The Anglo-Saxon Poems of Beowulf, The Scop or Gleeman’s Tale, and the
Fight at Finnesburg. With a literal translation, notes, and glossary,
&c., by Benjamin Thorpe. Oxford: printed by James Wright, Printer to the
University. M.DCCC.LV.
*Reprinted, 1875. 12mo, pp. xxxiv, 330.
Third English Translation. Short Lines.
_Author’s Prefatory Remarks._
‘Twenty-four years have passed since, while residing in Denmark,
I first entertained the design of one day producing an edition of
Beowulf; and it was in prosecution of that design that,
immediately on my arrival in England in 1830, I carefully collated
the text of Thorkelin’s edition with the Cottonian manuscript.
Fortunately, no doubt, for the work, a series of cares, together
with other literary engagements, intervened and arrested my
progress. I had, in fact, abandoned every thought of ever resuming
the task: it was therefore with no slight pleasure that I hailed
the appearance of Mr. Kemble’s first edition of the text of
Beowulf in 1833....
‘Copies of Mr. Kemble’s editions having for some time past been of
rare occurrence, I resolved on resuming my suspended labour, and,
as far as I was able, supplying a want felt by many an Anglo-Saxon
student both at home and abroad....
‘My first impulse was to print the text of the poem as it appears
in the manuscript, with a literal translation in parallel columns,
placing all conjectural emendations at the foot of each page; but,
on comparing the text with the version in this juxta-position,
so numerous and so enormous and puerile did the blunders of the
copyist appear, and, consequently, so great the discrepance
between the text and the translation, that I found myself
compelled to admit into the text the greater number of the
conjectural emendations, consigning to the foot of the page the
corresponding readings of the manuscript. In every case which I
thought might by others be considered questionable, I have
followed the more usual course, of retaining in the text the
reading of the manuscript, and placing the proposed correction at
foot....
‘Very shortly after I had collated it, the manuscript suffered
still further detriment.
‘In forming this edition I resolved to proceed independently of
the version or views of every preceding editor.’ --Pages vii,
viii, xii, xiii.
_Criticism of Thorpe’s Text._
Considering the amount of time that had elapsed between this and the
edition of Kemble[1], Thorpe can hardly be said to have made a
satisfactory advance. In some respects his edition is actually inferior
to Kemble’s. It is probable, for example, that the collation of which
the author speaks in his introduction was the one which he had made
twenty years before, and that, in taking up his work a second time,
he did not trouble himself to revise it. At any rate, the MS. did not
receive from Thorpe that respectful attention that it had had from
Kemble. Thorpe was more clever than the former scholar in deciphering
faded lines of the MS., but he was not always careful to indicate those
letters which he actually found there, and those he himself supplied
from conjecture. Yet these readings were often of sufficient importance
to affect an entire passage, and later scholarship has in many cases
deciphered readings whose sense is entirely different from Thorpe’s.
Thus his edition presents striking divergences from later texts, while
no explanation of them is offered in the footnotes. Not only does he
frequently incorporate his own readings in the text without noting the
MS. forms, but he even makes mistakes in the MS. forms which he does
note. A collation of Thorpe’s text with the MS. has revealed a
carelessness which was all the more reprehensible in that it came from a
scholar who was thought to be well-nigh infallible. A few examples of
this carelessness are given:--
Line 319 (158)[2], _banan_ (misreads MS. in footnote).
487 (241), _Ic_ (word emended from _le_ without noting MS. form).
1160 (578), _hwæþere_ (emends without noting the MS. form).
1207 (601), _ac him_ (omits a word).
4408 (2201), _hilde hlemmum_ (MS. misread in a footnote.
Emendation unnecessary).
At line 2218 the MS., badly mutilated at this point, reads,
_... slæpende be syre ... de þeofes cræfte._
In Thorpe’s edition the line reads (4443),
_... slæpende be fire, fyrena hyrde þeófes cræfte._
Not only does he fail to state that he has changed MS. _sy_ to _fi_, but
he gives no indication that for the words _fyrena hyrde_ there is no
room in the MS., and that the reading is entirely of his own making.
In order to afford a comparative estimate of the work of Thorpe and
Kemble, I append the texts of each as they appear at what is now line
2000[3].