File NLW MS 23975D. - Commentary on Juvenal's Satires

Autograph manuscript, [c. 1701], of William Baxter's unpublished commentary on Juvenal's Satires. The manuscript is incomplete and in its current form consists of commentaries on all of three, and parts of a further six, of the sixteen Satires: Satire I (ff. 5 verso-24 verso), II (ff. 25-44 verso), III.1-113 (ff. 44 verso-57 verso), VIII.186-240 (ff. 58-63 verso), X.286-366 (ff. 64-69), XI (ff. 69 verso-84), XII.1-11 (ff. 84-85 verso), XIV.250-331 (ff. 86-91 verso) and XV.1-128 (ff. 92-101).
Typically the volume consists of transcripts of the Satires in sections of some 10-50 lines at a time, in the original Latin, followed by Baxter's numbered notes relating to that section, in Latin and Greek; there are numerous deletions, corrections and insertions throughout. The volume also includes a brief life of Juvenal with accompanying notes (ff. 4-5) a number of Latin quotations (f. 5 recto-verso) and the transcript of the remainder of Satire XV (f. 101 recto-verso). A fragment of a title page taken from an earlier printed edition of Juvenal, [1550x1619], has been pasted in on f. 2. The numbering of the surviving bifolia suggests the commentary originally encompassed the whole of the Satires. There are now four major lacunae, with some one hundred and sixty-four leaves missing after f. 57, thirty-eight after f. 63, fifty-four after f. 85 and an unknown number at the end, all lost before Moses Williams wrote his transcript of 1732 and prior to the present binding. The beginning of the commentary (ff. 5 verso-6) was published as a specimen in Williams' Proposals for printing by subscription D. Gulielmi Baxteri quæsupersunt enarrationes & notæ in D. Junii Juvenalis satyras (London: [William] Bowyer, 1732, ESTC T135764).