British Museum: they have been now made public by the Society’s edition,
with their large additions to our vocabulary, and their interesting
dialectal formations. The _Sir Gawayne_, from the same MS., could only
have been had before in Sir Frederick Madden’s rare and costly edition,
printed by the Bannatyne Club. And the _Lauder_ has restored, as it
were, to Scotland, a Poet whose name had found no place in the standard
History of Scottish Poetry, and the Biographical Dictionaries.

Though the Society started late in the past year, these four Texts were
published within a fortnight of its close; and before that time the
first Text for the second year was in the printer’s hands. The Committee
pledge themselves to continue their exertions to render the Texts issued
worthy of the Society, and to complete the issue of each set within the
year assigned to it. They rely with confidence on the Subscribers to use
their best endeavours to increase the list of Members, in order that
funds may not be wanting to print the material that editors place at
their service. The aim of the Committee is, on the one hand, to print
all that is most valuable of the yet unprinted MSS. in English, and, on
the other, to re-edit and reprint all that is most valuable in printed
English books, which from their scarcity or price are not within the
reach of the student of moderate means.[6] Those relating to KING ARTHUR
will be the Committee’s first care; those relating to our Language and
its Dialects the second; while in due proportion with these, will be
mixed others of general interest, though with no one special common
design. The Committee hope that no year will pass without the issue of
one Text in the Northern dialect, as well in acknowledgment of the
support that the Society has received in Scotland, as to obviate the
hitherto limited circulation of the works of the early Scotch writers
among students south of the Humber.