Thorpe's first volume gives us a 'first series,' extending over nearly a whole year, from Christmas to the second Sunday in Advent. His second volume gives us a 'second series,' again commencing at Christmas, and coming down to the Deposition of St. Martin (Nov. 11); followed by a few occasional homilies and some prayers. This enables us at once to understand Ælfric's allusion to his 'two former books' in his own preface to the present work; see page 3, l. 7. In like manner, the Lives of Saints are arranged nearly in the order of the calendar, and present us with a 'third series'; though they were doubtless intended to constitute an independent work, and are written, on the whole, in a more poetical and less didactic style.
There is only one good MS. which could be taken as the foundation for the text, to which I have, accordingly, adhered throughout. This is the MS. marked Julius E. vii, in the Cottonian collection in the British Museum. But I have taken the opportunity of collating other MSS., wherever any other copies of the Lives exist, giving all the various readings in foot-notes, with the exception of a few late spellings that are, comparatively, of no value. The number of copies of each Life is given at the head of each, with an explanation of the symbols denoting the MSS[1].
I have to remark that MS. O. (Otho, B. x) and MS. V. (Vitellius, D. xvii) are both very much injured by fire, many leaves being lost and destroyed. By help of the printed text, I have been enabled to give several good readings from them in passages which, without such assistance, are hardly legible. Many of the Lives are written in a loose sort of alliterative
- ↑ Tables exhibiting all the copies of all of Ælfric's Homilies are printed in the Seventh Report of the E. E. T. S. for 1871. In the table of Homilies in MS. Julius, E. vii., the first homily is marked as being 'unique.' But it appears that this is not exactly the case, since the homily in MS. Bodley 343, no. lxxv, fol. 155 (Wanley, p. 24), though beginning with different words, is practically the same thing. It is, however, a very late and inferior copy, from the various readings in which little is to be gathered. Yet I was glad to see that it contains the word wile, which, at p. 20, l. 170, I had inserted, by conjecture, to complete the sense.
