Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 2.djvu/83

 pursuit the principles of association and co-operation which he advocated in other relations of life. Of the Philological Society he became one of two honorary secretaries in 1853, and was solo secretary from 1862 till his death. He supported with enthusiasm the society's proposals for spelling reform, which Alexander John Ellis [q. v. Suppl. I] devised, and always took an active part in promoting such reform, adopting in his own writings a modified phonetic scheme. In another direction his energetic participation in the Philological Society's work bore more valuable fruit. At the end of 1858 the society, at Archbishop Trench's suggestion, resolved to undertake a supplement to Johnson's and Richardson's Dictionaries. But Furnivall urged a wholly new dictionary, and his proposal was adopted. On the death in 1861 of the first editor of the suggested dictionary, Herbert Coleridge [q. v.], Furnivall took his place, and he worked at the scheme intermittently for many years. At the same time he planned a 'concise' dictionary which should be an abstract of the larger undertaking. Although he accumulated much material for the double scheme he made little headway owing to his varied engagements. In 1876 the Oxford University Press took over the enterprise, appointing Dr. (afterwards Sir) James A. H. Murray editor. The 'New English Dictionary' was the result. To that great work Furnivall continued to contribute to the end of his life.

Meanwhile Furnivall was concentrating his attention on early and middle English literature. He deemed it a patriotic duty to reprint from manuscript works which were either unprinted or imperfectly printed. He valued old literature both for its own sake and for the light it shed on social history. His literary endeavours at first centred in the literature of the Arthurian romances, and he inaugurated his editorial labours with an edition of Lonelich's fifteenth-century epic 'Seynt Graal,' which he prepared for the Roxburghe Club (1861, 2 vols.; re-edited for the Early English Text Society, 1874-8). Two prominent bibliophile members of the Roxburghe Club, Henry Huth [q. v. Suppl. II] and Henry Hucks Gibbs, afterwards Baron Aldenham [q. v. Suppl. II], enlisted his services. In 1862, for the Roxburghe club, he undertook one of his most valuable pieces of textual labour, the 'Handlyng Synne' of Robert of Bninne, to which he added the 'Manuel des Pechiez' of William of Waddington, unhappily from a MS. of inferior textual value. In 1862 he also printed a collection of early English poems from MSS. for the Philological Society, and in 1865 he published with Macmillan the more attractive 'Morte d'Arthur,' from an Harleian MS.

In 1864, with a view to more effectual pursuit of his literary aims, Furnivall founded the Early English Text Society. It began with 75 subscribers, Ruskin and Tennyson amongst them. Its first publication was Furnivall's edition of a short metrical 'Life of King Arthur.' The society flourished under Furnivall's energetic guidance, and he worked hard for it both as director and editor for more than forty years. He enlisted the co-operation of scholars all over the world, who edited texts for the society. At first the society's sole aim was to print mediaeval MSS. But in 1867 a second or extra series was instituted to include reprints of the work of the earliest English printers. At his death the society had issued 140 volumes in the original series and 107 in the extra series. The vastness of the material with which Furnivall sought to deal led him to found other societies on similar fines for separate treatment of volmninous mediaeval writers. Chaucer, Wiclif, and Lydgate each in his view needed a society exclusively devoted to his interests. It was chiefly at the suggestion of Henry, Bradshaw [q. v. Suppl. I] that Furnivall started in 1868 the Chaucer Society. His hope was to form an accurate text of the poems by collation of all known manuscripts and to ascertain from both internal and external evidence the date at which each of Chaucer's known works was composed. His labour began in 1868 with the issue of his six- text edition of the 'Canterbury Tales,' which provides the best possible material for textual study. There followed parallel text editions of Chaucer's 'Minor Poems' (1871-9), and of his 'Troilus and Criseyde' (1881-2). Although he had collaborators, the most important of the Chaucer Society's pubhcations are the fruit of Furnivall's own industry. He thus set Chaucerian study on a new and sure footmg. Another enterprise diverted Furnivall's attention to English literature of a later period. In 1868 he and Prof. J. W. Hales edited and printed by subscription in three volumes the folio MS. of the 'Percy Ballads' [see ]. With a view to continuing Percy's labours in rescuing old ballads from obhvion, Furnivall thereupon founded the Ballad Society, which was designed to make accessible the large store of ballad