twelfth century.

Attempts have been made to identify some of our extant Anglo-Saxon
literature with a name so eminent. In 1835 the Anglo-Saxon Psalter of
the Paris manuscript was first printed at Oxford, and as this book gives
a hundred of the Psalms in vernacular poetry, the suggestion that they
might be Aldhelm's, though modernised, had rhetorical attractions for
the editor (Thorpe), and supplied him with material for a few rather
idle sentences of his Latin preface. In 1840 Jacob Grimm edited (from
Thorpe's editio princeps) two poems of the Vercelli book, the "Andreas"
and the "Elene;" and in his preface he sought to fix this poetry upon
Aldhelm by a line of argument altogether fallacious, as was afterwards
shown by Mr. Kemble in his edition of the "Andreas" for the Ælfric
Society.

That which we have to show for this period in the native Kentish dialect
is less ambitious, but it will not be despised by the considerate
reader. In the beginnings of learning, when students had not the
apparatus of grammars and dictionaries, which now, being common, are
almost as much a matter of course as any gift of nature, it was
necessary for students to make lists of words and phrases for
themselves, and after a while a few of these would be thrown together,
and would be reduced to alphabetical order for facility of reference. It
is to such a process as this that we owe the Glossaries which form an
interesting branch of Anglo-Saxon literature. The Epinal Gloss is the
oldest of these, and it is very valuable because of the archaic forms of
many of the words. A selection is here given by way of specimen:--[62]


EPINAL GLOSS.