PUBLICATIONS OF THE CHAUCER SOCIETY.* Tx publications of the Chaucer
Society are already of sufficient extent to give a fair idea of their method and value. The society is attempting a difficult work in seeking to do for Chaucer what has been done for Shakespeare, and it may be feared that public enthusiasm will hardly extend to the publication of all existing texts, especially as it now appears that the variations are unim- portant even to philologists. Yet it is no small result that we now know as much as this certainly. As Mr. Earle very well observes in a letter to Mr. Furnivall, "It would of course have been more fruitful in curiosities of the English language, if a great and complicated system of varieties had been discovered ; but, on the other hand, a small number of variations, and these all within a limited and definite range, has the result of assuring us that we look upon the veritable text of Chaucer with hardly a film of interposed modification." Nor has the labour of the editors been confined to the production of a critical text. "The Knight's Tale," the only one yet published, has been carefully collated by Mr. H. Ward with the " Tereide " of Boccaccio, and every pas- sage translated, or in any way borrowed from the original, has been marked in the side-notes. The result, as Mr. Furnivall tells us, is that "out of 2,250 of Chaucer's lines, he has only trans- lated 270; that only 374 more lines bear a general likeness to Boccaccio, and only 132 more a slight likeness. Precise state- ments of this kind, summing-up a world of labour in a few words, are very valuable points in an edition which may fairly aspire to be classical and final.
Mr. Furnivall's Temporary Preface is among the most perfect pieces of work he has produced. Its chief points are an examina- tion of the value of the six manuscripts selected, an analysis of their more important dialectic peculiarities, and a scheme of the pilgrims' journey to Canterbury. No one of these topics is in itself very interesting. But Mr. Furnivall's merits and faults alike give animation and colouring to every subject he touches. The question whether the pilgrims were one day, two days, or three-and-a-half days on their pleasant journey may seem scarcely to deserve long discussion. Chaucer students evidently think differently, and Mr. Furnivall goes at length into the question of medians' journeys, bringing royal progresses and the travels of Oxford fellows on college business to bear on the probabilities of the poet's design. What with anecdotes of Colet, speculations as
* A Temporary Preface to the Six-Text Edition of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Part L By F. J. Fnrnivall. London : Tritbner and Co. A Six-Text Print of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. London : Trtibner and CIO.
On Early English Pronunciation, with Especial Reference to Shakespeare and Chaucer. By Alexander .1. Mix. Part L London : Trilbnar and Co.
Essays on Chaucer. Part L London TrUbnar and Co.
to the number of meals mediaeval pilgrims would eat, and illustra- tions from Chaucer's own picturesque narrative, the discussion at last acquires that strange kind of fascination for the reader which the clearing-up little intricacies of detail always seems. to carry with it when the first difficulties are
surmounted. It is like a page from Defoe, or the planning of a summer holiday's excursion. The pages of dialectical variations, however useful, are, of course, "caviare to the general." But. thenotes on particular words are very interesting, and if it was not strictly necessary to quote at length four mediaaval cookery receipts in illustration of a single word, the offence is of the moat venial. But we are sometimes reminded that Mr. Furnivall's work is, as he himself says, purely tentative. It is strange that such a word as " Lodmannagian," pilotage, should be explained simply as Low-Latin. " Lothman " is still the common word in Norway for a pilot, and means simply " leadman," the man who throws the lead and takes the soundings.
But it is not possible or right always to prophesy pleasant things even of a society which is doing good work without pay. The Chaucer Society must take warning in time, or it will die with its work yet undone. It can appeal only to a limited audience. Scholars of Old English are few in number, and not often rich. It is, therefore, scarcely wonderful that with a subscription of two guineas the Chaucer Society should only number some sixty- one members. But it is doubly important that small resources should be husbanded. As it is, the first year's expenses have swelled to nearly double the amount of the money in hand or due ; and there have been one or two windfalls in the first year. It is not too much to say that half the expenses incurred might have been saved. It is surely something like extravagance to publish the six texts in two different copies, one exhibiting them in paral- lel columns for collection, and the other giving each text separately. Eberr's essay is heavy and badly written, and being accessible in German, did not require to be published again ; while the printing of a whole treatise "On the Chilindre " to illustrate a line of Chaucer is certainly not work for an impecunious society. Above all, the issue of Mr. Ellis's work on Eng- lish pronunciation by three kindred societies at the same time is a tax upon the subscribers, of which they all have just right to complain. Against the book itself we desire to say nothing. It has evidently been a work of great labour, and may be assumed to deserve the favourable reception it has met with in Germany. It is clearly right that such a book, which-no publisher would look at, should be published at the expense of some learned body, of one of the Universities, or of either the Philological or the Chaucer Society. But for three Societies, having subscribers in common, to issue a book in triplicate or duplicate, to men who perhaps subscribed for English texts, and are quite uninterested in philology, is policy that will react fatally on public confidence in the management of all societies. If the Chaucer Society desires a long life, it had better withdraw at once from such enterprises, and confine its labours to the publication of texts in a single edition. When these are before the world, it will be time to write about them.
Previous page
