Egerton MS 3875

ROBERT CLARKE (D. 1675), LATIN POET: 'Christiados Libri 18', in Latin hexameters, etc.; circa 1625-1650. Scribal fair copy. The earliest edition of this religious epic appeared at Bruges in 1670 under the title Christiados, sive De Passione Domini, Libri 17, with an approbation by Father Edward Daniel dated 13 June 1650. The present manuscript comprises an earlier state of the text, that in the printed edition being shorter by over three thousand lines and heavily revised throughout. The disparity between the two versions in numbering the Books is owed to the fact that in the printed one all but the final section of the original Book IV was discarded, ll. 848-968 re-appearing as ll. 42-131 of the Book V. The verse-arguments that in the manuscript precede each individual Book were grouped together before the poem in the printed version, where they follow a section of commendatory poems not included here. The 1670 edition was reprinted at Dillingen in 1708, and at Ingolstadt in 1855 by Aloys Kassian Walthierer, who had issued his own German translation of the poem in 1853. An English metrical version by Baron Edmund de Harold was in 1855 in the library of his nephew at Trostberg. See Bloomsbury Book Auctions, sale-cat. 20 Nov. 1997, lot 426. Purchased from Arthur Freeman, March 1998.

Paper: ff. viii+214. 292 x 190mm. 17th-cent. calf binding with compartments on both covers formed from blind-stamped rules. Spine, of four raised bands, carries paper label (f. i) with legend 'M S ³ christiados'. Remains of four silk ties. Paper of two stocks, watermarked with horn-in-shield and pendent 'M C' or with three circles, arranged vertically and crowned, bearing (1) a cross (2) '6 P 6' and (3) 'S'. Text transcribed on unruled pages, trimmed at edges in binding, with catchwords and running-titles throughout, signatures, notes of sources, and verse-numbering in the margins of Books I-IX, in four main hands. Hands A and B alternate as far as Book IV, l. 389 (ff. 1-42v), while C copied the rest, with the exception of sixty-three lines on an inserted leaf (ff. 184, 184v) in Book XVI, which were begun by B and completed by hand D. D was also responsible for some revisions, corrections and marginal additions throughout C's portion. A contemporary hand has added sub-headings in the margins from f. 138, passim, while another has noted errors (e.g. ff. 13, 71, 131v, 132, 179v, 189, 190, 191v). Separate inscriptions inside the front cover (f. ii) read: (1) 'Christiados Libri 18. Authore Reverendo Patre P. Roberto Clarke In Carthusia Neoportensi Monacho Anglo'; (2) '[erased words illegible] ex dono Ex: Dni et Magistri Nostri Edoardi Daniel. S.T.D.' (d. 1657); and (3) 'Liber qui in hoc Manuscripto Quartus est, in Christiade impressa Brugio in Flandria non inuenitur[.] Dignus tamen qui locum habeat si uspiam alia editio Latina odornetur. Ita censeo ³ [erasure] Carolus'. Signature C at foot of f. 5 has been expanded in a contemporary hand to read 'Charles'. Formerly found loose in the manuscript, and now tipped in (ff. iii-viii), are two sets of Latin elegiac verses on moral themes, the second of which is annotated (f. v) 'The guift of ye Author F. Clarke'. The hand of these verses was that responsible also for part (ff. 85-145) of the only known manuscript of Sir John Beaumont's twelve-book epic 'The Crowne of Thornes' in Add. MS 33392, ff. 1-145. However, none of the hands in the Christias itself appears to correspond with that of ff. 146-189v, a collection of miscellaneous poems in Latin which, from an anagram occurring on f. 150v, has been attributed to Clarke.