[24] Paul Meyer calls it the work of a true grammarian (Romania, xxxii. p. 65).
[25] There are four MSS. extant. These have been collated and published by J. Sturzinger in the Altfranzösische Bibliothek, vol. viii., Heilbronn, 1884; cp. Romania, xiv. p. 60. The earliest MS. is in the Record Office, and was published by T. Wright in Haupt and Hoffman's Altdeutsche Blaetter (ii. p. 193). Diez quoted from this edition in his Grammaire des langues romanes, 3rd ed. i. pp. 415, 418 sqq. The three other MSS. are in the Brit. Mus., Camb. Univ. Libr. and Magdalen Col. Oxon., and belong to the three succeeding centuries. Portions of the Magdalen Col. MS. are quoted by A. J. Ellis, in his Early English Pronunciation, pp. 836-839, and by F. Génin, in his preface to the French Government reprint of Palsgrave's Grammar, 1852. It is the British Museum copy, made in the reign of Edward III., which contains the French commentary.
[26] Early English writers on the French tongue were fond of drawing attention to the opportunities for punning afforded by the language.
[27] Edited by Miss M. K. Pope in the Modern Language Review (vol. v., 1910, pt. ii. pp. 188 sqq.), from the Brit. Mus. Addit. MS. 17716, ff. 88-91; it also exists at All Souls, Oxford (MS. 182 f. 340), and at Trinity Col. Cambridge (MS. B 14. 39, 40); in the last MS. the introduction of the two preceding ones is lacking (cp. Meyer, Romania, xxxii. p. 59).
[28] For instance, we are told that a is sounded almost like e as in savez vous faire un chauncoun . . .; that the phrases a, en a, i a which mean one and the same thing when they come from the Latin habet, should be written without d; that aura, en array should be written without e in the middle, and sounded without u, as aray, en array, though the English include the e.
[29] Published by Stengel, in the Zeitschrift für neufranzösische Sprache und Literatur, 1879, pp. 16-22.
[30] Miss Pope, ut supra.
[31] His name has provoked some discussion as to its correct form. It is frequently written as Biblesworth, and one MS. gives it the form of Bithesway; the correct form, however, is Bibbesworth, the name of a manor in the parish of Kempton (Herts), of which Walter was the owner (P. Meyer, Romania, xv. p. 312, and xxx. p. 44 n.; W. Aldis Wright, Notes and Queries, 1877, 4th Series, viii. p. 64).
[32] Printed from the MS. in the Bodleian, in Wright and Halliwell's Reliquiae Antiquae, i. p. 134.
[33] Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1247-58, pp. 58, 103, 187. He received exemption from being put on assizes or juries in 1249.