Book III
. At the end is the colophon:--
{ Heer endith the book of } 'Tregentyll { } Chaucer.' { Troylus and of Cresseyde}
I take 'Tregentyll' to be the scribe's name[67]. Besides the 'Troilus,' the MS. contains, on a fly-leaf, the unique copy of the Balade to Rosemounde, beneath which is written (as in the former case) 'tregentil' to the left of the page, and 'chaucer' to the right; connected by a thin stroke. See my 'Twelve Facsimiles of Old English MSS.'; Plate XII.
12. MS. Arch. Seld. supra 56. Small quarto, 8 inches by 5½, on paper; vellum binding; writing clear. A poor copy. The grammar shews a Northern dialect.
13. MS. Digby 181. Incomplete; nearly half being lost. It ends at III. 532--'A certayn houre in which she come sholde.' A poor copy, closely allied to the preceding. Thus, in III. 17, both have _moreux_ for _amoreux_; in III. 2, both have _Adornes_; in III. 6, both absurdly have _Off_ (_Of_) for _O_; and so on.
14. MS. L. 1, in St. John's College, Cambridge. A fair MS., perhaps earlier than 1450. Subjoined to the Troilus is a sixteenth century copy of the Testament of Creseide. Quarto; on vellum; 10 inches by 6½; in 10 sheets of 12 leaves each. Leaf g 12 is cut out, and g 11 is blank, but nothing seems to be lost. It frequently agrees with Cp., as in I. 5, fro ye; 21, be this; 36, desespeyred; 45, fair ladys so; 70, Delphicus; 308, kan thus. In I. 272, it correctly has: p_er_cede; in 337, nou_n_c_er_teyne. In II. 734, it agrees with H.; 735 runs--'And whan hem list no lenger, lat hem leue'; a good line. In II. 894, it has 'mosten axe,' the very reading which I give; and in II. 968, stalkes.
15. MS. Phillipps 8252; the same MS. as that described in my preface to the C. text of Piers the Plowman, p. xix, where it is numbered XXVIII.
16. A MS. in the Library of Durham Cathedral, marked V. ii. 13. A single stanza of Troilus, viz. I. 631-7, occurs in MS. R. 3. 20, in Trinity College Library, Cambridge; and three stanzas, viz. III. 302-322, in MS. Ff. 1. 6, leaf 150, in the Cambridge University Library; all printed in Odd Texts of Chaucer's Minor Poems, ed. F. J. Furnivall, Chaucer Society, 1880, pp. x-xii. In 1887, Dr. Stephens found two vellum strips in the cover of a book, containing fragments of a MS. of Troilus (