Page:Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - Tolkien and Gordon - 1925.djvu/12

vi is fair to him), is in proportion more extensive. The glossary, for instance, bulks unusually large. But to a certain extent the author has made this inevitable. While a full glossary is still essential for students of any Middle English text that merits a close and scholarly attention, the vocabulary and idiom of Sir Gawain deserve as much as even Chaucer’s best work (which has not received it) a full and careful analysis—one even fuller and more careful than has here been possible. The language is idiomatic, and the vocabulary rich. There are approximately as many distinct individual words as there are lines in the poem: a new word for every line.

Our thanks are due to Mr. J. F. Sharpe for his kindness in answering questions concerning the geography of lines ; to Mr. C. T. Onions for his help on several points, and for his constant interest; to Mr., K. Sisam for personal advice and help; to Sir Walter Napier for the loan of the late Professor Napier’s notes. The general debt of a pupil, still freshly remembering Napier’s skill in the elucidation of the difficult language of the poems of this manuscript, is thus greatly increased. Though not much of the present edition is derived directly from this source, it is noteworthy that many of the suggestions made independently by others are there found anticipated but unpublished.