Árbók Landsbókasafns Íslands - Nýr flokkur - 01.01.1991, Side 80

80
ANDREW WAWN
was fixed giving as I thought a fair margin, but even then I wrote &
said as you will see by my letters if you have them, that though the
expence would fall on me I did not care if the estimate was
exceeded. Y[ou]r answer was that you supposed Mr. Barentzen
knew his own aífairs & would not lose by his bargain. It now turns
out that he sends me a facsimile which though accurate enough is
not as good a one as I expected & makes people here believe that
Icelandic MS are very poor in point of execution. I expressly
mentioned the facsimiles in the Antiquités Russes as those I wished
imitated, & yet I find, though I had said that expence was not an
object, that the expence is thrown in my teeth. I suppose it was the
same question of expence whicli prevented Mr Bárentzen from
indicating on the facsimiles the MS from which each is taken. They
have not a mark on them, and will stand in the book as if they had
fallen from heaven. I suppose black ink is scarce as well as red in
his oífice. Nothing can be further from my intention than that you
should be put to any expence on my account and I have added 10.6
to the Bill for £14. 14.4 which Messrs Hambros are sending you to
pay for the Book Post. I thought when once paid here there was
nothing more due on the other side. I have sent some more proof
sheets & Pp. 1-62 of the MS to you through Mr Fletcher Wilson13
...I shall be very glad if Mr Vigfússon will pay particular attention
to the compound words, the accents, & the Diphthongs æ & œ.
According to my notion of orthography æ comes from long á & œ
from long ó - fœtr not fætr bœndr not bændr, & in this Gislason &
Munch14 bear me out, but throughout the whole of this MS æ seems
to have been used; or at least it is quite impossible to detect the œ.
On looking over the sheets I found many printers errors, but on
the whole considering that neither reader nor compositor knew a
word of the language I think them very well composed ... I do not
know whether I told you that I found the statements of the Saga
wonderfully corroborated by my visit to Orkney... I should be very
glad to have the first volume of the Biskupa Sögur15 if you can get it
me as I see the Orkneys are several times mentioned in it. This is
13. Unidentified.
14. Konráð Gíslason and Peter Andreas Munch, Um frumparta íslerukrar tungu í fornöld
(Christiania, 1846).
15. Biskupa sögur, ed. Guðbrandur Vigfússon and Jón Sigurðsson, 2 vols. (Copenhagen,
1858-78).