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Margaret Bellasys' “Characterismes of Vices”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Lambert Ennis
Lambert Ennis*
Affiliation:
Northwestern University
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Extract

The duodecimo volume which is known in the British Museum as Additional MS 10,309 comprises 155 folio sheets, closely written on both sides. It is completely filled with written matter, all in the same hand but showing the gradual variation in handwriting that would normally occur in one person with the passage of time. That the filling of the book took several years, is made more apparent by the wide range of interests shown in its contents.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 56 , Issue 1 , March 1941 , pp. 141 - 150
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1941

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References

Note 1 in page 141 Joseph Foster, ed., The Visitation of Yorkshire (London, 1875), p. 233.

Note 2 in page 141 Page 76 (Since the notebook is paginated rather than foliated, footnotes will refer to page numbers). These verses are reprinted by Thomas Fairholt in the Percy Society Publications, xxix (1850), pp. 9–10.

Note 3 in page 141 See H. J. C. Grierson, The Poems of John Donne (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1912), ii, cviii. Professor Grierson agrees with my identification of Margaret Bellasys.

Note 4 in page 141 Loc. cit.

Note 5 in page 141 “The Flatterer is blear-eyed to ill, and cannot see vices; and his tongue walks ever in one track of unjust praises, and can no more tell how to discommend than to speak true.” Henry Morley, Character Writings of the Seventeenth Century (London, 1891), p. 139. References to Hall's characters are to this edition.

Note 6 in page 142 For example, Hall, “The Distrustful” (Morley, p. 148); “He dares not come to church, for fear of the crowd, . . . nor come near the Parliament house, because it should have been blown up.” Cf. Adams, “Palsey and timorous suspicion,” p. 38; “On the Thames they dare not come, because they have heard some there drowned: nor neere the Parliament-house, because it was once in danger of blowing vp.”

Note 7 in page 142 In each column the set of numerals at the left designates the number of the character in the collection, the number at right indicates its opening page number. The page numbers from Hall refer to Morley's Character Writings of the Seventeenth Century.

Note 8 in page 143 The name of the disease which accompanies each character is omitted.

Note 9 in page 143 Erroneously numbered seven in Adams's running- title.

Note 10 in page 143 Bellasys, pp. 64–67; Adams, pp. 58–59.

Note 11 in page 144 Bellasys, pp. 59–63; Adams, pp. 60–63.

Note 12 in page 144 Bellasys, pp. 22–26; Adams, pp. 39–44; Hall (Morley), pp. 148—150.

Note 13 in page 144 Contractions in the manuscript are consistently expanded þ is written “th.” The original punctuation has been preserved. The diagonal bar (/) has been used in the Bellasys text to indicate the turning of a page; in the Adams (or later the Hall) text it indicates a break in the continuity. For both texts I have supplied page numbers in the margin. Such numbers refer to the subsequent rather than the preceding passages.

Note 14 in page 145 Cf. Thomas Overbury, ‘A Welchman’ (1615): “He . . . prefers Owen Glendower before any of the nine Worthies.” W. J. Paylor, ed., The Overburian Characters (The Percy Reprints, xiii, 1936), p. 18.

Note 15 in page 145 Cf. Overbury, ‘An Ignorant Glory-Hunter’: “Hee is ignorant of nothing, no not of things, where ignorance is the lesser shame” (ed. Paylor, p. 9).

Note 16 in page 146 Cf. Overbury, ‘A Welchman’: “Above all men he loves a Herrald, and speakes pedigrees naturally” (ed. Paylor, p. 18).

Note 17 in page 147 See above, p. 141.

Note 18 in page 147 Pages 22–26. The letter A in the right hand margin indicates borrowings from Adams, the letter H indicates those from Hall (ed. Morley, p. 148).

Note 19 in page 147 Adams renders this idea (p. 40): “Hee climbes falling towers, and the hope to scale them, swallowes all feare of toppling downe.”

Note 20 in page 148 Cf. Overbury, ‘An Elder Brother’: “His ambition flies Justice-hight” (ed. Paylor, p. 17).

Note 21 in page 150 See above, pp. 142, 144.

Note 22 in page 150 The presence of Nashe's pornographic Choise of Valentines (p. 268) rules out the possibility that these parts of the notebook were intended to be perused by parents or tutors.

Note 23 in page 150 Always excluding the possibility that the scrambling of Adams characters was performed by some other author whose work Margaret Bellasys copied.