Chaucer's Works, Volume 3 — The House of Fame; The Legend of Good Women; The Treatise on the Astrolabe; The Sources of the Canterbury TalesChaucer, Geoffrey
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Chaucer's Works, Volume 3 — The House of Fame; The Legend of Good Women; The Treatise on the Astrolabe; The Sources of the Canterbury Tales
Chaucer, Geoffrey
English poetry -- Middle English, 1100-1500
It further appears that some of the later sections, particularly sections
39 and 40, have not been properly revised; the corrector may very well have
become a little tired of his task by the time he arrived at them. It must
also be remembered, that such blunders as are made by a scribe who is not
clear as to the meaning of his subject-matter are by no means the blunders
which are most puzzling or most misleading; they are obvious at once as
evident blotches, and the general impression left upon the mind by the
perusal of this MS. is--that a careless scribe copied it from some almost
perfect original, and that his errors were partially corrected by an
intelligent corrector (possibly the author), who grew tired of his task
just towards the end.
The order of the Conclusions in Part ii. differs from that in all the
editions hitherto printed, and the MS. terminates abruptly in the middle of
a sentence, at the words 'howre after howre' in Conclusion 40 (p. 223). A
portion of the page of the MS. below these words is left blank, though the
colophon 'Explicit tractatus,' &c. was added at the bottom of the page at a
later period.
Certain allusions in the former part of the MS. render it probable that it
was written in London, about the year 1400.
§ 3. B.--MS. E Museo 54, in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. This is an
uncorrected duplicate of the preceding, as has been explained, and ends in
the same way, at the words 'howre after howre,' followed by a blank space.
The chief addition is the rubricated title--'Bred and mylk For childeren,'
boldly written at the beginning; in the margin are the following notes in a
late hand--'S_i_r Jiffray Chaucer'--'Do_mi_nus Gaufredus
Chaucerus'--'Galfredi Chauceri Tractatus de Ratione et vsu Astrolabij ad
Ludouicum filiu_m_.'
§ 4. C.--MS. Rawlinson, Misc. 1262, otherwise 1370 (leaves 22-42), in the
Bodleian Library, Oxford.
This is a beautifully written MS., on vellum, with 38 pages of text, and 4
blank pages. It has the Conclusions in the same order as the preceding, six
well-executed diagrams, and corrections on nearly every page. It is of
early date, perhaps about A.D. 1420, and of considerable importance. It
agrees closely with the text, and, like it, ends with 'howre after howre.'
Some variations of spelling are to be found in the Critical Notes. In this
MS. the Conclusions are numbered in the margin, and the numbers agree with
those adopted in this edition.
§ 5. D.--MS. Ashmole 391, in the Bodleian Library. I have made but little
use of this MS., on account of its being very imperfect.
§ 6. E.--MS. Bodley 619. This MS., like B., has the title--'Brede and Milke
for children.' Like other good MSS., it ends sect. 40 with 'houre after
houre.' But after this, there occurs an additional section, probably not
genuine, but printed here (for the sake of completeness) as section 46; see
p. 229. Cf. § 17.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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