Beowulf, a heroic poem of the eighth century, with a translation, notes,
and appendix, by Thomas Arnold, M.A. London: Longmans, Green & Co.,
1876. 8vo, pp. xliii, 223.
Fourth English Translation. Prose.
_Circumstances of Publication._
No edition of the text of _Beowulf_ had appeared in England since the
work of Thorpe[1], now twenty years old. The textual criticism of the
Germans had, meanwhile, greatly advanced the interpretation of the poem.
Grein’s text of the poem had passed into a second, and Heyne’s into a
third, edition. There was an opportunity, therefore, for an improved
English edition which should incorporate the results of German
scholarship. This edition Mr. Thomas Arnold (1823-1900) undertook to
supply.
_Relation of the Parts._
The Introduction contained a new theory of the origin of the poem[2].
But the important part of the book was the text and translation. There
is no glossary[3]. The notes are at the bottom of the page. Here
glossarial, textual, and literary information is bundled together. There
is a very inadequate bibliography in the Introduction.
_Nature of the Translation._
The translation is a literal prose version, printed under the text. It
resembles Kemble’s work[4], rather than Thorpe’s[5]. It eschews unwieldy
compounds, and makes no attempt to acquire an archaic flavor. Supplied
words are bracketed.
_Criticism of the Text._
Arnold had access to the MS., and gave the most thorough description of
it that had yet appeared. But, strangely enough, he did not make it the
basis of his edition. He speaks of a ‘partial collation’ of the MS., but
this appears to have been nothing more than a transcription of certain
fragmentary parts of the MS. One of these passages is printed in the
Introduction, where it is referred to as an ‘exact transcript’; yet, in
collating it with the Zupitza _Autotypes_, I have found the following
errors:--
Line 2219[6], þeowes _for_ þeofes.
2220, biorn _for_ beorna.
2211, geweoldum _for_ ge weoldum.
2223, b _for_ þ.
2225, wea ... _for_ weal ...
2226, inwlitode, inwatode _for_ mwatide.
Of course the faded condition of the MS. offers some excuse for one or
two of these errors, but, if we encounter mistakes in a short transcript
professedly exact, what would have been the fate of the text had the
entire MS. been collated?
Professor Garnett[7] has noted that Arnold’s text was taken from
Thorpe’s, with some changes to suit the 1857 text of Grein. In order to
test the accuracy of these statements I have made a collation of the
texts of Arnold, Thorpe, and the MS. The list of errors in Thorpe’s
text, which I have mentioned in a discussion of that work[8], is
repeated bodily in Arnold’s. Yet there was no excuse at this time for
the retention of many of these readings. Grundtvig[9] had corrected
several of them as early as 1861 by his collation of the Thorkelin
transcripts[10]; Heyne had got rid of them by collating Thorpe’s work
with Kemble’s[11] and Grundtvig’s. Arnold makes almost no reference to
the work of Heyne, and incorporates none of his emendations. He also
overlooked Grein’s 1867 text, which contained new readings and a
glossary. Arnold himself did not emend the text in a single instance.