‘History of English Poetry,’ and by Joseph Brooks Yates in ‘Archæologia,’ 1820, xix. 314–34. The whole was first printed, in the Northumbrian dialect in which it was first written from the Cottonian MS. Galba E. ix. by the Rev. Richard Morris for the Philological Society in 1863. Manuscripts abound, not only of the original Northumbrian, which was modified and altered in endless particulars by southern English copyists, but of translations into Latin. The latter bear the title of ‘Stimulus Conscientiæ.’ There are eighteen English manuscripts in the British Museum; collations of all these were published at Berlin in 1888 in a German dissertation by Dr. Percy Andreæ. Dr. Bülbring of Groningen has printed collations of thirteen other manuscripts, at Trinity College, Dublin, in Lichfield Cathedral Library, Sion College, London, Lambeth Palace, Cambridge University Library (Ee, 4, 35), Bodleian Library (Ashmole, 60), and elsewhere (cf. Transactions of the Philological Society, 1889–90; Englische Studien, vol. xxiii. 1896; Herrig's Archiv, vol. lxxxvi. 390–2). Five manuscripts of the ‘Pricke of Conscience’ are in the Cambridge University Library, and at least twelve are in the Bodleian Library at Oxford.
Of hardly less interest than the ‘Pricke of Conscience’ is Rolle's English paraphrase of the Psalms and Canticles. The work was first fully printed at the Clarendon Press in 1884 from a manuscript at University College, Oxford. This manuscript preserves Rolle's Northumbrian dialect, but is imperfect. The editor (the Rev. H. R. Bramley) has supplied the defects partly from a copy at Sidney-Sussex College, Cambridge, and partly from one in the Bodleian Library. An imperfect Northumbrian manuscript is in the church of St. Nicholas, Newcastle-on-Tyne (cf. Notes and Queries, 5th ser. i. 41–42). Dr. Adam Clarke, the biblical commentator, owned a manuscript copy, and in his own work often quoted Rolle's commentary with approval (Lewis, History of the Translations of the Bible, 1739, pp. 12–16). A copy at Trinity College, Dublin, is in course of printing by the Early English Text Society.
Ten English prose treatises by Rolle found in Robert Thornton's manuscript (dated about 1440) in the Lincoln Cathedral Library were edited for the Early English Text Society by Canon Perry in 1866. Thornton lived near Hampole; he ascribes seven of the treatises to ‘Richard Hermite,’ and the rest are assigned to Rolle on good internal evidence. The subjects of the treatises are respectively ‘Of the Vertuz of the Haly Name of Ihesu;’ ‘A Tale that Rycherde Hermet made;’ ‘De in-perfecta contricione;’ ‘Moralia Ricardi Heremite de Natura Apis;’ ‘A Notabil Tretys off the Ten Comandementys;’ ‘Of the Gyftes of the Haly Gaste;’ ‘Of the Delyte and Yernyng of Gode;’ ‘Of the Anehede of Godd with Mannys Saule;’ ‘Active and Contemplative Life;’ and the ‘Virtue of our Lord's Passion.’
Mr. Carl Horstmann published in 1895–6 in his ‘Richard Rolle and his Followers,’ ‘The Form of Perfect Living’ (prose), many short poems and epistles (from Cambr. Univ. MS. v. 64), as well as ‘Meditations on the Passion’ (prose) from Cambridge Addit. MS. 3042, and other pieces from British Museum MS. Arundel 507. Of Rolle's Latin works there was published at Paris in 1510, as an appendix to ‘Speculum Spiritualium,’ his ‘De Emendatione Vitæ’ or ‘Peccatoris,’ a short religious tract. In the same place and year appeared in a separate volume Rolle's ‘Explanationes Notabiles,’ a commentary on the book of Job, in Latin prose. The latter is in part a translation from Rolle's ‘Pety Job’ (in Harl. MS. 1706, art. 5). The ‘De Emendatione’ was reissued at Antwerp in 1533, together with ‘De Incendio Amoris’ and ‘Eulogium Nominis Iesu.’ Later reissues, with various additions of other Latin treatises (including Rolle's English paraphrases of the Psalms, Job, and Jeremiah turned into Latin), appeared at Cologne in 1535, and again in 1536, when the volume was entitled ‘D. Richardi Pampolitani Anglosaxonis Eremitæ, viri in diuinis scripturis ac veteri illa solidaque Theologia eruditissimi, in Psalterium Davidicum, atque alia quædam sacræ Scripturæ monumenta compendiosa, justaque pia enarratio.’ The Latin tracts, with the exception of the commentaries on scripture, were reprinted at Paris in 1618, and again in tom. xxvi. pp. 609 et sqq. of the ‘Bibliotheca Patrum Maxima’ at Lyons in 1677.
[The Legenda appended to Rolle's Office, noticed above, is the main authority for Rolle's biography. See also the editions of his printed works already mentioned; B. ten Brink's Geschichte der engl. Litt. vol. i.; Studien zu Richard Rolle de Hampole, von J. Ullmann, in Englische Studien, vol. vii.; Hampole Studien, von G. Kribel, in Englische Studien, vol. viii.; Ueber die Richard Rolle de Hampole zugeschriebene Paraphrase der sieben Busspsalmen, von Max Adler, 1885; Heinrich Middendorf's Studien über Richard Rolle, Magdeburg, 1888; Ritson's Bibliographia Anglo-Poetica; Tanner's Bibl. Brit.; Oudin's De Scriptoribus Ecclesiæ, iii. col. 927–9; Morley's English Writers, iv. 263–9; Hunter's South Yorkshire, i. 358. Some assistance has been rendered by Canon G. G. Perry and by Dr. Frank Heath.]
