MIDDLE ENGLISH.
A Middle English Reader. By 0. F. Emerson. (Macmillan and Co. 8s. net.)—This reader is based upon a plan which the author has found of practical advantage in the classroom. Taking the Midland dialect as the standard for the Middle English period— as West Saxon is for the Old—he first supplies a sufficient body of texts illustrating this division of the language, and only after the student has become thoroughly familiar with its peculiarities does he pass to examples of the Northern and Southern dialects. A special division supplies texts of the London vernacular, intended to illustrate its relation to both Midland and Southern English. The grammatical introduction —an elaborate and careful piece of work filling over a hundred pages—follows the same plan of treating Midland as the standard and the other dialects as subordinate. The texts appear well chosen, and are neither left in too chaotic a state of spelling and punctuation, nor made to assume a specious air of precise regularity. Many interesting specimens of Middle English literature are included, though the choice has naturally been limited by the necessity of presenting more or less pure texts from the philological point of view. The volume should prove of service to students.
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