The English Register of Godstow Nunnery Near Oxford, Vol. 1

Angebote / Angebote:

Excerpt from The English Register of Godstow Nunnery Near Oxford, Vol. 1: Written About 1450 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 Abc) have been fild up from the Stowe MS. 952 (which old John Stowe completed) and from the end of the other imperfect MS. Cotton, Tii3erius A vii. Thanks to the diligence of the old Elizabethan tailor and manuscript-lover, a complete text of Lydgate's poem has been given. The British Museum French MSS. (Harleian 4399, and Additional 22, 937 and 25, 594) are all of the First Version. Besides his first Pelermaige de l'homme in its two versions, Deguilleville wrote a second, "de l'ame separee du corps, " and a third, "de nostre seigneur lesus." 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, 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. 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 Galilean, - 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 1