As in ordinary mundane things a custom termed fashion, always fitful, wayward, and unreasoning, governs, with a rod of iron, the destinies of the social world, we cannot altogether expect that books will be exempted from its operation. By it, old books, "the assembled souls of all that men held wise," such as have formed the subject of this address, are passed by, for fashion demands novelty.

"Books, like times, do shift, each thing his time does hold,
New things succeed as former things grow old."

So sung Herrick.

But "tempus edax rerum"; one is reminded of the proverb, cited by John Hooker, in the dedication of his MS. History of Exeter, that

"Be the day never so longe

At lengeth it ringeth at eveninge songe."

Let me therefore conclude this address with a quotation from the closing passage of an old-fashioned work, written by Ralegh's kinsman, Richard Carew of Antony:

"Diogenes, after he had tired his scholars with a long lecture, finding at last the voyde paper, Bee glad, my friends (quoth hee) wee are come to harbour. With the like cumfort, in an vnlike resemblance, I will refresh you who haue vouchsafed to trauaile in the rugged and weary some path of mine ill-pleasing stile, that now your iourney endeth with the land. . . I will heere sit mee downe and rest."

APPENDIX A.

THE following is a list of the principal works referred to, and under the name or initials within brackets:

Transactions of the Devonshire Association. (D. A.)
Rev. J. Prince, Worthies of Devon, 1810. (Prince.)

Dictionary of National Biography to vol. xxxiv. (Dict. Nat.
Biog.)

Ant. A. Wood, Athenæ Ox. and Fasti, ed. by Dr. Bliss, 5 vols., 1815.

(Wood.)

T. Fuller, D.D., History of the Worthies of England, 1662. (Fuller.)

J. Pits, De Illust. Brit. Scriptoribus, 1619. (Pits.)

T. Wright, Biographia Brit. Literaria, 2 vols., 1842, 1846. (T. Wright.)

H. Hallam, Literary History, 3 vols., 1873. (Hallam.)

T. Warton, B.D., History of Eng. Poetry, 4 vols., 1824. (Warton.) S. R. Gardiner, History of England, 10 vols., 1883-4. (Gardiner.) J. R. Green, History of the English People, 4 vols., 1880-1. (Green.)

R. Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, &c., of the English Nation, ed. by E. Goldsmid, 16 vols., 1885-1890. (Hakluyt.) Western Antiquary, 11 vols., 1882-1893. (W. A.)

1. The letters were published for the first time, and in the original Latin, by N. Serarius, at Mainz, in 1605, and passed through several editions. That of Jaffé, in Monumenta Moguntina (1866), is the basis of the paper, "St. Boniface and his Correspondence," by E. Bishop, in D. A. viii. 497-516.

2. These Itineraries have formed the subjects of two papers by the Very Rev. Canon Brownlow:

"St. Willibald a West-country Pilgrim of the Eighth Century." "The Brother and Sister of Saint Willibald."

(D. A. xxii. 212-228; xxiii. 225-238.)

3. Confusion of names has led the works of other writers (e.g. Alfred of Canterbury) to be attributed to him. It is noteworthy that the second work named, was also the title of one written by Alex. Neckam (1157-1217) v. Wright, i. 478, 9; ii. 457. Even the duration of his Bishopric of Crediton is very uncertain; according to Le Neve it was 22 years, to Godwin years, and to Dr. Oliver 4 years: the last being probably the correct period. Dr. Oliver (Bps. of Exeter, 4) attributes some

9

other works to him.

4. Prince (567) is the authority for this title, and gives "Synopsis of Devon MS." by Hooker as his authority. This is apparently the "Synopsis Chorographica," preserved in Harl. MS. 5827, from which the following is extracted:-" He attended Kinge Canutus in his pylgramege at Rome. And whereof as of other his owne doings he wrote as it is sayed one booke."

5. The list will be found in E. H. Pedler's Anglo-Saxon Episcopate of Cornwall, 136-140; and in F. S. Merryweather's Bibliomania, 149. It is somewhat remarkable that Dr. Dibdin, in his Bibliomania, fails to notice Leofric's Library, although he makes special allusion to Benedict, Abbot of Peterborough, for being the possessor, at a later date (1177), of 57 volumes.

6. Although to H. Wanley is due the credit of having given the earliest account of it, in his Catalogue of Anglo-Saxon MSS. (in Dr. G. Hickes' Thesaurus, 1703-5), the attention of the literary world may be said to have had its value first pointed out by the Rev. J. J. Conybeare (who accompanied it with a Latin translation), in two papers, read by him in 1812 and following year, before the Society of Antiquaries. These will be found in Archæologia, xvii. 180-197, and, subsequently, in a more extended form, in Illustrations of Anglo-Saxon Poetry (1826), edited by his brother, the Rev. W. D. Conybeare. A new edition of the Codex, by Mr. Israel Gollancz, is in course of publication by the Early English Text Society.

7. Thorpe affirms he did not understand the poem, and was "unable to translate it." (Op. cit. 352-355, 522-525.) H. Morley (Eng. Writers before Chaucer (1864), 326) declares it to be "the only known example of an Anglo-Saxon rhyming poem," and that "Mr. Thorpe finds it to be a free paraphrase of a passage in Job, with words perverted to make them rhyme," but the passage cannot be found in Thorpe's notes in the Codex.

8. Here is a translation of a short one that bears much resemblance to several modern variants :

9. Attention may be called to the completion, by a Committee of Members of this Association, of The Devonshire Domesday, which, commenced in 1884, has been regularly supplied in parts to the members for nine successive years, without any increase in the annual subscription, but not without some strain upon the general finances of the Association. This, and the Supplementary Geld Inquest, form a work of nearly 1,300 pages. The text of each Domesday has been extended, and printed on opposite pages for comparison, and to each entry has been added an English translation. To crown all, there are very full indices. No more important work bearing upon the history of this county has ever been printed. The Committee and the Hon. Secretary—the latter especially for having in addition undertaken the task of extending the text of the Inquisitio Geldi, and of its translation—are highly to be congratulated for having so satisfactorily completed their labours, and thereby well earned the hearty thanks of all literary and historical students.

A singular anecdote relating to the restoration of a missing leaf of the Exeter Domesday Book, is mentioned by B. Botfield in his Cathedral Libraries (1849), 139. It was removed, so it was thought, by Dean Wylughby or Willoughby (Dean of Exeter 1496-1508), and was restored by one of his descendants during the present century.

10. It is curious that in the following century (1330) Pits (426, 7) records another of the same name, also a native of Devon and a Dominican monk. Of four works assigned to him, one -Super Magistrum Sententiarum-reported to be preserved at Oxford, appears also in the account of the earlier one. As no other author mentions one of the 14th century, Pits probably made an error.

11. Pits (250) mentions the title of one work as De obitu S. Thomæ Cantuariensis. Probably this was the sermon he preached when the cathedral was re-opened. Several MS. copies of his works were formerly in the Exeter Cathedral Library. Two of them are still in existence, Dialogus contra Judæos and a Liber penitentialis, the former in the Bodleian Library, and the latter in the Cotton MS. Brit. Museum.

12. John Siberch, as was customary in that and the next centuries at Cambridge, carried on his printing in his own house, the site of which is now occupied by part of Gonville and Caius College. (Willis & Clark, Univ. of Cambridge, iii. 130, 1.) A MS. copy on vellum of Baldwin's work, that formerly belonged to the Abbey of Waltham, is among the Ashburnham MSS. It is headed "Baldwinus, Frater Monasterii Fordensis," &c.; and as he succeeded Robert de Penynton as Abbot in 1168, it must have been written before that date. (8th Rep. Hist. MSS. Com., pt. iii. p. 24.)

13. In the notice of the Eton College copy, contained in 9th Rep. Hist. MSS. Com. i. 357, the dedication to Bartholomew is alone mentioned. The Provost of the College, Dr. Hornby, has kindly examined the MS. for the writer, and finds that it has both dedications.

14. On the authority of an Acrostic, in the opening lines of his abridgment of the work of Boethius, Wright (ii. 349) asserts his proper name to have been Simon du Fresne, but this is simply a translation in French of the name Ash or Fraxinus, assigned to him by Pits, Leland, and Prince. He is said to have been a Canon of Hereford Cathedral, but he is not mentioned in Le Neve's list. Although recognised by Morley (Eng. Writers before Chaucer 600) and others, he finds no place in the Dict. Nat. Biog.

15. His De Bello Trojano is a paraphrase of a history of the war, written in Greek by Dares, a Phrygian priest, in the 3rd century. The first edition was printed at Basle in 1541, followed by one in 1558, under the pseudonym of Cornelius Nepos. So imperfect, however, was it that Leland spoke of it as so corrupt an offspring that its father would scarce know it." The defects were remedied in a later edition under another editor. In France, M. Jusserand issued a portion of it in 1877. Long quotations from it are given by Wright (ii. 403-406), Warton (i. clxiii.—clxvi.), and Sir John Bowring the last-named in "The Life and Writings of Josephus Iscanus, the Swan of Isca.” (D. A. iv. 244–256.)

16. According to the Registers of Bp. Bronescombe (ed. by Rev. F. C. Hingeston-Randolph) Bracton was Rector of Combe-in-Teignhead (1259) and of Bideford (1261), Archdeacon of Barnstaple (1264), and Chancellor of the Cathedral (1264). At the time of his death (1268) he was Prebendary of Exeter and Bosham. It is noteworthy that Dr. Oliver does not identify the ecclesiastic with the judge; certain is it that he makes no reference to it. At "Bratton's Altar," instituted by him, and situated under the south side of the rood-loft of the Cathedral, the earliest daily mass was celebrated "for the convenience of the industrious population before they began their daily labour." (Dr. Oliver, Bps. of Exeter, 214, 222, 253, 361, 2.) In front of this altar Bracton's body was interred, and probably a large slab of Portland marble, measuring 6 ft. 6 in. x 3 ft. 8 in., covers the spot. From the crosses at the angles, and in the centre of this slab, it is evident it belonged formerly to an altar, and probably to that of Bracton. Some of his MSS. are recorded in the inventory of the Cathedral Library made in 1327, but none in that of 1506. (Ibid. 305, &c.) Vide "Henry de Bracton," by W. K. Willcocks, in D. A. xv. 180–195. A volume entitled Bracton's Note Book. A Collection of Cases decided in the King's Courts during the reign of Henry the Third, annotated by a Lawyer of that time, seemingly by Henry de Bratton, and edited by F. W. Maitland, was published in 1887.