Chapter D: DIGBY 138, Bodleian Library, Oxford. Contains Vox Clamantis

only, preceded by the Table of Chapter-headings. Parchment and paper, ff. 158 originally, with other leaves inserted at the beginning and end in the sixteenth century; about 10½ x 7¼ in., in quires of eight with catchwords; neat writing of the second quarter of the fifteenth century, about 37 lines to the page. No decoration except red and blue initials, numbering of chapters in red, &c. The rubricator has introduced some corrections here and there, but there are no passages rewritten over erasure. There is some transposition of leaves in the fourteenth quire, dating from before the rubricator’s numbering of chapters. The name of a sixteenth-century owner, Roger Waller, occurs on f. 158 v^o. and Kenelm Digby’s device, ‘Vindica te tibi, Kenelme Digby,’ on f. 1.

The text of D is of a mixed character. Sometimes, in company with
TH₂ it reproduces the original form of a passage, as i. 1029
ff., vi. cap. xviii and xix, vii. 189 f., 1409 ff., 1454 ff.,
1479 ff. In other places, as iii. 1 ff., vi. 545, and elsewhere,
the readings of D are those of the revised MSS. It is peculiar
in the addition after vi. 522, where eight lines are introduced
from the original text of the altered passage which follows at
the end of the chapter. The text of D generally is much less
correct than that of the older copies, and it is derived from a
MS. which had lines missing here and there, as indicated by the
‘deficit versus in copia,’ which occurs sometimes in the margin.
In the numbering of the chapters the Prologues of Libb. ii. and
iii. are reckoned as cap. i. in each case. The corrections and
notes of the rubricator are not always sound, and sometimes we
find in the margin attempts to improve the author’s metre, in a
seventeenth-century hand, as ‘Et qui pauca tenet’ for ‘Qui tenet
et pauca’ (ii. 70), ‘Causa tamen credo’ for ‘Credo tamen causa’
(ii. 84). Some of these late alterations have been admitted
(strange to say) into Mr. Coxe’s text (e.g. ii. 70).

The book is made up of parchment and paper in equal proportions,
the outer and inner leaves of each quire being of parchment.
Sixteen leaves of paper have been inserted at the beginning
and twelve at the end of the book, easily distinguished by
the water-mark and chain-lines from the paper originally used
in the book itself. Most of these are blank, but some have
writing, mostly in sixteenth-century hands. There are medical
prescriptions and cooking recipes in English, selections of
gnomic and other passages from the _Vox Clamantis_, among which
are the lines ‘Ad mundum mitto,’ &c., which do not occur in the
Digby text, four Latin lines on the merits of the papal court
beginning ‘Pauperibus sua dat gratis,’ which when read backwards
convey an opposite sense, the stanzas by Queen Elizabeth ‘The
dowte of future force (_corr._ foes) Exiles my presente ioye, And
wytt me warnes to shonne suche snares As threten myne annoye’
(eight four-line stanzas).

With regard to the connexion between D and L see below on the
Laud MS.