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THE GOUDA MANUSCRIPTS 611 and one entitled Carmen Petri Nannonis paraneticum ad studiosos adulescentes, vt Goudam adeant literas Latinas Graecasque sub doctis pracceptoribus discituri. On ff. 40-56 is Adrian Barland’s Epithome de omnibus Hollandiae Principibus, which is taken from the second edition, Antwerp, Hillen, Jan. 1520; on f. 56 an extract from ‘Herasmus’’ adage, Auris Bataua, the last in the Aldine Adagia of 1508; and on ff. 57-60 more poems by Cornelius Gerard and Herman, of which only one, Herman’s Ode g (cf. p. 136), has been published, until recently by Dr. Molhuysen. Ff. 61-181 are occupied by Collecta quaedam ex magno Epistolari Erasmi impresso Basileae n officina Frobeniana anno 1538 (N1), written by Hand B. In 1324, which is written throughout by Hand A, the contents are also miscellaneous. The first item is Erasmus’ preface to the reader prefixed to his paraphrase of St. Matthew, published in Feb. 1522. Then follow various extracts from his writings and letters ; including the prefaces to his Suetonius (June 1518) and Seneca (July 1515) and the three letters prefixed to F (1521), which are not in E (1519). As the first, f. 46, to Beatus Rhenanus, is styled in the margin ‘Praefatio in 2% aeditionem Farraginis epistolarum suarum,’ the suggestion is that the writer was in possession of E, and took an opportunity to begin copying the new letters added in F. Following these, f. 50 v°, is a copy of Reyner Snoy’s preface to the Silua Carminum Herasmi, a very rare volume printed at Gouda in 1513. Then on f. 50 follows Dorp’s letter to Erasmus attacking the Moria, which was written from Louvain in Sept. 1514. On f. 57 is the Brief of Adrian vı to Erasmus, 1 Dec. 1522, followed by Erasmus’ letter to Jodocus Gaverus, 1 March 1524; both of which were printed in Erasmus’ Æxomologesis, e. Sept. 1524. The next item is Erasmus Paraphrase on the 3rd Psalm, addressed to Melchior Viandal, 25 Feb. 1524, which was published with the Exomologesis ; and then long sections from the Hxomologesis and the De Conscribendis Epistolis, in the latter case following the edition of 1522. After some extracts from Politian and other Italian humanists comes the preface to Erasmus’ edition of Cicero’s Tusculanae Quaestiones, published in October 1523; and the book concludes with the two Disputations by Erasmus, the importance of which has been shown on pp. 245-6. It is remarkable that in almost all cases the manuscripts have a text which differs from the printed versions, and which in some points is fuller and more correct. Not only is this so for the letters of Snoy and Dorp, but even with the correspondence of Erasmus—the Wimpfeling letters, the three prefixed to F, the prefaces to Suetonius, Seneca, and Cicero, the letter to Gaverus, and the Brief of Adrian— the manuscripts have in places a better text than that printed under the direction of Erasmus or his friends. This fact alone is very significant; and when it is combined with the possession of the Gerard correspondence, Erasmus’ early poems, including the original form of the Carmen Bucolicum, and finally of the Disputations written in Oxford, —all of them known from no other source—it becomes plain that the writer of the manuscripts must have been some one who enjoyed the confidence of Erasmus or of one of his intimate friends, and thus had access to original documents.
