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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 June 2012
In the course of my labours at the British Museum, a volume came recently into my hands containing two tracts: the first, “Meditacions sur les Sept Pseaulmes Penitenciaulx;” the other, a French version of the “Cordiale, sive de quatuor Novissimis.” It became my duty to ascertain all the typographical particulars relating to these works, as they had been hitherto but partially described in the Museum Catalogue; and I was much struck, in the course of my inquiry, by the resemblance between the types with which they are printed, and those used by the first English printer. A closer examination has led me to the conclusion that they are actually the production of Caxton's press. The “Meditacions” are printed in the same character as the French and English Recueil of the Histories of Troy, and the first edition of the Game of Chess. The Cordiale is printed in the same type as the English version of the same work, made by the unfortunate Antony Widvile Earl Rivers; the Propositio clarissimi Oratoris Magistri Johannis Russell, the second edition of the Game of Chess, the first edition of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, the Mirrour of the World, and several other pieces, printed by Caxton.
page 412 note a Dr. Dibdin, in the 4th vol. of the Bibliotheca Spenceriana, mentions a history of the life of Jason, in French, printed in the same character as the Recueil, and discovered in the Bibliothèque du Roi, at Paris, by M. Van Praet, who sent an account of the book to the Dr., and which account was by him communicated to the Gentleman's Magazine, vol. lxxxii. part 2. pp. 3, 4.
page 413 note b The four last things—Death, Judgment, Hell, and Heaven—have employed the pens of many writers, and great confusion exists among some of the early pieces upon this subject, which were published anonymously. The Cordiale appears to have been the first of these works, and is attributed to Henricus de Langenstein, or de Hassia, (who died in 1397,) by Fabricius, who, however, adds that the authorship has been given, in some manuscripts, to Thomas Ebendorffer de Haselbach. There is not, in fact, any satisfactory proof that the Cordiale was written by either of these authors; and by the greater number of bibliographers it is treated as anonymous. There is equal uncertainty respecting the author of the French translation, which is the subject of the present notice. M. Barrois, in his Bibliothèque Protypographique, describes two manuscripts of this version, (Nos. 833 and 1812,) which he attributes in his index to “Jehan Mielot, le moindre des secretaires de Philippe le Bon.” This, in all probability, is the same Jean Mielot to whom M. Paulin Paris, in his Manuscrits François de la Bibliothèque du Roi, vol. ii. p. 110, and vol. iv. p. 201, attributes one of the translations of the Speculum Humanæ Salvationis. We are not informed upon what evidence these statements are made, and I find no notice of such a person as Jean Mielot in the various authorities I have been enabled to consult. A short account of Jean Miclot, chanoine de St. Pierre à Lille, is given by Paquot, Histoire Littéraire des Pays Bas, who states that he translated two works relating to St. Adrien, by order of Philippe le Bon, but makes no mention either of the Cordiale, or the Speculum Humanæ Salvationis. Another French version of the Cordiale was printed at Oudenarde, about the year 1480; and an acrostic in eleven verses, at the end of the volume, gives the name of Thomas le Roy as the translator. Brunet, Manuel du Libraire. Tit. Quatuor Novissimis (de). Thomas le Roy is involved in as much obscurity as Jean Mielot.
Hain, in his Repertorium Bibliographicum, gives the titles of 27 editions of the Cordiale, viz.: 21 in Latin, 2 in English, and 4 in Dutch, all printed in the fifteenth century. It may be mentioned, as a proof of the rarity of the French versions, that not one appears in this very accurate and comprehensive catalogue of books printed before the year 1500.
St. Bonaventura wrote “Sermones quatuor Novissimorum perutiles et necessarii.” These form a totally different work from the Cordiale, but, having been printed anonymously, are frequently confounded with it: an edition printed about 1480, has been entered erroneously by Hain (notwithstanding his general accuracy) among the editions of the Cordiale. The prima pars of the “Sermones” begins, “Ad excludendum igitur negligentiam,” &c. The Cordiale and these Sermones have been attributed to Thomas Aquinas, but upon no credible authority.
A third work, De quatuor Novissimis, which has also been confounded with the Cordiale, was written by Dionysius a Leeuwis, or a Rickel, a Carthusian Monk, who died in 1471, called by Seemiller, “Quidam Carthusianus,” and generally known by the appellation “Dionysius Carthusianus.” Articulus 1. commences, “In omnibus operibus tuis memento novissimorum. In Ecclesiastico scripta sunt verba hæc, in quibus admonemur ut novissima ista jugiter ac indelebiliter nostræ imprimamus memoriæ,” &c. The earliest edition mentioned by Hain was printed at Antwerp in 1486.
Nicolas Denyse, a French Minorite, was the author of a fourth work, which was printed at Paris in 1509, by Regnault, under the title “Divinis humanisque dignum conspectibus preclarissimum opus super quatuor novissimis cui Speculum moralium titulus prefertur.”
Another author, about whom little appears to be known, is Jean de Carthéni, a Carmelite, who died in 1580, as stated in the Bibliotheca Carmelitana, or in 1588 according to a note by La Monnoye, in vol. iv. p. 372, of La Croix du Maine and Du Verdier. His work, Des quatre Novissimes, ou fins dernières de l'homme, as he states in his dedication to Sabina, Countess of Egmont, was compiled by him in Latin from the writings of “holy and Catholic doctors,” and afterwards translated by himself into French. It was printed at Antwerp in 1573.
A friar of the order of Celestins, a native of Rouen, named Bigot, wrote on the Four Last Things, in French verse: his work does not appear to have been printed.
Diego de Granados wrote “Opusculum de quatuor Novissimis,” which is preserved in MS. in the Harleian Collection.
A discourse on the same subject, by Joseph Boyse, was published at Dublin, in 1724: another, by William Sheppard, at London, in 1649; and a third by Simon Birckbeck, at London, in 1655. Birckbeck, in the preliminary matter to his treatise, gives the following list of authors in addition to some of those enumerated above:—Joannes Cacchenius, Antwerp, 1588; Gabriel Inchino, Cologne, 1652; Petrus Bessæus, Cologne, 1629; Hieronymus Dresselius, Cologne, 1635; Isaac Ambrose, London, 1640; Robert Bellarmin, Cologne, 1626; and Robert Bolton, London, 1633.
Among the Roxburghe Ballads, there is a piece consisting of 34 verses of 4 lines each, with the following title, “The Great Assize; or Christ's certain and sudden appearance to Judgment; being serious considerations on these four last things, Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell. By Mr. Stevens, Minister. To the tune of ‘Aim not too high,’ &c.” This appears to have been printed in the latter half of the 17th century.
To the above must be added the venerable name of Sir Thomas More. The following passage in his life, printed in the last edition of Wordsworth's Ecclesiastical Biography, from a MS. in the Lambeth Library, describes his treatise in the following words. “He made a very devoute booke, intituled De quatuor Novissimis, wherein he describeth vice and virtue even to the quick: but this work was never finished.” This fragment is inserted in the edition of his English works, printed by Cawood, Waly and Tottell, in 1557, vol. i. p. 72–102; and is also noticed by Dr. Dibdin, in the introduction to his edition of Robinson's translation of the Utopia, p. lxxxix.
page 417 note c The following is a specimen: “There ben iiij thyngs full harde for to knowe which way that they wyll drawe. The furst ys the wayes of a younge man. The seconde, ye course of a vessell in the ssee. The thyrde, of an adder or of a serpent sprent. The ff'rth of a ffowle sittynge on any thynge. Too wyffs in one howse, ij catts and one mouse, and ij dogges and one bone—these shall nevr accorde in one.