CORRECTIONS.

Pp. 2, 3, titles, read liflade.

P. 9, line 5, read bizeted.

P. 53, line 12; p. 57, line 6, read milzfule, milzful, for miltsfule, miltsful.

P. 63, version line 3, correct as opposite.

P. 75, line 15, uppart error of penman for uppaɲt, upwart.

The Subscriptions for 1872 became due on Jan. 1, and should be paid forthwith (not to the Treasurer, but) to the Hon. Sec., GEORGE JOACHIM, Esq., St Andrew House, Change Alley, London, E.C., by Post-office Order on the Chief Office, or to the Society's account at the Union Bank, Argyll St, Regent St, London, W.

No books will be sent to any Member until his Subscription for 1872, and his arrears, if any, are paid.

Early English Text Society.

Eighth Report of the Committee, January, 1872.

§ 1. THE Society's Texts last year took an extraordinary range, as well in language as in subjects of interest. Stretching, on the one hand, from the time of Alfred to that of James I, they reacht, on the other, from the sufferings of Christ, from the Holy Grail, mystic, wonderful,' to sketches of Scotch manners in 1530, and of London follies in 1617. But over all this range the purpose of the Society was well carried out,-the desire to make plainer to Englishmen of to-day the life, the thought, and tongue of their forefathers, who in olden time called England

'home.'

The 'Joseph of Arimathie,' or History of the Holy Graal,

1

took men back to the Crusades of the twelfth century, and our own Lionheart, whose father's chaplain gave the world the vision of the Blood of God, to lift them out of the fierce passions of lawless life into the purity and holiness that alone could fit them for heaven. Still has the Vision power over us; never will it lose its fascination over the student of Middle-Age Romance. The ancient fragment of its History issued by the Society was first made known to Arthurian readers by its editor, Mr Skeat; and the three black-letter lives of Joseph of Arimathæa reprinted in the Appendix, with the quaint woodcut of the Glastonbury Thorn from Pynson's edition, and the general Introduction by Mr Skeat, added much to the interest of the book.

'King Alfred's West-Saxon Version of Gregory's Pastoral Care' chiefly claimed attention on account of its language. It gave opportunity for the study of the 9th-century forms, in contrast with those of the later stages of the language represented in most of our printed Anglo-Saxon books. But it was impossible for a reader to follow, page after page, the precepts of the old saint, without strong sympathy with his purpose, and without feeling what help his wise counsels must have given to those who in Alfred's time shepherded the flocks of God in our land. The teacher evidently taught from the experience of his own heart, warning his hearers against the temptations he had himself felt.

In 'The Legends of the Holy Rood, Symbols of the Passion, and Cross-Poems,' was contained a rare store of curious stories about the finding and making of Christ's Cross, the history of the tree from which it was cut, the nails that were driven into it, and everything else belonging to it,-details in which the mediæval mind ran riot. But the volume also included some very pathetic poems on the subject which most took hold of the religious feeling of the Middle Ages, the Mother by the Cross of her Son. Divine or non-divine, here all were one; and all hearts beat as they heard the sad lament-

Mother and child; life and death; the fate of the world: no wonder that such topics toucht the hearts of men.

The seven Minor Poems of Lindesay' brought again under view the social condition of Scotland in the middle of the 16th century, which had been dealt with by the former Parts of the poet's works, and by Lauder. The evils of Roman Catholicism,

§ 1, 2. Texts of 1871: Original and Extra Series. 3 the abuse of the Confessional, the misdeeds of courtiers, the absurdities of doctors, of women's long tails and veils, were all exposed in the strong, straight-hitting words of the forwarder of the Reformation in Scotland. Prof. Nichol's rapid sketch of Scotch Poetry, prefixt to these Poems, served, on the one hand, to bring under the notice of Southrons many names and works of worth not familiar to them before; and, on the other, to set Lyndesay, Lyon King, in his right place among his peers.

Of 'The Times' Whistle and other Poems, by R. C. gent, A.D. 1616,' some account was given in our last Report, p. 6; and a justification was there put forward of our Society's undertaking so late a work. Now that the book has appeared, its contents have proved the wisdom of its production. Its sketches of London and English life in Shakspere's time, the light it has thrown on many of the dark places of its day, have rendered the book acceptable to a larger circle of readers than the Society includes, and have shown that it would have been an act of culpable folly for the Committee to have left the MS. longer unprinted, especially when there was no other Society than our own to put it in type.

Assuredly the Texts of our Original Series in 1871 have nothing to fear when compared for range, variety, and interest, with those of any former year. Of course they were limited in number by the perpetual want of money that the Society suffers; but still, for their guinea, subscribers got over a thousand pages of sound matter,-less than a farthing a page.

§ 2. The income of the Extra Series is unluckily so much less than that of the Original Series, that in the former only three Texts could be issued in 1871. Yet the first two of these were of singular value to the student of Tudor England, from the light they threw on the social evils of Henry VIII's and his son's times, and the need they showed for a political as well as a religious Reformation. Across the gulf of three hundred years came voices to us that our own days echo; cries of the sacrifice of men to money, of the poor to landlords' and masters' greed; calls for a wider, a better education; demands for the removal of hindrances to men's well-being; reminders to us of what since then had been won from prejudice and ignorance; reminders, too, of how much remains to win.

Are such works 'dry-as-dust'? Nay, rather, living things, wet with the tears, quivering with the emotion, of those who yet plead and struggle for the Right.

Starkey's treatise, printed for the first time from the manuscript by the Society, is an authority of the first order, which