ABSTRACT

Palmer (1965:24) describes this ‘unsympathetic but spirited account of Beowulf’ in Dale’s ‘Preface’ to his revised edition of Hugh Blair, Lectures on Rhetoric. and Belles Lettres, London 1845 as ‘probably not very different from that heard by [Dale’s] students in the London colleges’ between 1833 and 1840. Like many later professors of English, Dale seems not to have read the poem, and to be deriving his opinions quite likely from Ivanhoe. P. xxii Dale, cited by Palmer, p. 24.