ABSTRACT

Richard Price (1790-1833) was the first English commentator on Beowulf with a firm grip on its language. At the start of his ‘Editor’s Preface’ to Thomas Warton, The History of English Poetry…A New Edition, 4 vols, London 1824, from which this excerpt is taken, he adds a reference to Thorkelin; corrects Warton’s belief, expressed in the essay ‘Of the Origin of Romantic Fiction in Europe’, that ‘dragons, giants, and fairies’ were ‘the progeny of Arabian fancy’; and adds to Warton’s ‘Note on the Saxon Ode on the Victory of Athelstan’ an extensive linguistic commentary depending heavily on Beowulf. The ‘Editor’s Preface’, however, gave him his best chance of passing on knowledge of the poem to Warton’s readers (for Warton had known of Beowulf only through Wanley, see Introduction, p. 3-4). He starts characteristically by discussing the Classical concept of the ‘Lamia’, and relegating Beowulf to a footnote. Vol. I, pp. 42-3.