Christian Cato: A Middle English Translation of the Disticha Catonis

Item number 169 of Brown's Index of Middle English Verse lists two manuscripts of Cato's Distichs in six-line stanzas: MS Bodl. 3894 (Fairfax 14), fols. 122r-123v, and MS Bodl. 29003 (Add A. 106), fols. 15V-27V. The Fairfax version is a fragment of only two leaves, coming at the end of one of the manuscripts of Cursor Mundi. The version in MS Bodl. Add. A 106 is, in fact, an entirely different translation, unrelated to that in the Fairfax manuscript. Wells recognized this, and Forster demonstrated the difference by printing a few sample verses of the present poem. Brown's error persists, however. In one of the most recent discussions of the English versions of Cato, I.A. Brunner neglects to mention the Bodleian translation at all, although she discusses the Fairfax version. Furthermore, a mistake in the New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature obscures the information given there as well.