Beowulf. “Zupitza” is the E. E. T. S. edition already mentioned. A, B, Wülcker, and Zupitza, do not mark vowel-length. The names of the proposers of the chief emendations adopted in the text are given for credit’s sake. Rejected emendations are quoted but sparsely; only when they are backed by considerable authority, or when I was in doubt as to the true reading. Points of grammar are discussed in the notes only in so far as they affect the question of readings. I have indulged but sparingly in the luxury of personal emendations, because they are obviously the greatest disqualification for discharging duly the functions of an editor.
Glossary. The plan on which the glossary is arranged must be tested by experience. Some decisions which had to be taken when I began to work on it may prove to have been mistaken; certainly I am not concerned to defend them here. I have endeavoured to furnish the requisite amount of help and no more. Every passage that struck me as really difficult I have translated under what appeared to me to be the crucial word, but I wish it to be distinctly understood that my renderings are meant to be suggestive and not authoritative.
Acknowledgments. It can but be a pleasure for me to make this public acknowledgment of the ready, willing, and efficient help which I have received, and without which the date of publication would have been seriously delayed. Mr C. Sapsworth, M.A., gave me his notes on the grammar of the poem, which have been of use in several ways. The labour of collating every line of the autotypes of the MS. with the texts of all the principal editions was done almost entirely by my wife, Mr D. Johnson, B.A., and other friends; and in the preparation of
