Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 1.djvu/319



have already given some instances of the valuable assistance to be derived from the literature and from the illuminated manuscripts of the middle ages, especially in treating of the domestic and military architecture of the middle ages. The present article will be confined to one book (an illuminated MS. in three volumes), preserved now in the British Museum (MSS. Addit. Nos. 10,292, 10,293, and 10,294), containing the series of romances relating to the San Graal and the Round Table, written in French prose by Robert de Borron and Walter Mapes. Our first figure, one of the earlier illuminations in the first volume of the book alluded to, is a curious representative of a master and his two workmen employed in cutting incised monumental slabs. The chapter to which it belongs is entitled in the MS., Ensi que une duchoise fet taillier les tombes et les lettres escrire; and it goes on to inform us how the duchess sent for workmen far and near (elle manda ouvriers près et loins), and "caused them to write on each of the tombs letters which told how each had come by his death." It is important that to one of these tombs the scribe has given a date, 1316, which there can be no doubt is that of the year in which these illuminations were executed, and this gives a still greater value to the architectural information they may convey.