Advertisements 327

* * * * *

KING ALFRED'S GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE.

There is no other printed copy of the A.-S. _Orosius_ than the very
imperfect edition of Daines Barrington, which is perhaps the most
striking example of incompetent editorship which could be adduced. The
text was printed from a transcript of a transcript, without much pains
bestowed on collation, as he tells us himself. How much it is to be
lamented that the materials for a more complete edition are diminished
by the disappearance of the _Lauderdale MS._, which, I believe, when Mr.
Kemble wished to consult it, could not be found in the Library at Ham.

Perhaps no more important illustration of the Geography of the Middle
Ages exists than Alfred's very interesting description of the _Geography
of Europe_, and the _Voyages of Othere and Wulfstan_; and this portion
of the _Hormesta_ has received considerable attention from continental
scholars, of which it appears Mr. Hampson is not aware. As long since as
1815 Erasmus Rask (to whom, after Jacob Grimm, Anglo-Saxon students are
most deeply indebted) published in the _Journal of the Scandinavian
Literary Society_ (ii. 106. sq.) the Anglo-Saxon Text, with a Danish
translation, introduction, and notes, in which many of the errors of
Barrington and Forster are pointed out and corrected. This was reprinted
by Rask's son in the _Collection_ he gave of his father's
_Dissertation_, in 2 vols. Copenhagen, 1834.

Mr. Thorpe, in the 2nd edit. of his _Analecta_, has given "Alfred's
Geography," &c., no doubt accurately printed from the Cotton MS., and