TYRWHITT'S URRY'S CHAUCER'S WORKS: THE

TRACKS OF EDITORIAL HISTORY

SARAH A. KELEN

T H E British Library owns six copies of John Urry's 1721 edition of Chaucer's Works,^three of which are catalogued as containing manuscript notes. Of these three catalogueentries, two ascribe annotations to particular people,^ and one, 642.m.i (the second copylisted in the British Library catalogue), is described as containing 'copious MS notes',but without an attribution. The annotations in this volume are, indeed, copious: wordby word correction of Urry's idiosyncratic Middle EngUsh orthography in some of theCanterbury Tales; notes making reference to the manuscripts; emendations to thePreface and the Glossary; cross-references to source texts; discussions of Tale order; aswell as other sorts of commentary and correction. The annotations in this volume areinteresting not only for their sheer number and their engagement with Urry's text, butfor their source: they are the notes of Chaucer's next editor, the accomplished classicaland Uterary scholar, and Trustee of the British Museum, Thomas Tyrwhitt (fig. i).^

Although the current catalogue does not identify Tyrwhitt as the author of theseannotations, his authorship of the notes was once part of the catalogue record. The eight-volume, octavo catalogue of printed books in the British Museum (1813-19) lists thre|copies of the Urry Chaucer: the first one is identified as having 'MS Notes by Mr.Tyrwhitt '; and both of the others are listed as containing notes by Timothy Thomas.'^However, when the first general catalogue of the library's collection (GK I) was compiledat the end of the nineteenth century, this attribution was left out, and only one copy (thenii6o7.k.i, 2; now 643.m.4) had its notes ascribed to Thomas.^

It seems likely that Tyrwhitt's copy of Urry's Chaucer entered the Library collectionas part of Tyrwhitt's bequest of his books to the British Museum on his death in 1786,although there is no surviving Ust of the 900 books in that bequest.^ There are books inthe collection whose bequest by Tyrwhitt is noted on slips glued to the flyleaf, e.g.64i.m.6(i-2), a 1687 edition of Spenser's Works; and C.39.i.i3, a Shakespeare SecondFoUo. On the other hand, C.71.C.29, the 1550 first edition of Piers Plowman, containsTyrwhitt's annotations, but lacks any notes as to its provenance.^ Nevertheless, theBritish Museum accession stamps in both the Urry Chaucer edition and the CrowleyPiers Plowman edition are in yellow ink, suggesting that they were gifts to the library,rather than purchases.

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Fig. I. Thomas Tyrwhitt, engraved by J. Jones; Shakespeare Illustrated (London, 1793).BL, 831.1.6

That the notes on Urry's edition are indeed by Tyrwhitt seems clear from the evidenceof the hand itself, and is confirmed through a careful comparison between the marginalannotations in this volume and the editorial matter of Tyrwhitt's own Chaucer edition.^For example, in Tyrwhitt's 'Account of the Works of Chaucer to which [his] Glossaryis Adapted', he remarks with characteristic acidity on the haphazard growth of theChaucerian canon, opining that:

It would be a waste of time to sift accurately the heap of rubbish, which was added, by JohnStowe, to the Edit, of 1561. Though we might be able to pick out two or three genuine fragmentsof Chaucer, we should probably find them so soiled and mangled, that he would not thank us forasserting his claim to them. {Tyrwhitt, vol. v, pp. xxii-xxiii)

As evidence of Stowe's unsifted rubbish {uncritically reprinted in subsequent earlymodern editions), Tyrwhitt offers the example of the 'Balade' beginning 'O mercifulland o merciable':

The first four stanzas [of this poem] are found in different parts of an imperfect poem upon theFall of man. MS. Had. 2251. n. 138. The n t h Stanza makes part of an Envoy, which in the sameMS. n. 37. is annexed to the poem entitled ' The craft of Lovers' [among the additions to Chaucer'sworks by J. Stowe]; which poem (by the way) though printed with a date of 1347, and ascribedto Chaucer, has in the MS. a much more probable date of 1459, near sixty years after Chaucer'sdeath. {Tyrwhitt, vol. v, p. xxiii)

All of the comments Tyrwhitt makes here on the non-Chaucerian and miscompiled'Balade' are echoed in manuscript notes throughout the 1721 Urry edition.

The poem beginning 'O mercifull, and 0 merciable' appears on p. 556 of Urry'sedition. In 642.m.i, the poem is marked with an asterisk in manuscript; and in thebottom margin of this page is a lengthy manuscript note:

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* In MS. Harl. 2251. these 4 stanzas are found in different parts of a Poem, upon the fall of man&c. in which the persons of Mercy, Truth, Rightwiseness & Peace are introduced. The i.st St.is the beginning of Mercys speech; the 2.d (with some difference) the conclusion. The 3.d & 4.thare part of Peaces speech. The Poem is imperfect at the end, & has not the name of the author.

The stanzas of Urry's text are also numbered in manuscript, with a horizontal rule addedbetween the first and second stanzas, and a double rule between the second and thirdstanzas. That is, ttie two parts of Mercy's speech are shown, as is the division betweenthe speeches of Mercy and Peace. Furthermore, there is an asterisk marking the eleventhstanza (p. 557), indicating this manuscript note in the bottom margin:

* In MS. Harl. 2251. this stanza makes part of another Poem, see before P. 533.

And on Urry's p. 533, where the poem 'The Craft of Lovers' names its own compositionin 1347, there is a manuscript note remarking that:

In MS. Harl. 2251. it is the year 1459, & there is at the end a L'envoye of 3 stanzas. The secondof which is the stanza which occurs p. 557. v. 795 of this Edit.

This manuscript note thus refers back to the note on the eleventh stanza of' O mercifulland o merciable'. The comments that these manuscript notes make on the poem thusreplicate those in Tyrwhitt's edition.

Even clearer evidence that the notes in 642.m.i are Tyrwhitt's (rather than those ofa particularly compulsive reader of Tyrwhitt's edition) is given by the following first-person annotation. In John Dart's 'Life of Chaucer' in the Urry edition. Dart citesThomas Speght's claim for a lost first edition of Chaucer's works by William Thynne,which edition allegedly contained the anticlerical Pilgrim's Tale, beginning 'InLincolneshire fast by a Fenne / Standeth a religious house, who doth it kenne' (Urry f.2r). Here 642.m.i contains a manuscript note (fig. 2) that reads: ^

I have seen this Tale in a 12.""° Black Letter miscellany (as it should seem, for the running titleof the preceding leaf was ' The court of Venus') under the title of ' The Pilgrimes Tale:' but itwas certainly not written by Chaucer, for this reason, among many others, that he is quoted init by name.

In the 'Appendix to the Preface' of Tyrwhitt's edition, a lengthy footnote discusses theproblems with the story of the supposed Thynne edition of the Pilgrim's Tale. Tyrwhittremarks that:

Though Mr. Speght did not know where to find the Pilgrim's tale, ... I have had the good fortuneto meet with a copy...But it is impossible that any one who had read it should ascribe it toChaucer. He is quoted in it twice by name, fol. xxxiii, and fol. xlv. and in the latter place thereference seems to be made to a printed book. {Tyrwhitt, vol. i, pp. xv-xvi)

And in a footnote to this footnote, Tyrwhitt clarifies that:

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fdundina it with ihcTlowmart's Talc. -„ r • n*Mr. Spegf^t in his Life of Chaucer printed in i6ox. mcnuons a Tale in Mr.

m printed Book of C/;«r/fi?r's Works, more odious to the Clergy than the Speech ofj whieh began thus;

In Lincolncihirc fajl by a FenneSta/ideth a rel/gious houfe^ who doth it kenne, ccc.

The Argument of which Tale, as alfo the occafion thereof, and the caufe why it was Icfcouc of Chaucer's Works, he promifcd Ihould be Hicwcd in Mr. Francis Thynne's Commentupon Chaucer'^; bur neither the one nor the other have been fince publiflied.

One thing more is to be obfcrved of his Works ; that they were fo univerfaliy valued, rhatwe do noe find them in the Catalogues of Books prohibited by the Bifhop of Londo/t, in theyear i j i6 . nor of thofe prohibited by the King, at the Inftigacion of the Bifhops, by Procla-mfltion in 1519'. But on the contrary, in an A d of Parliament in rhc ^^He/t. VIII. Cap. I.For tbe advanceme/it of true Religion^ and for the abolijhment of the contrary^ the Canter'bury Tales, ChaucerV Works, are exeepted from the Prohibirion of that k&..

As to the Tales added in this Edition; an Account of them comes within the Defign of thePreface, to which the Reader is refeir'd; as he is to the following Teftimonies for a folleraccount of the Judgment of Learned Men, both in Chaucer's time and fmce, concerning Himand his Works.

P g c s 5 fi55 "' I'jgc 557. • P Ai51s and Mon. V()l. I[. p.See ihc Proi. to the Monlci Tale, 9. 85, &c. 1 Sic H'nprf's Athena: in Frrfne/r Thynnt.

" Dr. UicLti calls ilic TelUmcniolCrf/iiile, C«rwi»Chau- "̂ Fax's Afls and Mon. rCjS4. Vol. il. p.cerL Gram. AS. p-fjj. in mnrg

T E S T I-

Fig. 2. A specimen of Tyrwhitt's autograph annotation of his copy of Urry's edition of Chaucer.BL, 642.m.i

The copy, of which I speak, is in the black letter, and seems to have once made part of a volumeof miscellaneous poems in 8vo. The first leaf is numbered xxxi and the last xlv. The Pilgrim's talehegins about the middle of fol. xxxi vers. and continues to the end of the fragment, where it breaksoff imperfect. The first leaf has a running title - Venus The court of- and contains the last lines ofone poem, and another whole poem of twenty lines, before the Pilgrimes tale. {Tyrwhitt, vol. i,p. xv)̂

Tyrwhitt's edition reiterates the information in the manuscript notes on Urry 's edition(including the first person voice), but with sufficient alteration (e.g., the identification of

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the miscellany as both duodecimo and octavo) to suggest that the notes in the Urryvolume were not simply transcribed from Tyrwhitt's edition.

Tyrwhitt's annotations on Urry are significant because they record his progresstoward his own edition. Tyrwhitt's collation papers are in the collection of the HoughtonLibrary of Harvard University (fMS. Eng. 1219); and the printer's copy for his editionis in the Alderman Library of the University of Virginia (PR1850 1602, copy 2).̂ *̂However, his notes in this British Library copy of the Urry edition show the importanceof Tyrwhitt's work with the non-Canterbury Tales material in the Chaucer canon.Although his own edition only prints the texts of the Tales, his editorial matterconsistently cross-references and comments on the rest of the canon. His marginaldialogue with Urry's edition demonstrates quite readily Tyrwhitt's interest in the fullcorpus of Chaucer's works. Two areas of Tyrwhitt's editorial practice that areparticularly visible in his annotations on Urry are his work in identifying Chaucer'sliterary sources, and his compilation of the Glossary.

Although Tyrwhitt famously claimed in the 'Advertisement' to his Glossary that 'Mr.Urry's edition should never be opened by any one for the purpose of reading Chaucer'(vol. V, p. vi), his thorough annotations in his copy prove that he had indeed opened itand read it closely, even if only to come to that damning conclusion. In fact, this critiqueof Urry's text is embedded within Tyrwhitt's acknowledgment of the use he has madeof at least part of that edition:

It would be injustice to the learned author of the Glossary to Mr. Urry's edition [identified inTyrwhitt's note as 'Mr. Timothy Thomas'], not to acknowledge, that I have built upon hisfoundations, and often with his materials, (vol. v, p. ii)^^

Tyrwhitt's annotations on the glossary of the Urry edition demonstrate his process ofcorrecting and revising its entries, adding more citations for various terms, and refiningdefinitions. ^

In the 1721 Glossary, the entry for 'Vasselage' reads thus:

Vasselage: Servitude, subjection; service due from the Vassal to the Lord. Prol. 3056. which isthus read in some Copies;

For alle foryetin is than his vasselage. (Urry, 'Glossary', p. 68)

The line cited is from Theseus's Prime Mover speech in the Knight's Tale. Tyrwhittcrosses out both definitions (from 'Servitude' to 'Lord') in Urry's edition, replacingthem simply with ' Valour' and adding a reference to the word's appearance in Chaucer'sRofTiance of the Rose, 'R. 5871.' In Tyrwhitt's own edition, the word is glossed thus:'VASSELAGE, n. Fr. Valour, courage. 3056. R. 5871' (Tyrwhitt, vol. v, p. 223). Vasselagedoes undoubtedly mean the service of the vassal to the lord, but (as Tyrwhitt must haveobserved) that meaning is inappropriate to the contexts of the word's Chaucerianappearances; Tyrwhitt thus refines the glossary to make it fit the Chaucerian text morenarrowly.

Tyrwhitt's annotations also show his interest in identifying source texts for Chaucer's

works, one of his great contributions to Chaucer studies. The flyleaf of this volumequotes catalogue entries from the Catalogue de Gaignat for 'Le Roman de Troiele' aswell as Latin and French texts of Pamphilus de Amore}^ There are also notes on theflyleaf referring to an early printed edition of Boccaccio's Filostrato, the main source forChaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, and to Machaut's Dit du lyon, which Tyrwhitt identifiesin his edition as the possible original for the lost 'boke of the Leon' named in Chaucer'sRetraction (Tyrwhitt, vol. iii, p. 313).^^

Tyrwhitt seems to have been especially interested in Chaucer's Italian source texts. Inhis account of Chaucer's versification, Tyrwhitt notes that no English poet beforeChaucer wrote in Heroic Metre, which (he supposes) Chaucer must have copied fromthe hendecasyllabic, iambic verse which 'had been cultivated with the greatest assiduityand success, in preference to every other metre, by Dante, Petrarch, and Boccace'(Tyrwhitt, vol. iv, p. 84). In a long footnote on this discussion of Chaucer's metre,Tyrwhitt discloses his discovery that Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde is largely translatedfrom Boccaccio's Filostrato:

It is so little a while since the world has been informed, that the Palamon and Arcite of Chaucerwas taken from the Theseida of Boccace, that it would not have been surprizing if another centuryhad elapsed without our knowing that our countryman had also borrowed his Troilus from theFilostrato of the same author; as the Filostrato is more scarce, and much less famous, even inItaly, than the Thesetda. (Tyrwhitt, vol. iv, p. 85)

He then describes the printed copy that he has inspected in the collection of 'theReverend Mr. Crofts' (printed in Milan by Ulrich Scinzenzeler in 1498); this is the sameedition that he cites on the flyleaf of Urry's edition. ̂ "̂ Tyrwhitt's interest in the Italiansources also extends to Dante; on a back fiyleaf of the Urry edition is a manuscript notethat lists every time that the Chaucerian text makes reference to Dante or his works.

As it happens, Tyrwhitt's copy of Urry is not the only record of his editorial process.Similar, though less extensive, annotations appear in (what is left of) Tyrwhitt's copy ofthe 1602 Speght edition of Chaucer, 641.m.19.^^ In this volume the annotations are evenmore explicitly preliminary to Tyrwhitt's own editorial notes. For example, the text ofSpeght's glossary entry for 'Tabard' is marked in the margin: 'To be inserted in n. 6'(Speght, sig. Uuuiiii'). And, indeed, Speght's explanation of the name of Harry Bailly'sinn is quoted verbatim in note 6 of Tyrwhitt's 'Introductory Discourse of theCanterbury Tales' (Tyrwhitt, vol. iv, p. 124). Other notes of this kind appearsporadically throughout the volume. Furthermore, Tyrwhitt's copy of the 1542 Thynneedition of Chaucer (BL, C.57.g.6) contains his notes collating other manuscripts againstit. Again, although Tyrwhitt's authorship of these notes is recorded in the 1813-18catalogue, it is not recorded in GK I.

As this brief discussion of Tyrwhitt's various annotations should make clear, theseBritish Library copies of Urry's, Speght's, and Thynne's Chaucer editions offer excitingopportunities for the study of Tyrwhitt as both a scholar and an editor. ThomasTyrwhitt was a dedicated friend of the British Museum; it therefore seems only fitting

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that his editorial labours toward his Chaucer edition should be visible across the marginsof volumes held by the British Library, despite the fact that both his collation papers andhis printer's copy have ended up in libraries in the United States.^^

1 In fact, although the edition bears his name,Urry was dead by the time it was completed andpublished; the work on the volume was com-pleted by a group of men associated {as Urryhimself had been) with Christ Church, Oxford,among whom were the brothers Timothy andWilliam Thomas; Timothy Thomas wrote the'Preface' to the Urry edition; he and his brothercompiled the 'Glossary'. On the notoriouslycomplicated editorial history of the 1721 edition,see William L. Alderson and Arnold C.Henderson, Chaucer and Augustan Scholarship{Berkeley, 1970), chapter v.

2 643.m.4 is catalogued as having 'copious MSnotes [by Timothy and William Thomas]'; and831.1.4, 5 'S catalogued as having ' MS notes' and'an inscription by William Thomas'. In fact,several (although not all) of the annotations inthis volume are signed 'T.T. ' , suggesting thatthe annotations in this volume are also by thetwo Thomas brothers. Both the Thomas copieswere given to the British Museum by WilliamThomas in 1764. 643.m.i also contains fairlyextensive eighteenth-century annotations,although this is not mentioned in its catalogueentry. J. M. Cowen has recently identified theseannotations as being by Samuel Pegge: 'SamuelPegge's Ownership of a Manuscript of Chaucer'sLegend of Good Women', Notes £5' Queries, n.s.,xxxiv {1987), pp. 152-3.

3 Tyrwhitt only edited the Canterbury Tales, notthe complete Works as Urry had. Tyrwhitt's fourvolumes of text and notes were published in1775, followed by the fifth volume, the Glossary,in 1778; Thomas Tyrwhitt {ed.). The CanterburyTales of Chaucer. To which are added an essay onhis language and versification; an introductorydiscourse; and notes, 5 vols. (London, 1775-8).

4 [British Museum, Department of PrintedBooks], Librorum Impressorum qui in MuseoBritannico adservantur Catalogus, vol. ii, CA-CZ{London, 1814), sigs. Ii2v-Ii3r. These copies arethose currently pressmarked 642.m.i; 643.m.4;and 831.1.4, 5.

5 British Museum, Catalogue of Printed Books, vol.xv: Charles-Chekus {London, 1886), col. 181.

All six of the Library's current copies of Urry'sedition are catalogued in GK I.

6 The figure comes from Edward Edwards, Livesof the Founders of the British Museum {London,1870), p. 417.

7 The annotations are attributed to Tyrwhitt inR. C. Alston, Books with Manuscript; A ShortTitle Catalogue of Books with Manuscript Notesin the British Library, Including Books with Manu-script Additions, Proofsheets, Illustrations, Cor-rections, with Indexes of Owners and Books withAuthorial Annotations {London, 1994), p. 653.Alston identifies fifteen books as containing notesby Tyrwhitt, including a copy of the 1602 Speghtedition of Chaucer, 641.m.19. The library'sonline catalogue (OPAC) extends this list toeighteen books with Tyrwhitt's annotations,though neither list includes the 1721 Chaucer.

8 For a specimen of Tyrwhitt's hand, see hisletters to Rev. Thomas Burgess, D.D., in BL,Add. MS. 46847.

9 This fragment is Bodl., Douce Frag. g. 3 {STCZ4650), which is printed as Appendix I in F. J.Furnivall's revised edition of Francis Thynne'sAnimadversions vppon...Chaucers works...isg8,E.E.T.S., O.S., ix {London, 1876), pp. 77-98.

10 On these documents, and Tyrwhitt's editingpractice in general, see B. A. Windeatt, 'ThomasTyrwhitt, 1730-1786' in Paul G. Ruggiers{ed.}. Editing Chaucer: the Great Tradition{Norman, OK, 1984), pp. 117-43, ^^ P- 123.The printer's copy is cannibalized from a copy ofthe 1602 Speght edition of Chaucer's Works; therelevant leaves have been removed fromTyrwhitt's own copy in the British Library:641.m.19. The discover}' of the printer's copy isdescribed in Atcheson L. Hench, ' Printer'sCopy for Tyrwhitt's Chaucer,' Studies in Bib-liography , iii {1950), pp. 265-6.

11 Alderson and Henderson discuss the eighteenth-century influence of the editorial matter, and toa lesser extent the text, of the Urry edition {pp.82-4). Alderson and Henderson also attributethe Glossary to both the Thomas brothers, notjust Timothy {p. 99).

12 Supplement a la Bibliographie Instructive, ouCatalogue des Livres du Cabinet de feu M. Louis

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Jean Gaignat..., 2 vols. (Paris, 1769). The entrynumbers are: 2342, 2233, and 2234, respectively.The Old Woman {Anus) who acts as a go-between in Pamphilus is at least an analogue, ifnot a source, for Pandarus in Troilus andCriseyde; Chaucer mentions Pamphilus explicitlyin both the Franklin^s Tale {fragment v, 1. m oin the Riverside Chaucer, 1. 11422 in Tyrwhitt'snumbering: Tyrwhitt, vol. ii, p. 143) and theTale of Melibee (fragment vii, I. 1556 in theRiverside Chaucer; Tyrwhitt, vol. ii, p. 294). Itis not clear if Tyrwhitt recognized the re-lationship between Pamphilus and Troilus andCriseyde, although his notes do explain itsappearances in these two Tales-, 'the allusion [inthe Franklin's Tale] is plainly to the first lines ofa Latin Poem, which was very popular in thetime of Chaucer, in which one Pamphilus givesa history of his amour with Galatea...Thispoem, by the name of Pamphilus, is quoted inour author's Melibeus, p. 294, 5' (Tyrwhitt, vol.iv, pp. 298-^).

13 On both the flyleaf of the Urry edition and in hisprinted note on the Retraction, Tyrwhitt cites areference to Le Dit du lyon from Memoiresde Litterature, tires des registres de PAcademieRoyale des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, depuisCannee M.DCCXLIV jusques & compris FanneeM.DCCXLVI, tom. xx {Paris, 1753), p. 408; in

his edition, he also cites a second reference to LeDit du lyon in the Memoires, p. 379 {Tyrwhitt,vol. iii, p. 313)-

14 Thomas Crofts was Chancellor of the Diocese ofPeterborough; his library of over 8,000 bookswas sold over forty-three days, beginning 7 April1783, during which sale Tyrwhitt bought thiscopy of the Filostrato (or Fylostrato, as it isspelled in this edition). That volume is now inthe collection of the British Library, IA.26783,with an inscription citing both Tyrwhitt'spurchase of the volume and his presentation of itto the Library on 27 May 1785. The Departmentof Manuscripts has a marked up copy of thecatalogue from the sale of Crofts's collection(PR.3.A.8); the Filostrato was lot 3996; itspurchase price is recorded as ,(^2:3:0 (p. 198).

15 This is the volume from which the printer's copywas taken; the volume thus lacks ff. 1-85 and 92-108, which contain the text of the CanterburyTales.

16 My thanks to Greg Brown, Gayle Cooper, JohnHopson, Willis Johnson, Jason Kemper, andAndrew Prescott for their valuable researchassistance and suggestions, and to the JournaFsanonymous readers for their very helpful cor-rections and additions. My thanks also to theOffice of Sponsored Programs at Oberlin Col-lege, which supported my research at the BritishLibrary with an H. H. Powers Travel Grant.

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