Part 5 (1/2)
8vo, pp. x.x.xii, 263.
A Translation of the Anglo-Saxon Poem of Beowulf, with a copious glossary, preface, and philological notes, by John M. Kemble, Esq., M.A., of Trinity College, Cambridge. London: William Pickering, 1837.
8vo, pp. lv, 127, appendix, 179.
First English Translation. Prose.
_The 1833 Volume._
A sufficient account of this volume is given by Professor Earle, who says of it:--
'The text was an improvement on Thorkelin, but still very faulty;--to say nothing of inaccuracies from want of proper oversight as the sheets were pa.s.sing through the press. The Glossary, though short, was a valuable acquisition ... Of this edition only 100 copies were printed;--and it was a happy limitation, as it left room for a new edition as early as 1835, in which the text was edited with far greater care. All the rest remained as before, and the Preface was reprinted word for word.'
--_Deeds of Beowulf_, pp. xix, xx.
_The Text of 1835. Kemble's Scholars.h.i.+p._
But whatever may be said of the text of 1833, there is nothing but praise for the edition of 1835. In this book the poem first had the advantage of a modern scholarly treatment, and for the first time the text of the MS. was correctly transcribed. It received its first punctuation. For the first time it was properly divided into half-lines, with attention to alliteration. The text was freely emended, but the suggested readings were placed in the footnotes, in order not to impair the value of the text as a reproduction of the MS. The necessity for this was made evident by Kemble himself:--
'But while he makes the necessary corrections, no man is justified in withholding the original readings: for although the laws of a language, ascertained by wide and careful examination of all the cognate tongues, of the hidden springs and ground-principles upon which they rest in common, are like the laws of the Medes and Persians and alter not, yet the very errors of the old writer are valuable, and serve sometimes as guides and clues to the inner being and spiritual tendencies of the language itself. The reader will moreover be spared that, to some people, heart-burning necessity of taking his editor's qualifications too much for granted, if side by side he is allowed to judge of the traditional error, and the proposed correction. I have endeavoured to accomplish this end by printing the text, letter for letter, as I found it.' --Preface, pp. xxiv ff.
With this wholesome respect for the tradition of the MS., it is not strange that Kemble's carefully chosen emendations should stand to-day as of high critical value, and that many of them are retained in modern editions of the text[1]. When we compare Kemble's book with Thorkelin's, the advance is seen to be little less than astonis.h.i.+ng. Thorkelin's emendations were worse than useless.
Kemble had a full acquaintance with the new science of comparative philology which was developing in Germany under Jakob Grimm. He had corresponded, and later studied, with Grimm, and, according to William Hunt, was the 'recognised exponent' of his investigations[2]. It is to Grimm that Kemble dedicates his volumes, and to him that he repeatedly acknowledges his indebtedness. Thus Kemble brought to the study of the poem not only a knowledge of the Old English poetry and prose, but acquaintance with Old Norse, Gothic, Old High German, and Old Saxon. It may sufficiently ill.u.s.trate his scholarly method to instance examples of his treatment of the unique words in _Beowulf_. Take, e.g., the word _hose_ in line 924. This word does not appear elsewhere in Old English; it does not appear in Lye's _Dictionary_, the only dictionary that was at Kemble's disposal. Upon this word Kemble brought to bear his knowledge of the Germanic tongues, and by citing Goth. _hansa_, OHG.
_hansa_, &c., derived the meaning _turma_--a process in which he is supported by a modern authority like Kluge. The study of compounds also first began with Kemble. He collected and compared the compounds in _heao._. Thus he laid the foundation of all modern studies on the Old English compound.
_Further Critical Material Afforded by the Volume of 1837._
In the 1835 volume twenty-three words were ill.u.s.trated in the above way.
But it remained for the 1837 volume to present a complete glossary of the poem, containing also important poetic words not in _Beowulf_.
By reason of its completeness and comparative work, it remained the standard commentary on the Old English poetic vocabulary until the appearance of Grein's _Sprachschatz_[3].
_Aim of Kemble's Translation._
Like his edition of the text, Kemble's translation is quite independent of any preceding book; like his edition of the text, its aim was faithfulness to the original. He adheres scrupulously to the text, save where the original is unintelligible. The translation was designed to be used together with the glossary as a part of the apparatus for interpreting the poem. He therefore made it strictly literal.
'The translation is a literal one; I was bound to give, word for word, the original in all its roughness: I might have made it smoother, but I purposely avoided doing so, because had the Saxon poet thought as we think, and expressed his thoughts as we express our thoughts, I might have spared myself the trouble of editing or translating his poem. A few transpositions of words, &c. caused princ.i.p.ally by the want of inflections in New English (since we have now little more than their position by which to express the relations of words to one another) are all that I have allowed myself, and where I have inserted words I have generally printed them in italics.' --
Postscript to the Preface, p. 1.
EXTRACT.
VIII.