The Correspondence of Edward Lye (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Correspondence of Edward Lye Graham Tulloch Clunies Ross, Margaret and Amanda J. Collins, eds, The Correspondence of Edward Lye (Publications of the Dictionary of Old English, 6), Toronto, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2004; cloth; pp. xxxii, 411; 2 maps, 3 b/w illustrations; RRP C$94.95; ISBN 0-88844-906-2. Scholars attract the attention of scholars: this is a case in point. The letters of an eighteenth century scholar of Germanic language and literature have been edited by two scholars of our own time. The demands made on the editors' knowledge and skills are considerable. First the letters themselves need to be accurately transcribed and accompanied by textual notes, not a simple task in itself. Secondly they need to be accompanied by extensive annotations and, in many cases, translations since Lye's correspondence (much of it with Swedes) includes letters in English, Latin and Swedish, themselves including quotations in Old English, Old Norse and Gothic. To provide proper annotation, the letters' discussion of the early Germanic languages needs to be set against the scholarship available in Lye's time and also against subsequent scholarship which has often been able to provide answers to then unanswered questions. Such annotation requires knowledge across a huge field of studies and over a large period of time. All this the editors handle expertly, producing a work of very substantial and impressive scholarship. The editors suggest that a major reason for making Lye's correspondence available in this way is 'the intrinsic interest of a mid eighteenth-century scholarly correspondence devoted in large part to the study of the early Germanic languages and their literatures' (p. 3). They further hope that it will help to revive his reputation after 'the neglect into which he was plunged by the early nineteenth-century English Anglo-Saxonists' (p. 4). Certainly the correpondence gives us a real insight into how the new field, then known as 'Septentrional studies' or 'Northern learning', was developing. It is also fascinating to see how the old learning in classical languages lies behind this new learning: Lye remarks that 'The Greek and Latine writers I have always admir'd; but nevertheless it seems somewhat preposterous to me out of love of them to continue perfectly ignorant of our own Antiquities' (p. 94). [End Page 176] At the same time the reader will find another quite different source of interest. The letters reveal much about the process of research in eighteenth-century England. Lye's interests lay in Old English, Old Norse and Gothic. He edited Junius's Etymologicum Anglicanum (adding much new material) and prepared Eric Benzelius's edition of the Gothic gospels for the press (again adding his own material) and when he died was working on a new dictionary of Old English and Gothic, later published (with extra material) by Owen Manning. It was not easy to gain access from England to all the materials which were needed to carry out this research. Although some Old English literature was in print, much was not. Lye did not know either the manuscript of Beowulf or the Vercelli Book but like other scholars of the time he made full use, in manuscript form, of two other major compilations of Old English poetry, the Cædmon MS and the Exeter Book. He found Scandivanian and older German books particularly hard to come by: many of the letters contain requests for books, acknowledgements of books received, or short descriptions of the content of books that could not be sent. Lye's comment to Eric Benzelius is typical: 'I am very much oblig'd to You for the account of Schilterus, Palthenius and Diecmannus. They wou'd, as You observe, have been of very great service in the improvement of Junius. 'Twas a misfortune to me, that I heard nothing of them' (p. 150). Antipodean scholars, especially those who started research before the days of the Internet, will easily sympathize with these stories of attempts to trace and obtain books which are not in one's local library. At the same time the greater casualness of those earlier days is very striking. One letter to Lye asks him to return nothing...