Selections from [Chaucer's] Canterbury Tales

possess the ipsissima verba of Chaucer. There is far greater certainty now, especially in the case of The Canterbury Tales, as to what Chaucer, in any given passage, actually wrote than there is as to what Shakespeare wrote.

On December 29, 1868, when the reprinting of the several texts by the Chaucer Society had not yet advanced beyond the Prologue and The Knight's Tale, the Rev. Prof. John Earle wrote to the founder of the society, Dr. F. J. Furnivall:

'I do not at all agree with you that the value of your labours is minished by the small amount of variation you have as yet discovered in the Chaucer texts. Indeed, it seems to me to tell rather in the other direction.

It comes to this we are in possession of the real and palpable words of Chaucer, and there is no room to doubt it; at least, as concerns his most famous and popular poems. That is, if the same range of variation holds throughout The Canterbury Tales. It may prove larger in some than in others. . . . It would, of course, have been more fruitful in curiosities of the English language if a great and complicated system of varieties had been discovered; but, on the other hand, a small number of variations, and those all within a limited and definite range, has the result of assuring us that we look upon the veritable text of Chaucer with hardly a film of interposed modification.

'The Lansdowne is, indeed, full of varieties, and those of a strongly marked character; but they are hardly of a nature to raise a question about the original text of the poet. They seem to me to be provincial work.'

In the Selections, the aim has been to represent Chaucer

at his best, both as a story-teller and as a poet. Accordingly, along with the tales given entire, with a few unimpor

tant omissions, tales among the most admirably told, —

are given selections which are among the most poetical in The Canterbury Tales, some of them being from Tales which could not, in these days, be introduced into a textbook for students.

I have followed Alfred W. Pollard's mode of indicating the syllabic value of the final e, in his edition of The Canterbury Tales, by marking it with a small dot which is hardly noticeable when the eye is cast over the page, and of indicating, with the ordinary acute accent, such accentuations of words as differ from present usage, and such initial syllables of acephalous verses as constitute their first feet.

For ready reference, I have given in the Glossary a separate entry to every different grammatical form of the same word, instead of giving, as is usually done, various forms under one heading. Where different parts of a verb have the same form, they are given under the same heading; e.g., biquethe, to bequeath, D 1121; pp. D 1164; blent, pr. s. blinds, deceives, G 1391; pp. G 1077; that is, the infinitive and the past participle have here the common form, biquethe, and the present singular, third person, and the past participle, have the common form, blent.

My acknowledgments of special obligations are due to the monumental edition of the Complete Works of Chaucer, by the Rev. Dr. Walter W. Skeat, and to the greatly sağacious Studies in Chaucer, his Life and Writings, by Prof. Thomas R. Lounsbury, of Yale University.

And every student and editor of Chaucer must feel under obligations, direct or indirect, to the founder and indefatigable conductor of the London Chaucer Society, the Early English Text, the New Shakespeare, the Browning, and other societies, Dr. F. J. Furnivall, to whom the whole learned world is more indebted than to any other living man, for being put in possession of manuscript literature of the earlier periods of the English language, and for being furnished with extensive material subservient to the study of later authors.

CASCADILLA COTTAGE, ITHACA, N.Y.,
August 29, 1896.

HIRAM CORSON.