[817] ‘Dicunt scripture’ &c. 2 ff. margin Nota—executores] Nota quod bonum est vnicuique esse executor sui ipsius E
[818] 7 Dum tua tempus habes EH
NOTES
EPISTOLA.
This Epistle, written apparently on the occasion of sending a copy of the book to the archbishop, is found only in the All Souls MS., and it is reasonable to suppose that this was the copy in question. The statement of Mr. Coxe in the Roxburghe edition, that ‘the preface to archbishop Arundel ... is also in the original hand’ of the book (Introduction, p. lix) is a surprising one, and must have been due to some deception of memory. The hand here is quite a different one from that of the text which follows, and has a distinctly later character. The piece is full of erasures, which are indicated in this edition by spaced type, but the corrections are in the same hand as the rest. Having no other copy of it, we cannot tell what the original form of the erased passages may have been, but it is noticeable that the most important of them (ll. 26-34) has reference almost entirely to the blindness of the author, and nearly every one contains something which may be regarded as alluding to this, either some mention of light and darkness, or some allusion to the fact that his only perceptions now are those of the mind. We may perhaps conclude that the Epistle was inscribed here before the author quite lost his eyesight, and that the book then remained by him for some time before it was presented. The illuminated capital S with which this composition begins is combined with a miniature painting of the archbishop.
2. tibi scribo, ‘I dedicate to thee.’
3. Quod ... scriptum: written over erasure; perhaps originally ‘Quem ... librum,’ altered to avoid the repetition of ‘librum’ from the preceding line.
4. contempletur: apparently in a passive impersonal sense.
17. Cecus ego mere. The word ‘mere’ alone is over erasure here, but if we suppose that the original word was ‘fere,’ we may regard this as referring originally to a gradual failure of the eyesight, not to complete blindness.
19. Corpore defectus, ‘the failure in my body,’ as subject of ‘sinit.’