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Notes
acknowledgements. Plate I is reproduced by courtesy of the Bodleian Library, Plate IIa by courtesy of the Warden and Fellows of All Souls College, Oxford, Plate IIb by courtesy of the Master and Fellows of Balliol College, Oxford.
Quoted from F. N. Robinson (ed.), The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer (London, 1957 edn), p. 534, except that I have modified Robinson's punctuation. To provide a balance see Thomas Hoccleve's account of a scribe's point of view: F. J. Furnivall (ed.), Hoccleve's Works. III. The Regement of Princes, EETS e.s. 72 (1897), 36-38, lines 985-1029; also Osbern Bokenham's Legendys of Hooly Wummen, ed. M. S. Serjeantson, EETS o.s. 206 (1938 for 1936), lines 895-908. For general accounts of medieval 'publication' see, e.g. R. K. Root, 'Publication before Printing', PMLA, 28 (1913), 417-431, and H. S. Bennett, 'The Production and Dissemination of Vernacular Manuscripts in the Fifteenth Century', The Library, 5th ser., 1 (1946-47), 167-178, also my article on Capgrave, cited below, n. 3.
My interpretation of this verse differs from that of A. McIntosh who takes it that the scribe was given Chaucer's original and enjoined 'to transmit it unaltered': 'Scribal Profiles from Middle English Texts', Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 76 (1975), 218-235, quot. on p. 224. The phrase 'more trewe' seems to me probably to imply some tolerance of non-essential alterations which do not affect the wording. Cf. Troilus and Criseyde, V, 1793-98, esp. 1795 and 1798.
See my 'John Capgrave, O.S.A. (1393-1464), Scribe and "Publisher"', Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 5, i (1969), 1-35, quotation from p. 27, additions in square brackets.
I have retained the numerical designations employed in the monograph referred to in the previous footnote.
For a reproduction (reduced) of f. 365r see Plate I. The manuscript is also described by H. M. Bannister in his 'Introductory Note' to J. Capgrave, Ye Solace of Pilgrimes, ed. C. A. Mills (1911), p. xi; the frontispiece of this book is a reproduction (reduced) of f. 387r. For a reproduction of part of f. 376 see N. Denholm-Young, Handwriting in England and Wales (1954), pl. 22.
See H. O. Coxe, Catalogus codicum MSS qui in Collegiis Aulisque Oxoniensibus hodie adservantur (1852), II, 5; also the letter from A. S. Napier to F. J. Furnivall printed in the 'Forewords' to Capgrave's Life of St. Katharine of Alexandria, ed. C. Horstmann, EETS o.s. 100 (1893), xxxiv-xxxv.
The manuscript is paginated, starting at the beginning of the text (Capgrave's 'De Fidei Symbolis'). I refer to the front endleaves as folios by roman numeral.
On the date of this work see my 'Capgrave Scribe and Publisher', p. 3, n.2. The text is printed from manuscript [3] by Mills, Solace; see especially pp. 26-32.
This was the view of Bannister in Solace, ed. Mills, p. xviii, confirmed in my 'Capgrave Scribe and Publisher', pp. 11-12, but recently questioned by E. Colledge in 'The Capgrave "Autographs"', Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 6, ii (1975), 137-148. Colledge's view, that the body of the text was written by Capgrave's 'secretary' but that the corrections are in the hand of the author, depends on whether the two hands are distinguishable. Although I believe the weight of the evidence is firmly against Colledge it is not my purpose to refute him here nor is it necessary. [See now my review of C. L. Smetana's Life of St. Norbert by John Capgrave (1977) in Medium Ævum, 48 (1979), 316-319, esp. p. 316.] What matters for the present purpose is that the text of the 'Solace' in [3] was revised by Capgrave and thus had authorial approval; on this matter there is no dispute.
See Plate II. Printed, very inaccurately, by F. C. Hingeston in The Chronicle of England by John Capgrave, Rolls Series 1 (1858), Appendix IV, pp. 355-66.
In the transcriptions the following conventions are used: (1) Italic letters indicate expanded contractions; (2) an apostrophe, ('), indicates a flourish which is added to some letters—almost invariably when they occur at the end of a word—and which may be either a mark of abbreviation, usually for -e, or an otiose stroke; (3) a vertical bar | indicates a line division (doubled for a page division); (4) \ oblique strokes / indicate letters or words written suprascript or added in the margin for insertion; (5) & (ampersand) stands for the Tironian sign for 'and'. In the transcription of A the letters þ and y are printed as appropriate, although in the manuscript the y-form of þ is indistinguishable from y itself; whereas in S þ and y are distinguished in the manuscript. The distinction in both A and S between i and j is merely calligraphic and whichever is the appropriate letter is printed in the transcriptions.
References to A are by folio and line (without preceding 'f.' or 'l.') followed, after a semi-colon, or sometimes in brackets, by page and line references to Mills's edition. References to S are also by page or folio (as appropriate) and line, from which it is easily deduced whether a reference is to manuscript [7]—pp. 223-24, fol. i—or to manuscript [8]—fols. 118-19.
The word him appears in the right-hand margin after pri, and there is a caret after vndirtok to indicate where him should be inserted.
Another fault that should be noted here was the S-scribe's occasional failure to keep A's capitalization and punctuation. On two occasions the dropping of a capital letter is immediately preceded by the omission of a punctuation-marker so that a reader might temporarily miss the beginning of a new sentence. However, such faults would hardly have led to the copy being rejected as they could easily have been corrected during rubrication.
There are probably more than 85 errors but when there is any uncertainty as to whether a divergence between S and A constitutes an error or not I have given the S-scribe the benefit of the doubt.
The uncorrected errors are as is suppose (recte supposed) at 365r/42, possibly not an error at all as final d has been erased (see Plate I), and the example of wrong word order cited in Part I above, under (1). The corrections are all omitted words or letters inserted suprascript or in the margin, or repeated words or letter-strokes expuncted.
This form could possibly show excrescent d after -n though I know of no other instance of this feature in this word. In the context it is probably an error: S reads a faire conk of purphiri stonde be fore hir.
This error could be the result simply of a misreading of A's ambiguous y-form of þ but the effect is to substitute one word for another. Morphological substitution is unlikely as this is not a feature of the linguistic alterations in S. See further below, Appendix, n. 1.
This reading is probably right though the letter read as a could be the first stroke of an o followed by a minim and the letters read as ft could be st.
Mon for man is of course a dialectal variant associated especially with the W. Midlands but is not otherwise known in the area from which S comes; for the argument concerning S's dialect see below.
It is just possible that the omission here is a grammatical variation, the S-scribe preferring a zero-introduced noun clause, but if so it is the only grammatical alteration in the text. Cf. 2.1.1 above.
The effect in 3.2.10 and 3.2.13-14 is also to substitute another word ('Tiber', 'lantern') but these words would be so inappropriate in their contexts that the errors would hardly have done more than check a reader (unless he was exceptionally stupid).
On Capgrave's meticulousness see my 'Capgrave Scribe and Publisher', pp. 5-7, and 15, n. 1, also my 'Consistency and Correctness in the Orthographic Usage of John Capgrave's Chronicle', Studia Neophilologica, 45 (1973), 323-355, esp. 355.
3.1.9-13. For a discussion of the kinds of error that could arise from the movement of the copyist's eye from his copy back to his exemplar see E. Vinaver, 'Principles of Textual Emendation', in Studies in French Language and Medieval Literature presented to Professor Mildred K. Pope (1939), pp. 351-369, esp. pp. 355-360.
"Tradition and Innovation in some Middle English Manuscripts', Review of English Studies, n.s. 17 (1966), 359-372, quot. on p. 372, n. 1. Her study is based on manuscripts containing the metrical Chronicle formerly attributed to Robert of Gloucester. I am grateful to Dr Hudson for commenting on a draft version of this paper.
Indeed D. Pearsall has recently suggested that Capgrave had 'other scribes . . . working under his direction, producing copies of Capgrave's own works, in a standard "house style" of spelling . . .': in 'John Capgrave's Life of St. Katharine and Popular Romance Style', Medievalia et Humanistica, n.s. 6 (1975), 121-137, quot. on p. 123. I know of no evidence for this 'standard "house style" of spelling' and the present material would suggest that what 'standard spelling' there was in Capgrave's scriptorium was confined to Capgrave alone.
M. Benskin, 'Local archives and Middle English dialects', Journal of the Society of Archivists, 5 (1977), 500-514, quot. on p. 510.
Quoted from De Scauri et Palladii libris excerpta in H. Keil (ed.), Grammatici Latini (1855-1923), VII, 325.
Victorinus, Ars Grammatica, in Keil, Grammatici, VI, 194; Diomedes, Ars Grammatica, in Keil, Grammatici, I, 421. The statements by Donatus (Keil, Grammatici, IV, 368) and Charisius (Keil, Grammatici, I, 7) are less full. The fifth-century grammarian Priscian expresses the relationship slightly differently—and less perspicuously: Figurae accidunt quas videmus in singulis literis. Potestas autem ipsa pronuntiatio, propter quam et figurae et nomina facta sunt (Keil, Grammatici, II, 9).
'Towards an Inventory of Middle English Scribes', Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 75 (1974), 602-624, quotations on p. 603.
Properly 'dialectal' is correct since dialect has always meant 'regional speech' (rather than writing), as in all the instances cited by OED and OEDS Dialect. However, in much the same way as the original meaning of atom 'that which is indivisible' was changed by the splitting of the atom, so the recognition that 'orthographic' or 'W-features' are regionally distributed in an orderly way in Middle English effectively introduces a new sense for dialect: 'subordinate variety of a language (of a past period) characterized by distinctive written forms which may or may not signify distinctive pronunciations'. Henceforth in this article the word 'dialectal' is used with the sense 'pertaining to dialect (in the sense given)'.
For this analysis I am indebted to Mr Michael Benskin and Mrs Margaret Laing both of whom are working on ME dialectology in association with Professor Angus McIntosh at Edinburgh. Since their material is unpublished I have not been able to verify it. I am grateful to Mr Benskin for his very full answers to my queries.
By 'of dialectal significance' I mean 'showing an orderly geographical distribution in the area concerned'.
For spelling distinctions of this kind observed by Capgrave see my 'Consistency in Orthographic Usage', p. 351.
A change not listed is that, whereas A uses a y-form of þ so that þ and y are indistinguishable in shape, in S þ and y are distinguished. I regard this as a palaeographical rather than linguistic feature, though it can have textual consequences (see Part II above, §1.1.10 and n. 19) and may show regional distribution (see McIntosh, 'Inventory', p. 609).
Since n and u are indistinguishable this spelling could be an error with the nasal titulus omitted. Cf. A straunge > S straunge (2).
This variation probably derives from OF Bretaigne beside L Brittania; cf. my 'Consistency in Orthographic Usage', p. 343, n. 1.
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