Add MS 41647

TWO TREATISES, in Italian, the first anonymous, the second by Dante Alighieri, viz.:-

(1) Moral tract, in eight main divisions ('trattati') with sub-sections, without title, but with the following opening rubric:-'Questo libro da chonoscimento per che si possino consolare, etc.'. The purpose of the work is recorded by the author thus (f. 4): 'Si mi puosi in quuore di molti detti di saui chauena trouato di fare una operetta nella quale io mostrassi per ordine tutta la misera condizione de lumana generazione', and the text beg. 'Se uuoli auere buona uita in questo mondo'; ends 'fuocho arzente che non restara mai dardere nel secholo de secholi. Amen'. It is copiously illustrated by quotations in translation from the Bible and well-known authors, both classical and medieval. The spaces left for the rubrics have in many cases remained unfilled. ff. 1-50b.

(2) The 'Convivio' of Dante Alighieri. Imperf., lacking the last two out of the four tractates and the concluding chapters of the second. Beg. 'Sichome dice il philosofo nel principio della prima metafisicha philosofia'; breaks off ,che e nell arte uechia e nella nuoua si truoua'= II. xiv, l. 106 in the Oxford Dante, ed. E. Moore (4th ed., 1924, revised by P. Toynbee), and II. xiii [xiv], 12 of the Testo Critico issued by the Società Dantesca Italiana, 1921. The MS. tradition of the 'Convivio' is unsatisfactory (cf. Introduction to the Testo Critico, pp. xiii-xvii); the present text, like that of the other copy in the Department of MSS., Add. 28840, seems to belong to the b group of MSS. as classified by E. G. Parodi in the Bullettino della Soc. Dant. Ital., N.S., xxviii, 1921, pp. 16-29, and, repeating Parodi, by F. Schneider in his Introduction to the facsimile of the Codex Barberini Latino 4086 (Codices e Vaticanis selecti quam simillime expressi, xxii), 1932, p. 14. A few blanks are left where the exemplar was presumably illegible, e.g. [ben se menare], f. 53 = 1. ii, 1. 35; p[ronta liberaltà], f. 62 = l. ix, 1. 74; P[otissima], f. 75 b = 11. vi. 1. 56. No reference to the present MS. is made by M. S. Simonelli in her 'Contributi al testo critico del "Convivio"', Studi Danteschi, XXX, I951, pp. 23-127. ff. 5I-85 b. Paper (watermark, crossed daggers), with vellum covers; ff. iii + 87.

9¾ in. x 6¾ in. XV cent. Gatherings of 16 leaves (12, ii1^4, vii^4, last^3), with catch words. Double columns of 28 to 36 lines to the page. The scribe does not observe syllabic divisions at the end of the line, but is capable of writing n/on, m/olte, s/echondo, and is in other respects not of the first quality. Proverbial tags, and accompts in Italian currency, in various hands of the 16th and 17th centt., occur passim, mostly on the end-leaves. On f. 87, in a 17th century hand, is a list of people to whom 'grano di giornata' has been issued. Bookplate of Lucy Wharton Drexel (f. i), and labels of two Philadelphia booksellers, Robert A. Tripple (whose name is also pencilled on f. iii with the date 10. 1. 82), and Peter Doyle (ff. i, iii). Sotheby's sale-cat., 31 July-1 Aug. 1928, lot 311.