* 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 euuangelie of Joon [ þe bygynnynge was þe worde (þat is goddis fone) and he worde was at god, † god was þe worde/ his was in þe bigynnynge at god/ alle þingis ben made by hym: and wih outen hym is made nouzt/ þat þing þat is made: in hym was liff/ and he liff was he lizte of men/ and |þe lizte fchynep in dirkenellis & dirkenellis_comprehenden (or taken) not it/ a man was sente fro god: to whom þe name was ioon/ þis man came into witneffynge• þat he schulde bere wit(neflynge of þe lizt• þat alle men schulde bileue by hym/ he was not þe lizts but þat he schulde bere witnellynge of þe lizt. it was verrey lizte þe whiche liztenep eche man comynge into þis worlde/ he was in þe worlde. * þe worlde was made by hym: and þe worlde knewe hym not/ he came into his owne þingis: and hes receyueden hym not/ forlohe how manye euer receyueden hym: he zaue to hem power for to be made þe lones of god to hem þat bileueden in his name |