practice in correcting letter-press. The last and one of the most important Saxon works ever published here or abroad is M. Thorpe's Analecta Anglo-Saxonica. So many interesting pieces of Saxon poetry are here reprinted (and, corrected) from rare books as to make this work a valuable depositary of venerable reliques. But it is to learners that the Analecta will be found of right good use; and the Grammatical glossary is an invaluable addition to their means of mastering the tongue. Considered merely with reference to them, there might be some doubts of the propriety of reprinting the corrupt Ormulum. Those who are somewhat more advanced in these studies will know better how to appreciate the service which the author has done them, by furnishing them with the means of investigating the historical and dialectic variations, contained in this and similar compositions.

These are, if not all, at least the principal books which have appeared in this country relative to Saxon study: Mr. Ritson and Mr. Horne Tooke might perhaps have been named but as the first named of these persons was as profoundly ignorant of Saxon, as he was careless and inaccurate in transcribing, commenting upon, and glossing old

English1, I did not think it necessary to waste much time upon him, especially in a matter which he only dragged in upon occasions, by the head and shoulders. Mr. Horne Tooke deserves a far more complete examination than I could give him within the limits of this letter; for, with all his swaggering upon the subject, even he was barbarously ignorant of all the Teutonic tongues; and owes what repu

1 I am well aware that any opinions upon this subject do not tally with those which are usually entertained by those who have never subjected Mr. Ritson's books to the ordeal of a collation. There is now lying before me the new edition of his Ancient Popular Poetry, most of which was printed from MSS. etc. in the library of the university of Cambridge. Some of my results will probably startle Mr. Ritson's adherents; but here they are. In the tale of the Frere and the Boy taken from a printed copy by Wynkyn de Worde, there are 480 lines, and 64 mistakes; while in 84 lines of the same poem from a MS. copy there are 49 blunders, and the omission of one whole line. In the tale of the King and the Earker from the same MS. there are 128 lines, and herein, with his usual accuracy, Mr. Ritson contrived to commit 140 blunders. In the Marchaunt who did his wife betray, there are 272 lines and only about 80 errors of consequence; which, as the MS. is as legible as the letter-press, accounts for nearly the same proportion of blunders being found in this and the Frere and the Boy, taken from a printed original; and thus furnishes a fair guage of Mr. Ritson's accuracy under circumstances of ordinary facility. Yet this man dared to run down and persecute Warton! It is now beginning to be felt, that it was not Warton's inaccuracy that moved Ritson's bile : oh no! it was the unhappy fact that Warton was a fellow of a college, a scholar, a gentleman, and a Christian, to no one of which titles Ritson had the slightest claim. See on this subject, Mr. R. Price's preface to the last edition of Warton's History of English Poetry.

tation he has enjoyed solely to a happy knack of outbullying his opponents upon subjects with which he and they were alike conversant'. For the present Mr. Tooke must be remanded. There are yet two books which, though I am well aware that they have no very close connection with subject of Saxon philology, must nevertheless exercise so great an influence upon Saxon scholars, as to deserve particular mention here. The first of these is Mr. Sharon Turner's History of the Anglo-Saxons, 1801, a learned and laborious work; yet in all that relates to the language and the poetry of our forefathers, often deficient, often mistaken. It is painful to be compelled to speak in terms like these of a work which in many respects deserves great praise; yet, to spare errors in a new science, is to endanger it for ever. The second work is Sir F. Palgrave's Anglo-Saxo Cnommonwealth, 1832, which cannot be too highly valued, as a clear and learned exposition of the Saxon polity. Nevertheless one must, as a philologist, quarrel with Sir Francis for false etymology. As long as he is at work with his Latin or Saxon charters, he reads them well,

1 [ See on Horne Tooke's Diversions of Purley, Specimens of the table talk of the late Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In two volumes. London John Murray, MDCCCXXXV, 8vo, 117-125. - FR. MICHEL.]

and no man can more safely be followed : but set him once upon a bit of etymology, up go the heels of his hobby, and down comes Sir Francis into the mire, no better informed, as it appears, than most of his English predecessors have been, respecting the true form and power of many words.

It remains to notice such editions of AngloSaxon monuments as have appeared in foreign countries, or from the hand of foreigners. Meric Casaubon gives some account of the Saxon, in his de Lingua Saxonica et Lingua Hebraica Commentarius, published in London by Somner, with notes upon the Lipsian Glosses, 1650. In 1660, some prayers, creeds, etc. were published by M. Freher. Boxhorn, in some notes upon Tacitus, says: « Beah, vel ut alii scribunt, Beaz, quod ornamentum capitis, coronam et galeam, et caput interpretatur vir eruditissimus Johannes Lotius, in Lexico suo anglo-saxonico dignissimo, vel sola germanicarum antiquitatum illustrandarum causa, quod in lucem aliquando prodeat. » Lotius's work I have never seen, or been able to find; however Beah is annulus, whether worn on the head, the arm or the ancle, but never caput. Langebeke, in his Scriptores Rerum Danicarum, Hafn., 1772, quotes at length the genealogies

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of the Saxon kings, and the voyages of Ohthere and Wulfstan, probably from the English printed copies. Professor Nyerup, in his Symbola, Hafn., 1787, has printed very inaccurately a Saxon spell for fertilizing land, since rather better given in the appendix to Rask's grammar. In 1815, a very bold attempt was made by G. J. Thorkelin misled by the common supposition that Beowulf recorded the deeds of a Danish hero, he came to England under learned and noble patronage, and after many disappointments produced his edition of the Scyldingis, as he chose to call it. But though some courage was required to induce an old man to make this journey, undergo these fatigues, and beard the resentment of all Saxonists by offering to do what they were too modest or too idle to attempt; yet still more courage was required to publish a work not five consecutive lines of which are without errors of transcription, or five consecutive words without errors of translation. It is truly wonderful to see with what perverse ingenuity both text and sense are every minute transfigured in this edition: and yet, till it appeared, most English scholars were contented to believe either with Hickes, that the poem recorded the exploits of one Beowulf, contra quosdam regulos