Cross of Christ, followed, treated in the same way. What was to be done? Nothing but groan, say "mistakes are natural to man" (I know they are to me), and print the earlier text. Here accordingly it is, and printed with all its metrical points, and guard-stops on each side of figures and single letters, as in the MS., for an experiment how Members like these points and stops reproduced. This early Vernon version has not several passages which later transcribers have introduced into the Cotton and Lambeth MSS. It shows that the Lambeth continuation of the Cotton MS. was not a late addition, but that the Cotton had lost its tail. It shows the Lambeth text to be more like it than the Cotton, in the passages which all three contain; and though it does not clear up any of the puzzles of the later copies, it is interesting, as well for its earlier language as for the new Churches it mentions. These are eleven in number, St Anthony's, 1. 473 St Martin's in the Mount, 1. 563 St Marcelle's, 1. 609 St Grisogon's, 1. 680 St Tyre and St John's, 1. 681 St Adrian's, 1. 701 St Clement's, 1. 704 St Stephen's, 1. 705 The Virgin's Chapel, where Thomas à Becket kept school, 1. 717 St Urban's, 1. 720 and on them Mr William M. Rossetti has, as on those of the former volume, kindly added notes, which follow this Preface. Thus far I had written when I learnt from Sir F. Madden's Appendix to his Preface to his Syr Gawayne that (the late) Mr Ormsby Gore's Porkington MS. No. 10, contained a copy of the Stations in prose, beginning "In Rome bethe iic paresche churchs." I at once applied for leave to see the MS., and the present Mr Ormsby Gore forthwith obtained it for me from his mother. Its Stacyons proved to be a short and incomplete abstract of our long Poem, in 7 pages of a very small MS., wisely wound up with an Et C., and I have therefore printed it here for completeness and contrast sake. The allusion to the sea-voyage to the Holy Land in the Stations, 3if men wuste. grete and smale he pardoun pat is. at grete Rome. has induced me to add to this Text the most amusing Poem on "The Pilgrims' Sea-Voyage and Sea-Sickness," from MS. Trin. Coll., Camb., R. 3, 19, first printed by Mr Halliwell in Reliquiæ Antiquæ, vol. 1, p. 2, 3, and to which the present Keeper of the Printed Books in the British Museum, Mr Thomas Watts--encyclopædic in knowledge and gracious in speech-called my attention some twenty years ago. Mr Aldis Wright has himself read the transcript with the MS., and I do not think that any readers will regret its reproduction here. The cause of Clene Maydenhod appearing in this Text is Mr Cockayne's edition of that most vivid sketch of an English girl's temptations to forsake marriage and maternityin 1220 A.D., Hali Meidenhad. It is long since I have been so interested in any treatise ; and seeing that Clene Maydenhod was in the Vernon, I could not resist the temptation of printing it, for illustration and contrast sake. The texts are paged separately, so that they may be bound, if wished, with those that they refer to; and for the same reason the Index to the names of Men and Churches in Stations refers to the Cotton and Lambeth versions printed in "Political, Religious, and Love Poems," 1866. Mr George Parker, of Rose Hill, Oxford, has read both the Vernon texts with the MS., and my thanks are due to him for his care. 3, St George's Square, N.W., Dec., 1866. P.S.-The reviewer in The Saturday Review of Dec. 22, 1866, does not understand in what sense we publish our Texts. We print them mainly for our Members; but, remembering the times when we wanted single volumes of the books of the Camden and Percy Societies, the Abbotsford, Bannatyne and other Clubs, and could not get them, we resolved, when starting the Society, to sell each of our texts separately to any person wanting it, at the publisher's profit on its cost: this-though it would be a great nuisance to us by spoiling our sets-to benefit some poor students who might need help. We sell, perhaps, an average of five copies of each Text separately, against 400 odd issued to Members. This is why I conceive myself entitled to write Prefaces as to a circle of my friends; for such I look on Subscribers as being. Did I consider a Saturday Reviewer and the public as part of my audience, I should certainly write in a different tone to them. To the Saturday man I should say, that the libertinism of his comments was often unworthy of a Free man; * This called forth the following remarks-reprinted with the heading, " The Saturday's Insolence and The Saturday's Ignorance "—from one of our literary journals now discontinued: "Last Saturday's Punch contains the following paragraph (p. 35, col. 2, No. 349):-'Some fiddler advertises himself in the Musical World as 'Paganini Redividus.' One would not notice his blunder but for his cheek.' That is our own feeling about a ludicrous blunder occurring in a review of Dr Kingsley's 'Thynne on Chaucer,' in the Saturday Review of the week before, written in that tone of ungentlemanlike assumption and petulant insolence for which one writer, at least, in that journal has long been notorious, and which, at a certain period of its existence, drove men like Professor Pearson and Mr Bowen from its columns. Dr Kingsley-evidently not a careful corrector of the press— passed over his printer's error of printing the Anglo-Saxon thorn, or sharp th, þ, as r, ɲ. For this he was jeered at by his reviewer in the regular vulgar-little-boy fashion; and then, by way of displaying his own learning, the little boy went on to explain the difference between th and r. But as strutting daws unwittingly drop the peacock's feathers out of their tails, so this unlucky boy either did not know, or did not notice, that he or his printer had put an Anglo-Saxon w (p) for the th (þ); so that there, while he (the clever reviewer) was pointing at Dr Kingsley for his ignorance or carelessness, he was all the time displaying his own, and deliberately forcing every one's attention to the display. Scholars at the Museum, Bodleian, Cambridge, Lambeth, and elsewhere, have enjoyed the self-inflicted punishment that the reviewer's nasty-tempered notice of a book by a courteous, well-read, and widely-esteemed gentleman and man of letters has met with. We make it public on Punch's principle-' One would not notice his blunder but for his cheek; 'but we trust we shall have no more such exhibitions in the Saturday's pages; and for the benefit of the reviewer we reprint for him the judgment he passed on his better,―commending to him the study of his Anglo-Saxon Grammar,' the 'Printer's Guide,' and The Book of Courtesy.'-Of course, we shall be told that all these things are trifles [one 'thing' was the putting a comma for a full stop], most likely misprints. We answer that accuracy and inaccuracy are not trifles, and that a [writer] of a philological [review], who is either so ignorant that he cannot read his text, or so careless that he lets pass misprints which turn that text into nonsense, displays exactly the same crassa ignorantia as an architect who can do everything except build a house, or a surgeon who can do everything except cut off a leg." The Reader, Feb. 3, 1866. What wonder that this man calls my masterly 6 that wandering through Summer Meads he should be greeted in eye and ear by sights and sounds that should bring him into sweet accord with them, and prevent his always printing every "nasty-tempered" thing he can lay tongue on; that instead of leaving a set of men— of whom the chief workers are all poorer than himself to do a work of much help to him, without his help, but with his sneers, it would be more like a generous gentleman to send his subscription to the Society, and print a text for it with his Saturday pay. I should ask of the chief Cook who presides over the making of the weekly pudding that tickles so many palates and disturbs so many inwards, that he should pick out the bits of grit in the dab of pabulum contributed to his seventh-day compound by the reviewer I have been addressing. To the public on the other hand I should say, what a very stupid public it is for not supporting more vigorously the best and most liberal Early English printing Society that has ever existed: that there are several thousand well-to-do men in this country who can easily spare a guinea a year each to make their forefathers' speech and thoughts better known to this and future generations; and they ought so to spare it. To the Historian and Antiquary the Society's work yields rich fruit; to the Tory who glories in the past, it appeals with strongest claim; to the Liberal who pleads, as cause for modern justice, the ancient tale of poor men's wrongs that starts before the Conquest, the Society makes heard the voice he listens for. Every man of culture is bound to support us; and yet hardly any do. The Sanskrit Text Society starts—most rightly—with a first year's subscription of over £1200. The Early English Text Society with a miserable £152. In its third year its income is not much over £600; and when it asks for money to print nineteen Texts in one year, it hardly gets money for eleven. The apathy of English lettered men on this subject is a disgrace to them; and a journal like The Saturday, which has a chance of rousing them from it, would be much better employed in strokes of irony (N.B.), nonsense, and my brilliant satire (N.M.), bad jokes? When you hear a little boy on Hampstead Heath call to a known cross-country rider, "Why don't you get inside?" need you ask whether the ingenuous youth is a judge of a seat, or is—a little boy? doing so than in picking out little blemishes in the Society's Texts, and holding them up to show off a reviewer's fancied cleverness, which, as has been shown in some instances, and can be shown in others, has often turned out to be ludicrous ignorance. If we (as we do) point out some of our own shortcomings, we are thankful enough to have others shown us in the right spirit and the right way. The wrong in both,* I for one will protest against as best I can. F. J. F. *The later review of Mr Perry's edition of Hampole's Short Prose Treatises is written in the right and gentleman-like spirit. |