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THE ALBION SERIES

OF

Anglo-Saxon and Middle English Poetry

J. W. BRIGHT AND G. L. KITTREDGE

GENERAL EDITORS

The Albion Series

This series will comprise the mo important Anglo-Saxon and Middle English poems in editions designed to meet the wants of both the scholar and the student. Each volume will ordinarily contain a single poe critically edited, and provided with an introduction, notes, and a full

glossary.

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WILLIAM EDWARD MEAD

PROFESSOR OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY

BOSTON, U.S.A.
GINN & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS

The Athenæum Press

1904

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PREFACE

Among the minor verse romances of the late Middle Ages few exceed in interest The Squyr of Lowe Degre. Yet for some reason it has been generally neglected by students and historians of English literature. Apart from a few remarks by Warton in his History of English Poetry, some observations by Ritson prefatory to his reprint of Copland's sixteenth-century edition, a page or two by Hazlitt by way of introduction to his edition of the poem, and a few scattering remarks elsewhere, it is scarcely mentioned. In some elaborate histories of early English literature it is passed over without a word. The belief entertained by some scholars that Chaucer was glancing at it in his Sir Thopas has brought out an occasional remark, but the only attempt before the present study to deal with the romance in some detail is a recent German doctor's dissertation.1

The present account considers a variety of matters treated elsewhere very briefly or not at all. A word of comment will show what has been here attempted.

In the summer of 1901 I collated the printed editions of the Copland and Percy texts with the originals in the British Museum. Hazlitt's blunders in his edition of C betray editorial negligence. Hales and Furnivall's edition of P in Bishop Percy's Folio MS. is remarkably accurate. For the fragments of Wynkyn de Worde's Vndo Youre Dore I am indebted to Dr. F. J. Furnivall, who, with a kindness I have

1 Paul Tunk, Studien zur mittelenglischen Romance The Squyr of Lowe Degre, Breslau, 1900, 68 pp. This is an industrious piece of work, discussing various aspects of the romance. But it does nothing for the text, and, except by furnishing parallel passages, makes no attempt to supply annotations. Some of the typical parallel phrases in Tunk's collection (pp. 51–68) I have found useful for the Notes and have credited to him with the initial 7. But in the discussion of the date, the relation of the romance to Chaucer, and some other matters, I have been obliged to adopt views quite different from his.

A brief paper by M. Weyrauch, Zur komposition, entstehungszeit und beurteilung der me. romanze The Squyr of Lowe Degre (Englische Studien, XXXI, 177–182), touches upon a few questions relating to the composition of the romance but otherwise goes into no detail.

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