Studies from Court and Cloister Part 25

Of the constant activity going on in the formation of this wonderful library, and of the great generosity with which the books were lent the following letters are eloquent. Archbishop Ussher writes thus:

"Worthy Sir,--I have received from you the history of the Bishops of Durham, together with your ancient copies of the Psalmes, whereof that which hath the Saxon interlineary translation inserted is the old Romanum Psalterium, the other three are the same with that which is called Gallic.u.m Psalterium. But I have not yet received that which I stand most in need of, to wit the Psalter in 8vo which is distinguished with obeliskes and asteriskes. I pray you, therefore, send it unto me by my servant, this bearer, as also the life of Wilfrid, written in prose by a nameless author that lived about the time of Bede; the other written in verse by FredeG.o.dus I received from Mr. Burnett; together, with William Malmsburiensis de vitis Pontific.u.m Anglia et S. Aldhelmus.

Before you leave London I pray you do your best to get master Crashaw's MS. Psalter conveyed unto me. I doubt not but before this time you have dealt with Sir Peter Vanlore for obtaining Erpenius his Hebrew, Syriach, Arabick, and Persian books, and the matrices of the letters of the Oriental languages. If he interpose himself seriously herein, it is not to be doubted, but he will prevayle before any other. But what he doth he must do very speedilye, because the Jesuites of Antwerp are already dealing for the Oriental presse, and others for the Arabick, Syriac, Hebrew, and Persian bookes. It were good you took some order before you went, how Sir Peter may signify unto you, when you are in the countrye, what is done in this businesse. If he send to Mr. Burnett at any time [who dwellith at the signe of the three swannes in Lombard Streets he will finde some means or other to communicate what he pleaseth unto me. I thank you very hartilye for the care which you have taken in causing my Samaritan Bible to be so faire bound. I have given order to Mr. Burnett to content the workman for his paynes, and so with remembrance of my best affections unto yourself and the kinde ladye your wife,* I committ both of you to G.o.d's blessed protection, and rest your own most a.s.sured,

"Ja Armacha.n.u.s."

* Sir Robert Cotton had married Elizabeth, daughter and co-heiress of William Brocas of Thedingworth, Leicesters.h.i.+re, by whom he had several sons, the eldest Thomas, alone surviving him.

Sir Edward Dering writes in 1630:

"Sir; I received your very welcome letter, whereby I find you abundant in courtesies of all natures. I am a great debtor to you, and those obligations likely still to be multiplied. As I confess so much to you, so I hope to witnesse it to posterity. I have sent up two of your bookes which have much pleasured me. I have here the charter of King John, dated at Running Meade.* By the first safe and sure messenger it is yours, so are the Saxon charters, as fast as I can copy them, but in the meantime I will enclose King John in a boxe and send him. I shall much long to see you at this place, where you shall command the heart of your affectionate friend and servant,

"E. Dering."

Dover Castle, May 10, 1630.

* There are two original drafts of Magna Charta in the Cottonian Library.

It would be extremely interesting were Cotton's own letters extant, to have some account from his pen of the manner in which he came by many ma.n.u.scripts, the history of which is a blank to us from the time of the dissolution of the monasteries till they found a safe haven in his library. But his letters are very rare; two only have been preserved in the Record Office. They are addressed to his brother, Thomas, in the years 1623 and 1624, and they begin "Loving David," and end "Thy Jonathon." One is much stained, and difficult to read; both treat of political matters.

In 1629 the origin of a seditious pamphlet, ent.i.tled, "How to bridle the impertinency of Parliaments," which was handed about in London, causing some commotion, was traced to the Cottonian library. In spite of all that Cotton could put forward to exculpate himself, an order was issued by the Privy Council for the sequestration of his books, on the ground that they were not of a nature to be exposed for public inspection. And this was not all. Once before he had been deprived of access to them for a time, and now again he was himself debarred from entering his own library, a privation which affected him so seriously, that from the moment of sequestration his health visibly declined, and he declared to his friends that they had broken his heart, who had locked up his books from him.

Disraeli, in his Amenities of Literature, says that, "Tormented by the fate of a collection which had consumed forty years, at every personal sacrifice to form it for 'the use and services of posterity,' he sank at the sudden stroke. In the course of a few weeks he was so worn by injured feelings that, from a ruddy-complexioned man, his face was wholly changed into a grim blackish paleness, near to the resemblance and hue of a dead visage."

Cotton made two separate pet.i.tions to have his rights over his own property restored. In the first he signified to the Privy Council that their detaining his books without rendering any reason for the same had been the cause of the mortal malady from which he suffered. In the second, in which his son joined, he merely complained that the doc.u.ments were peris.h.i.+ng for lack of airing, and that no one was allowed to consult them. The Lord Privy Seal was at last sent to him with a tardy message from the king, but too late to avail him anything.

Within half an hour of his death the Earl of Dorset came to condole with his son, now Sir Thomas Cotton, bearing the somewhat ambiguous a.s.surance that, "as his Majesty loved his father, so he would continue his love to him." Sir Robert Cotton died on the 6th May 1631, and was buried at Connington. Long afterwards it was discovered that the author of the fatal pamphlet, that had done so much to kill him, was Sir Robert Dudley, who had written it when in exile at Florence.

Before tracing the subsequent history of the Cottonian library we will pause and consider some of the most important ma.n.u.scripts which it contained at the death of its famous originator.

It has been said that he turned his attention largely towards collecting materials for every period of English history. Those materials are particularly rich as regards the Anglo-Saxon period.

Beginning chronologically we find here (in Vitellius, A 15) the story of Beowulf, the oldest monument of AngloSaxon literature, reaching back into the ages of heathendom. It is a pagan war-song which, in being handed down from minstrel to minstrel, has lost nothing of its wild, exultant beauty, while it has received many Christian inflexions from the bards of a better religion than that in which it was originally conceived, through whose minds it pa.s.sed before being committed to parchment. When the Saxons had embraced Christianity they carefully weeded out from their national poetry all allusion to personages of pagan mythology, so that, in an antiquarian sense, their literature suffered. But the forcible and picturesque imagery of half-barbaric tribes still remained. The coa.r.s.eness of the beer-hall is, however, subdued by the gold and silken embroideries with which it is adorned.

In a vivid description of a battle, in the midst of lurid flames, of blood and carnage, the enemy is "put to sleep with the sword." When a hero dies in peace, "he goes on his way."

The poem of Beowulf has been variously edited. It was first noticed by Wanley, in his catalogue of Saxon MSS. in 1705. It was printed with a Latin translation by Thorkelin, at Copenhagen, in 1815. Conybeare, in his Ill.u.s.trations of Anglo-Saxon Poetry, points out several errors into which the Dane, Thorkelin, and the Englishman, Turner fell; and Thorpe, in his Anglo-Saxon Poems of Beowulf, differs from all preceding editors, who considered the heroes as mythical beings of a divine order, he suggesting that they were kings and chieftains of the North, within the pale of authentic history.* This opinion had been shared by Kemble, but under the influence of Grimmperhaps the greatest authority on these matters--he ended by regarding the poem as mythic. Later critics have, however, considered that it deals with historical persons.

* Preface, p. xvii.

Only secondary to the romance of Beowulf must once have been the fragment of a poem on the death of Beorhtnoth.* It was printed by Hearne in the appendix to his edition of Johannis Glastoniensis Chronicon, but without a translation.

* Formerly Otho A 12, in the Cottonian Library; the original perished in the fire of 1731.

"It const.i.tutes," says Conybeare, "a battle-piece of spirited execution, mixed with short speeches from the princ.i.p.al warriors, conceived with much force, variety, and character; the death of the hero is also very graphically described. The whole approximates much more nearly than could have been expected to the war-scenes of Homer."

Of the poem of Judith, one of the finest specimens of Anglo-Saxon songs, a fragment is preserved in the same volume which contains the story of Beowulf.

The type of the Anglo-Saxon poets in Christian times is Caedmon, whom Professor George Stephens called "the Milton of North England in the seventh century," and who, according to the legend told by Bede, being singularly unblessed with the power of song, received the gift miraculously in sleep. He is represented in the Cottonian library only by a few prayers in Anglo-Saxon (Julius, A 2) which Junius printed from this MS. at the end of his edition of Caedmon's paraphrase. The interesting collection, which goes by Caedmon's name in the Bodleian library, is a series of pieces on Scriptural subjects, with beautifully painted ill.u.s.trations.

A ma.n.u.script of the tenth century (Cleopatra, B 13) contains a short hymn on the conversion of the AngloSaxons; and in the same volume is a life of St. Dunstan.

Two important volumes (Tiberius, B 5, and t.i.tus, D 27), one of which appears to have been written for the use of nuns, formed part of the material for a history of mathematics in England, during the Middle Ages.*

* Rara Mathematica from inedited MSS., by J. O. Halliwell.

Alcuin and Aldhelm were the chief Anglo-Latin poets. Some of Alcuin's letters are to be found in this collection. St. Aldhelm, Abbot, afterwards Bishop of Malmesbury, was regarded by King Alfred as the prince of Anglo-Latin poets. His chief work, The Praises of Virginity, is at Cambridge, but his metrical treatise on the monastic life and one of his letters are here preserved.

Alfred is well represented in his Laws, and in his Saxon versions of Augustine's soliloquies.

Of the works of the venerable Bede we have the Ecclesiastical History, the Life and Miracles of St. Cuthbert, and nine other ma.n.u.scripts.

It was probably between 1615 and 1621 that Sir Robert Cotton became possessed of the celebrated ma.n.u.script known as the Utrecht Psalter.

Its early history is obscure, and experts have differed widely as to its probable date and origin. Sir Thomas Hardy, who summarised its contents, and drew up a report upon the intrinsic arguments in favour of its remote antiquity, called attention to the fact that it could not have been written in England, because it contains certain liturgical pieces which were not in use in this country, at the time a.s.signed for its age by other internal evidence. He suggested that it was brought into England by the Christian princess, Bertha, daughter of Charibert the Frankish king, who became the queen of Ethelbert. He based this supposition on the costliness of the ma.n.u.script which would point to its having belonged to a royal personage. He next considered the probability that this Psalter was presented by Queen Bertha to the monastery of Reculver, in Kent, where the king had built a new palace, and where Bertha attended the services of her religion, Hardy drew this inference from the coincidence that at the time when the volume came into Cotton's hands there was bound up with it a charter, recording the gift of certain lands by Lothair, King of Kent, to Bercwald, Abbot of Reculver, and to his monastery. The charter is dated Reculver, May 7, 679, and it seems to have been the custom in smaller monasteries to place royal and other charters inside valuable books for preservation, in default of any more suitable depository. This charter, which Cotton took to be an original doc.u.ment, he separated from the Utrecht Psalter, preserving it in another part of his library. It is still to be found where he placed it (in Augustus, B 2).

Mr. Birch, however, disposed summarily of Sir Thomas Hardy's ingenious theory, and p.r.o.nounced Cotton's opinion that the charter was an original doc.u.ment, as not worth much. After giving all the evidence for and against the probability of Queen Bertha, having presented the Psalter to Reculver Abbey, he showed reasons for the charter being a copy of the original, and for its having been made at Christ Church, Canterbury, a religious house very closely allied to Reculver, which was secularised centuries before the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII.

But the most recent authority on illuminated ma.n.u.scripts, Sir Edward Maunde Thompson, considers that the actual date of the Utrecht Psalter may be placed about the year 800, and he maintains with Sir Thomas Hardy, judging by internal palaeographical evidence, that without doubt, the ma.n.u.script is of Frankish workmans.h.i.+p, and he a.s.signs its origin to the north, or north-east of France.* This carries us back to Queen Bertha and Cotton's suggestion that she brought the book over with her.

* See a Paper on English Illuminated Ma.n.u.scripts, A.D. 700-1066, by Mr., now Sir Edward Maunde Thompson, Bibliographica, part ii., London Kegan & Co.

Shortly after the suppression of Christ Church, which, in all probability, inherited the treasures of Reculver, the Utrecht Psalter, together with its incorporated charter, fell into the hands of the Talbot family; and in Mr. Bond's report on the ma.n.u.script he said that the name Mary Talbot could, with some difficulty, be deciphered on the lower margin of folio 60b, in a sixteenth century hand. Various suggestions have been made in regard to this name, but in Mr. Birch's opinion--and here there is good reason for following him--it belonged to the wife or daughter of "Master Talbot of Norwich, a most ingenious and industrious antiquary." He made a collection of rare ma.n.u.scripts, most of which are now in Corpus Christi College at Cambridge, and it was from this collection that the Utrecht Psalter pa.s.sed into Sir Robert Cotton's possession, but whether by gift or purchase is not recorded.

The ma.n.u.script is entered in the catalogue of the library written by Cotton himself in 1621, under the press-mark Claudius C 7, but it is not to be found in any subsequent catalogue. An entry occurs among the Notes of such books as haze been lent out by Sir Robert Cotton to divers persons, and are abroad in their hands att this daye, the 15th of January 1630, which entry is to the effect that the Psalter was lent "to my lord the Earle of Arundel." Birch gave it up as lost to the Cotton library from the time that it pa.s.sed into Lord Arundel's hands; but he must have been unaware of the existence of Smith's own copy of his printed catalogue, which contains his ma.n.u.script notes of books borrowed from the Cotton collection, and in which these words are written "Borrowed by Mr. Ashmole, on the 17th February 1673, Claudius, C. 7." Smith's folio catalogue, published in 1696, has the word Deest, marking its absence from the library. Nothing further can be discovered till 1718, when the book appears to have become the property of Monsieur de Ridder, a Dutchman, who presented it to the University of Utrecht where it still remains.* Sir Robert Cotton's signature is on the first page.

*The History, Art, and Paleography of the Utrecht Psalter, by W. de Gray Birch, F.R.S.L., Keeper of the Ma.n.u.scripts in the British Museum.

The great charm of this ma.n.u.script, a facsimile of which is to be seen in the Cottonian library, lies in its pen-and-ink ill.u.s.trations, as forcible and appealing as are the scenes of the Last judgment on the walls of the Campo Santo at Pisa. Among the Harleian MSS., moreover (No. 603), there is an illuminated Psalter so like it, that it seems impossible that the artist should not have had the Utrecht Psalter before him as he drew; unless, as Sir Edward Thompson supposes, the older ma.n.u.script is itself a copy of a still more ancient one, which leads him to infer that other versions of this Psalter were in existence in England at an early date. This would account also for the Eadwine Psalter at Cambridge, a twelfth-century imitation of the Harleian ma.n.u.script. Neither of these Psalters can be described as an absolute copy of the Utrecht Psalter.

We are here led to deplore the loss of another valuable ma.n.u.script of a totally different kind, which, although not in the collection at the time of Sir Robert's death, once belonged to this library, and was lost in the same way. We refer to to the "Enconium Emmae" an eleventh century MS. which Cotton sent to d.u.c.h.esne, and which the latter used in writing his Historiae Normanorum, but never returned. It has entirely disappeared.

We now come to what is perhaps the n.o.blest monument of Anglo-Saxon times in the Cottonian library--namely, the famous Lindisfarne Gospels also known as the Durham Book, a marvel of palaeographic art. It is indisputably the finest production of the school of Lindisfarne. The Latin text, written in double columns, was transcribed by Eadfrith, Bishop of Lindisfarne, while still a simple monk, in honour, some say for the use, of St. Cuthbert. It was finished after the saint's death, at the end of the seventh, or beginning of the eighth century. This we learn from intrinsic evidence, in the form of a brief note in Anglo-Saxon at the end of the Gospel of St. Matthew, and a longer one at the end of the volume. These notes have thus been translated by Mr.

Waring:--*

* Prolegomena, Lindisfarne, and Rushworth Gospels, part iv.

"Thou, O living G.o.d, bear in mind Eadfrith and Aethelwald, and Billfrith and Aldred, the sinner. These four with G.o.d's help were employed upon (or busied about) this book."

And--

"Eadfrith, Bishop over the Church of Lindisfarne, first wrote this book in (honour of) G.o.d and St. Cuthbert, and all the company of saints in the Island; and Aethelwald, Bishop of Lindisfarne, made an outer cover, and adorned it as he was well able; and Billfrith, the anchorite, he wrought the metal-work of the ornaments on the outside thereof, and decked it with gold, and with gems, overlaid also with silver and unalloyed metal; and Aldred, an unworthy and most miserable priest, by the help of G.o.d and St. Cuthbert, over-glossed the same in English, and domiciled himself with the three parts. Matthew, this part for G.o.d and St. Cuthbert; Mark, this part for the bishop; and Luke, this part for the brotherhood; with eight ora of silver (as an offering) on entrance; and St. John's part for himself--i.e., for his soul; and (depositing) four silver ora with G.o.d and St. Cuthbert, that he may find acceptance in heaven through the mercy of G.o.d; good fortune and peace on earth, promotion and dignity, wisdom and prudence through the merits of St.

Cuthbert.