title Speculum Hominis, and not that of Speculum Meditantis, under which it was ordinarily referred to. He at once called my attention to the MS. with the title Mirour de l’omme, which he had lately bought and presented to the University Library. On examining this I was able to identify it beyond all doubt with the missing book.

It may be thus described:

Camb. Univ. Library, MS. Additional 3035, bought at the Hailstone sale, May 1891, and presented to the Library by the Librarian.

Written on parchment, size of leaves about 12” x 7¾”, in eights with catchwords; writing of the latter half of the 14th century, in double column of forty-eight lines to the column; initial letter of each stanza coloured blue or red, and larger illuminated letters at the beginning of the chief divisions, combined with some ornamentation on the left side of the column, and in one case, f. 58 vo, also at the top of the page. One leaf is pasted down to the binding at the beginning and contains the title and table of[Pg lxix] contents. After this four leaves have been cut out, containing the beginning of the poem, and seven more in other parts of the book. There are also some leaves lost at the end. The first leaf after those which have been cut out at the beginning has the signature a iiii. The leaves (including those cut out) have now been numbered 1, 1*, 2, 3, 4, &c., up to 162; we have therefore a first sheet, of which half is pasted down (f. 1) and the other half cut away (f. 1*), and then twenty quires of eight leaves with the first leaf of the twenty-first quire, the leaves lost being those numbered 1*, 2, 3, 4, 36, 106, 108, 109, 120, 123, 124, as well as those after 162.

[Pg lxix]

The present binding is of the last century and doubtless later than 1745, for some accounts of work done by ‘Richard Eldridge’ and other memoranda, written in the margins in an illiterate hand, have the dates 1740 and 1745 and have been partly cut away by the binder. The book was formerly in the library of Edward Hailstone, Esq., whose name and arms are displayed upon a leather label outside the binding, but it seems that no record exists as to the place from which he obtained it. From the writing in the margin of several pages it would seem that about the year 1745 it was lying neglected in some farm-house. We have, for example, this memorandum (partly cut away) in the margin of one of the leaves: ‘Margat ... leved at James ... in the year of our Lord 1745 and was the dayre maid that year ... and her swithart name was Joshep Cockhad Joshep Cockhad 

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