Le Morte Darthur
eloquent and ornated style and phrase.’
No new edition seems to have been published till 1816, when two
independent editions appeared, one in two, and the other in three 24mo
volumes. Both are modernised for popular use, and are probably the
volumes through which most of my own generation made their first
acquaintance with King Arthur and his knights; but neither has any
merit as to its editing.
In 1817 Messrs. Longmans and Co. published an edition in two volumes
quarto, with an introduction and notes by Southey, who says,’The
present edition is a reprint with scrupulous exactness from the first
edition by Caxton, in Earl Spencer’s library[31].’ As it appears from a
note[32] that he had nothing to do with the superintendence of the
press, which was undertaken by Mr. Upcott, he was probably unaware that
eleven leaves were, as I have mentioned above, then wanting in the copy
from which this reprint was made. These had not then been restored in
fac-simile; for Earl Spencer’s copy contains a note, signed by Messrs.
Longmans and dated 1816, which gives a list of the pages then wanting;
and, in fact, the substitutes for them which actually appear in
Southey’s edition differ widely from the restored, or the original,
text. Thus in chapter xii. of the last book, besides the interpolation
of the long passage ‘O ye myghty and pompous lordes,’ &c., which is not
in Caxton, there are in the first eleven lines thirty-five variations
of spelling and punctuation, besides the introduction of the words ‘but
continually mourned un—’ and ‘needfully as nature required,’ which are
not in Caxton, and the change of Caxton’s ‘on the tombe of kyng Arthur
& quene Guenever’ into ‘on kynge Arthur’s & quene Gwenever’s tombe.’
And thus throughout the pages in question—seventeen in number[33]—the
spelling constantly, and words and even sentences occasionally, differ
from the real text of Caxton[34].
When at page 113 of volume i. the editor introduces the words ‘certayne
cause’ to complete the sense, he is careful to call attention, in a
foot-note, to the fact that these words are not in the original, but
taken from the ‘second edition,’ by which I presume he means that of
1498. But when he subsequently supplies seventeen pages which were also
not in his original, he gives no hint of the fact; and his reticence
was so successful that for fifty years the interpolations passed as
genuine among learned critics, who quoted from them passages wholly
spurious as Caxton’s genuine text. It was only in 1867 that, in
collating Earl Spencer’s copy with the edition of Southey, I discovered
that these passages—to which my attention was directed by Messrs.
Longman’s note above mentioned—did not correspond with Caxton’s text,
as represented by Whittaker’s restorations: and on afterwards collating
them with the Osterley text itself I found the like result. It remained
to trace them to their real sources. This was not so easy as might be
supposed, for though it was evident that Mr. Upcott must have had
recourse to one or other of the existing editions, the interpolated
passages in fact agree exactly with none of them. But a careful
collation of the last four chapters of the book (which include more
than half the interpolations, and may be taken as a fair specimen of
the whole) with the old texts, leaves no doubt that, with the exception
of the first thirty-six lines of chapter x, they were taken, like the
two words mentioned above, from the first edition of Wynkyn de Worde,
but with the spelling occasionally altered, and here and there a small
word put in, left out, or changed. These alterations throw an ingenious
disguise over the whole; but if we penetrate through this we find that
in these four chapters there are only thirteen words differing from
those in Wynkyn de Worde’s first edition, and these unimportant; while
in his second edition, and in those of Copland and East, the variations
from Mr. Upcott’s text of the same chapters are respectively
fifty-seven, fifty-six, and fifty in number, and many of them important
in kind: and if we go to the edition of 1634 we find the differences
still greater, except as to those thirty-six lines, which are supplied
from this edition, as they were wanting in the other copy. But the
colophon, or concluding paragraph of the book, Mr. Upcott could not
take from any of the editions which followed that of Caxton; for though
Wynkyn de Worde might, and in fact did, supply at least one or two of
the first words, the latter part of his colophon relates to his own
edition, and departs widely from that of Caxton, while those in the
later editions are still more unlike; and yet Mr. Upcott’s colophon is
a tolerable, though not an exact, representation of that of Caxton. But
his other materials can be ascertained beyond a doubt. They are, the
colophon as given by Ames, and repeated by Dibdin in a modernised and
otherwise inexact form[35], and that which first appeared in the
Catalogue of the Harleian Library[36], and was thence copied in the
article on Caxton in the _Biographia Britannica_, and also in Herbert’s
Additions to Ames. The colophons of Ames and of the Harleian Catalogue
have important variations from each other and from that of Caxton; and
as Mr. Upcott adopts some portions of each which are not found either
in the other, or in Caxton, we see the manner in which the paragraph in
question was compounded. Each stone of the ingeniously fitted mosaic
may be referred to the place from which it was taken. We cannot indeed
choose positively between Ames and Dibdin, or among the Harleian
Catalogue, the Biographia, and Herbert; but as the two paragraphs which
are required in addition to that of Wynkyn de Worde are both found in
Herbert’s Ames, it seems most probable that Mr. Upcott had recourse to
that work, though another combination would have served the purpose
equally well. That the interpolated passages are not taken from the
Osterley Caxton itself, even in the roughest and most careless manner,
is quite evident[37].
In 1858 and 1866 Mr. Wright published successive editions reprinted
from that of 1634. His learned introduction and notes are of
considerable interest; but nothing can justify the reprinting the most
corrupt of all the old editions when the first and best was within
reach, though perhaps at greater cost.
In 1868 was published the first edition of the present volume, with the
purpose of giving the original text in a form available for ordinary
readers, and especially for boys, from whom the chief demand for this
book will always come. It is a reprint of the original Caxton with the
spelling modernised, and those few words which are unintelligibly
obsolete replaced by others which, though not necessarily unknown to
Caxton, are still in use, yet with all old forms retained which do not
interfere with this requirement of being readable. For when, as indeed
is oftenest the case, the context makes even an obsolete phrase
probably, if not precisely, known, I have left it in the text, and
given its meaning in the Glossary, in which I have chiefly followed
Roquefort, Halliwell, and Wright. In the Glossary I have also added a
few geographical notes for those readers who may care for them. And for
the like reason—of making the book readable—such phrases or passages
as are not in accordance with modern manners have been also omitted or
replaced by others which either actually occur or might have occurred
in Caxton’s text elsewhere. I say manners, not morals, because I do not
profess to have remedied the moral defects of the book which I have
already spoken of. Lord Tennyson has shown us how we may deal best with
this matter, in so far as Sir Thomas Malory has himself failed to treat
it rightly; and I do not believe that when we have excluded what is
offensive to modern manners there will be found anything practically
injurious to the morals of English boys, for whom I have chiefly
undertaken this work, while there is much of moral worth which I know
not where they can learn so well as from the ideals of magnanimity,
courage, courtesy, reverence for women, gentleness, self-sacrifice,
chastity, and other manly virtues, exhibited in these pages.
The omissions, not many, nor in any sense constituting an abridgment of
the original, were thought desirable to fit the book for popular
reading. And if any one blames the other departures from the exact form
of that original, I would ask him to judge from the specimens of the
old type and spelling which I have given at the end of each book, and
of the volume, whether a literal and verbal reproduction of the whole
would not be simply unreadable except by students of old English[38].
And if some departure from the original was necessary, it was
reasonable to carry it so far as, though no farther than, my purpose
required. And, subject to these conditions, the present volume is in
fact a more accurate reproduction of Caxton’s text than any other
except those of Southey and Dr. Sommer. I have, indeed, made use of
Southey’s text for this edition, having satisfied myself by occasional
collation with the Althorp and Osterley Caxtons that it is a
sufficiently accurate reprint excepting as to the passages above
mentioned; and these have been taken by me from the original in the way
I have said.
In 1862, 1868, 1871, 1880, abridgments of Malory’s book were edited by
J. T. King, E. Conybeare, B. M. Ranking, and S. Lanier, respectively.
And in 1886 Mr. Ernest Rhys edited a reprint of fourteen of the
twenty-one books, from the version of Mr. Wright, with further
modernisations and an introduction.
In 1889, 1890, and 1891, Dr. H. Oskar Sommer edited, and Mr. Nutt
published, in three volumes, what will henceforth be the best, if not
quite the best possible, edition of Caxton’s original text, for the
scholar and the student. It would be hard to over-rate the industry,
the learning, and the munificent public spirit of these worthy
representatives of Sir Thomas Malory and William Caxton. The first
volume gives the text of the Althorp copy, page for page, line for
line, word for word, and letter for letter, with no change but that of
Roman for black letter type. It is, indeed, too scrupulously exact, for
it reproduces the mistakes in Whittaker’s fac-simile pages which now
form part of the Althorp copy, only correcting these by collations with
the Osterley original, given in the second volume. Whittaker has no
more authority than any other mere copyist; and the direct correction
of his mistakes would have made Dr. Sommer’s reprint a perfect
representation of the original while making a reprint of the collations
unnecessary. Besides these collations, and others of the second edition
of Wynkyn de Worde with the text of Caxton, Dr. Sommer’s second volume
contains a complete bibliography of the original text and all its after
editions; an Index of names of persons and places; a Glossary, or
indeed dictionary, of words, whether obsolete or still in use; and an
Essay on the language of the book.
In the third volume, after a graceful essay by Mr. Andrew Lang on the
literary merits of Malory, Dr. Sommer gives us a series—an original
and very important series—of ‘Studies on the Sources’; and he prints
from MSS. in the British Museum the only two of those ‘sources’ which
had not been so made accessible already, either by ancient or modern
editors. Into this hitherto chaotic mass of mediæval romances, French
and English, prose or verse, Dr. Sommer has now first brought light and
order. With an almost inconceivable amount of thoughtful and learned
labour, he has collated the various manuscripts with the printed
editions and with Malory’s book, in a detail which, great as it is,
represents, as he tells us, a still more minute investigation of which