Page:The Dream of the Rood - ed. Cook - 1905.djvu/11

Rh introduction, translation, or notes of any description.' The same writer says: 'Circumstances prevented the publication of the book, but a few copies of it found their way into the hands of persons interested in the subject, both here and in Germany.' At last, in 1869, Lord Romilly, as Master of the Rolls, ordered the Appendixes, which had been in store since 1837, to be distributed. The editions of the poems by Kemble (1843, 1856), and of the Andreas and Elene by Grimm (1840), were based upon the text published by Thorpe.

For further details concerning the manuscript, see Wülker, Grundriss, pp. 237–43, and the remarks prefixed to his photographic facsimile of the poetical parts, under the title Codex Vercellensis (Leipzig, 1894).

The Dream of the Rood begins on the back of leaf 104 (line 6), immediately following the fragment of the poem called Falsehood of Men, and continues through this page and three more, ending at the bottom of the first page of leaf 106. There is a blot near the bottom of the first page, which, however, renders nothing illegible. At the top of the second page, the beginning of leaf 105, a new hand appears, according to Wülker, and continues beyond the limits of this poem. The second hand, which is manifestly smaller in the facsimile, begins with wendan, l. 22. The successive pages then end with ðam, l. 61; on, l. 105; and wæs, l. 156. The verse is written as prose. Accents are found over the vowels of the following words : fáh, l. 13; áheawen, l. 29; áhof, l. 44; áhofon, l. 61; ród, l. 136. The poem begins, after a break, with a capital H, enclosing a smaller capital w, as the beginning of Hwæt. Other manuscript peculiarities are noted in the variants. Rh