TORRENT OF PORTUGAL. An English Metrical Romance. NOW FIRST PUBLISHED FROM AN UNIQUE MANUSCRIPT OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY, PRESERVED IN THE CHETHAM LIBRARY AT MANCHESTER. EDITED BY JAMES ORCHARD HALLIWELL, ESQ. F.R.S., F.S.A., HON. M.R.I.A., F.R.A.S., ETC. SECRETARY OF THE CAMBRIDGE ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY, AND OF THE то SIR FREDERIC MADDEN, K. H. KEEPER OF THE MANUSCRIPTS IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM, ETC. ETC. ETC. THIS VOLUME IS, WITH HIS KIND PERMISSION, MOST RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED. PREFACE. THE manuscript, from which the following early English metrical romance is now for the first time printed, is a folio volume on paper of the fifteenth century, formerly in the possession of Dr. Farmer, and now preserved in the Chetham Library at Manchester. An account of the entire contents of this volume is given in a small catalogue of the MSS. in that library recently published ;* and it is not therefore necessary to describe the MS. more minutely in this place, further than to remark that it somewhat resembles in language and other characteristics the MS. in the Public Library at Cambridge, from which Mr. Wright printed the tale of "Jack and his Step-Mother." It is very incorrectly written, and the copy of the romance of Torrente of Portugal, which occupies eighty-eight pages of the book, contains so many obvious blunders and omissions, that it may be conjectured * 12mo. 1842, published by J. R. Smith. I communicated a more particular account of the manuscript under consideration to the Society of Antiquaries, which was read during the last session, (Feb. 17th.) |