14

DESCRIPTION OF THE MANUSCRIPT

writer of a commonplace book. That the sketches were made at separate times,and probably from real objects, or copied from paintings or sculptures that heencountered in his travels, is shewn by the fact that several of them are inverted,by the accident of opening the book with the wrong end upwards, which sofrequently occurs in sketching. It is also evident that he, as space ran short,sometimes inserted a sketch in a spare corner of a back page that had been nearlyfilled up already. His intention of observing as much method as the circum-stances admitted of, is shewn by four contiguous pages devoted exclusively andcompletely to his elements of portraiture, and followed by three others similarlyappropriated to the geometry of masonry, as he himself declares.

On the whole, I conclude that the volume is a veritable sketch-book, and thedrawings inserted in it from time to time, and that it is not a collection made upor rearranged in after-life by its possessor. The inscriptions, on the contrary, fromthe manner in which they are written between and amongst the drawings, andthe dark colour of their ink, shew plainly that they are subsequent additions forthe information of posterity, and not contemplated at the time the drawings weremade, for no space had been reserved for them.

One at least of the drawings was made upon the vellum before the sheetswere bound up, for the lances of the cavaliers in plate 15, which is part of theoutside sheet of the second quire, are continued across the present fold, and shewtheir points above the heads of the figures in plate 26. This only proves thatwhen the book was bound this sheet of vellum was introduced into it upon whichthe drawing had already been made.

The plates of this volume form a complete facsimile of the original manuscript,and therefore preserve its unclassified arrangement. Nevertheless, it is absolutelynecessary that the detailed description or explanation of each plate should ac-company it, for the attempt to describe the subjects of the plates in a methodicalseries would lead to so much troublesome reference from one plate to the other, asto nullify the advantages of such a systematic mode of proceeding. It is truethat in the admirable essay of M. Quicherat, of which the first part has beenalready presented to our readers, this method is employed, and with greatsuccess. But that essay is illustrated only by a few copies of the leading draw-ings selected from the collection, and printed in wood on the pages where theirdescriptions occur.

Two tables are subjoined, which will enable the arrangement of the volumeand the nature of its contents to be understood, and the various specimens ofeach subject compared together at pleasure.

The first table gives a comparative view of the different systems of paging that have