GENERAL INTRODUCTION
[§ 1]. In the very brief Introduction to vol. I., I have given a sketch of the general contents of the present work. I here take occasion, for the reader's information, to describe somewhat more particularly the chief objects which I have had in view.
In the first place, my endeavour has been to produce a thoroughly sound text, founded solely on the best MSS. and the earliest prints, which shall satisfy at once the requirements of the student of language and the reader who delights in poetry. In the interest of both, it is highly desirable that Chaucer's genuine works should be kept apart from those which were recklessly associated with them in the early editions, and even in modern editions have been but imperfectly suppressed. It was also desirable, or rather absolutely necessary, that the recent advances in our knowledge of Middle-English grammar and phonetics should be rightly utilised, and that no verbal form should be allowed to appear which would have been unacceptable to a good scribe of the fourteenth century[[1]].
I have also provided a large body of illustrative notes, many of them gathered from the works of my predecessors, but enlarged by illustrations due to my own reading during a long course of years, and by many others due to the labours of the most
recent critics. The number of allusions that have been traced to their origin during the last fifteen years is considerable; and much additional light has thus been thrown upon Chaucer's method of treating his originals. How far such investigation has been successful, can readily be gathered from an inspection of the Index of Authors Quoted in the present volume, in which the passages quoted by Chaucer are collected and arranged, and an alphabetical list is given of the authors whom he appears to have most consulted.
The Glossary has been compiled on a much larger scale than any hitherto attempted, wherein the part of speech of almost every word is duly marked, and every verbal form is sufficiently parsed. A special feature of the Glossary is the exclusion from it of non-Chaucerian words and forms; and in order to secure this result, separate Glossaries are given of the chief words occurring in Fragments B and C of the Romaunt of the Rose and in Gamelyn; and we are thus enabled to detect a marked difference in the vocabulary employed in these pieces from that which was employed by Chaucer[[2]]. And I cannot refrain from here expressing the hope, that the practical usefulness of the Glossary and Indexes may predispose the critic to forgive some errors in other parts of the work. And further, also in the interest of every true student, much pains have been bestowed on the mode of numbering the lines. It is not so easy a matter as it would seem to be. Many editors give no numbering at all; and, where it is given, it is not always correct[[3]]. The numbering of the Canterbury Tales, in particular, was especially
troublesome. I give three distinct systems of counting the lines, and even thus have failed in giving the numbering of Wright's edition beyond l. 11928, where he suddenly begins a new numbering of his own[[4]].
I append a few remarks on the text of the various pieces.
[§ 2]. Romaunt of the Rose. The old text is often extremely and even ludicrously corrupt. Thanks to the patient labours of Dr. Max Kaluza, and his restoration, by the collation of MSS., of the French original, many emendations have been made, for several of which I am much indebted to him. A paper (by myself) containing a summary of the principal passages which are thus, for the first time, rendered intelligible, has lately appeared in the Transactions of the Cambridge Philological Society, vol. iii. p. 239; but the whole subject is treated, in an exhaustive and highly satisfactory manner, in two works by Kaluza. The former of these is his edition of the Romaunt, from the Glasgow MS., side by side with the French text in an emended form, as published for the Chaucer Society; and the other work is entitled 'Chaucer und der Rosenroman,' published at Berlin in 1893[[5]].
See also the valuable paper on 'The Authorship of the English Romaunt of the Rose' by Prof. G. L. Kittredge, printed in 'Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature,' and published