PREFACE.
Reading edition
Halliwell's reprint of the Cotton MS. is open to objection, because the language of the MS. is specially rude, and can only be understood by professed antiquaries, no footnotes explanatory of the text being given, only a glossary at the end of the book. Also, Mr. Halliwell has taken his illustrations from various sources, not confining himself to English woodcuts—the Cotton MS. having no illustrations. If, however, the language in Halliwell's edition is too archaic, Bohn and Nimmo err in the opposite direction. Without illustrations, and clothed in modern English, they are bald in the extreme; whilst the editors of both have not been over careful to closely copy the text.
Seeing these difficulties, and dearly loving Sir John, in spite of his romancing, I cast about for a book which should fulfil the conditions of an edition I should like for my own reading; which should have the spice of the old language, without being unreadable, like the Cotton MS., and which contained the original quaint illustrations. This I have found in a reprint of Pynson's unique edition (now in the Grenville Library, British Museum), from which it varies very slightly, except in the modernizing of the language, which is rather an advantage; and which, by means of the copious footnotes I have made, will, I hope, be easily read by anybody.
Perhaps the Illustrations in one or two of the early foreign editions are quainter, but I wanted, and have got, a thoroughly representative English Edition, which gives Sir John's adventures, with their concomitant "Travellers' Tales," without the apocryphal stories which were introduced into some of the MSS. and foreign editions.
Of East, the printer of the exemplar I have chosen, very little is known; and, curiously, he is ignored in Herbert and Dibdin's edition of Ames' Typographical Antiquities. According to Ames, he was made free of the Stationers' Company 3rd December, 1565, and he gives his first known printed book as 1569, or a year later than the book I have copied. East, according to the same authority, was granted a patent for ruled paper for music, and worked both for Bird and Tallis. The date of his death does not seem to be known, but his widow, or daughter, printed a book of Bird's music in 1610.
JNO. ASHTON.
