Page:The Chronicle of Henry of Huntingdon.djvu/20

 MSS. has supplied a text of great purity for the first six Books of Huntingdon's History which only are printed in his collection. He observes, that the variations obtained by the collation of the first seven Books were, on the whole, very few, and those mostly verbal; but that in the eighth Book they were much more valuable, rectifying many mistakes of Savile's printed text, and affording several additions. Mr. Petrie's notes of these variations having been lost, it was deemed advisable that a fresh collation of the eighth Book should be made with two valuable MSS. in the British Museum, Arundel, No. 48, and Royal 13, B. 6, both on vellum, and of the thirteenth or fourteenth century. This collation, some of the results of which are referred to in the notes, has not only served to improve the present version of the eighth Book, but an examination of the MSS. has supplied the means of forming correct conclusions as to the order of Huntingdon's works and the dates of their publication. The "Letter to Walter" was printed in Wharton's "Anglia Sacra," and in Dacher's "Spicilegium;" both of which editions have been consulted for the present translation.

Henry of Huntingdon's merits as an historical writer were, perhaps, overrated by the old bibliographers, Pitts, Polydore Virgil, and John Leland, while modern critics have done him but scanty justice. The value of his History varies, of course, with its different epochs. The earlier Books being, as he informs us in the Preface, a compilation from Bede's Ecclesiastical History and the Chronicles, meaning the Saxon Chronicle, they are of little worth, although occasionally supplying additional facts. The third Book, describing the conversion to Christianity of the several kingdoms of the Heptarchy, though wholly compiled from Bede, has the merit of being a well digested epitome, and of omitting the greater part of the miraculous accounts which break the thread of the venerable historian's narrative, our author judiciously reserving them for a separate book. Indeed, Henry of Huntingdon's works in general are interspersed with very few of those sacred legends which, however characteristic of the age, mar the historical effect, though they