book contains much material for linguistic study. From the purely literary point of view, it does not introduce much new matter of striking merit. There is, of course, the ever fresh charm and characteristic naïveté of detached phrases: “þe coluere of noe” for the dove sent forth from the Ark; “a Sory beuerech” for the bitter cup of Gethsemane; “a weping dale” for “this vale of tears.” No. 49, “All Other Love is like the Moon,” from a MS. at Eton hitherto unprinted, has an attractive simplicity; but No. 69, from Grimestone’s book, disappoints the fancy stirred by its refrain:
Lueli ter of loueli eyȝe, qui dostu me so wo?
Sorful ter of sorful eyȝe, þu brekst myn herte a-to.
No. 5, from a New College, Oxford, MS., might find a corner in anthologies:
Louerd, þu clepedest me
an ich nagt ne ansuarede þe
Bute wordes scloe and sclepie:
“þole yet! þole a litel!”
Bute “yiet” and “yiet” was endelis,
and “þole a litel” a long wey is.
There is, moreover, a wealth of material for students of literary morphology, and Professor Carleton Brown’s notes are constantly stimulating. His general introduction, when it comes, will no doubt comment amongst other things on the elaborate structures of the stanzaic forms, which, in this happy spring-tide of our language, the great freedom of riming allowed to the poets. No. 81 corresponds in rhythm and rime-scheme (apart from the first line) to The Nutbrown Maid. No. 83 shows very curious rhythmic evolutions. In the Vernon series, several poems of similar structure, with a rime-scheme ab ab ab ab bc bc, might have been presented in similar style; but Nos. 101 and 106 are printed with indentations, No. 103 flush. Nos. 51–54, from Harleian MS. 2316, are there written, the editor notes, “as prose”: and though this is not without parallel, one is again prompted to wonder why.
In his note on No. 67, the earliest version of the Dialogue between Jesus and the B.V. at the Cross, Professor Carleton Brown makes a very suggestive comment in referring to the later versions: “A comparison of these several versions affords an interesting opportunity to observe the tendencies in lyrical development.” How did the variations arise? Such a lyric cannot be held to be as “fatherless” as a popular ballad; but the occurrence of versions in such
