ABSTRACT
Distinguished Sir, I could not have expected such a friendly letter from you for my insignificant observations. I hope, however, at one time to deserve it and only want to say now that if you seek to answer anything from MSS, or wish to possess a copy of any kind of an English MSS, I want to do all that I can for you with industry and work. I had even copied down the entire poem of Beowulf in order to send it to you; I have been, however, convinced by my friends to have it printed; thus instead of’ my MS, you shall soon receive a printed copy. Now I am sending you a few words which I have found in different MSS, and they are seldom or not at all to be found in printed books; together with a few questions, which, if you will be so gracious as to answer them, will be highly useful to me. The Codex Exoniensis remains almost entirely unprinted. A few very badly copied fragments are published in Conybeare’s Illustrations; yet the whole Codex is extremely important for language, poetry and Anglo-Saxon rune study. [23 very detailed notes follow, mostly on single words in Beowulf. Kemble complains of Thorkelin’s ‘horrible inaccuracy’, and declares the second handwriting of the MS ‘certainly much younger than the first’.]
of wicg, heafela umbor etc.? Certainly the Clarissimi knew very little of the A.S. language. Even Junius, the oraculum could not, or would not read the MSS. Thorkelin’s Beowulf has not a line copied without mistakes. And for a translation-God in Heaven: You will better be able to judge that when you possess my edition which will come very soon. I would like to print with it first the poem of the Traveller, Cod.Ex. (that perhaps enlarges so much on Beowulf) [i.e. Widsith] and also the Battle of Finnes-burh. Also I have a very complete verbal and glossarial index prepared. It would be, however too costly, and as we are printing only one hundred copies, my book dealer (Pickering) will not allow me the whole index. Therefore I am giving only the text of Beowulf, and for glosses the unusual words and those which can’t be found in Lye. The Englishmen shall certainly lose something with this, because I had written down all the precise formulae and also the genera, etc. [Praises Thorpe’s Cædmon, about to appear (1832), and predicts failure for Sir Frederic Madden’s edition of Layamon, eventually published in 1847.]
Excuse me now, if I pose the following question. In Beow. 37 [i.e Thorkelin, p. 37] there is fere fyhtum. That must be false. I don’t understand it, and I don’t know how to better it. What do you think of it? Also p. 84 elne un-filitme which I as little understand. 86,/walfagre winter/wunode mið Finnel/unhlitme/eard ge-munde/. Should unhlitme or un-hlitine stand, and what does it mean, or should we suppose a lost word and read/…unhlitne? I do not hesitate to ask these questions, because I am indeed your pupil, and have taken all my knowledge from you [ends with praise of the Deutsche Grammatik, comments on a German MS, and a string of corrected readings to different texts].
