Committee of Management: Director: DR. FREDERICK J. FURNIVALL, M.A. Treasurer: HENRY B. WHEATLEY, Esq. Hon. Sec.: W. A. DALZIEL, Esq., 67 VICTORIA ROAD, FINSBURY PARK, Hon. Secs. North & East: Prof. G. L. KITTREDGE, Harvard Coll., Cambr., Mas for America: South & West: Prof. J. W. BRIGHT, Johns Hopkins Univ., Baltimo LORD ALDENHAM, M. A. ISRAEL GOLLANCE, M.A. S. L. LEE, B.A. REV. PROF. J. E. B. MAYOR, M.A. PROF. NAPIER, M.A., Ph.D. DR. W. ALDIS WRIGHT, M.A. Bankers: THE UNION BANK OF LONDON, 2, PRINCES STREET, E.C. THE Early English Text Society was started by Dr. Furnivall in 1864 for purpose of bringing the mass of Old English Literature within the reach of ordinary student, and of wiping away the reproach under which England had lo rested, of having felt little interest in the monuments of her early language and life On the starting of the Society, so many Texts of importance were at once taken hand by its Editors, that it became necessary in 1867 to open, besides the Origi Series with which the Society began, an Extra Series which should be mainly devo to fresh editions of all that is most valuable in printed MSS. and Caxton's and ot black-letter books, though first editions of MSS. will not be excluded when the c venience of issuing completed Texts demands their inclusion in the Extra Series. During the thirty-six years of the Society's existence, it has produced, w whatever shortcomings, an amount of good solid work for which all students of Language, and some of our Literature, must be grateful, and which has rendered p sible the beginnings (at least) of proper Histories and Dictionaries of that Langua and Literature, and has illustrated the thoughts, the life, the manners and customs our forefathers and foremothers. But the Society's experience has shown the very small number of those inherit of the speech of Cynewulf, Chaucer, and Shakspere, who care two guineas a year the records of that speech. 'Let the dead past bury its dead' is still the cry of Gr Britain and her Colonies, and of America, in the matter of language. The Society I never had money enough to produce the Texts that could easily have been got rea for it; and many Editors are now anxious to send to press the work they have p pared. The necessity has therefore arisen for trying to increase the number of 1 Society's members, and to induce its well-wishers to help it by gifts of money, eitl in one sum or by instalments. The Committee trust that every Member will bri before his or her friends and acquaintances the Society's claims for liberal suppo Until all Early English MSS. are printed, no proper History of our Language or Soc Life is possible. The Subscription to the Society, which constitutes membership, is £1 18. a ye for the ORIGINAL SERIES, and £1 1s. for the EXTRA SERIES, due in advance on the 1st JANUARY, and should be paid by Cheque, Postal Order, or Money-Order, crost Uni Bank of London,' to the Hon. Secretary, W. A. DALZIEL, Esq., 67, Victoria Rd., Fil bury Park, London, N. Members who want their Texts posted to them, must add their prepaid Subscriptions 1s. for the Original Series, and 18. for the Extra Seri yearly. The Society's Texts are also sold separately at the prices put after them the Lists; but Members can get back-Texts at one-third less than the List-prices sending the cash for them in advance to the Hon. Secretary. The Society intends to complete forthwith the Reprints of its out-of-print Texts of the year 1866. Prof. Skeat has finisht Partenay; Dr. McKnight of Cornell is re-editing King Horn and Floris and Blancheflour; Dr. Otto Glauning has undertaken Seinte Marherete; and Dr. Furnivall has Hali Meidenhad and his Political, Religious and Love Poems in type, so that the Society may have all its Texts in print in 1901. As the cost of these Reprints, if they were not needed, would have been devoted to fresh Texts, the Reprints will be sent to all Members in lieu of such Texts. Though called 'Reprints,' these books are new editions, generally with valuable additions, a fact not noticed by a few careless receivers of them, who have complained that they already had the volumes. The friends of the Society's Founder and Director, Dr. F. J. Furnivall, to commemorate his 75th Birthday on Feb. 4, 1900, raised a Fund to present him with his Portrait, and a big three-sculling Boat for his Sunday outings, and to benefit his Early English Text Society. Out of this Fund, its Committee decided to devote £200 towards a new edition of Dr. F.'s Robert of Brunne's Handlyng Synne, A.D. 1303, and its French original, William of Waddington's Manuel des Pechiez, ab. 1260 (Roxburghe Club, 1861), for the Original Series of the E. E. T. Soc. in 1901; and another £200 to lessen the Society's debts to its printers, Clay and Sons, and the Clarendon Press. These sums have now been paid, and will set free the like part of the Society's money for its Reprints, which are necessary to enable it to supply complete sets of its Texts. The thanks of the Society are hereby given to the Subscribers to the Furnivall Birthday Fund. December 1900. For this year the Original-Series Texts have all been issued. Two for 1901 are now ready. The texts of several other works are also in type, but wait for Introductions. In the Extra Series only one Text has been issued, the other two should be ready in the spring of 1901. For next year, two Texts are nearly ready, and the third will go to press in March. Mr. I. Gollancz apologises for his great delay in finishing his little Hoccleve volume for 1897: he has been so very busy with other books, lectures, &c. The Original-Series Texts for 1899 are No. 112, Merlin, Part IV, Prof. W. E. Mead's Outlines of the Legend of Merlin, with Glossary, &c., and No. 113, Queen Elizabeth's Englishings of Boethius de Consolatione, Plutarch's De Curiositate, and part of Horace, De Arte Poetica, edited from the unique MS. (a portion in the Queen's own hand) in the Public Record Office, London, by the late Miss C. Pemberton, with a Facsimile, and a note on the Queen's use of i for long e. The Extra-Series Texts for 1899 are No. LXXVI, George Ashby's Poems, A.D. 1463, &c., edited by Miss Mary Bateson; No. LXXVII, Part I of Lydgate's englisht Pilgrimage of the Life of Man, edited by Dr. F. J. Furnivall; and No. LXXVIII, The Life and Death of Mary Magdalene, ab. 1620, edited by Dr. H. O. Sommer. (The original blundering Introduction to this was accidentally sent out in the first issue of the book. A Cancel has since been sent out, and also put into the copies in hand.) The Original-Series Texts for 1900 are No. 114, Part IV (the last) of Prof. Skeat's edition of Aelfric's Metrical Lives of Saints; No. 115, Jacob's Well, a quaint allegorical treatise on the cleansing and building-up of Man's Conscience, edited from the unique MS. in Salisbury Cathedral, by Dr. Arthur Brandeis, Part I; and No. 116, An Old-English Martyrology, re-edited from four MSS. by Dr. G. Herzfeld. The Extra-Series Texts for 1900 are No. LXXIX, Caxton's Dialogues, English and French, 1481-3, edited by Henry Bradley, M. A., No. LXXX, Gower's Confessio Amantis, vol. 1, edited by G. C. Macaulay, M.A., and No. LXXXI, Nightingale and other Poems, edited by Dr. Otto Glauning. The E. E. T. Soc. has taken advantage of the Clarendon Press publication of all Gower's Works (edited by Mr. Macaulay) to secure copies of the englisht Confessio Amantis at a reduced price as part of the Society's Extra-Series. The two volumes will probably be ready in February, 1901. The Original-Series Texts for 1901 will be No. 117, Part II of the Minor Poems of the Vernon MS. (of which the text is all printed), edited by Dr. F. J. Furnivall, The Lay Folk's Catechism by Archbp. Thoresby, edited by the late Canon Simmons, and the Rev. H. E. Nolloth, M.A.; and Robert of Brunne's Handlyng Synne, A.D. 1303, and the French poem on which it was founded, Wm. of Waddington's Manuel des Pechiez, ab. 1260 A.D. The Extra-Series Texts for 1901 will be, No. LXXXII, Gower's Confessio Amantis, vol. 2, edited by G. C. Macaulay, M.A., No. LXXXIII, Lydgate's DeGuilleville's Pilgrimage of the Life of Man, Part II, edited by Dr. F. J. Furnivall, and No. LXXXIV, Lydgate's Reason and Sensuality, edited by Dr. Ernst Sieper. The Extra-Series Texts for 1902 ought to be the Second Part of the prose Romance of Melusine-Introduction, with ten facsimiles of the best woodblocks of the old foreign blackletter editions, Glossary, &c., by A. K. Donald, B.A. (now in India); and a new edition of the famous Early-English Dictionary (English and Latin), Promptorium Parvulorum, from the Winchester MS., ab. 1440 A.D.: in this, the Editor, the Rev. A. L. Mayhew, M. A., will follow and print his MS. not only in its arrangement of nouns first, and verbs second, under every letter of the Alphabet, but also in its giving of the flexions of the words. The Society's edition will thus be the first modern one that really represents its original, a point on which 4 Texts preparing: The Texts for 1902, 1903, 1904, &c. Deguilleville. Mr. Mayhew's insistence will meet with the sympathy of all our Members. But if these Texts are not ready, substitutes will be taken from the others next mentioned. The Extra-Series Texts for 1903 will be chosen from Miss Rickert's re-edition of the Romance of Emare; Mr. I. Gollancz's re-edition of two Alliterative Poems, Winner and Waster, &c., ab. 1360, lately issued for the Roxburghe Club; Dr. Norman Moore's re-edition of The Book of the Foundation of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, London, from the unique MS. ab. 1425, which gives an account of the Founder, Rahere, and the miraculous cures wrought at the Hospital; The Craft of Nombrynge, with other of the earliest englisht Treatises on Arithmetic, edited by R. Steele, B.A.; Alexander Scott's Poems, 1568, from the unique Edinburgh MS., ed. A. K. Donald, B. A. An urgent appeal is hereby made to Members to increase the list of Subscribers to the E. E. Text Society. It is nothing less than a scandal that the Hellenic Society should have nearly 1000 members, while the Early English Text Society has not 300! The Original-Series Texts for 1902 and 1903 will probably be chosen from Part II of the Exeter Book-Anglo-Saxon Poems from the unique MS. in Exeter Cathedral-re-edited by Israel Gollancz, M. A.; Part II of Dr. Holthausen's Vices and Virtues; Part II of Jacob's Well, edited by Dr. Brandeis; the Alliterative Siege of Jerusalem, edited by the late Prof. Dr. E. Kölbing and Prof. Dr. Kaluza; Miss Lejeune's Introduction and Glossary to the Minor Poems of the Vernon MS.; Prof. Bruce's Introduction to The English Conquest of Ireland, Part II; Dr. Furnivall's edition of the Lichfield Gilds, which is all printed, and waits only for the Introduction, that Prof. E. C. K. Gonner has kindly undertaken to write for the book. The Texts for the Extra Series in 1904 and 1905 will be chosen from The Three Kings' Sons, Part II, the Introduction &c. by Prof. Dr. Leon Kellner; Part II of The Chester Plays, re-edited from the MSS., with a full collation of the formerly missing Devonshire MS., by Mr. G. England and Dr. Matthews; the Parallel-Text of the only two MSS. of the Owl and Nightingale, edited by Mr. G. F. H. Sykes (at press); Prof. Jespersen's editions of John Hart's Orthographie (MS. 1551 A.D.; blackletter 1569), and Method to teach Reading, 1570; Deguilleville's Pilgrimage of the Soule, in English prose, edited by Prof. Dr. L. Kellner. (For the three prose versions of The Pilgrimage of the Life of Man-two English, one French-an Editor is wanted.) Members are askt to realise the fact that the Society has now 50 years' work on its Lists,-at its present rate of production, and that there is from 100 to 200 more years' work to come after that. The year 2000 will not see finisht all the Texts that the Society ought to print. The need of more Members and money is urgent. Before his death in 1895, Mr. G. N. Currie was preparing an edition of the 15th and 16th century Prose Versions of Guillaume de Deguilleville's Pilgrimage of the Life of Man, with the French prose version by Jean Gallopes, from Lord Aldenham's MS., he having generously promist to pay the extra cost of printing the French text, and engraving one or two of the illuminations in his MS. But Mr. Currie, when on his deathbed, charged a friend to burn all his MSS. which lay in a corner of his room, and unluckily all the E. E. T. S.'s copies of the Deguilleville prose versions were with them, and were burnt with them, so that the Society will be put to the cost of fresh copies, Mr. Currie having died in debt. Guillaume de Deguilleville, monk of the Cistercian abbey of Chaalis, in the diocese of Senlis, wrote his first verse Pèlerinaige de l'Homme in 1330-1 when he was 36.1 Twenty-five (or six) years after, in 1355, he revised his poem, and issued a second version of it,2 a revision of which was printed ab. 1500. Of the prose representative of the first version, 1330-1, a prose Englishing, about 1430 A.D., was edited by Mr. Aldis Wright for the Roxburghe Club in 1869, from MS. Ff. 5. 30 in the Cambridge University Library. Other copies of this prose English are in the Hunterian Museum, Glasgow, Q. 2. 25; Univ. Coll. and Corpus Christi, Oxford 3; and the Laud Collection in the Bodleian, no. 740. A copy in the Northern dialect is MS. G. 21, in St. John's Coll., Cambridge, and this is the MS. which will be edited for the E. E. Text Society. The Laud MS. 740 was somewhat condenst and modernised, in the 17th century, into MS. Ff. 6. 30, in the Cambridge University Library: "The Pilgrime or the Pilgrimage of Man in this World," copied by Will, Baspoole, whose copy "was verbatim written by Walter Parker, 1645, and from thence transcribed by G. G. 1649; and from thence by W. A. 1655." This last copy may have been read by, or its story reported to, Bunyan, and may have been the groundwork of his Pilgrim's Progress. It will be edited for the E. E. T. Soc., its text running under the earlier English, as in Mr. Herrtage's edition of the Gesta Romanorum for the Society. In February 1464,5 Jean Gallopes-a clerk of Angers, 4 1 He was born about 1295. See Abbé GoUJET's Bibliothèque française, Vol. IX, p. 73-4.-P. M. The Roxburghe Club printed the 1st version in 1893. The Roxburghe Club's copy of this 2nd version was lent to Mr. Currie, and unluckily burnt too with his other MSS. 3 These 3 MSS, have not yet been collated, but are believed to be all of the same version. 4 Another MS. is in the Pepys Library. 5 According to Lord Aldenham's MS. Anglo-Saxon Psalters. More Money wanted. Saints' Lives. 5 afterwards chaplain to John, Duke of Bedford, Regent of France-turned Deguilleville's first verse Pèlerinage into a prose Pèlerinage de la vie humaine.1 By the kindness of Lord Aldenham, as above mentiond, Gallopes's French text will be printed opposite the early prose northern Englishing in the Society's edition. The Second Version of Deguilleville's Pèlerinaige de l'Homme, A.D. 1355 or -6, was englisht in verse by Lydgate in 1426. Of Lydgate's poem, the larger part is in the Cotton MS. Vitellius C. xiii (leaves 2-308). This MS. leaves out Chaucer's englishing of Deguilleville's ABC or Prayer to the Virgin, of which the successive stanzas start with Ă, B, C, and run all thro' the alphabet; and it has 2 main gaps, besides many small ones from the tops of leaves being burnt in the Cotton fire. All these gaps (save the A B C) will be fild up from the Stowe MS. 952 (which old John Stowe completed) and from the end of the other imperfect MS. Cotton, Tiberius A vii. Thanks to the diligence of the old Elizabethan tailor and manuscript-lover, a complete text of Lydgate's poem can be given. The British Museum French MSS. (Harleian 4399,2 and Additional 22,9373 and 25,5944) are all of the First Version. Besides his first Pèlerinage de l'homme in its two versions, Deguilleville wrote a second, "de l'ame separee du corps," and a third, "de nostre seigneur Iesus. Of the second, a prose Englishing of 1413, The Pilgrimage of the Sowle (with poems by Hoccleve, already printed for the Society with that author's Regement of Princes), exists in the Egerton MS. 615,5 at Hatfield, Cambridge (Univ. Kk. 1. 7, and Caius), Oxford (Univ. Coll. and Corpus), and in Caxton's edition of 1483. This version has 'somewhat of addicions' as Caxton says, and some shortenings too, as the maker of both, the first translator, tells us in the MSS. Caxton leaves out the earlier englisher's interesting Epilog in the Egerton MS. This prose englishing of the Sowle will be edited for the Society by Prof. Dr. Leon Kellner after that of the Man is finisht, and will have Gallopes's French opposite it, from Lord Aldenham's MS., as his gift to the Society. Of the Pilgrimage of Jesus, no englishing is known. As to the MS. Anglo-Saxon Psalters, Dr. Hy. Sweet has edited the oldest MS., the Vespasian, in his Oldest English Texts for the Society, and Mr. Harsley has edited the latest, c. 1150, Eadwine's Canterbury Psalter. The other MSS., except the Paris one, being interlinear versions,—some of the Roman-Latin redaction, and some of the Gallican,-Prof. Logeman has prepared for press, a Parallel-Text edition of the first twelve Psalms, to start the complete work. He will do his best to get the Paris Psalter-tho' it is not an interlinear one-into this collective edition; but the additional matter, especially in the Verse-Psalms, is very difficult to manage. If the Paris text cannot be parallelised, it will form a separate volume. The Early English Psalters are all independent versions, and will follow separately in due course. Through the good offices of the Examiners, some of the books for the Early-English Examinations of the University of London will be chosen from the Society's publications, the Committee having undertaken to supply such books to students at a large reduction in price. The net profits from these sales will be applied to the Society's Reprints. Members are reminded that fresh Subscribers are always wanted, and that the Committee can at any time, on short notice, send to press an additional Thousand Pounds' worth of work. The Subscribers to the Original Series must be prepared for the issue of the whole of the Early English Lives of Saints, sooner or later. The Society cannot leave out any of them, even though some are dull. The Sinners would doubtless be much more interesting. But in many Saints' Lives will be found valuable incidental details of our forefathers' social state, and all are worthful for the history of our language. The Lives may be lookt on as the religious romances or story-books of their period. The Standard Collection of Saints' Lives in the Corpus and Ashmole MSS., the Harleian MS. 2277, &c. will repeat the Laud set, our No. 87, with additions, and in right order. (The foundation MS. (Laud 108) had to be printed first, to prevent quite unwieldy collations.) The Supplementary Lives from the Vernon and other MSS. will form one or two separate volumes. Besides the Saints' Lives, Trevisa's englishing of Bartholomæus de Proprietatibus Rerum, the medieval Cyclopædia of Science, &c., will be the Society's next big undertaking. Dr. R. von Fleischhacker will edit it. Prof. Napier of Oxford, wishing to have the whole of our MS. Anglo-Saxon in type, and accessible to students, will edit for the Society all the unprinted and other Anglo-Saxon Homilies which are not included in Thorpe's edition of Elfric's prose, Dr. Morris's of the Blickling Homilies, and Prof. Skeat's of Elfric's Metrical 1 These were printed in France, late in the 15th or early in the 16th century. 2 15th cent., containing only the Vie humaine. 3 15th cent., containing all the 3 Pilgrimages, the 3rd being Jesus Christ's. 4 14th cent., containing the Vie humaine and the 2nd Pilgrimage, de l'Ame: both incomplete. 5 Ab. 1430, 106 leaves (leaf 1 of text wanting), with illuminations of nice little devils-red, green, tawny &c.-and damnd souls, fires, angels &c. 6 Of these, Mr. Harsley is preparing a new edition, with collations of all the MSS. Many copies of Thorpe's book, not issued by the Elfric Society, are still in stock. Of the Vercelli Homilies, the Society has bought the copy made by Prof. G. Lattanzi. 6 The Original Series of the "Early English Text Society." Homilies. The late Prof. Kölbing left complete his edition, for the Society, of the Ancren Riwle, from the best MS., with collations of the other four. Mr. Harvey means to prepare an edition of the three MSS. of the Earliest English Metrical Psalter, one of which was edited by the late Mr. Stevenson for the Surtees Society. Members of the Society will learn with pleasure that its example has been followed, not only by the Old French Text Society which has done such admirable work under its founders Profs. Paul Meyer and Gaston Paris, but also by the Early Russian Text Society, which was set on foot in 1877, and has since issued many excellent editions of old MS. Chronicles &c. Members will also note with pleasure the annexation of large tracts of our Early English territory by the important German contingent under General Zupitza, Colonel Kölbing, volunteers Hausknecht, Einenkel, Haenisch, Kaluza, Hupe, Adam, Holthausen, Schick, Herzfeld, Brandeis, &c. Scandinavia has also sent us Prof. Erdmann; Holland, Prof. H. Logeman, who is now working in Belgium; France, Prof. Paul Meyer-with Gaston Paris as adviser -Italy, Prof. Lattanzi; Hungary, Dr. von Fleischhacker; while America is represented by the late Prof. Child, by Dr. Mary Noyes Colvin, Profs. Mead, Perrin, McClintock, Triggs, &c. The sympathy, the ready help, which the Society's work has cald forth from the Continent and the United States, have been among the pleasantest experiences of the Society's life, a real aid and cheer amid all troubles and discouragements. All our Members are grateful for it, and recognise that the bond their work has woven between them and the lovers of language and antiquity across the seas is one of the most welcome results of the Society's efforts. ORIGINAL SERIES. 1. Early English Alliterative Poems, ab. 1360 A.D., ed. Rev. Dr. R. Morris. 16s. 2. Arthur, ab. 1440, ed. F. J. Furnivall, M.A. 4s. 3. Lauder on the Dewtie of Kyngis, &c., 1556, ed. F. Hall, D.C.L. 48. 4. Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight, ab. 1360, ed. Rev. Dr. R. Morris. 108. 5. Hume's Orthographie and Congruitie of the Britan Tongue, ab 1617, ed. H. B. Wheatley. 4s. 6. Lancelot of the Laik, ab. 1500, ed. Rev. W. W. Skeat. 88 7. Genesis & Exodus, ab. 1250, ed. Rev. Dr. R. Morris. 88. 8. Morte Arthure, ab. 1440, ed. E. Brock. 78. 9. Thynne on Speght's ed. of Chaucer, A.D. 1599, ed. Dr. G. Kingsley and Dr. F. J. Furnivall. 10s. 10. Merlin, ab. 1440, Part I., ed. H. B. Wheatley. 2s. 6d. 11. Lyndesay's Monarche, &c., 1552, Part I., ed. J. Small, M.A. 38. 12. Wright's Chaste Wife, ab. 1462, ed. F. J. Furnivall, M.A. 18. 13. Seinte Marherete, 1200-1330, ed. Rev. O. Cockayne; to be re-edited by Mr. Otto Glauning. 14. Kyng Horn, Floris and Blancheflour, &c., ed. Rev. J. R. Lumby, B.D. [At Press. 15. Political, Religious, and Love Poems, ed. F. J. Furnivall. 16. The Book of Quinte Essence, ab. 1460-70, ed. F. J. Furnivall. 18. 17. Parallel Extracts from 45 MSS. of Piers the Plowman, ed. Rev. W. W. Skeat. ls. 18. Hali Meidenhad, ab. 1200, ed. Rev. O. Cockayne, re-edited by Dr. F. J. Furnivall. [At Press. 19. Lyndesay's Monarche, &c., Part II., ed. J. Small, M. A. 38. 6d. 20. Hampole's English Prose Treatises, ed. Rev. G. G. Perry. 18. 21. Merlin, Part II., ed. H. B. Wheatley. 48. 22. Partenay or Lusignen, ed. Rev. W. W. Skeat. 23. Dan Michel's Ayenbite of Inwyt, 1340, ed. Rev. Dr. R. Morris. 10s. 6d. 24. Hymns to the Virgin and Christ; the Parliament of Devils, &c., ab. 1430, ed. F. J. Furnivall. 31. Myrc's Duties of a Parish Priest, in Verse, ab. 1420 A.D., ed. E. Peacock. 48. 32. Early English Meals and Manners: the Boke of Norture of John Russell, the Bokes of Keruynge, 35. Lyndesay's Works, Part III.: The Historie and Testament of Squyer Meldrum, ed. F. Hall. 28. 41. William Lauder's Minor Poems. Ed. F. J. Furnivall. 38. 42. Bernardas De Cura Rei Famuliaris, Early Scottish Prophecies, &c. Ed. J. R. Lumby, M.A. 28. 43. Ratis Raving, and other Moral and Religious Pieces. Ed. J. R Lumby, M.A. |