*THE FRENCH WORKS

  Oxford

  AT THE CLARENDON PRESS

  1899

   Oxford PRINTED AT THE CLARENDON PRESS

  BY HORACE HART, M.A. PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY 

[Pg v]

[Pg v]

PREFACE

The publication of this book may most conveniently be explained by a short account of the circumstances which brought it about.

While engaged some years ago in studying the Chaucer manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, I incidentally turned my attention also to those of the Confessio Amantis. The unsatisfactory character of the existing editions of that poem was sufficiently well known, and it was generally recognized that the printed text could not safely be referred to by philologists, except so far as those small portions were concerned which happened to have been published from a good manuscript by Mr. A. J. Ellis in his Early English Pronunciation; so that, in spite of the acknowledged importance of the book in the history of the development of standard literary English, it was practically useless for linguistic studies. I was struck by the excellence of the authorities for its text which existed at Oxford, and on further investigation I convinced myself that it was here that the much needed new edition could best be produced. Accordingly I submitted to the Delegates of the University Press a proposal to edit the Confessio Amantis, and this proposal they accepted on the condition that I would undertake to edit also the other works, chiefly in French and Latin, of the same author, expressly desiring that the Speculum Meditantis, which I had lately identified[Pg vi] while searching the Cambridge libraries for copies of the Confessio Amantis, should be included in the publication. To this condition I 

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