Queries.
FRAGMENTS OF MSS.
Dr. Maitland, in his valuable volume on the "Dark Ages," has the following remarks on a subject which I think has not met with the attention it deserves:
"Those who are in the habit of looking at such things, know how commonly early printed books, whose binding has undergone the analytical operation of damp, or mere old age, disclose the under end pieces of beautiful and ancient manuscript. They know how freely parchment was used for backs and bands, and fly-leaves, and even for covers. The thing is so common, that those who are accustomed to see old books have ceased to notice it."
In order to come within the design of your pages, I must put this in the shape of a Query, and ask, if it is not a pity that this fact has ceased to be noticed? We do not know what treasures may be contained in the shabby covers which we contemplate getting rid of. "There are thousands" (of MSS.), says the same writer, "equally destroyed,—thousands of murdered wretches not so completely annihilated: their ghosts do walk the earth; they glide unseen into our libraries, our studies, our very hands; they are all about and around us. We even take them up and lay them down, without knowing of their existence; unless time and damp (as if to punish and mock us for robbing them of their prey) have loosed their bonds, and set them to confront us."
Archbishop Tenison had not "ceased to notice it." He very diligently rescued these "fragments" from the hands of his bookbinder and it is to be regretted that he did not take equal precaution in preserving them. Recently, all that I could collect have been cleaned, inlaid, and arranged chronologically, making two interesting and valuable volumes.
How far would it be desirable to unite for the purpose of collecting MS. fragments, and early printed leaves?
Might not a Society, which should have for its especial object the discovery, cataloguing, and circulating information about these stray bits, be of great service? E. g. I have before me five volumes of Justinian's Codices and Digesta, Paris, 1526; the covers of which are made of MS. Thirteen leaves go to make one board. They are written on both sides and thus an easy multiplication gives us 260 pages of MS., or early printing, in the covers of one work!
It is not unlikely that, if the results of research in this direction were carefully registered, many perfect pieces might be recovered.