4 APPENDIX. In the above list, I have put a mark (+) to such of the readings as seem to be preferable to those in Asloan's manuscript, although they have not been adopted. Notwithstanding all the vigilance made use of to make the text as accurate as possible, the following errata require to be corrected. If any others should have likewise escaped, I flatter myself that they are not of much im- portance. St. xvi. 1. 5, Thai war,' read. Thai mak.'-St. xxi. 1. 6. 'Emperour ;' this word, which is contracted in the MS. in this, and in one or two other places, should have been printed Empriour.'--St. XXXIV. I. 8, Estate read Estatis.'—St. xLv. 1.7, That thai,' read. Thocht I thaim.'-St. 46, 1. 8,' Aft,' read Oft ;' 1.9, Armis, read Armes.'-St. XLVII. 1. 9, bowit, dele the inverted commas. St. 1. In the myddis of May.-Beyond all question, the most extensive and singular specimen of alliterative composition in the English language, is the Visions of Piers Plowman, which Fame has ascribed to Robert Langland, who flourished about the year 1970, and who, by the bye, is claimed as a native of Scotland, by David Buchanan, one of our older biographical writers, in his un- published treatise De Scriptoribus Scotiae illustribus. Much curious informa- tion concerning alliterative verse is contained in the preface to the splendid edition of the Visions, by the late Dr Whittaker. But I need not enlarge on a subject on which so much has been said; nor attempt to point out the mo- tives which led authors, at successive and different times, to adopt this fa- vourite practice of bringing together, (in the words of Sir Philip Sidney,) "Rimes Running in Rattling Rowes." In reference to the alliterative style of the HOWLAT, Mr George Chalmers, in the preface to his elaborate edition of Sir David Lyndsay's Works, says, “If it be inquired, by what artifices of composition the poets of these times sacrificed common sense to far-fetched conceits, they will be found in two sources; their desire of alliteration, and their passion for antiquated phraseo- logy. In obtaining the first object, they searched for words having the same prefixes, without any analogy of sense; and in quest of the last, they went be- yond the old English, into the Anglo-Saxon speech, as they found it in vulgar use. They thus sacrificed sense to sound, and facility to facture." -Not so, however, according to Holofernes, in Love's Labour's Lost'; who, in his "ex-
