Friday 19th. At 10 oC. went with Dr Bliss to Magd. College,
& called on the Librarn. D.r Chapman, who attended
us to the MS. liby. & gave into my hands the MSS.
No. 12 & 53. The Printed library is by far the
handsomest of all the smaller Colleges, & is preferable
to any in point of situation, & the care taken of it,
in keeping it painted & clean. The President
Dr. Routh desired I would make use of his study
to transcribe in, which I did, & remained there
till 12oC. I collated first the Poem in Whitaker:
Vita S. Neoti, which I find very wretchedly transcribed
in some places; as indeed, the scribe allows. The
original is very fairly written, doub. col. Cent. XIII. &
bound up with Historical treatises of various ages.
I will only give one instance of the transcriber’s
errors. In Whitaker the poem reads, p. 319.
“Nascitur means et murcas (1), atque Neotus
Nomen ei donant: gaudet uterque parens.”
Note “(1) From the letters here, I suppose the line to have been this:
“Nascitur hic minuens et murcens atque Neotus &c.”
It is a doubt which of the two is more absurd, the
copy, or the emendation. In the MS. itself we have:
“Nascitur hiis infans et masculus; atque Neotus
Nomen ei, &c__________________” !!!
I then turned with eagerness to No. 12. expect~g to
find the long ####looked for treatise on Chess by Abp
^Simon Aylward, as stated by Bale, Hyde, Twiss, and
a
host of others, but what was my disappointment & vexation,
when, instead of an ^unknown treatise by the Abp. I found nothing more
than a copy of Jacobus de Cesulis^or Cessolis, with the four lines
at the end, which so often occur, and at the end the
name of the scribe, Symon Aylward. I was quite angry,
to think ^that men with their eyes open, sh.d have fallen
into such absurd errors; when only five ten lines
above was the name of the real author at length.
‘Ego pater Jacobus de Cessolis“, &c. as usual. It is
also a very badinferior copy of this common MS. The first
chapter has been cut out, for the sake of the border.
On my return to the Bodln. Dr Bliss #### went with me
to the Vice-Chancellor, Dr Jenkins, of Balliol College (who had very politely stated he shdshould
be happy to show me the ^matrix of the seal) & examined the seal
itself, on which the legend is too plain to leave any
doubt of my reading being right. The Vice Chancellouror
expressed himself extremely obliged to me, & promised to
shew me a separate seal of Devorguilla they possess, but
which is at present under 3 keys, so ##could not be got at.
This oldoriginal seal of Bailliol coll. is not the one they use at
present (much to the regret of the ViceC. & indeed of every
man of taste) #for in its place has been substituted one
of the most blackguard things, both in design and exe=
cution, I ever beheld! A woman leaning on an anchor,
or wheel (I forget which) with a drawn sword in her hand!
There never was any thing so bad! It is a disgrace to the
College. The Vice C. wishes to restore the oldoriginal seal, if it can
be done without the interference of the Heralds College.
The oldmatrix of this Seal itself, washad been totally neglected & filled with dirt
but the Vice C.r cleaned it with vitriol, & it is certainly
one of the handsomest I ever saw. Rawlinson got to=
gether a great number of old Covent. Seals (the matrices,
not impressions) which I have seen at the Bodln. liby,
but there is ^among them nothing comparable to this. Bliss asked the
for an impression ^of the Seal & intends to have an engraving
of it by Blore. Dined with Bliss, & having determined
to go to town tomorrow, took a seat on the Coach. D.r
Bliss sends by me to town a parcel (a pedigree of
his wife’s family (Bell) for the purpose of asserting the right
of Founder’s kin to New Coll.), to ^Charles Geo. Young, ###York Herald, which
will serve the purpose of an introduction ^for me at the
Herald’s College.— Packed up my things,– but my boxes
of Books I leave behind.
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