A Note on the Neckham Canon

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THE confusion surrounding canon of Alexander Neckham is well known. Of forty odd titles attributed to him by Bale, Tanner, Fabricius, and others, less than half can be accepted as or indeed even identified with any confidence. At last count twenty-four were still listed as dubious, unidentified, or lost.' However much of this condition may be blamed on normal attrition of time, a substantial part of it should doubtless be laid to fact, deplored over forty years ago by Victor Mortet, that his writings have, in general, been as yet insufficiently studied.2 A sufficient study, if it is ever made, will obviously begin with an examination of Neckham's many unedited, not to say unread treatises, and particularly with several florilegia compiled from works. But it must also take some account of hundreds of Neckham citations and allusions scattered throughout writings of mediaeval and early Renaissance authors. The value of latter method is well illustrated by quotations from Neckham's poetry which are found in Robert Holkot's commentary, In proverbia Salomoni8.3 Holkot considered Neckham a prime authority and in second half of book appealed to him (under name of Alexander) more frequently than to any other author, ancient or modern. This note will consider relation of some of citations to two of more puzzling items in Neckham bibliography. One of Neckham's longer unpublished prose works is called Corrogationes Promethei. It consists of two main parts, one devoted to a discussion of Latin grammar and other to a verbal commentary on Bible. The meaning of its enigmatic title, which had vexed successive generations of scribes and scholars, was solved by Paul Meyer, who convincingly glossed it as the compilations of a man condemned to idleness.4 But another problem connected with work remains. What is its relation to 127 elegaic lines by Neckham which are