Excerpt from The Recluse: A Fourteenth Century Version of the Ancren Riwle
Judging from the writing as well as from a note on p. 370 of the volume given below p. Xi-miss Panes (0p. Cit. P._ Lvui) considers the ms. As belonging ’to about the year A stated by Hulme, the ms. Is a large folio on vellum, consisting of 232 leaves (fol. 22 only a half-sheet) besides two paper fly-leaves at the commencement and two at the end of the volume arranged in quires of eight leaves each, as is shown by catch-words, which occur with perfect regularity on every sixteenth page, except at the end of the third and the twenty third quires, which contain 14 and 11 leaves respectively. The ms. Is numbered by pages in a recent handwriting, evidently by Daniel Waterland (fellow of Magdalene College, 1683 the first leaf of every quire also bears its number in pencil. The size of the page is now X9 10he inches, but in the re binding the margins of many of the leaves have more or less been cut off. The written matter is in two columns, measuring inches each, each column containing 54 lines, and separated by a free space of inch. The pages are ruled and the columns marked ofi in pale violet ink, in some places very distinct, in others hardly visible. The handwriting, dating apparently from the close of the xivth century, is clear, fairly large, the same throughout, though with slight variations in the size and form of the letters. The ink is generally a deep black at times shading off into brown. In several places where the parchment is comparatively thin, the ink has run through the leaf. Occasionallv the writing is somewhat faint, often it seems, owing to the nature and preparation of the parchment; every where. However, it is quite legible. Headings, Latin quotations and now and then English words and phrases are in red ink (indicated in mv print by spaced out letters). In the same colour are inserted marginal notes of varying size giving the names of the supposed authors of the quotations.
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