صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

married a Duke of Northumberland.

The

It must be still at Alnwick. Write to the Duke there, and you'll get your MS." I wrote. Duke said he had the MS.; and he kindly let Mr. Martin (the Inner Temple Librarian, who also lookt after the Alnwick Library) bring the Chaucer MS. to the Inner Temple Library for me; and there, with the MS., Mr. Brock and I collated the Beryn pages cut out of my copy of Urry's Chaucer. The proofs were read twice by me with the MS., and I believe the text is a faithful print of it, though unluckily, when editing it, I was affected for a time with the itch of padding out lines by needless little words in square brackets. The reader can easily leave them out in reading when he finds them unnecessary, or gratify his resentment at such impertinences by drawing a pen through them. But he will agree that the MS. is often faulty in metre, and is not a correct copy of the original poem.

For the text and side-notes of the Poem, its Forewords, and choosing its Plans,1 I am responsible. To Mr. Stone is due the Index or Glossary, and such of the Notes as Mr. F. Vipan and Prof. compensated by the addition of two new Pieces, not extant in any of the other MSS. which are there inserted between the Tale of the Chanon's Yeman and Chaucer's Tale of Melibeus, viz. The Adventure of the Pardoner and the Tapster at the Inn in Canterbury, and the Merchant's Tale in the Pilgrim's Return from thence" (sign. k. 2). Of the former of these, Thomas rightly says that "it is not properly a Tale, but an Account of the Behaviour of the Pilgrims, and particularly of the Pardoner, at their Journey's end, and a kind of Prologue to a set of Tales to be told in their Return" (sign. k. 2). He adds, on k. 2, back, "It may (perhaps with some shew of reason) be suspected that Chaucer was not the author of the Adventure and Beryn, but a later Writer, who may have taken the hint from what is suggested in v. 796 of the Prologues, that the Pilgrims were to tell Tales in their Return homewards; but as to that the Reader must be left to his own Judgment. But supposing they were not writ by our Author, we are however obliged to Mr. Urry's diligence for finding out and publishing Two ancient Poems, not unworthy our Perusal: And they have as good a right to appear at the end of this Edition, as Lidgate's Story of Thebes had to be printed in former ones."

Of the Plowman's Tale, Thomas says on sign. k. back, it "is not in any of the MSS. which Mr. Urry describes, nor in any other that I have seen or been informed of." No MS. of it has since turnd up.

1 Ogilby's road-plan of 1675 was the earliest full one I could find. The London to Maidstone plan is borrowd from the E. E. Text Soc.'s edition of Vicary's Anatomie. Smith's MS. I showd long ago to Mr. H. B. Wheatley, and he and Mr. E. W. Ashbee publisht it by subscription in 1879, with all its colourd plans, coats of arms, &c.: 'A Particular Description of England in 1588,' &c.

Skeat have not written. Mr. Vipan has also read the French Berinus, &c., for us, and Prof. Skeat has partly revised the Notes and Glossary; while the abstract of that portion of the Romance from which the Tale was derived, and the Persian, Indian, and Arabian variants or versions, with the notes thereon, are due to Mr. Clouston.

To these kind helpers, and to the Duke of Northumberland for lending me his unique MS., I tender hearty thanks. To the Members of the Chaucer Society I apologize for the long delay in the production of the concluding Part of this volume. But it's an ill wind that blows nobody good. The delay has led to our getting the valuable help of Mr. W. A. Clouston in his own peculiar line; and all our Members will thank him for his interesting Paper on 'The Merchant and the Rogues,' p. 121-174 below.

Canon Scott Robertson's long-promist Paper on the Pilgrim's road to Canterbury is not yet written. Let us pray that it soon will be. The second Supplementary Canterbury Tale,' Lydgate's 'Sege of Thebes,' has been undertaken by a Scandinavian friend, Dr. Axel Erdmann, who hopes to get it to press next year.

Our Concordance to Chaucer has been taken in hand by Mr. Graham, after 7 years' neglect by Prof. Corson. I hope to live to see it finisht. Now that the first volume of the Philological Society's New English Dictionary, edited by Dr. J. A. H. Murray,1 has been publisht by the generosity of the Clarendon Press, one need not despair of seeing the Chaucer Concordance in type, tho' it is not so far ahead as Mr. F. S. Ellis's Shelley Concordance.

Westfield Terrace, Bakewell, Derbyshire,

13 August, 1888.

F. J. FURNIVALL.

1 He is now at work on vol. ii, while volume iii is in the hands of Mr. Henry Bradley, Member of Council of the Philological Society. We started work at the Dictionary in 1858.

CORRECTION.

p. 80, 1. 2619, for ageyn[se] read ageyn[es].

(I leave each reader to supply, according to his taste, more insertions between brackets, to make all the lines of the Poem of normal length.)

[graphic][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed]
« السابقةمتابعة »