148 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 
At the beginning of Part ii.: ‘Here begynneth of pe Amonicions 
drawyng gretly inwarde”; and at the end of it: ‘‘Here endip pe 
Amonicions drawyng inwarde. And here folowen the Chapitres of Pe 
pirde boke pat is of inwarde consolacyon.” And at the end of 
Part ii.: ‘‘ Here endib be boke of Inwarde Consolacyoun. Deo 
gracias.” 
Mr. Kettlewell gives, at page 94 of his work, an extract from the 
printed Catalogue of MSS, in the University Library, Cambridge, 
which, by the quotations it supplies of the opening and closing sen- 
tences, enables us to see that a MS. in that library contains the same 
translation of the Jmitation as that in the Dublin volume.* But the 
Cambridge copy is much more seriously mutilated—wanting, as it 
does, eighteen leaves. It is surprising that Mr. Kettlewell, finding 
this entry in the Cambridge Catalogue, was not moved to make an 
examination of such an interesting item in the bibliography of the 
Imitation. He appears, however, to have taken no further notice of 
it. On looking into the Cambridge Catalogue, we find a note, omitted 
by Mr. Kettlewell, attributing to the MS. the date of “about 1400.” 
If this were really its date, the controversy as to the authorship of 
the Jmitation would be at an end, so far at least as the claim of 
Thomas 4 Kempis is concerned, for he was not born before 1379 or 
1380. If the year 1400 is wrongly given by inadvertence, 1500 
4 The following is the whole of the entry in the Cambridge Catalogue :— 
“1411. Gg. 1. 16. 
‘* A quarto, on vellum, containing ff. 171, with 20 lines in each page. There 
are catchwords after every 8th leaf, and a later hand has paged the MS. through- 
out. Date, about 1400. 
‘¢An EnouisH Transtation of the first three books of the treatise Dz 
ImMITATIONE CHRISTI. 
‘A leaf is lost between ff. 62 and 63; 68 and 69; and 16 between ff. 128 and 
129, containing B. ii. ch. 26-85. 
‘The initial rubrick in f. 1 is— 
‘Here bigynneth the tretes called Musica Kcclesiastica. . . . 
“B. i. begins (f. 1 a)— 
“¢. | . Oure lorde saith he that foloweth me goith not in darkenesse. . 
‘cB. 3. ends (f. 171.6)— 
“‘Defende and kepe the soul of pi litel servante amonge so many periles of pis 
corruptible lyue and thi grace going with dresse him by the wey of pees to the 
cuntrey of everlastynge clerenes. Amen. Amen. Amen. 
“¢ Here ende the boke of inwarde consolacion. 
“‘The translation differs considerably from that printed by Wynkyn de 
Worde.”’ 
In the Dublin copy the word dresse in the final sentence appears to have been 
altered by a later hand to directe. A writer quoted by Mr. Kettlewell, at p. 93 of 
his ‘‘ Authorship of the De Imitatione,”’ says :—‘‘ At this very time I have in my 
hands an exact transcript of a very old English manuscript, which is mentioned in 
the Appendix to the Catalogue of the Bodleian MSS., containing the first three books 
of that divine treatise (but wanting that which we call the fourth), without any 
name—or so much as ever mentioning it to be a translation—under this very title 
Musica Ecclesiastica.’’ Is this a third copy of our old version ? 
