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editors of Chaucer; the text in both differing in many places from all other MSS. of that author, as well as from the printed copies of his poems.

A large volume, being a collection of ancient and valuable poems on curious subjects, by Chaucer, Lydgate, and other English poets; amongst these is a poem of Chaucer's addressed to his empty purse, and consisting of twenty stanzas, though no more than the three first have been published. This poem is the more curious, as it informs us of some circumstances of Chaucer's life little known.

A fair transcript or translation of Lydgate's paraphrase into English verse, of Boccace's treatise De Occasu Principum, illuminated and embellished with historical miniature paintings; being the author's present-book to Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, by whose command he undertook the work.

Lydgate's lives of St. Edmund and St. Fræmund, with divers of his other poems, illustrated with 120 very elegant historical pictures of different sizes; besides other embellishments of illuminated letters, &c. so as to render it the finest manuscript in the English language, written in the time of King Henry VI. whose book this was, being presented to him by its author.

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A large and beautifully illuminated copy of the Confessio Amantis of John Gower, containing a collection of the principal pieces of Chaucer and Gower, finely written and ornamented.

An historical, political, and moral poem, consisting of 320 stanzas; the subject is the unfortunate reign of King Edward II. whose ghost is introduced as relating his transactions and disasters. The author, who is supposed to be Mr. Edmund Spencer, addresses this poem to Queen Elizabeth. Also the same poem revised and corrected by many alterations, and fitted up for the perusal of King James I.

A very fair and beautiful transcript of the celebrated poem entitled, Le Roman de La Rose, begun in French verse, by William de Lorris, continued and finished by John Clo pinel, alias John Moone, of Mewen upon the river Loyer. This manuscript is richly ornamented with a multitude of miniature paintings, executed in the most masterly manner. It is probably the copy which was presented to Henry IV. the blazon of his arms being introduced in the illuminations, with which the first page of this work is embellished.

Many original poems, by John Lydgate, Gower, Trevisa, &c.

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XX. A large collection both of ancient and modern musical compositions, with curious anecdotes relating to their authors, written for the most part by Mr. Wanley, by whom they were amassed, he being not only a great judge of music, but a very able composer.

XXI. Books of Architecture, Geometry, Gunnery, Fortification, Ship-building, and Military Affairs; particularly large volume written in High Dutch, soon after the invention of fire arms, being a treatise on military affairs, illustrated with a great number of fine drawings in water colours, representing the proper forms of marches, encampments, and dispositions of armies; orders of battle, attacks, sieges, and storms of forts, towns, and castles; draughts of ships of war, fireships, and fleets, bridges of timber and stone, hydraulic engines, tools, instruments, and warlike machines of every kind; and the form of the ancient British chariot.

XXII. Natural History, Agriculture, Voyages, Travels, &c. particularly an Herbarium, written in Saxon, and in the 10th century. And,

A very valuable volume of Geoponics, in Greek, with Scholia, not hitherto published, written upon silken leaves, and near 500 years old.

XXIII. Many rare MSS. in Astronomy, Cosmography, and Geography.

XXIV. A vast variety of Alchymical, Chymical, Chirurgical, Pharmaceutical, and Medical Tracts, one whereof, being a treatise in High Dutch, on the process for finding the philosopher's stone, formerly belonging to the famous M. Cyprianus, from whose neice, Mrs. Priemer, it was purchased, and presented to Edward E. of Oxford. This book is divided into a great number of chapters; on the back of the last leaf of each chapter the subject thereof is represented in an emblematical picture, in which the beauty of its colouring, the disposition of the figures, the elegancy of their attitudes, and the propriety of composition is scarcely. to be equalled.

XXV. A great number of volumes of original letters, and authentic transcripts of others, written as well by sundry persons who have been eminent for their high stations in the state, as by those who were remarkable for their literary accomplishments.

Lastly, a prodigious variety of MSS. which, exclusive of their importance in other respects, are highly valuable on account of the many beautiful illuminations and excellent paintings; those pictures being not only useful for illustrating

the subject of the books in which they are placed, but furnishing excellent lessons and useful hints to painters, perpetuating the representations of the principal personages, buildings, utensils, habits, armour, and manners of the age in which they were painted, and very probably preserving some pieces of eminent painters, of whose works no other remains are extant. Some of these MSS. have already been occasionally mentioned, and to them must be added;

A most noble copy of Bishop Grosthead's Speculum Humanæ Salvationis, every page whereof is decorated with admirable pictures explanatory of its contents.

A translation of Valerius Maximus into French, by Simon de Hesdin, and Nicolas de Gonesse, comprised in four large volumes, with fine historical paintings placed at the head of each book, representing the principal subjects treated of therein; together with another copy of the four last books of the same work, embellished with paintings in the like manner, and by the same hand as the former.

A most noble volume, consisting of the Antiquities of the Greeks and Romans, represented in paintings.

A volume, entitled, Le Tresor de Maistre Jehan de Mehun, with paintings.

The four elements and four seasons, painted by J. Bailly and intended as patterns of tapestry for the French king. 1763, April, May, July, August.

IV. Signification of Words, how varied.

MR. URBAN,

ONE of the most peculiar circumstances relating to language is the mutation of the sense of words, in different ages, so that the same word to which a good meaning was formerly affixed, may now have a signification directly opposite. This happens so universally, that, I believe, no language, whether ancient or modern, has been exempted from it; but the change proceeds so slowly and insensibly, that the life of one man is not sufficient to afford him an opportunity of perceiving the change. With regard to our own language, if we look into those authors who flourished a century and half ago, numerous instances will occur; and the reading of the following passage in Turberville's 2d Eclogue, a gentleman who was educated at Oxford, and wrote in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, led me into this observation.

Among the rest of all the route,
A passing proper lass,

A white-hair'd trull of twenty yeares,
Or neere about, there was;
In stature passing all the rest,
A gallant girl for hewe;

To be compar'd to townish nymphs,
So faire she was to viewe.
Her forehead cloth with gold was purld
A little, here and there;
With copper clasp about her neck
A kerchief did she weare,

That reached to her breast and paps;

The wench about her waist,

A gallant gaudy ribande had,

That girt her body fast.

Here we find the poet in describing an innocent country beauty, does not scruple to call her a trull, which now signifies a strumpet. Dr. Swift says,

So Mævius, when he drained his skull,
To celebrate some suburb trull;

His similies in order set,

And ev'ry crambo he could get;
And gone thro' all the common places,
Worn out by wits who rhime on faces;
Before he could his poem close,

The lovely nymph had lost her nose.

In the same manner Turberville puts wench for a young woman, which is now rarely used, but by way of contempt, and seems to be threatened with the same fate that trull has received. The alteration of knave, which formerly signified a servant, and of villain, a sort of slave, is generally known. Pedant anciently meant a schoolmaster; thus Shakespear in his Twelfth Night mentions

"A pedant that keeps a school i'th' church."

But this word now gives an idea of a stiff, formal, and unpo lished man of literature. Thus Addison in his Whig Ex

aminer:

"The remaining part of the preface has so much of the pedant, and so little of the conversation of man in it, that Į shall pass over it."

!And Swift,

In learning let a nymph delight,

The pedant gets a mistress by't.

In like manner, leech anciently signified a physician :

And straightway sent with careful diligence,
To fetch a leech, the which had great insight

In that disease of grieved conscience;

And well could cure the same: his name was Patience.

Spencer's Fairy Queen.

Even Dryden uses it in this sense:

Wise leeches will not vain receipts obtrude,

While growing pains pronounce the humours crude;
Deaf to complaints they wait upon the ill,

'Till some safe crisis authorise their skill.

Roscommon has thus described the insect which has now usurped this name by being used in bleeding:

Sticking like leeches till they burst with blood.

Leechcraft was also used for physic:

We study speech, but others we persuade,
We leechcraft learn, but others cure with it.
Sir John Davis.

"The word dame," says Dr. Watts, in his Logic, "origi nally signified a mistress of a family, who was a lady, and it is used still in the English law, to signify a lady; but in common use now-a-days it represents a farmer's wife, or a mistress of a family of the lower rank in the country."

Though the cause of such mutations may be principally ascribed to the caprice of mankind, yet much may be imputed to words being debased by vulgar use. An instance of this kind we have in the word lawyer, a name vul➡ garly given to every the meanest pettifogger; every farrier, little apothecary, or surgeon's mate, is also commonly ho noured with the title of doctor; even chimney doctors are become frequent. So that doctor and lawyer will, perhaps, in time undergo the same change, with leech and pedant, though physician and counsellor still retain their dignity.

However, it is hoped, that our language will be more fixed, and better established when the public is favoured

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