Scottish Text Society publications > Old series > Kingis quair

INTRODUCTION.
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ler have been collated, so as to form a text suitable to the
period.” The account of Chalmers’s text above will show
the want of wisdom of the plan adopted. The result is
of course unsatisfactory ; and if ever this volume becomes
valuable, it will be solely owing to its scarcity. We find
the old errors reproduced, such as tavartis for tabartis, yvete
iox ybete, satoure for fatoure, and the like ; besides additional
errors, such as husing for hnfing, in st. 159, where Tytler is
correct. The notes are few, and carefully avoid all difficult
passages.
K. “The King’s Quair ; a Poem by James the First, King
of Scots. John Thomson : Glasgow. 1877.” This is a re¬
print of E. Thomson’s Ayr edition of 1824; but it admits
into the text the corrections made by that editor in his
notes. “ Beyond the endeavour to present the poem in its
corrected form, with the best procurable notes elucidatory of
its meaning, nothing has been attempted.”
§ 27. It thus appears that none of the editors except E.
Thomson and myself ever saw the MS., and that, for all
practical purposes, they have done little beyond reprinting
the first incorrect text over and over again. The only com¬
plete text that gives us anything better is the latest impres¬
sion, in 1877, of E. Thomson’s edition ; and even this is im¬
perfect, owing to the slight opportunity afforded him : he
was only able to take some notes, “upon a rapid inspection of
the MS.” And hence it has come to pass that it has taken
a whole century, and a series of about ten editions, merely
to obtain a correct copy of a MS. which is in so accessible
a place as the Bodleian Library, and does not extend to so
much as fourteen hundred lines. But a great change for the
better has taken place of late years in the manner of edit¬
ing texts, and it is now an acknowledged principle that an