David Laing, eminent historian, antiquary and bibliographer, was the second son of the Edinburgh bookseller William Laing (1764-1832) and his wife Helen Kirk, and was born on 20 April 1793. He was educated at the Canongate Grammar School and later on attended Greek classes at the University of Edinburgh. At the age of fourteen, he became apprenticed to his father who, at the time, was the only bookseller in Edinburgh dealing in foreign literature. Laing was able, occasionally, to travel abroad in search of rare or curious books. In 1821, he became a partner in his father's business and throughout his life he was an avid collector of manuscripts and rescued many from destruction. The first published work of his own was Auctarium Bibliothecae Edinburgenae sive Catalogus Librorum quos Gulielmus Drummondus ab Hawthornden D.D.Q. Anno 1627 (1815). Among other works, Laing also reprinted Thomas Craig's Epithalamium on the marriage of Darnley and Mary Stuart (1821). When Sir Walter Scott founded the Bannatyne Club in 1823 for the printing of material and tracts relating to Scottish history and literature, Laing - a friend of Scott's - became Secretary of the Club and chief organiser until its dissolution in the 1860s. Laing was also associated with the Abbotsford Club, the Spalding Club, and the Wodrow Society, each of which had been set up for the publication of manuscripts and for the revival of old texts. When the keepership of the Advocates' Library fell vacant in 1818, Laing was a candidate but was not elected. He became Keeper of the Library to the Society of Writers to Her Majesty's Signet, a post which he occupied from 1837 until his death. On his appointment to the post, he gave up his business as a bookseller and disposed of the stock in a public sale. Laing died at Portobello, in Edinburgh, on 18 October 1878.
Contents
This manuscript is an anonymous prose translation of an early 14th century devotional text, Meditationes Vitae Christi. This work was traditionally attributed to St Bonaventure, but it has since been shown to have been composed by a Franciscan friar in Tuscany in the 14th century. The original text, from which the 15th century English translation derives, was a very popular Franciscan devotional text. Hundreds of manuscript copies exist of the Latin original,...
Contents
This manuscript dates from the first half of the 15th century, and is a collection of didactic, pastoral, and meditative devotional treatises, as well as some fragments of works by late 14th-century English theologian, John Wycliffe. Generally, devotional texts were an important element of medieval piety, as they provided guidance for individuals to deepen their faith through study, meditation and prayer. This volume is perhaps best described as a medieval instructional manual....
Contents
Contains twenty-four texts, in two different hands. This manuscript was made in England and dates from the 13th-14th century; the texts are various religious tracts in Latin, Old French, and Middle English.Flyleaves: Unidentified Latin text and the start of a Contents list in a 17th-century handff. 1r-28v: De Miseria Condicionis Humane (On the wretchedness of the human condition) by Pope Innocent...
Contents
Contains twenty-nine texts, all in the same hand. The collection is a curious one, and contains at the beginning and end a number of curious proverbs (copied in full by Catherine Borland, see Appendix IV, pp. 335-6 of her catalogue). The end papers have been taken from an English manuscript of the early 15th century, and contain interesting fragments of English religious verse (also copied in full by Catherine Borland, see Appendix IV, pp. 334-5 of her catalogue).The manuscript...
Contents
Contains six medical texts, and recipes inserted at a later date. The whole volume is written by the hand of Robert of Sherburn, with the exception of the recipes, written by Francis Cox.ff. 1v-2v: A Tabula to the volume, in the hand of Robert of Sherburn, and an ilustration of a physician and patient (described under 'Scope and Contents-Illumination').Ff. 3r-37r, ff. 41r-44r: 'Expositio cum questionibus super textu Rasis in...
Contents
The Brut Chronicle (also known as the Prose Chronicle) is a collection of medieval histories of England. It was originally an Anglo-Norman text, but was translated into Latin and also Middle English during the medieval period. The Brut presents a mythical history of England, describing for instance the settlement of England by a son of Aeneas from Troy. The original Anglo-Norman version of the chronicle ends in 1272, but there...
Contents
MS 185 is an extended version of the Brut Chronicle. The original was an Anglo-Norman chronicle that ended its account in 1272. This Anglo-Norman version was translated into Latin and Middle English during the middle ages, and many manuscripts continued the account beyond 1272. MS 185 is one such extended version, to 1419.The text begins on f. 1r with Here begynneth a bok which is called Brute, the cronyculis of...
Contents
These fragments consist of four leaves of the famous Auchinleck Manuscript, held by the National Library of Scotland. This manuscript was written in the 1330s in London and contains a collection on Middle English works believed to provide unique insight into the 14th century, not least because some of the Middle English texts within it do not appear elsewhere. These fragments were separated from the main manuscript, and seem to have been used for covers for books.Two of the...
