CRANE— MEDIEVAL SERMON-BOOKS AND STORIES. 395 



^.r^?n/'/a-collections is another work also of English origin, which I 

 shall mention slightly out of its chronological order 'because, like 

 the one just described above, it is a treatise for the use of preachers, 

 arranged in an alphabetical order. In 1886 while collecting ma- 

 terial for the history of the use of cxempla in mediaeval sermons 

 which serves as an introduction to my " Jacques de Vitry," Mr. Ward 

 of the British ]\Iuseum called my attention to MS. Additional 11 284, 

 formerly in the possession of the well-known antiquary Mr. W. J. 

 Thoms, containing an extensive collection of stories arranged al- 

 phabetically according to topics. I later (" Jacques de Vitry," p. Ixxii) 

 called attention to the importance of this collection in the hope that 

 it might soon find an editor. It was not, however, until the publi- 

 cation in 1910 of the third volume of the " Catalogue of Romances 

 in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum," by Mr. 

 Herbert, that the rich contents of the ]\IS. were made adequately 

 known to students of mediaeval literature, and it was reserved for a 

 French scholar, ]\Ir. J. Th. Welter, to publish the MS. in extenso}'^ 

 The attribution of the " Speculum Laicorum " to John of 

 Hoveden, the chaplain of Queen Eleanor and the author of " Philo- 

 mela," first made by Bale in his " Catalogus," 1548, rests on no 

 adequate ground, while the denial of his authorship, because the 

 work contains mention of the reign of Henry IV. (Hoveden having 



IS It is true that in my edition of "Jacques de Vitry" I cited several 

 MSS. in the British Museum containing the " Speculum Laicorum " without 

 suspecting its true title. My excuse must be that the principal MS. (Addi- 

 tional 1 1284), which formerly belonged to Mr. Thoms, contains no indication 

 of the true title (nor does it appear in the official catalogue), and the same 

 is true of the other MSS. which I used. Neither Mr. Thoms nor Mr. Thomas 

 Wright, who printed stories from this AIS., was aware of the true title of the 

 collection from which they were taken. The title of Mr. Welter's edition is : 

 "Thesaurus Exemplorum. Fascicule V: Le Speculum Laicorum. fidition 

 d'une collection d'exempla composee en Angleterre a la fin du XIIP siecle," 

 Paris, 1914. The first four fascicules have not yet appeared, but the author 

 has informed me that they are composed as follows: Fasc. I., Inventory of 

 the three thousand anecdotes of " fitienne de Bourbon " from the MS. Lat. 

 15970 of the Bib. Nat, with indication of sources (Complement to A. Lecoy 

 de la Marche, "Anecdotes historiques, legendes et apologues, tires du recueil 

 inedit d'£tienne de Bourbon," Paris, 1877) ; Fasc. II., Inventory of the "Liber 

 de dono timoris " of Humbert de Romans, and of the " Promptuarium exem- 

 plorum " of Alartinus Polonus ; Fasc. III., " Liber exemplorum secundum 

 ordinem Alphabet!"; Fasc. IV., MS. Royal 7 D. i, of the British Museum. 



