Of Coxe’s edition I wish to speak with all due respect. It has served a very useful purpose, and it was perhaps on a level with the critical requirements of the time when it was published. At the same time it cannot be regarded as satisfactory. The editor tells us that his text is that of the All Souls MS. ‘collated throughout word for word with a MS. preserved among the Digby MSS. in the Bodleian, and here and there with the Cotton MS. [Tib. A. iv.] sufficiently to show the superiority of the All Souls MS.’ The inferior and late Digby MS. was thus uncritically placed on a level with those of first authority, and even preferred to the Cotton MS. It would require a great deal of very careful collation to convince an editor that the text of the All Souls MS. is superior in correctness to that of the Cotton MS., and it is doubtful whether after all he would come to any such conclusion. As regards correctness they stand in fact very nearly on the same level: each might set the other right in a few trifling points. It is not, however, from the Cotton MS. that the Roxburghe editor takes his corrections, when he thinks that any are needed. In such cases he silently adopts readings from the Digby MS., and in a much larger number of instances he gives the text of the All Souls MS. incorrectly, from insufficient care in copying or correcting. The most serious results of the undue appreciation of the Digby MS. are seen in those passages where S is defective, as in the Prologue of the first book, and in the well-known passage i. 783 ff., where the text of D is taken as the sole authority, and accordingly errors abound, which might have been avoided by reference to C or any other good copy[73]. The editor seems not to have been acquainted with the Harleian MS., and he makes no mention even of the second copy of the _Vox Clamantis_ which he had in his own library, MS. Laud 719.