among living British authors, who encouraged me in the most friendly manner, by words * as well as by deeds, privileging me, to publish their productions in my "Collection." To all of them this volume may convey my best thanks for their kindness. Its companion volumes may at the same time prove a monument of my gratitude to the public, adorned by such a glorious galaxy of literary names. ** * One of them, celebrated alike as novelist and statesman said: "It is with extreme satisfaction, that I have assented to the wish of Mr. Bernhard Tauchnitz of Leipzig, to prepare an edition of ..... for continental circulation and especially for the German public. The sympathy of a great nation is the most precious reward of authors, and an appreciation, that is offered us by a foreign people has something of the character and value which we attribute to the fiat of posterity." ** I append a list, in alphabetical order, of writers, whose works have appeared in the Collection: Miss Aguilar, W. H. Ainsworth, Currer Bell, Ellis & Acton Bell, Lady Blessington, Rev. W. Brock, Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, John Bunyan, Robert Burns, Miss Burney, Lord Byron, Thomas Carlyle, W. Collins, Fennimore Cooper, Miss Cummins, Ch. Dickens, B. Disraeli, E. B. Eastwick, George Eliot, Fielding, Lady G. Fullerton, de Foe, Mrs. Gaskell, Oliver Goldsmith, Mrs. Gore, N. Hawthorne, Th. Hughes, Washington Irving, G. P. R. James, Douglas Jerrold, S. Johnson, Miss Kavanagh, R. B. Kimball, Kinglake, Ch. Kingsley, Ch. Lever, G. H. Lewes, H. W. Longfellow, Lord Macaulay, Lord Mahon, Mansfield, Captain Marryat, Mrs. Marsh, Milton, Thomas Moore, Miss Mulock, Hon. Mrs. Norton, Ossian, Mrs. Paul, Mrs. Pike, Pope, Ch. Reade, Walter Scott, Miss Sewell, Shakespeare, Smollett, Sterne, Mrs. Stowe, Swift, Baroness Tautphoeus, Alfred Tennyson, W. M. Thackeray, Thomson, Anthony Trollope, Warburton, S. Warren, Miss Warner, Miss Yonge. In the present volume it has been my intention to trace out the development of the English language during the last five centuries - from John Wycliffe, the venerable founder of the modern English in the middle of the Fourteenth Century, to Thomas Gray, the mild star on the sky of English poetry in the middle of the Eighteenth Century - in characteristic specimens. It constitutes a supplementary part to those ancient authors, whose works have already appeared in this "Collection," namely, Shakespeare, Swift, Thomson &c. And so I will proceed with this undertaking, with the same zeal and spirit that have hitherto marked its progress. LEIPZIG, February 1. 1860. BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ. .... "This Version (of the New Testament by Wycliffe) is interesting from the circumstances under which it was made, and its connexion with one of the greatest names of our country, so curious a monument of the language of that period, of so much philological importance, illustrating, as it does, the formation of our own mother tongue and exhibiting it in its transition-state, and also so valuable, as showing incidentally, and therefore the more surely, how certain questions of theology, were regarded by him whom we term our earliest reformer, and what was, in his day, and by him, considered the most authentic as a standard and, as it were, an original text." Preface of "The New Testament in English translated by J. W. etc. Printed for Will. Pickering." London 1848. ve cuuangelie of Joon He bygynnynge was be worde (Pat is goddis sone) / and be worde was at god. E god was he worde/ bis was in be bigynnynge at god/ alle þingis ben made by hyms and wis outen hym is made nouzt/ pat hing bat is made: in hym was lijk/ and be liff was be liste of men/ and be liste schyney in dirkenesis E Dirkenessis comprehenden (or taken) not it/ a man was sente fro god: to whom he name was ioon/ his man came into witnessynge hat he schulde bere witnellynge of be list þat alle men schulde bilene by hym/ he was not be lists but bat he schulde bere witnessynge of be list it was verrey liste be whiche liztenek eche man comynge into bis worlde/ he was in be worlde t he worlde was made by hym: and he worlde knewe hym not/ he came into his owne hingis: and hes receyueden hym not/ forsove how manye euer receyueden hym: he zaue to hem power for to be made be lones of gods to hem bat bileueden in his name |