ADVERTISEMENT. Ar the time that the present collection of the works of the British Poets was issued in Boston, there was, in the opinion of the American Editor, no text of Chaucer's poems available for use that was worthy of the poet's name, or of the standard of excellence and purity established for the series. The deficiency has at last to a great extent been supplied through the labors of scholars connected with the Chaucer Society, of London, established by Mr. Frederick J. Furnivall, and directed by him for a series of years with a persistent and self-sacrificing generosity seldom equaled. This learned body has made available for the use of editors a large number of manuscripts of the different poems and prose works, and notably six entire texts of the Canterbury Tales. In the present edition advantage has been taken of these important labors, which include investigations into the sources of Chaucer's stories, the meaning of his words, and the chronology of his poems. The arrangement devised by members of the Chaucer Society is in this edition adopted for the first time. The text of the manuscript owned by Lord Ellesmere is now considered better than any other known, and much superior to those within the reach of editors before the Chaucer Society was originated. It forms the body of the text now presented to lovers of the great poet. The labors of an editor who publishes a text of an author whose works appeared before the invention of printing differ in important points from those of one who prepares an edition of any publication that was put into type during its writer's lifetime. The poems of our poet, for example, cannot be printed for any but special students in exactly the form in which they exist in the manuscripts, and editors have differed essentially in the rules that they have followed in their work. Some, like John Urry, have made multitudinous arbitrary emendations and additions, while others have followed the manuscripts with more or less precision. The following are among the reasons for this diversity. ADVERTISEMENT. I. The manuscripts are not punctuated. It is apparent that every editor is obliged to follow the modern rules in this respect. II. The manuscripts abound in contractions, which must of necessity be extended. A stroke over a vowel signified that it was followed by m or n. A stroke over n meant that it stood for ne, nne, un, or n. A curl over n or s signified er; over p it stood for re. A small, undotted i above the line meant ri. There were signs for ra, ur, par, pro, es, is, us, com, con, and other combinations of letters, though the signs did not always stand for the same combination. III. The use of capital letters was variable, and, judged by modern standards, incorrect. IV. The alphabet differed in some respects from that now used, there being in Old English two signs, now obsolete, for th, and another that represented the sound of y, g, gh, and sometimes z. In process of time one of the signs for th fell into desuetude; and the sign which looked like a modern g, and stood for y, g, gh, and %, was modified in its form until it resembled z. The manuscripts are not uniform ▾ in the use of these signs; and in the absence of any rule or custom on the part of the ancient scribes, it only confuses the general reader if their irregular example is followed. There is no gain in printing ayeyn in one place and ageyn in another; nor are yaf, yeue, yiue, yate, any better forms than gaf, geve, give, gate, especially when we know that ageyn is allied to the Old English ongean, and the German gegen, and that g is the original consonant in the other words. Y was a distinct letter. In cases where this sign has the guttural sound editors are obliged to use gh, or h (as thurgh, thurh), and when it stands for z that letter is used (as marchauntz). V. The use of u and v was not in accordance with that of the present time. The former sign had both the modern sounds. VI. The letter j was almost unknown, its place being supplied by the capital I. In the use of u and j, the customs of editors have been various. In the texts edited for the Clarendon Press, Mr. Skeat prints loue, Tugement, deuoir, yeueth, haue; and Dr. Morris, ive, jugement, devoir, yeveth, have, putting the y in yeveth in italics, to indicate that the manuscript had the sign that represents the sounds of y, g, gh, and z. (In like manner Dr. Morris prints heigher, nought, eyghen, for it would be ADVERTISEMENT. vii misleading to use y in these and similar words, even if it were italicized.) - Ital The use of i for j, and u for v, was not discontinued until the present century, and yet the texts of Shakespeare and the Bible are printed in accordance with present usage. The same is true of the poems of Spenser, in the series to which the present volume belongs. There is a positive loss when povre· ian povero, French pauvre — is printed in an old author "poure," and poverte-poverta, pauvreté is printed "pouerte." This is true. also when iape, ioye, iade, iuge, take the places of jape, joye, jade, juge. On the contrary, the poet suffers no detriment when these words are presented with the letters which make the impression upon nineteenth-century readers that the other ones made upon readers accustomed to them in the fourteenth century. VII. It is sometimes almost impossible to decide whether a letter is a u or an n in the manuscripts, a fact that accounts for the two forms Cambyuskan and Cambynscan in various editions of the Squire's Tale. Tyrwhitt printed the word Cambuscan, but Thynne (A. D. 1599) had given it Cambiuscan, which is equivalent to Cambyuskan, the reading of the best manuscript now known. |