A Critical Edition Of Some Of Chaucer's Minor Poems (e-book) (used book) | bookbook.eu

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Excerpt from A Critical Edition of Some of Chaucer's 'Minor Poems'
We possess several editions of Chaucer's works, some being mere reprints from Mss. with all their faults, others reprints with a few alterations by the editors, when they thought the author ought to be helped up, or the scribe ought not be trusted. A really critical restoration of the text has only been made of the 'Astrolabe, ' by Prof. Skeat), of the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, and of the Balade 'Pite, ' by Prof. Ten Brink), and lately another of the Prologue, by Prof. Zupitza), who has promised to continue his publications, for the great advantage of all Chaucer students. But until he gets through the whole bulk of the Canterbury Tales, it may not be out of place to edit a few of the poets Minor Poems, which work I intend to pursue, should this present trial meet with some encouragement from the leading authorities.
If Prof. Zupitza and other editors make a certain Ms. the basis of their texts, closely following its peculiarities, except where metre or sense require some deviation, there can scarcely an objection be raised against this mode of treatment, as long as one and the same Ms. can be used for the whole of the publication in question. Prof. Zupitza has chosen the Ellesmere Ms. for his purpose, which, though written rather late in the 15th century, is generally correct in its readings and grammatical forms. But such is not the case with the so called Minor Poems, which have apparently never been collected completely into one Ms. Most of them are to be found in the Ms. Fairfax 16, in the Bodleian Library, but its text is not to be very much relied upon, which is clearly shown by a comparison with those pieces which are also extant in older and better Mss. The Cambridge University Ms., Gg. 4, 27, also contains several, but is often disfigured by clerical errors and dialectical peculiarities. There are, furthermore, Shirley's Mss., which sometimes offer a good reading, where the others show the purest nonsense; but much oftener are dreadfully corrupted by their copyists putting in his own words instead of the poets, so that they can never entirely be trusted, where they disagree with the others. Besides, Shirley writes in a dialect which surely was not Chaucer's. The remaining Mss. contain either only a few poems, or are too bad to come into consideration.
The safest way out of this dilemma would have been to print each poem after its best Ms., but then we should have got a nice collection of different dialects and spellings.