at least in print--must
have felt it. The dictum applies to my note on this page. An entirely
well-willing reviewer thought me "piqued" at the American remark, and
proceeded to intimate a doubt whether I knew M. Bedier's work, partly on
lines (as to the _Cantilenae_) which I had myself anticipated, and
partly on the question of the composition of the _chansons_ by this or
that person or class, in this or that place, at that or the other time.
But I had felt no "pique" whatever in the matter, and these latter
points fall entirely outside my own conception of the _chansons_. I look
at them simply as pieces of accomplished literature, no matter how,
where, in what circumstances, or even exactly when, they became so. And
I could therefore by no possibility feel anything but pleasure at praise
bestowed on this most admirable work in a different part of the field.

P. 38, l. 27.--A protest was made, not inexcusably, at the
characterisation of _Launfal_ as "libellous." The fault was only one of
phrasing, or rather of incompleteness. That beautiful story of a knight
and his fairy love is one which I should be the last man in the world to
abuse _as such_. But it contains a libel on Guinevere which is
unnecessary and offensive, besides being absolutely unjustified by any
other legend, and inconsistent with her whole character. It is of this
only that I spoke the evil which it deserves. If I had not, by mere
oversight, omitted notice of Marie de France (for which I can offer no
excuse except the usual one of hesitation in which place to put it and
so putting it nowhere), I should certainly have left no doubt as to my
opinion of Thomas Chester likewise. Anybody who wants this may find it
in my _Short History of English Literature_, p. 194.

P. 55, l. 3.--_Delete_ comma at "French."

P. 60, l. 6.--Insert "and" between "half" and "illegitimate."

P. 72, l. 4.--I have been warned of the "change-over" in "Saracen" and
"Christian"--a slip of the pen which I am afraid I have been guilty of
before now, though I have known the story for full forty years. But
Floire, though a "paynim," was not exactly a "Saracen."

P. 75, l. 2 from bottom.--_For_ "his" _read_ "their."

Pp. 158-163.--When the first proofs of the present volume had already
begun to come in, Dr. Hagbert Wright informed me that the London Library
had just secured at Sotheby's (I believe partly from the sale of Lord
Ellesmere's books) a considerable parcel of early seventee