INTRODUCTION. FTER about eighteen months' delay, the editor has at length the satisfaction of offering to the public a second and third volume, which, with a fourth in the press, will complete, so far as his present intentions go, this collection of the Early Popular Poetry of his native country. The extraordinary and almost incredible negligence, with which such descriptions of literary labour have been for the most part executed hitherto, has rendered his task more onerous than he at all anticipated at setting out. He regrets to be obliged to include in this general criticism many names of high repute in the antiquarian world. The notes are absolutely without pretension to any method or importance. As was stated in the prefatory remarks to the first volume, they are simply and purely such as occurred to the editor in the course of his desultory reading, and as, in preparing the various texts for the press, he conceived might be of service in elucidating or illustrating the passages, to which they are attached. Weever, in his Epistle to the Reader, prefixed to his Ancient Funerall Monuments, 1631, has a passage which might be borne in mind by any editor of early writings. "I likewise write the Orthographie," he says, "of the old English as it comes to my hands, and if by the copying out of the same it be any manner of wayes modified, it is much against my will, for I hola originalls the best." In these Remains, the editor has reproduced the whole of the volume published by Ritson in 1791 unde the title of Pieces of Ancient Popular Poetry, with th additional poem, "Sir Peny," added to the impressio of 1833. He has selected the best portions of Harts horne's Ancient Metrical Tales,1 of Utterson's Sele Pieces of Early Popular Poetry, and of Halliwell Nuga Poetica. He has also taken two articles fro Ritson's Ancient Metrical Romances, six from Reliqui Antiquæ, two from Anecdota Literaria, and three fr Halliwell's Contributions to Early English Literatur besides these, he has brought together between twei and thirty hitherto uncollected productions. There is not a single instance, throughout these f 1 A Tale of Robin Hood has been re-edited in a very super manner by Gutch, and others have reproduced, with measurably greater exactness, Florice and Blancheflour, Wil and the Werwolf, &c. 2 Sir Isembras, Sir Tryamoure, and Sir Degoré, which cor tute the principal portion of Mr. Utterson's second volu have been published since 1817 from better texts. Sir Gow is merely another version of Roberte the Deuyll, and some s mens of it are given in the notes to that romance.—See p. 217 et seqq. |