'W. CANT.
'Lambeth, Nov, 15, 1639.'
[377] Pedigree of the family of Lane, p. 392 of the Boscobel Tracts, edited by J. Hughes, A.M., second edition, 1857.
[378] No. 7762 in the catalogue of the South Kensington Museum, in 1862.
[379] Mr. John Gough Nichols, in his collection of the Literary Remains of Edw. VI, printed by the Roxburghe Club in 1857 (vol. i. pp. cccxxiii-cccxxv), describes these volumes at length, and assigns the whole of both of them to the pen of the King, but some part of the first volume corresponds much more closely with the usual style of Elizabeth's early writing, and a memorandum by Hearne testifies that it was regarded in his day as having been written by her.
[380] 'The poem of Joseph and Zuleikha, in the Public Library at Oxford, is perhaps the most beautiful MS. in the world; the margins of every page are gilt and adorned with garlands of flowers, and the handwriting is elegant to the highest degree.' (I. Disraeli's Romances, 1799, p. 52.)
[381] This book, which has appeared since the earlier sheets of this volume were printed, contains descriptions, with facsimiles, of the Leofric, Dunstan, and Mac-Regol MSS. and of the Rawlinsonian Life of St. Columba, besides those noticed above.
[382] Cædmon was a monk of St. Hilda's Abbey, and died in 680. Bede (Eccl. Hist. iv. 24) tells the well-known story of his being miraculously enabled by a vision to compose vernacular verses, when previously he had been entirely unable to compose or sing a line, so that when present as a layman at feasts where, on the principle of 'no song, no supper,' every one was expected to raise a lay in his turn, he was wont, when he saw the harp coming round, to rise from his place and go home supperless.
[383] This MS. is noticed by Warton in his Life of Sir T. Pope, p. 73, where he also quotes Hearne's account of Elizabeth's New Testament, which is described at p. 52 supra.
[384] Lent to the South Kensington Museum in 1862, from the catalogue of which exhibition (under No. 202) the above description is taken.
[385] Rawlinson, C. 876, f. 52.