66

transubstantiation was found to be so perfectly erased, that no letter or fragment of a letter remained. The Saxon copy of the same epistle having been found in the archives of Exeter church, the whole sentence has been restored. We are told that many books were destroyed in the wars between the houses of York and Lancaster. In the Lansdowne Collection we have “a copy of leaves torn out of a book, said to be written temp. Edw. IV., in favour of the house of Lancaster against the said King, which leaves were found in a bookbinder's shop, and the said book ignorantly put to profane uses."* In the scarcity of writing materials in the middle-ages, many MSS. were erased for the purpose of substituting other works considered at the time of more importance. These are but isolated facts, it is true, forming data of a slight kind on which to found a general conclusion. But it is these isolated facts which occasionally fall under our notice in literary history that confirm the statements of contemporary writers, and add to our minds a conviction which otherwise rests on the relation of individual, possibly interested, and therefore doubtful authority. If we had learnt from a contemporary writer, that, in the thirteenth century, the writings of some MSS. had been erased, for the purpose of employing the prepared membrane to write other compositions upon; if we had been told that this was a practice in common use; and that, from the erasure having been imperfectly made, the original writing might with care be traced, and thus be restored to us: if we had been told this, our evidence for its truth must rest entirely upon our belief in the veracity of the narrator. If we found a single MS. in which we could trace but a few words only, our belief would be stronger. But if whole works could thus be restored to us, all doubts would cease, and our belief in the truth of the narration would be complete. Many MSS. have, in this extraordinary manner, been restored to us. They have acquired the name of Palimpsests, or Codices Rescripti. More attention has been given to this class of MSS. on the Continent than amongst us. It is, however, by no means impossible that we

MS. Lansdown. 205, fol. 138 b. Anno 1581.

may yet, under some of the writings of the middle-ages, discover a portion of those Anglo-Saxon compositions now supposed to be lost.*

There are many reasons for believing that the Anglo-Saxon language was never extinct in England. Although the AngloSaxon characters were in use two centuries or more after the Conquest,f they were seldom used in Latin compositions; and to this, and the severe ordinances introduced by the Conqueror, may we attribute their decline. A few patriots in the monasteries preferred them still, and to them are we indebted for their preservation. On the destruction of Croyland monastery by fire in 1091, Ingulphus, bewailing the loss of his charters, attributes it to chance that any escaped. "A few years before," says he, "I had given several out of the treasury, of which we had duplicates, that they might be kept in the cloister for teaching the juniors the Saxon hand. Having been long slighted because of the Normans, it was come to be unknown, except by a few of the seniors; but the juniors were instructed to read the old letter, that they might understand and maintain our charters when they grew old." Camden tells us, that " in the Abbey of Tavistock, (which had a Saxon founder about 961,) there were solemn lectures in the Saxon tongue, even to the time of our fathers, that the knowledge of the language might not fail, as it has since well nigh done.Ӥ And that which is here related of Tavistock monastery seems to have been true also of others. William L'Isle, in his Preface to the Saxon Monuments, published by him in 1623, thus alludes to the subject: "Thanks be to God, that he

* In Jesus College Library, Cambridge, is a Palimpsest MS., in which a splendid copy of the Anglo-Saxon Homilies of Elfric has been erased to make room for Latin decretals. A few words near the margins of the leaves may with care be traced. Wright's Essay, 108. Historical Account of Palimpsest MSS. by Archdeacon Nares, in Trans. Royal Soc. Literature, vol. ii. 1834.

†The last expiring efforts of the Saxon language seem to have been made in 1258-9, in a writ of Henry III. to his subjects in Huntingdonshire and all other parts of the kingdom, in support of the Oxford provisions of that reign. It is printed in Somner's Saxon Dict. under Unnan. Bosworth Int. to A. S. Grammar, p. 17. Edit. 1823

Ingulph. Hist. sub anno.

§ Britannia in Devon.

that conquered the land could not so conquer the language, but that in memory of our fathers it hath been preserved with common lectures," &c.

Before the year 1525, we find a printing press already erected in the monastery of Tavistock, for in that year an English translation of Boethius de Consolatione Philosophiae was printed there, under the title of " The Boke of Comfort, translated into Englesse Tonge. Enprented in the exempt monastery of Tavestok in Denshyre, by me Dan Thomas Rycharde, Monke of the said Monastery. To the instant desyre of the ryght-worshypful esquyer Mayster Robert Langdon, Anno Do. MDXXV." Hearne, who, in his Glossary to Robert of Gloucester, has given us an account of this work, says that the translation was made by Joannes Waltwnen, or Walton, (canon of Oseney, and sub-dean of York,) at the request of Elizabeth Berkeley, and was finished in 1410; and he conjectures, that "it was printed out of a pious design, as well as for the advancing the Saxon tongue, which was taught in this abbey, as in some other places of this kingdom, with success; and there were lectures read in it constantly here, which continued some time after the Reformation."* He adds, "that, from having a variety of words agreeing with the Saxon, it might be thought a very proper book for the attaining to a knowledge of the Saxon language."†

It is singular that with this desire to perpetuate the language of our ancestors, there should exist no grammar of it amongst our manuscript collections. At least, none is at present known to exist by which that language was taught, and it is, perhaps, to the publication of this translation of Boethius that we must attribute the prevailing opinion that the monks of Tavistock Abbey cut a font of Saxon type, and with it printed a Saxon grammar and other Saxon works.‡

"It is said that the monks of Tavistock, before the dissolution of their monastery, not only revived the study of Saxon, but possessed a font of Saxon type, and printed Saxon books. I cannot give any information on this point: assuredly of any Saxon which they did print (if ever they printed any) there is nothing remaining in any library in Europe."-J. M. Kemble's Letter in

In 1533, (25 Hen. VIII.) John Leland was, by commission under the great seal, appointed the king's Antiquary. It is stated in the anonymous life of Leland,* that about 1525 he removed to All Souls' College, Oxford, where he prosecuted his studies not only in Greek and Latin, but in the Saxon and Welsh also. John Bale, Leland's friend and contemporary, tells us that "he was learned in Greke, Latyne, Frenche, Spanyshe, Brittyshe, Saxonyshe, Walshe, Englyshe, and Scottyshe." We have also the testimony of Tanner, Nicolson, and other writers, that Leland possessed a knowledge of the Saxon language; so that as much as was sufficient for the purpose of examining the Anglo-Saxon MSS. which he might meet with, we may readily grant to him. Although his appointment as king's Antiquary preceded by two years the dissolution of the smaller, and by six years that of the larger§ monasteries; the limited power with which he was invested could only partially preserve from destruction the literary treasures which in them were reposited. Hear the complaint of a contemporary: "Never had we bene offended for the losse of our lybraryes, beynge so manye in nombre, and in so desolate places for the more parte yf the chief monumentes, and moste notable workes of our excellent wryters had been reserved. If there had bene in every shyre of Englande but one solemyne lybrary, to the preseruacyon of those noble workes, and preferrement of good lernynges in our posteryte, it had bene yet sumwhat. But to destroy all without consyderation, a great number of them whych pur

Michel's Bibliotheque Anglo-Saxonne, p. 2. "It has been said, that so early as the fifteenth century, the monks of Tavistock applied themselves to the study of the Anglo-Saxon language, and that they even printed a grammar. No traces, however, of such a book can now be found; and it may have been a mere error arising from the indefinite manner in which some people formerly applied the term Anglo-Saxon."-Wright's Essay on the Literature, &c. of the Anglo-Saxons, p. 109.

* Lives of Leland, Hearne, and Wood, Oxford, 1772, p. 4.

† Preface to New Yeares Gift to Henry VIII.

27 Henry VIII. c. 28, Act for granting to the king all monasteries not

having L.200 a year, A.D. 1535-6.

§ Act for the dissolution of abbeys, 31 Henry VIII. c. 13, A.D. 1539.

chased those superstycyouse mansions, reserued of those lybrarye bokes, some to serue their iakes, some to scour their candlestyckes, and some to rubbe their bootes. Some they sold to the grossers and sopesellers, and some over see to the bokebynders,* not in small nombre, but at tymes whole shyppes full, to the wonderynge of the foren nacyons. Yea, the unyversytees of thys realme are not all clere in thys detestable fact. But cursed is that bellye, whyche seketh to be fedde with such ungodly gaynes, and so depely shameth hys natural contreye. I know a merchaunt man, whych shall at thys time be namelesse, that boughte the contentes of two noble lybraryies for xl shyllynges pryce, a shame it is to be spoken. Thys stuffe hath he occupyed in the stede of graye paper by the space of more than these x yeares, and yet he hath store ynough for as many yeares to come. I iudge thys to be true, and utter it with heauynesse, that neyther the Brytaynes, under the Romanes and Saxons, nor yet the Englyshe people undre the Danes and Normannes, had euer such dammage of their lerned monumentes as we have seane in our time."+

What a contrast does the present offer to the past! We are now seeking every where, at home and abroad, and purchasing back, at an immense cost, those very MS. treasures, perhaps, which, at the period of the Reformation, were scattered to the four winds of heaven as of no value. The Vandals of that age might have thought the retention of them would have delayed the glorious work of godly reformation. But

* Besides being sent over sea to the bookbinders, a circumstance now rendered almost certain by the discovery of several Anglo-Saxon MSS. on the continent, in the covers of books we have recently had evidence that many MSS. at home were also destroyed in this way. Thus fragments of a valuable MS. of the twelfth century were recently found in the cover of a book, for the strengthening of which they had been used. These have been published, entitled, Fragments of Ælfric's Grammar, Ælfric's Glossary, and a Poem on the Soul and Body, in the orthography of the Twelfth Century, discovered among the Archives of Worcester Cathedral, by Sir T. Phillipps, Bart. Edited by Sir T. P. London, 1838," folio.—Wright's Essay on Anglo-Saxon Literature, p. 59.

† Bale's Preface to Leland's New Yeares Gift to Henry VIII. 1549.