The statement that the poem had remained untouched and unnoticed is not strictly true. The public had not yet received any detailed information regarding it; but Wanley[1] had mentioned the _Beowulf_ in his catalog, and Thorkelin had already made two transcripts of the poem, and was at work upon an edition. Turner, however, deserves full credit for first calling the attention of the English people to the importance of the poem.
In the third edition, of which the author speaks, many improvements were introduced into the digest of the story and some improvements into the text of the translations. Many of these were gleaned from the _editio princeps_ of Thorkelin[2]. The story is now told with a fair degree of accuracy, although many serious errors remain: e.g. the author did not distinguish the correct interpretation of the swimming-match, an extract of which is given below. The translations are about as faulty as ever, as may be seen by comparing the two extracts. In the first edition only the first part of the poem is treated; in the third, selections from the second part are added.
No further changes were made in later editions of the History.
Detailed information regarding differences between the first three editions may be found below.
_Turner, and his Knowledge of Old English._
Sharon Turner (1768-1847) was from early youth devoted to the study of Anglo-Saxon history, literature, and antiquities. His knowledge was largely derived from the examination of original documents in the British Museum[3]. But the very wealth of the new material which he found for the study of the literature kept him from making a thorough study of it. It is to be remembered that at this time but little was known of the peculiar nature of the Old English poetry. Turner gives fair discussions of the works of Bede and Ælfric, but he knows practically nothing of the poetry. With the so-called _Paraphrase_ of Cædmon he is, of course, familiar; but his knowledge of _Beowulf_ and _Judith_ is derived from the unique, and at that time (1805) unpublished, MS., Cotton Vitellius A. xv. Of the contents of the Exeter Book he knew nothing. The Vercelli Book had not yet been discovered. The materials at hand for his study were a faulty edition of Cædmon and an insufficient dictionary. The author, whose interest was of course primarily in history, was not familiar with the linguistic work of the day. It is, therefore, not surprising that his work was not of the best quality.