A catalogue of medieval literature, especially of the romances of chivalry, and books relating to the customs, costume, art, and pageantry of the middle ages.

Bernard Quaritch Ltd

Date:: 1890

Credit: A catalogue of medieval literature, especially of the romances of chivalry, and books relating to the customs, costume, art, and pageantry of the middle ages. Source: Wellcome Collection.

42/100 (page 36)

$186 ROMAN DES SEPT SAGES DE ROME (AVEC LES SUITES: Marques, SenecLal de Rome, et Laurin fils de Marques), sm. folio, MS. in vellum, 212 leaves, double columns, with numerous illuminated capital letters, and 8 Miniatures of small size ; bound in brown morocco extra, gilt edges, by Belz-Niedree About A.D. 1300 62 10 0 A very precious volume of exceptionally rare character. The two Eomances of Chivalry (which, however, form one corpus) have never been published. They are attached to the ancient story through Cato (one of the Seven Sages), who has a son called Catonet elsewhere, but here called Marques or Mark, who in course of time undergoes the same kind of accusations, trials, and triumph as the King’s son in the original Seven Sages. He is then made Seneschal of Eome, and the chivalric portion of the romance begins, which is full of charming pictures of Love and War. Marques becomes King of Aragon, and his son Laurin Emperor of Constantinople. The episodes are delightful, the female characters are finely drawn, and the combats described with wonderful vividness; but the general plot is confused, and sadly deficient in the unities. The scene is partly laid in Britain, at the court of King Arthur. A long autograph description by Paulin Paris (beautifully written on twelve pages of small 4to. note paper) is inserted loosely in the volume, and explains the present arrangement of the MS. and the extent of the lacuna observable in it. Of the Sept Sages, according to him, only the first and the last leaf are missing. The language is pure Picard, and contains a number of forms which have not been registered in the vocabularies. Indeed, this MS. alone would serve to furnish a glossary of considerable interest and linguistic value, and a store of grammatical rules no less important. We may instance fac and fach for (je) fais, iehui for aujourd'hui ; comme used for que after the comparative; dou and sour for du and sur ; cancon=chanson; and a phrase like con sui adure cure nee=comme (que) je suis a dure heure n6e. On the eighth leaf we find the word mi lieue englesTce=h.&]i an Eng- lish league. This seems to point to a Norman hand in the composition; but the transcriber must have been a Fleming from his peculiar ij method of writing combi- nations like nai je, or words in which the i is (often unnecessarily) doubled. Le is a feminine singular form; duskes is always used tor jusque; solau coucant, iluekes, sour let hankes, are curious-looking forms. There is no copy in the British Museum. 187 LI ROMANS DES SEPT SAGES (altfranzosisch) nach der Pariser Handschrift heransgegeben von Hein. Adalb. Keller, 8vo. Fine Paper, calf extra, gilt edges, by Clarice and Bedford Tubingen, 1836 0 10 6 188 IL LIBRO DEI SETTE SAYJ di Roma,testo di lingua, con prefazione d’Alessandro d’Ancona, 8vo. hf. calf, lettered “ Pamphlets ” Pisa, 1864 0 7 6 An old Italian text printed from the fourteenth century MS.; bound up with Comparetti, Osservazioni intorno al libro, Fisa, 1865, and Picchioni, del senso allegorico della Divina Comedia, Basilea, 1857. 189 Loiselbur DES LONGCHAMPS (A.) Essai sur les Fables Indiennes et sur leur introduction en Europe, suivi dn Roman des Sept Sages de Rome, en prose, publie par Le Roux de Lincy, 8vo. Jif. calf gilt Paris, 1838 0 7 6 That the Seven Sages is of Oriental origin is universally admitted, but the exist- ing Western forms are older than any surviving Eastern texts. The Arabic historian, Masudi, in the middle of the tenth century, describes the Seven Wazirs as having been written by Sindibad in the time of Cyrus. The statement suffices to show that the book was read in Persian or Arabic about a thousand years ago. The Arabian Nights (Alf Laila) contains in Arabic an abridgment, probably of comparatively recent compilation, of the Persian text published in the fourteenth century. A Hebrew- Eabbinical translation of the book of Sindibad (called Mishle Sendebar) exists in MS., which must have been composed before the twelfth century. A Greek version, bearing the name of Syntipas, translated probably in the thirteenth century from a Syriac text (no longer extant), is also found in MS., and has been printed. The well-known Latin text, entitled “Historia de Eege et Septem Sapientibus,” was a version made (either from the Hebrew or the Syriac) in the twelfth century by Dans Jehans, a White Monk of the Abbey of Haute-Selve, and the French metrical translation, called Dolopathos, was rendered from the Latin, in the thirteenth century, by the trouv5re Hebers. Out of the Latin or the French all the kindred literature of later ages v?as derived. ' 190 VIRGIL THE ENCHANTER. Cy commencent les paitz merueilleux DE tirgille. [Head of A ii:] Cy comence les ditz de virgille et les merueilles quil fist estant a romme, sm. 4to. ffiotljlC \tiitt,with woodcuts; blue morocco extra, gilt edges, by Bauzonnet Paris par lehan trepperel {vers 1510) 18 18 0 First known edition ; EXTRemELv babe. This copy sold for 1320 francs in the Yemeniz sale. Eomulus built Eome, his brother Eemus built Eeims. Eomulus was jealous and$