Documents A/CSC/1/2 and A/CSC/1/3 are part of the Chubb collection in the Somerset record office at Taunton. They cover much the same ground, with one being a copy of the other. The documents (with others) were retrieved from the Archive by Mike Searle, Hon Curator of the Blake Museum, and digitised by him on equipment at the Museum. Without this effort, publication now would not be possible.
The archive catalogue describes these at Commonplace Books, but this is not strictly accurate, as such books are similar to scrapbooks filled with items of many kinds: adages, maxims, quotes, letters, poems, tables of weights and measures, prayers, legal formulas, and recipes. Documents A/CSC/1/2 and . A/CSC/1/3 comprise the texts of verses only and the latter is in chronological order.
The former document appears to be a loose assembly of disbound pages; some appear missing and others lack page numbers. Others are out of order. The latter document appears to be a fair copy of these, made by the same hand and is a complete manuscript book. The last page number of the former document is 162, the last page number of the latter is 207.
The latter also has some loose sheets inserted at the beginning in French, with translation, of the verse “Jamais, et Pourtant, ou conversation with Madame Gertrude,” par Mr Carnot.1 The author was Lazare Carnot (1753-1823). The date of publication has not been discovered. It was set to music by Henri Blanchard in 1857. A transcription may be read in Series 2 of the Chubb letters on this website.
At the beginning of documents are indices. That for A/CSC/1/3 follows this introduction, as it is fuller. To this has been added the page number where document page appears in this transcription, and the date noted