In 1729, the Rev. John Lewis, well known by his Life of Caxton and other autiquarian publications, again committed it to the press; upon the whole his edition may be pronounced superior to either of the former, yet it is not without its defects. The manuscript from which Lewis printed was lent him by Mr. Thomas Beake of Stourmouth, in Kent, and appears in many instances to have deserved the preference over those collated by Hearne; but this is not always the case, and it frequently happens that where the sense in the latter is simple and obvious, Mr. Beake's MS, has it involved and obscure.
Mr. Lewis's edition was again printed in London in 1731, and in Dublin in 1765. It was from a collation of the printed copies with Lewis's manuscript collections for his edition, I prepared that which I published in 1817.
Upon the present occasion I have carefully revised the text by a comparison of the two manuscripts mentioned above with my former edition, and the result has been the correction of many errors, some of which materially affected the sense. I have in this instance been induced to reform the unsettled and wretched orthography and punctuation, so as to render this edition acceptable to the general reader, for whom it is more particularly designed; at the same time I beg to assure the literary antiquary that it has been done with proper caution, and that the
