The copy of Boethius is contained on foll. 3-40. On fol. 41, recto, is a copy of Chaucer's Truth, and the description of the 'Persone,' extracted from the Prologue to the Cant. Tales. The other side of the leaf is blank. This is, in fact, the MS. which I denote by 'At.,' as described in the Introduction to the 'Minor Poems' in vol. i. p. 57.
4. MS. Addit. 16165, in the British Museum. This is one of Shirley's MSS., being that which I denote by 'Ad.,' and have described in the Introduction to the 'Minor Poems' in vol. i. p. 56. I believe this MS. to be of less value than MS. A. (above), and have therefore not collated it; for even A. is not a very good authority.
5. MS. Harl. 2421. The Harleian Catalogue describes it thus: 'Torq. Sever. Boetius: his 5 Books of the Comfort of Philosophy. Translated into English. On vellum, 152 leaves. XV century.'
A small quarto MS. of the middle of the fifteenth century. The first Prose of Bk. i. begins (like MS. A.) with the words: 'In þe mene while þat y stil recorded þese þinges;' &c. Hence are derived the readings marked 'H.' in Morris's edition, pp. 62-64. It rightly reads writheth, wyndy, bretheth (see p. xlii).
6. The celebrated Hengwrt MS. of the Canterbury Tales (denoted by 'Hn.' in the foot-notes to that poem) contains a part of Chaucer's Boethius. See the Second Report of the Historical MSS. Commission, p. 106.
7. There is also a copy in a MS. belonging to the Cathedral Library at Salisbury. It was discovered by Dr. Wülker in 1875; see the Academy for Oct. 5, 1875. Bk. i. met. 1 was printed, from this MS., by Dr. Wülker in Anglia, ii. 373. It resembles MS. A.
8. In the Phillipps collection, MS. no. 9472 is described as 'Boetius' Boke of Comfort,' and is said to be of the fifteenth century. I do not know its real contents.
Caxton. Chaucer's Boethius was first printed by Caxton, without date; but probably before 1479. See the description in The Biography and Typography of W. Caxton, by W. Blades; second edition, 1882; p. 213. A complete collation of this text with MS. A., as printed by Morris, was printed by L. Kellner, of Vienna, in Englische Studien, vol. xiv, pp. 1-53; of which I have gladly availed myself. The text agrees very closely indeed with that printed by Thynne in 1532, and resembles MS. C. rather than MS. A.
Perhaps it is necessary to remark that the readings of MS. C., as given in Kellner's collation, are sometimes incorrect, because MS. C. had not at that time been printed, and the readings of that MS. were only known to him from the foot-notes in Morris's edition, which are not exhaustive, but only record the more important variations. There is a curious but natural error, for example, in his note on l. 1002 of Morris's edition (Bk. ii. met. 3. 14, p. 32, l. 1), where MS. C. has ȝeelde (= zeelde). The word is missing in MS. A., but Morris supplied it from C. to complete the text. Hence the foot-note has: '[ȝeelde]—from C.'; meaning that A. omits ȝeelde, which is supplied from C. This Kellner took to mean that A. has ȝeelde, and C. has from. However, the readings of A. and of Caxton are given with all possible care and minuteness; and now that C. is also in type, the slight inevitable errors are easily put right. This excellent piece of work has saved me much trouble.