Volume 2

Universal palaeography, or, Fac-similes of writings of all nations and periods, copied from the most celebrated and authentic manuscripts in the libraries and archives of France, Italy, Germany, and England / by M.J.B. Silvestre ; accompanied by an historical and descriptive text and introduction by Champollion-Figeac and Aimé Champollion, fils ; translated from the French and edited, with corrections and notes, by Sir Frederic Maddan ... in two volumes.

Joseph-Balthazar Silvestre

Date:: 1849-1850

Credit: Universal palaeography, or, Fac-similes of writings of all nations and periods, copied from the most celebrated and authentic manuscripts in the libraries and archives of France, Italy, Germany, and England / by M.J.B. Silvestre ; accompanied by an historical and descriptive text and introduction by Champollion-Figeac and Aimé Champollion, fils ; translated from the French and edited, with corrections and notes, by Sir Frederic Maddan ... in two volumes. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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We read, in fact, at tlie foot of tlie second page of this ma¬ nuscript, (as copied in the Plate,) the following invocation, written in small Roman rustic capitals of gold,— ds [deus] propitius esto ovdalrico peccatori. and if we believe that the saint was himself the scribe of these two lines, their perfect resemblance to the writing of the rubric, affords a favorable inference as to the volume being in his autograph'''. Some other statements of this kind may here be oppor¬ tunely mentioned, to which a too easy credulity has given credit, in ancient as well as in modern times. Thus, Aulus Gellius speaks of the sale of the second book of the ^Eneid, written by the hand of Virgil; Tertullian states, that he had seen the autograph of the Epistles of St. Paul; Palladius read a book written by St. Hippolyte, who lived in the days of the apostles, and another work, written by Origen. In the Bibliotheque Royale at Paris, is a manuscript of the Gospels of the tenth century, which the scribe declares was corrected from the autograph Latin text of St. Jerome. At Venice they pretend to possess not only the original of the books of Esdras, but also the Gospel of St. Mark in his own handwriting. How much more might be added in regard to the forgeries produced by the modern taste for autographs, and which has given birth to a species of industry unhap¬ pily too productive of counterfeits! The manuscript of St. Udalric is, at all events, a fine specimen of the large Caroline minuscule writing, with the words semi-distinct and upright, the bases of the strokes and the tails diagonally truncated ; the top-strokes clavate, and * The Harleian MS. 2970, is an Evangeliarium, written in rather a smaller letter than the volume described above, but by the same hand, and bears the same inscription prefixed, in letters of gold, together with four miniatures containing portraits of the Evangelists, which are valu¬ able for the German art of the tenth century.—Ed.

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