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LVI. The Speculum Misericordie
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
The “Delamere” manuscript, owned successively by Lord Cholmondeley and Lord Delamere, and now passed into the possession of Mr. Boies Penrose II, has long been known to scholars for its complete text of the Canterbury Tales. It was first brought to notice by Furnivall, who listed, as well as the Canterbury Tales, the other poems, and described the state of the manuscript.
... it has lost 34 leaves in different parts of the volume ... The MS originally began with the Canterbury Tales and was regularly signed from a to z, 23 sheets. The scribe then put three sheets of Gower's Tales before the Canterbury Tales, and numbered the MS all through from 1 to 26, making the original first sheet a, number 3.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright
- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1939
References
1 I am deeply indebted to Mr. Boies Penrose of Taunton, England, for his permission to publish this poem. My thanks are due also to Professor Manly, who first introduced the Speculum Misericordie to me, and loaned his photographs.
2 F. J. Furnivall N. & Q., Fourth Series, ix (1892), 353.
3 Chaucer: Specimens of the Canterbury Tales, First series No. 90 (London, 1897).
4 E. P. Hammond, Chaucer: A Bibliographical Manual (New York, 1908), p. 195.
5 Sir William McCormick, The MSS of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (Oxford, 1933), pp. 101–110.
6 The five extracts are not mentioned in Macaulay's edition. See also footnotes 10, 11, 12.—De Ricci in his Consensus of Medieval MSS in America (New York, 1938) ii, 1886–97, lists this MS as Boies Penrose 10, and notes the printed description in the Sotheby Sales Catalogue, 1928, pp. 96–98. There are a few inaccuracies in de Ricci's account. It should be noted that the MS has never left England.—J. E. Wells in the Seventh Supplement to his Manual (New Haven, 1938) notes items in the Penrose MS on pp. 1565 [1608], 1573 [1618], 1578 [1624], 1587 [1638]; but he mistakenly locates the MS at Devon, Pennsylvania.
7 Urry's transcripts include three of the extracts from Gower and collations of the other extracts. See Catalogue of Additions to the MSS in the British Museum 1911–1915 (London, 1925), pp. 88–89.
8 Carleton Brown, A Register of Middle English Religious Verse (Oxford, 1916, 1920), No. 873.
9 Furnivall, loc. cit., said that this piece is not from the Confessio. Another version appears in Trinity College, Oxford, MS. 29, f. 190a; it is listed as a separate item in Brown's Register, No. 2253. It begins some 28 lines before the extract in the Delamere MS.
10 A new text not noted by Brown; it agrees with the version printed by Furnivall, Political, Religious and Love Poems EETS, 15, 96–102.
11 A. T. Bödtker, Partenope of Blois, EETS, cix, 481–484; reprinted from R. C.N [ichols] Roxburghe Club (London, 1873). The MS is described “at Vale Royal” (i.e., the seat of Lord Delamere) and is not identified further.
12 Agrees with the text in the National Library of Scotland, Advocates MS 19.3.1; printed by W. B. D. D. Turnbull, The Visions of Tundale (Edinburgh, 1843), pp. 1–76.
13 This confession is closely paralleled in the Prologue (MS. Ashmole 61) to the Adulterous Falmouth Squire, printed in EETS, 15, 93–96.
14 It should be observed that these Virtues are not the more common Three Theological and Four Cardinal Virtues, the “Seven [Principal] Virtues to the Trinity”—Faith, Hope, Charity; and Justice, Prudence, Temperance and Strength (cf. Brown, Register Nos. 627, 2449, 334 and 309); but the “Seven [Antithetical] Virtues opposed to the Seven Deadly Sins” (cf. Register Nos. 306, 1280)—Meekness, Charity, Patience, Labour, Largesse, Abstinence, and Chastity.
15 Some lines are even direct translations from the Vulgate; e.g. 276 (Daniel, iv, 32), 538 (Lvcam, xxiii, 42–43), 669 (Ionæ, iii, 8) etc
16 Introduced in the account of Envy; cf. also the problem given in Sloth—is the intention to make satisfaction for sins fully acceptable even if death prevents the proper fulfillment.
17 The order of the Virtues is dependent on the order of the Seven Deadly Sins. The listing given here is the same as in Gower's Mirour de l'homme, Chaucer's Parson's Tale, and The Kalendar and Compost of Shepherds (1518).
18 In the short tag, which list the Seven Deadly Sins the order is seldom constant. The nearest approximation to our list is in the unpublished three-line tag in B. M. MS Royal 8 F vii, f. 48a, col. ii: “Synnes be theyse seuen dedly / Pride Enuye and Wreght fulli / Sloutht Leccheri Aueryce and Gloteny.” For other short enumerations, all different, see Register Nos. 511, 1750 and 1205 (all unpublished). For a complete investigation of the Seven Deadly Sins see an unpublished dissertation presented to The Johns Hopkins University in 1913 by Francis Joseph Hemelt, entitled “The Seven Deadly Sins in English Literature.”
19 ed. J. R. Lumby, EETS, 14.
20 ed. Edith Rickert, EETS, xcix, p. xviii.
21 Present indicative: first person singular, e -: 188; second person singular, -est: 200, 343, 785, 825; third person singular, -eth: 106, 114, 134, 150, 164, 217; third person plural, -e: 99, 219; -en: 19, 98, 101, 186, 361, 694.
22 328 hit spedis; 332 it [the] nedis; 380 nedys; 386 nedis; 529 the (dative) lastis. The Northern form occurs once in the personal use of the third person singular: 335 hee bedys. The iotization, which also appears in the plurals of nouns, is a Northern characteristic.
23 Cf. Lancelot of the Laik, ed. W. W. Skeat, EETS, 6, p. xv.
24 Take and make are here in the subjunctive mood, and the parallel is not therefore perfectly accurate; but the form ma is quite common in the subjunctive, and would be employed in a truly Northern text: cf. Barbour's Bruce iv, 560, 561: “And gif he seis we may nocht swa / Luk on na vis the fyre he ma” (i. e. may make).
25 Once again make is not indicative, but imperative; cf., however, ma (imperative) in Cleanness 625: “þre metteз of mete menge & ma kakeз.”
26 Probably due to the confusion which goes back to the difficulties of the French scribes in the thirteenth century. This spelling here indicates that the spirant h is very weak; confirmation is seen in the spelling resseyvit (414 receives). Cf., however, nedyght (766).
1 In] I cut out. Urry: “The initial letter is cut out, I suppose because it seems to have been prettily illuminated; part of the ornamentation being still left.” Urry paginates by pages, designating f. 14b as p. 24. Throughout the entire poem, the text is bracketed by quatrains. 8 greet] Urry: greete
27 EETS, 15, 93–96.—Compare the treatment of the same theme in Deguileville's Pilgrimage of the Life of Man, followed by descriptions of the Sins: vv. 12515 (EETS lxxxiii, 340 ff.).
28 Brown Register, Nos. 971, 2237.
29 Ibid., No. 1214.
30 Ibid., Nos. 807, 1222, 2069.
31 Ibid., Nos. 366, 2396.
32 Ibid., Nos. 1280. (Seven Virtues against the Seven Sins), 1283 (Seven Bodily Works of Mercy), 1181 (Seven Sacraments), 1272 (Seven Principal Virtues).
33 For religious allegory, see: Karl Raab, Ueber vier allegorische Motive in der lateinischen und deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters (Program, Leoben, 1885)—one of the earliest works on this subject; there is a copy in the United States in the Bryn Mawr Library. See esp. pp. 25–38, Der Kampf der Tugenden und Laster. See also Hope Traver, The Four Daughters of God (Philadelphia, 1907); John M. Berdan, Early Tudor Poetry (New York, 1920), especially ch. ii; and C. S, Lewis, The Allegory of Love (Oxford, 1936), especially ch. ii.
34 C. Horstman, Yorkshire Writers: Richard Rolle of Hampole (London, 189S), i, 327.