FOREWORD, BY DR. F. J. FURNIVALL.
WHEN the late Thomas Wright offered to edit the following text for us, I got Mr. Wm. Rossiter, then of the Working Men's College, to copy it, and add the missing bits from Caxton's print of 1484. I also offered to have the proofs of the text read with the originals by a trustworthy man; but Mr. Wright said he would read them himself. Later, Mr. Edmund Brock found several mistakes in the text, and he compiled a list of them, which we issued in a thirteen-page appendix of "Additions and Corrections." On my asking Mr. Wright why he had not carried out his promise to me to read his proofs with the MS. and Caxton, he said that he did read the first sheet with the MS. and found it so correct that he did not think it necessary to read the rest. This was too bad of him, as the Society was quite ready to pay a good reader to do this part of the Editor's work.
The book having run out of print, one of the Clarendon Press readers made in my old copy of it all the corrections noted by Mr. Brock; and the new proofs to p. 48 were read with the MS. by Miss Evelyn Fox, and the rest by me, I adding a few footnotes from the French. Instead of adding a final e for all the d̛, g̛, ℏ, ƚƚ, n̄, of the MS., these letters have been printed as they stand.
In the extracts from Caxton I have had the tagd d̛, g̛, ℏ, printed as they (in his fount) are used in his type No. 4 *, which (says Blades, ii. xxxvii) made its first appearance among Caxton's types in the autumn of 1483, when he was printing the "Confessio Amantis" and the "Knight of the Tower." In the latter of these