THE

DEPARTING SOUL'S

ADDRESS TO THE BODY

A FRAGMENT OF

A SEMI-SAXON POEM,

DISCOVERED AMONG THE ARCHIVES OF WORCESTER CATHEDRAL,

BY SIR THOMAS PHILLIPPS, BART.

WITH AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION,

BY

S. W. SINGER.

LONDON: PRINTED BY LUKE JAMES HANSARD & CO.

M.DCCC.XLV.

The student of our early literature and language is indebted to the zeal of Sir Thomas Phillipps, for the discovery of the following interesting Fragment, which appears to have formed part of a volume that contained Ælfric's Grammar and Glossary, probably of the Twelfth Century. The fragments were discovered among the archives of Worcester Cathedral; and in 1836 Sir Thomas Phillipps printed the whole of them in folio. I know not whether the form or the typographical arrangement has been the cause of the neglect of this publication; but it has escaped both Mr. Wright and Mr. Thorpe. The former, in his interesting edition of "The Latin Poems of Walter de Mapes," where he has given the literary history of this legend with extracts, has not even referred to our fragment; nor has Mr. Thorpe adverted to it in his publication of the "Codex Exoniensis," which contains an Anglo-Saxon poem of the same kind, with which it is interesting to compare this later version of the legend. There is a portion of another semi-Saxon poem, entitled "The Grave," printed in Mr. Conybeare's "Illustrations," and by Mr. Thorpe in his "Analecta Anglo-Saxonica," which appears to be by the same hand, or at any rate of the same school and age. Indeed some of the 

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