i think i was supposed to go and be scolded by nicholas watson [to be fair he doesn't ever scold, but i was born with an internal bogeyman] but someone was in his office so i rapped on the next door to show off my copy of the malleus maleficarum to dan donoghue. he showed me, in turn, facsimiles of a manuscript of aelfric's version of the alcuini interrogationes sigeuulfi in genesin which he had given to his old english class to transcribe over break. (and although he had also provided copies of an early print edition, each student's copy is missing a different section (devious!) so that you really do have to transcribe the thing unaided and reconstruct with aid of the rest of the class. he'd also taken out several early german print editions of the text - and when he opend it to the title page - there it was! in a tight, front-tilting, very thin and slightly wiry hand - in a brownish black ink - george lyman kittredge, leipzig, octr 11th, 1886. he would have been a very young man - 26 in 1886 - i wonder what he was doing in leipzig. could i please have a copy of it, i asked, so we went off to the departmental photocopier and printed off a copy. the photocopy doesn't give you the same vibrations - in fact - it seemed very artificial, and as i look at it i feel i've rather spoiled the pleasure for myself - perhaps a colour copy would have done it better - it was such a very fine hand - but the whole thing came out rather dark and dull and flat - the writing doesn't quite leap from the page - you can't really tell how delicate the writing was on the copy - but what else could i have done? (thou shalt not steal! i was, afterall, a uva student.) and the photocopy is good for something - i'd visit it in the library now and then - but i'm not that mad about kittredge - now if it were child or donaldson! and there was half a sheet of yellowed paper with some of kittredge's own jottings lying between two pages of the book - it must be his handwriting - donoghue held it up to kittredge's name on the cover page for comparison - take it? - it's too like possession, isn't it? it is unethical - almost a kind of vandalism - violence to the body of the book - oh dear - maybe i'm not the carnal lover of books afterall!