6 - Cambridge, Sidney Sussex College, MS 63

Summary

Confessio Amantis, a plain paper MS, with ‘Explicit’, ‘Quam cinxere’; also Cato’s Distichs in English

s.xv, second quarter, late

Contents

1

(fols 2ra–202va) Confessio Amantis, Prol. 141–VIII.3172

Þo heuen wot what is to done < > …Amen I prai pur charite | þat it mot so be (following VIII.3172)

Prologue (fol. 2ra) begins imperfectly at Prol. 141; Book I (fol. 8ra); Book II (fol. 30ra); Book III (fol. 52va); Book IV (fol. 70ra); Book V (fol. 92va); Book VI (fol. 137vb); Book VII (fol. 151vb); Book VIII (fol. 184vb).

The first leaf is lost, with Prol. 1–140. It is replaced by a parchment leaf, s.xv, no text, now kept in a separate plastic sleeve (see ADDITIONS). The Prologue has the ten lines added by Caxton, which also appear in Bodleian Library, MS Hatton 51 (the MS copied from Caxton’s print) and perhaps also in a leaf lost from San Marino, Huntington Library, MS Ellesmere 26 A 17 (Macaulay [ed.], Works, II.466). See the descriptions of those MSS in this Catalogue. Eleven Latin hexameters are substituted for the Latin glosses at Prol. 591 and 617, beginning ‘Dormitans statuam sublimem rex babilonis’ and referring to the Man of Metal statue seen by Nebuchadnezzar in his dream; also, four Latin hexameters are added after the gloss at VII.2891, beginning ‘Sede sedens ista iudex inflexibilis sta’, referring to how Cambises, king of Persia, dealt with a corrupt judge by having him flayed and his skin made a covering for the seat of judgment (Macaulay [ed.], Works, II.cliii). There is a Latin note written by the scribe beside VIII.2813–16, and quoted in Macaulay’s footnotes, which occurs elsewhere only in Bodleian, MS Bodley 294, San Marino, Huntington, MS EL 26 A 17 and Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R.3.2, MSS in other respects textually close to the Sidney Sussex MS.

Text: Macaulay allocates the MS to his second recension (ed., Works, II.cliii–liv) and gives it the sigil Δ. It agrees throughout with San Marino, Huntington Library, MS Ellesmere 26 A 17, though it is not derived from that MS.

For further information about the following Latin and French addenda that Gower caused to be added to MSS of the Confessio, see Appendix III.