THE 



MONTHI.Y MAGAZINE. 



No. 351.] 



MARCH 1, 1821. 



[2 of Vol. 61. 



If any one enquire in regard to the public feelings which guide the Conductor nf this Miscellany, he re- 

 plies, that in Pu/ilics, he is an immovable friend to the principles of civil liberty, and of a benevolent 

 administration of governinent ; and is of the party of the Tories, the Whigs, and the Radical Reformers, 

 as far as they are friends to the same principles and practices;— that in matters of Jif/tgibn, acting la 

 the spirit of Christianity, he maintains perfect liberty of conscience, and is desirous of living in mutual 

 charily with every sect of Christians; — and that, in P/u7osophy,he prefers the useful to the speculative, 

 constantly rejecting doctrines which have no better foundation than the authority of respected names, 

 and admitting the assumption of no causes which are not equal and analogous to the effects. 



■ 



ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS. 



To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine. 



SIR, 



(EING full)' aware that your useful 

 autl entertaining magazine is al- 

 ways open to the reception of literary 

 information, 1 take the liberty of trans- 

 mitting you an account of rt manuscript 

 o/Chaucer, which cannot fail to inte- 

 rest your readers in general, but more 

 particularly to awaken the attention 

 of those who cherish a predilection 

 for the dawning of English literature. 

 The curious document in question is 

 written upon rellum, and in 4to, 

 being bound up with two other MSS. 

 written also upon vellum ; the one con- 

 sisting of 73 leaves or 146 pages, con- 

 taining a treatise of the maladies inci- 

 dental to the hum.in body, and the signs 

 whereby they are cognizable ; the other, 

 comprising only three leaves, or six 

 pages, and impeifect, is a disquisition 

 upon urine. It is, however, the first trea- 

 tise in this curious volume which must 

 solelj' occupy the attention, and there- 

 fore before I enter upon a description, 

 I shall preface the same by a few words, 

 tending to elucidate the fact to be ad- 

 duced, and which will also serve to 

 attest the singular curiosity of this 

 unique document. On referring to the 

 works of Chancer, by Speight, it will 

 be found that mention is therein made 

 of a work from the hand of that great 

 father of English poesy, said to be lost, 

 l)eing a treatise upon the Astrolabe, 

 written for the instruction of his son 

 IjCwIs, then studying at Merton College, 

 Oxford, under the fiimous Nicholas 

 Strode, and which commenced with 

 these words — " Little Lewis, my son ;'' 

 it is thus ascertained that such a work 

 was known to have existed, and which 

 treatise it is now my task to prove is yet 

 in existence, and perfect in e\'ery re- 

 spect, its delineation being as follows : 



The work in quarto consists of 27 

 leaves, or 54 pages, there being about 

 87 lines in each page, written iu a fair, 



Monthly Ma«. No. 351. 



bold, upright hand ; the capitals at the 

 commencement of each chapter or head, 

 being in blue or red, and sometimes 

 figured, while the head-line of each 

 respective part is in red letters; the 

 abbreviations are numerous, which 

 would render the perusal rather diffi- 

 cult to persons unacquainted with the 

 orthography of that remote period, but 

 to any one at all conversant with early 

 manuscripts, it will appear at the first 

 glance, that the present document is a 

 production of (he close of the fourteenth 

 century; but whether absolutely from 

 the hand of Chaucer, or an amanuensis, 

 the writer will not pretend to say; 

 though, as Little Lewis was at the 

 period in question only^eH//effr*of age, 

 it is probable, that if executed by his 

 father, he would have written it in a 

 very legible hand, such as the manu- 

 script is, in order to facilitate the peru- 

 sal ; for iu the opening address tohis son, 

 which I have partly transcribed under, 

 he obviously feels for the yet dawning 

 faculties of his mind, when he says, 

 "ybr latyn canst you zif but litel my 

 litelsone;'''' however, he tlie writer who 

 he may, the subject matter is most in- 

 dubitably the production of Chaucer. 



Page the first is a blank, and the 

 thirteen contain subsequent Tabida Fes- 

 torum Mohilium. — The fifteenth displays 

 Tab-la adSciend —quis pl-ar regnat t glib 

 ho. — Page sixteenth is a blank, and on 

 the seventeenth is a rude drawing of 

 the human figure, the physiognomy of 

 which is by no means dissimilar to the 

 portraits of Chaucer, as handed down 

 to us, having the hair curly on either 

 side, and the beard forked ; over diffe- 

 rent parts of this body are distributed 

 the signs of the zodiac. Page eighteenth 

 is a blank, and nineteen and twenty 

 present delineations of the several stages 

 of eclipses. — The twentieth page is a 

 blank, and on the twenty-second is 

 written, in aueat liaud,as follows: 



" This treatise of the Astrolabe was 

 N written 



