close; and before that time the
first Text for the second year was in the printer's hands. The Committee
pledge themselves to continue their exertions to render the Texts issued
worthy of the Society, and to complete the issue of each set within the
year assigned to it. They rely with confidence on the Subscribers to use
their best endeavours to increase the list of Members, in order that
funds may not be wanting to print the material that editors place at
their service. The aim of the Committee is, on the one hand, to print
all that is most valuable of the yet unprinted MSS. in English, and, on
the other, to re-edit and reprint all that is most valuable in printed
English books, which from their scarcity or price are not within the
reach of the student of moderate means.[6] Those relating to KING ARTHUR
will be the Committee's first care; those relating to our Language and
its Dialects the second; while in due proportion with these, will be
mixed others of general interest, though with no one special common
design. The Committee hope that no year will pass without the issue of
one Text in the Northern dialect, as well in acknowledgment of the
support that the Society has received in Scotland, as to obviate the
hitherto limited circulation of the works of the early Scotch writers
among students south of the Humber.

[Footnote 6: "A vast mass of our early literature is still
unprinted, and much that has been printed has, as the late Herbert
Coleridge remarked, 'been brought out by Printing Clubs of
exclusive constitution, or for private circulation only, and
might, for all that the public in general is the better for them,
just as well have remained in manuscript, being, of course,
utterly unprocurable, except in great libraries, and not always
there.' It is well known that the Hon. G. P. Marsh, the author of
'The Origin and History of the English Language,' could not
procure for use in his work a copy of 'Havelok' for love or money;
and the usual catalogue-price of 'William and the Werwolf,' or
'The Early English Gesta Romanorum,' etc., etc., is six guineas,
when the book should be obtainable for less than a pound.
Notwithstanding the efforts of the Percy, Camden, and other
Societies and Printing Clubs, more than half our early printed
literature--including the Romances relating to our national hero,
Arthur--is still inaccessible to the student of mode