Early English Text Society

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, N.

Bankers: THE UNION BANK OF LONDON, 2, PRINCES STREET, E.C.

The Early English Text Society was started by Dr. Furnivall in 1864 for the purpose of bringing the mass of Old English Literature within the reach of the ordinary student, and of wiping away the reproach under which England had long 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 in hand by its Editors, that it became necessary in 1867 to open, besides the Original Series with which the Society began, an Extra Series which should be mainly devoted to fresh editions of all that is most valuable in printed MSS. and Caxton’s and other black-letter books, though first editions of MSS. will not be excluded when the convenience of issuing them demands their inclusion in the Extra Series.

During the thirty-nine years of the Society’s existence, it has produced, with whatever shortcomings, an amount of good solid work for which all students of our Language, and some of our Literature, must be grateful, and which has rendered possible the beginnings (at least) of proper Histories and Dictionaries of that Language and Literature, and has illustrated the thoughts, the life, the manners and customs of our forefathers and foremothers.

But the Society’s experience has shown the very small number of those inheritors of the speech of Cynewulf, Chaucer, and Shakspere, who care two guineas a year for the records of that speech: ‘Let the dead past bury its dead’ is still the cry of Great Britain and her Colonies, and of America, in the matter of language. The Society has never had money enough to produce the Texts that could easily have been got ready for it; and many Editors are now anxious to send to press the work they have prepared. The necessity has therefore arisen for trying to increase the number of the Society’s members, and to induce its well-wishers to help it by gifts of money, either in one sum or by instalments. The Committee trust that every Member will bring before his or her friends and acquaintances the Society’s claims for liberal support. Until all Early English MSS. are printed, no proper History of our Language or Social Life is possible.

The Subscription to the Society, which constitutes membership, is £1 1s. a year for the Original Series, and £1 1s. for the Extra Series, due in advance on the 1st of January, and should be paid by Cheque, Postal Order, or Money-Order, crost ‘Union Bank of London,’ to the Hon. Secretary, W. A. Dalziel, Esq., 67, Victoria Rd., Finsbury Park, London, N. Members who want their Texts posted to them, must add to their prepaid Subscriptions 1s. for the Original Series, and 1s. for the Extra Series, yearly. The Society’s Texts are also sold separately at the prices put after them in the Lists; but Members can get back-Texts at one-third less than the List-prices by sending the cash for them in advance to the Hon. Secretary.

--> The Society intends to complete, as soon as its funds will allow, the Reprints of its out-of-print Texts of the year 1866, and also of nos. 20, 26 and 33. Prof. Skeat has finisht Partenay; Dr. M^cKnight of Ohio King Horn and Floris and Blancheflour; and Dr. Furnivall his Political, Religious and Love Poems and Myrc’s Duties of a Parish Priest. Dr. Otto Glauning has undertaken Seinte Marherete; and Dr. Furnivall has Hali Meidenhad in type. 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. As the Society’s copies of the Facsimile of the Epinal MS. issued as an Extra Volume in 1883 are exhausted, Mr. J. H. Hessels, M.A., of St. John’s Coll., Cambridge, has kindly undertaken an edition of the MS. for the Society. This will be substituted for the Facsimile as an 1883 book, but will be also issued to all the present Members.

Original and Extra Series Books 1903-1906.

July 1904. The Original-Series Texts for 1903 were: No. 122, Part II of The Laud MS. Troy-Book, edited from the unique Laud MS. 595 by Dr. J. E. WÜlting; and No. 123, Part II of Robert of Brunne’s Handlyng Synne, and its French original, ed. by Dr. F. J. Furnivall.

The Extra-Series Texts for 1903 are to be: No. LXXXVIII, Le Morte Arthur, in 8-line stanzas, re-edited from the unique MS. Harl. 2252, by Prof. J. Douglas Bruce (issued), No. LXXXIX, Lydgate’s Reason and Sensuality, edited by Dr. Ernst Sieper, Part II, and English Fragments from Latin Medieval Service-Books, edited, and given to the Society, by Mr. Henry Littlehales.

The Original-Series Texts for 1904 will be No. 124, t. Hen. V, Twenty-six Political and other Poems from the Digby MS. 102, &c, edited by Dr. J. Kail, and No. 125, Part I of the Medieval Records of a London City Church (St. Mary-at-Hill), A.D. 1420-1559, copied and edited by Mr. Henry Littlehales from the Church Records in the Guildhall, the cost of the setting and corrections of the text being generously borne by its Editor. This book will show the income and outlay of the church; the drink provided for its Palm-Sunday players, its officers’ excursions into Kent and Essex, its dealing with the Plague, the disposal of its goods at the Reformation, &c., &c., and will help our members to realize the church-life of its time. The third Text will be Part I of An Alphabet of Tales, a very interesting collection, englisht in the Northern Dialect, about 1440, from the Latin Alphabetum Narrationum by Etienne de BÉsanÇon, and edited by Mrs. M. M. Banks from the unique MS. in the King’s Library in the British Museum; the above-named three texts are now ready for issue. Those for 1905 and 1906 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 Prof. 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; an Introduction and Glossary to the Minor Poems of the Vernon MS. by H. Hartley, M.A.; Alain Chartier’s Quadrilogue, edited from the unique MS. Univ. Coll. Oxford MS. No. 85, by Mr. J. W. H. Atkins of Owen’s College; a Northern Verse Chronicle of England to 1327 A.D., in 42,000 lines, about 1420 A.D., edited by M. L. Perrin, B.A.; Prof. Bruce’s Introduction to The English Conquest of Ireland, Part II; and 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. Canon Wordsworth of Marlborough has given the Society a copy of the Leofric Canonical Rule, Latin and Anglo-Saxon, Parker MS. 191, C.C.C. Cambridge, and Prof. Napier will edit it, with a fragment of the englisht Capitula of Bp. Theodulf. The Coventry Leet Book is being copied for the Society by Miss M. Dormer Harris—helpt by a contribution from the Common Council of the City,—and will be publisht by the Society (Miss Harris editing), as its contribution to our knowledge of the provincial city life of the 15th century.

Dr. Brie of Berlin has undertaken to edit the prose Brut or Chronicle of Britain attributed to Sir John Mandeville, and printed by Caxton. He has already examined more than 100 English MSS. and several French ones, to get the best text, and find out its source.

The Extra-Series Texts for 1904 will be chosen from Lydgate’s DeGuilleville’s Pilgrimage of the Life of Man, Part III, edited by Miss Locock; Dr. M. Konrath’s re-edition of William of Shorcham’s Poems, Part II; Dr. E. A. Kock’s edition of Lovelich’s Merlin from the unique MS. in Corpus Christi Coll., Cambridge; the Macro Plays, edited from Mr. Gurney’s MS. by Dr. Furnivall and A. W. Pollard, M.A.; Prof. Erdmann’s re-edition of Lydgate’s Siege of Thebes (issued also by the Chaucer Society); Miss Rickert’s re-edition of the Romance of Emare; Prof. I. Gollanez’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.; and Miss Warren’s two-text edition of The Dance of Death from the Ellesmere and other MSS.

These Extra-Series Texts ought to be completed by their Editors: the Second Part of the prose Romance of Melusine—Introduction, with ten facsimiles of the best woodblocks of the old foreign black-letter editions, Glossary, &c, by A. K. Donald, B.A. (now in India); 4 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 Mr. Mayhew’s insistence will meet with the sympathy of all our Members.

Texts preparing: The Texts for 1906, 1907 &c.

The Texts for the Extra Series in 1906 and 1907 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 Sowle, 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 pressing. Offers of help from willing Editors have continually to be declined because the Society has no funds to print their Texts.

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!

Deguilleville.

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; Sion College, London; and the Laud Collection in the Bodleian, no. 740.3 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:4 “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, afterwards chaplain to John, Duke of Bedford, Regent of France—turned Deguilleville’s first verse PÈlerinaige into a prose PÈlerinage de la vie humaine.6 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 A, 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) have been 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 5 manuscript-lover, a complete text of Lydgate’s poem can be given, though that of an inserted theological prose treatise is incomplete. The British Museum French MSS. (Harleian 4399,7 and Additional 22,9378 and 25,5949) are all of the First Version.

Besides his first PÈlerinaige 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. 615,10 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 translater, 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.

Anglo-Saxon Psalters.

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.

More Money wanted.

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 anytime, on short notice, send to press an additional Thousand Pounds’ worth of work.

Saints’ Lives.

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 mediÆval 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 Ælfric’s prose,11 Dr. Morris’s of the Blickling Homilies, and Prof. Skeat’s of Ælfric’s Metrical Homilies. The late Prof. KÖlbing left complete his text, for the Society, of the Ancren Riwle, from the best MS., with collations of the other four, and this will be edited for the Society by Dr. ThÜmmler. 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, the late Professors Zupitza and KÖlbing, the living Hausknecht, Einenkel, Haenisch, Kaluza, Hupe, Adam, Holthausen, Schick, Herzfeld, Brandeis, Sieper, Konrath, WÜlfing, &c. Scandinavia has also sent us Prof. Erdmann and Dr. E. A. Kock; Holland, Prof. H. Logeman, who is now working in Belgium; France, Prof. 6 Paul Meyer—with Gaston Paris as adviser (alas, now dead);—Italy, Prof. Lattanzi; Austria, Dr. von Fleischhacker; while America is represented by the late Prof. Child, by Dr. Mary Noyes Colvin, Miss Rickert, Profs. Mead, McKnight, Triggs, Perrin, &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.

EXTRA SERIES.

The Publications for 1867-1901 (one guinea each year) are:—

EARLY ENGLISH TEXT SOCIETY TEXTS PREPARING.

Besides the Texts named as at press on p. 12 of the Cover of the Early English Text Society’s last Books, the following Texts are also slowly preparing for the Society:—

ORIGINAL SERIES.

EXTRA SERIES.

The Subscription to the Society, which constitutes membership, is £1 1s. a year for the Original Series, and £1 1s. for the Extra Series, due in advance on the 1st of January, and should be paid by Cheque, Postal Order, or Money-Order, crost ‘Union Bank of London,’ to the Hon. Secretary, W. A. Dalziel, Esq., 67, Victoria Road, Finsbury Park, London, N. Members who want their Texts posted to them must add to their prepaid Subscriptions 1s. for the Original Series, and 1s. for the Extra Series, yearly. The Society’s Texts are also sold separately at the prices put after them in the Lists; but Members can get back-Texts at one-third less than the List-prices by sending the cash for them in advance to the Hon. Secretary.

Footnotes: EETS Texts