The Book-Hunter at Home | Page 6

of St. Margaret' (known by three leaves preserved in the Bodleian), the 'goste of guido' or Ghost of Guy, and the Epitaph of the King of Scotland, all printed by Pynson, as well as that mysterious volume ycleped 'The Nigramansir,' said to be by John Skelton the poet-laureate who lived under five kings and died in 1529. Many of Skelton's works, perhaps even the majority of his writings, are known to us by title and hearsay alone; but who shall say that his 'Speculum Principis,' or 'the Commedy Achademios callyd by name,' which he himself mentions, are lost beyond all hope of recovery? 'The Nigramansir' was actually seen by Thomas Warton, the poet-laureate, in the 'fifties of the eighteenth century, and is described by him in some detail. His account is so interesting that it deserves quoting.
'I cannot quit Skelton,' he writes, 'without restoring to the public notice a play, or MORALITY, written by him, not recited in any catalogue of his works, or annals of English typography; and, I believe, at present totally unknown to the antiquarians in this sort of literature. It is, The NIGRAMANSIR, a morall ENTERLUDE and a pithie written by Maister SKELTON laureate and plaid before the king and other estatys at Woodstock on Palme Sunday. It was printed by Wynkin de Worde in a thin quarto, in the year 1504.'
Against this Warton makes the following note: 'My lamented friend Mr. William Collins . . . . shewed me this piece at Chichester, not many months before his death (Collins died in 1759), and he pointed it out as a very rare and valuable curiosity. He intended to write the History of the Restoration of Learning under Leo the Tenth, and with a view to that design had collected many scarce books. Some few of these fell into my hands at his death. The rest, among which, I suppose, was this Interlude, were dispersed.'
Warton then goes on to describe the book in detail, and this circumstance, together with the fact that he quotes one of the stage directions ('enter Balsebub with a Berde') seems to point to the fact that he actually had the volume in his hands. It concerned the trial of Simony and Avarice, with the Devil as Judge. 'The characters are a Necromancer or Conjurer, the Devil, a Notary Public, Simonie, and Philargyria or Avarice. . . . There is no sort of propriety in calling this play the Necromancer: for the only business and use of this character is to open the subject in a long prologue.'[3] Unfortunately there is no other mention of this interesting work, and of recent years its very existence has been doubted.
'It was at Chichester,' wrote Hazlitt, 'that the poet Collins brought together a certain number of early books, some of the first rarity; his name is found, too, in the sale catalogues of the last century as a buyer of such; and the strange and regrettable fact is that two or three items which Thomas Warton actually saw in his hands, and of which there are no known duplicates, have not so far been recovered.' Mr. Gordon Duff, in his 'English Provincial Printers,' mentions seventeen books described by Herbert at the end of the eighteenth century, of which no copies are now known to exist. Another rare volume is known to have existed about the same time. A copy, the only one known, of 'The Fabulous Tales of Esope the Phrygian' by Robert Henryson, published at London in 1577, was formerly in the library of Syon College; for it is included in Reading's catalogue of that college library, compiled in 1724. But its whereabouts is now unknown. Fortunately in this case a later edition has survived.
Another mysterious volume is the treatise concerning Elizabeth Barton, the Maid of Kent, who was burnt at Tyburn in 1534. Cranmer, describing her story to a friend, writes: 'and a boke (was) written of all the hole storie thereof, and putt into prynte, which euer syns that tyme hath byn comonly sold and goone abrod amongs all people.' From the confession of John Skot, the printer of this work, at the trial, it seems that seven hundred copies were printed; but no copy is now known to exist.
Other works there are as yet unseen by bibliographer, such as Markham's 'Thyrsis and Daphne,' a poem printed in 1593, and the 1609 and 1612 quartos of Ben Jonson's 'Epicoene or the Silent Woman.' This last was seen by William Gifford a century ago, but neither is now known to exist. Or is a copy extant of Horace's 'Art of Poetry' english'd by Jonson and published so late as 1640. Alas! the list of works by 'rare Ben Jonson' now lost to us, it is feared, for ever, is quite a lengthy one.