"fit" of the poem, with a view to facilitate a knowledge of its episodes.

WASHINGTON AND LEE UNIVERSITY,
LEXINGTON, VA., June, 1882.


NOTE II.

The editors now have the pleasure of presenting to the public a complete
text and a tolerably complete glossary of "Beówulf." The edition is the
first published in America, and the first of its special kind presented to
the English public, and it is the initial volume of a "Library of
Anglo-Saxon Poetry," to be edited under the same auspices and with the
coöperation of distinguished scholars in this country. Among these scholars
may be mentioned Professors F.A. March of Lafayette College, T.K. Price of
Columbia College, and W.M. Baskervill of Vanderbilt University.

In the preparation of the Glossary the editors found it necessary to
abandon a literal and exact translation of Heyne for several reasons, and
among others from the fact that Heyne seems to be wrong in the translation
of some of his illustrative quotations, and even translates the same
passage in two or three different ways under different headings. The
orthography of his glossary differs considerably from the orthography of
his text. He fails to discriminate with due nicety the meanings of many of
the words in his vocabulary, while criticism more recent than his latest
edition (1879) has illustrated or overthrown several of his renderings. The
references were found to be incorrect in innumerable instances, and had to
be verified in every individual case so far as this was possible, a few
only, which resisted all efforts at verification, having to be indicated by
an interrogation point (?). The references are exceedingly numerous, and