Notes and Queries, Number 20, March 16, 1850

There is no other printed copy of the A.-S. Orosius than the very imperfect edition of Daines Barrington, which is perhaps the most striking example of incompetent editorship which could be adduced. The text was printed from a transcript of a transcript, without much pains bestowed on collation, as he tells us himself. How much it is to be lamented that the materials for a more complete edition are diminished by the disappearance of the Lauderdale MS. , which, I believe, when Mr. Kemble wished to consult it, could not be found in the Library at Ham.
Perhaps no more important illustration of the Geography of the Middle Ages exists than Alfred's very interesting description of the Geography of Europe , and the Voyages of Othere and Wulfstan ; and this portion of the Hormesta has received considerable attention from continental scholars, of which it appears Mr. Hampson is not aware. As long since as 1815 Erasmus Rask (to whom, after Jacob Grimm, Anglo-Saxon students are most deeply indebted) published in the Journal of the Scandinavian Literary Society (ii. 106. sq.) the Anglo-Saxon Text, with a Danish translation, introduction, and notes, in which many of the errors of Barrington and Forster are pointed out and corrected. This was reprinted by Rask's son in the Collection he gave of his father's Dissertation , in 2 vols. Copenhagen, 1834.
Mr. Thorpe, in the 2nd edit. of his Analecta , has given Alfred's Geography, &c., no doubt accurately printed from the Cotton MS., and has rightly explained Apdrede and Wylte in his Glossary, but does not mention Æfeldan ; and Dr. Leo, in his Sprachproben , has given a small portion from Rask, with a few geographical notes. Dr. Ingram says: I hope on some future occasion to publish the whole of 'Alfred's Geography,' accompanied with accurate maps.
On the names Horithi and Mægtha Land Rask has a long note, in which he states the different opinions that have been advanced; his own conclusions differ from Mr. Hampson's suggestion. He assigns reasons for thinking that the initial H in Horithi should be P , and that we should read Porithi for Porizzi , the old name for Prussians . Some imagined that Mægtha Land was identical with Cwen Land , with reference to the fabulous Northern Amazons; but Alfred has placed Cwenland in another locality; and Rask conjectures that Mægth signifies here provincia, natio gens , and that it stood for Gardariki , of which it appears to be a direct translation.