[Footnote 77: Louis-Elizabeth de la Vergne, Comte de Tressan, was born in 1705 and died in 1783. In early life he was sent to Rome on diplomatic business, and it is said that in the Vatican library he acquired his taste for the literature of chivalry. His chief works were _Amadis de Gaules_ (1779); _Roland furieux_ (translated from the Italian, 1780); _Corps d'extraits romans de chevalerie_ (1782). His translations were partly adaptations, and were far from being rendered with precision.] [Footnote 78: See particularly his article on Ellis's and Ritson's _Metrical Romances_ (_Edinburgh Review_, January, 1806), the essay on _Romance_, and _Remarks on Popular Poetry_ in the _Minstrelsy_.] [Footnote 79: _Edinburgh Review_, July, 1804. Ellis and Scott had had much correspondence on _Sir Tristrem_, and it was Ellis's queries that first led Scott into the detailed investigation which resulted in the separate publication of the work. He had intended to print it in the _Minstrelsy_ (_Lockhart_, Vol. I. p. 289). The letters are given in _Lockhart_, Vol. I.] [Footnote 80: _Lockhart_, Vol. I, p. 381.] [Footnote 81: _Die nordische und die englische Version der Tristan-sage_--II. _Sir Tristrem_. Heilbronn, 1882. Mr. George P. McNeill's edition of _Sir Tristrem_ was printed for the Scottish Text Society, Edinburgh, 1886.] [Footnote 82: Koelbing thinks Scott probably hired a transcriber who knew nothing of Middle English--a usual method of procedure in the beginning of the nineteenth century. In later editions more errors were introduced by the carelessness of printers, until, after 1830, when the book was included in the complete editions of Scott's poems, the text was collated with the manuscript. But it was still far from correct. Koelbing enumerates about a hundred and thirty mistakes (see his Introduction, p. xvii). Of these I took twenty-one at random, and found that eight of them did not occur in the 1806 edition--in other words, the person who collated the text nearly thirty years after Scott or his hired transcriber had done it was far from infallible. A few illustrations may be given of mistakes that occur in both the 1806 and the 1833 editions: l. 117, _send_ is given for _sent_; l. 846, _telle_ for _tel_; l. 863, _How_ for _Hou_; l. 912, _mak_ for _make_; l. 1212, _leuedi_ for _leuedy_; l. 1580, _wende sche weren_ for _whende sche were_; l. 1334. _have_ for _han_; l. 1514, _as_ for _als_.] [Footnote 83: Review of Johnes's Translation of Froissart, _Edinburgh Review_, January, 1805.] [Footnote 84: Waverley, and Claverhouse in _Old Mortality_.] [Footnote 85: _Lockhart_, Vol. I, pp. 480 and 482. _Familiar Letters_, Vol. I, p. 147.] [Footnote 86: _Essay on Romance_.] [Footnote 87: See Gaston Paris, _La Litterature Francaise au Moyen Age_, 1ere partie, ch. IV.] [Footnote 88: Review of _Metrical Romances_, _Edinburgh Review_, January, 1806.]