There are also books on paleography written in German, Spanish and Italian, but these are seldom met with in England.
Now let us see what our own countrymen have done towards elucidating our national manuscripts. The list will not be a long one.
It must be borne in mind that first of all four separate languages are required, namely, Anglo-Saxon, Norman-French, Latin and Old English. For the first of these, the standard work is Bosworth’s Anglo-Saxon dictionary; a second-hand copy may be bought for 8s. 6d. It contains the alphabet and grammatical peculiarities of the Anglo-Saxon language, besides the dictionary of words.
For Norman-French, all that is required at first start is a familiarity with the modern language. Any good, old-fashioned dictionary will be of assistance, and later on Roquefort’s dictionary, Lacombe’s Burguy, and the glossary in the Supplement to Ducange, may be resorted to, to solve difficulties.
Latin and English may be studied together, the one being translated verbatim from the other.
The standard English work upon handwriting as a whole is called ‘The Origin and Progress of Handwriting,’ by Astle; it was published in the beginning of this century. A good copy is now worth two or three sovereigns, though I have seen it advertised for 12s. 6d. This book deals with every kind of known writing from its earliest existence. There are facsimiles of Hebrew, Sanscrit, Greek, Latin, and other languages, besides specimens of English charters of each century.
The Paleographic Society was started in 1873, and their yearly volumes contain exact representations of the old documents, but these cost £1 1s. each. They are valuable as having the facsimile and its transcript side by side, but as yet they have only selected very old charters, not considering mediæval English deeds worthy of consideration. Bosworth’s Anglo-Saxon dictionary is the standard work on this subject.
Some Anglo-Saxon manuscripts were published in 1878 by command of the Queen, upon the recommendation of the Master of the Rolls, the work being undertaken by General Cameron, director of the Ordnance Survey, with translations added by W. Basevi-Saunders. The charters selected were those among the archives of Canterbury Cathedral, as they give three centuries of Anglo-Saxon history, A.D. 742 to A.D. 1049. This work now fetches £2 2s.
A collection of early Anglo-Saxon charters, those of Abingdon Abbey, has been issued in the ‘Rolls Series’ in two volumes.[6] Other Anglo-Saxon documents have been printed and translated at various times.
Domesday Survey has been reproduced by a photographic process, and is extremely clear and well executed; it is also published in four volumes in a more readable type, but still abbreviated. Each county can be obtained in a separate volume. The translations are not given; this for the student is rather an advantage than otherwise.