Abbotsford Club > Penni worth of witte

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ACCOUNT OF THE AUCHINLECK MS.
A CATALOGUE OF ITS CONTENTS.
PREFIXED TO THE ROMANCE OF SIR TRISTREM, EDITED BY
SIR WALTER SCOTT.
This valuable record of ancient poetry forms a thick quarto volume, containing
334 leaves, and 44 different pieces of poetry ; some mere fragments, and others,
works of great length. The beginning of each poem has originally been adorned
with an illumination ; for the sake of which the first leaf has in many cases been
torn out, and in others cut and mutilated. The MS. is written on parchment, in a
distinct and beautiful hand, which the most able antiquaries are incHned to refer to
the earlier part of the 13th [14th] century. The pages are divided into two columns,
unless where the verses, being Alexandrine, occupy the whole breadth of the quarto.
In two or three instances there occurs a variation of the hand-writing ; but as the
poems regularly follow each other, there is no reason to believe that such altera-
tions indicate an earUer or later date than may be reasonably ascribed to the rest
of the work ; although the Satire against Simonie, No. 44, seems rather in an older
hand than the others, and may be an e.xception to the general, ride.
The MS. was presented to the Faculty of Advocates, in 1744, by Alexander Bos-
well of Auchinleck, a Lord of Session, by the title of Lord Aucliinleck, and father
to the late James Boswell, Esq., the biographer of Dr Johnson. Of its former his-
tory nothing is known.
Many circumstances lead us to conclude that the MS. has been written in an
Anglo-Norman convent. — That it has been compiled in England there can be little