The Index of Middle English Prose. Handlist IV: A Handlist of Manuscripts Containing Middle English Prose in the Douce Collection, Bodleian Library, Oxford by Laurel Braswell

Abstract

REVIEWS CX2- (in Manuscnpts in the Fifty Years After the Invention ofPrinting, ed. J. B. Trapp [London, 1983], pp. 6-8) or of A. L. Hench's identification of the setting copy for Tyrwhitt in Studies in Bibliography 3 (1950):265-66. It is regrettable that this volume shows evidence ofa lack offinalrevision. Professor Boyd has assembled much useful material in this volume. With a little more effort its reliability, particularly in textual matters, could have been greatly increased, and fuller justice done to her industry and scholarship. A.S. G. EDWARDS University of Victoria LAUREL BRASWELL. The Index ofMiddle English Prose. Hand/ist IV: A Handlist of Manuscripts Containing Middle English Prose in the Douce Collection, Bodleian Library, Oxford. Cambridge and Wolfe­ boro, N.H.: D.S. Brewer, 1987. Pp. xix, 110. $32.50, ,£19.50. It is encouraging to see the steady accomplishment of ambitious designs in the publication of substantial parts of a large scholarly project such as The Index ofMiddle English Prose.Since such collaborative projects are, by their very nature, vulnerable, it is of considerable credit to the general editor and coeditors and the editorial board that this fourth handlist, a list ofmanuscriptscontaining Middle English prose in the Douce Collection in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, appeared within three years of the publica­ tion of the first handlist (with others now also out or imminent and the invaluableIndexofPrinted MiddleEnglishProse [IPMEP] also published). T he present handlist usefully identifies those items of specific interest to Middle English specialists in the large and diverse Douce Collection, listing fifty-four manuscripts containing Middle English prose, ranging from the ubiquitous collections of medical and other recipes to a translation of Vegetius De re militari; a copy of the Master ofGame; several copies of the Wycliffite translation of the Bible; a romance, Ponthus; a manuscript of devotional treatises of Carthusian provenance; and so forth. A concise introduction categorizes the types of Middle English prose texts found in the Douce manuscripts and offers a resume of the formation of the collec­ tion as a whole, as well as of Douce's career as a collector of diverse objects and as an unexpected benefactor ofthe Bodleian Library. Given all this, it is 191 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER a great pity that in detail Handlist IVdoes not seem to fulfill the expecta­ tions raised by the businesslike tone of its introduction, nor the high standard set by earlier handlists in the series, such as the exemplary list of MiddleEnglish prose in the HuntingtonLibrary that appeared as Handlist Ithat has become, with IPMEP, an invaluable reference point for any study of this material. A sample of three entries in the present handlist, chosen at random, reveals, when checked against the manuscripts, an unfortunate number of inaccuracies. And so, in the opening lines of the Three Kings ofCologne, which begins imperfectly in MS 301, "pis" in the first line of the transcrip­ tion should read "pat"; in line 3, in the account of Paul's road to Damascus experience, the text should read "conuerted to Crist" andnot "connected to crist"; in line 4, "propre heryes" should read "prophecyes," and the un­ biblical "zhalaam" should read "Balaam"; in the following line, "his bokes" should read "in he(r) bokes" (and in the transcription of the final lines "three," incidentally, should read "thre"). And again in the transcription of the opening lines of a copy of the Brut Chronicle in MS 323, "surreye" should read "Surrye"; "a noble kyng and myghty a man of grete renoun" in fact has an additional ampersand after "myghty"; "dyoclissian" should read "Dyoclician" (and is it really necessary to avoid capitals [cf. the general editor's note, p. v, paragraph 4], at times even in the face ofmanuscript practice, when an equally arbitrary decision to capitalize all proper names would help the reader considerably?). The transcription of the closing passage of the Brut, which is said to begin on folio 101v but in fact begins on the recto, contains two mistranscriptions: "toke pytye" for "toke pe pylfre" (a radically different effect in the context of the aftermath of a battle between the Scots and the English) and "scotte" for "Scottes." (In...