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 HISTORY 
 
 OF 
 
 ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS.
 
 HISTORY 
 
 OF 
 
 ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 A LECTURE 
 
 DELIVERED IN 
 
 THE HALL OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 
 
 WILLIAM yFORSYTH, Esq., Q.C, LL.D., 
 
 Treasurer of the Inn. 
 
 AND PRINTED AT THE REQUEST OF THE 
 
 MASTERS OF THE BENCH. 
 
 LONDON: 
 JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE ST. 
 
 1872.
 
 LONDON : 
 BRADBURY, KVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.
 
 
 HISTORY 
 
 Ancient Manuscripts. 
 
 E fee on our fhelves, in handfome Volumes, 
 the Works of old Authors who lived and 
 wrote before the invention of printing ; but how 
 few of us afk ourfelves the queftions, Where are 
 the originals of which thefe books are the copies ? 
 And what authority have we for the genuinenefs 
 of the text ? Take, for inftance, the Classic 
 Authors of Greece and Rome. As might be 
 expedted, from the perifhable nature of fuch 
 materials as parchment and paper, not more 
 than a few fragments of manufcripts which are 
 older than the Chriftian era now furvive. If, 
 then, the originals of thefe works are loft, what
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 guarantee have we for the genuinenefs of the 
 printed copies in our libraries ? So imprefled 
 was the Abbe Hardouin, born in 1646, with 
 this difficulty, that he gravely propounded the 
 theory that the fo-called works of the claffic 
 writers of Greece and Rome were nothing but 
 forgeries of the monks — juft as Chatterton tried 
 to pafs off his own writings as the poems of 
 Rowley, which he pretended to have found in 
 fome old manufcripts in a cheft which I have 
 feen in the tower of the Church of St. Mary's 
 Redcliffe, at Briftol. The Abbe affeded to 
 believe that the fo-called ancient clafTics had 
 been compofed in the thirteenth century, by the 
 help of the remains of Cicero and Pliny, the 
 Georgics of Virgil, and the Satires and Epiftles 
 of Horace, which he declared were the only 
 relics of antiquity that had come down to 
 that period.* He attributed the ^neid to a 
 
 * In an epitaph written upon the Abbe, by Veinet, of 
 Geneva, he is called :
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 Benedl6tlne Monk, who wifhed to defcribe in 
 an allegory, the journey of St. Peter to Rome. 
 It is, indeed, difficult to believe that this was 
 not a literary joke ; but the Abbe feems to have 
 been thoroughly in earneft, and if fo, it appears 
 not to have ftruck him that there is fuch a thing 
 as internal evidence and moral impoffibility. 
 The idea of mediaeval monks being able to 
 compofe the works of Homer and of Plato ; 
 of Cicero and of Virgil ; does not deferve repeti- 
 tion. We fhall, by-and-by, fee how in reality 
 it was that long after the revival of letters 
 many of the ancient manufcripts, containing the 
 writings of the claflics, were recovered or re- 
 ftored ; but it muft be borne in mind that even 
 thofe ancient documents are not the originals, 
 but only copies of fome one or more manufcripts 
 
 Venerandae antiquitatis cultor et depredator, 
 Scepticum pife egit, 
 Credulitate puer, 
 Audacia juvenis, 
 Deliriis senex, 
 Veibo dicam, hie jacet Harduinus. 
 
 ? B 2
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 now Utterly and for ever loft to mankind. I 
 fay "fome one or more manufcripts," for con- 
 fider what mud have happened when a man fet 
 down to write a book before the invention of 
 printing. Let us fuppofe him to have lived 
 in the time of Auguftus, and to have been a 
 Poet or an Hiftorian. He would commit his 
 thoughts either to a waxen tablet or to a papyrus 
 or parchment roll, and this would ftridlly and 
 properly be the only original. But clever flaves 
 were kept as fcribes, whofe fole bufinefs it was 
 to multiply copies of their mafter's works, and 
 fo far as this was done, under his fupervifion, 
 fuch copies may fairly be confidered entitled to 
 rank as originals. But none of thefe exift now, 
 they have all difappeared, fwallowed up in the 
 gulf of time — and fpeaking loofely, but with 
 fufficient accuracy for our prefent purpofe, we 
 may aflume that the oldeft MS., containing the 
 fuppofed poems or hiftory, is not earlier than 
 the flxth century, — that is to fay, there is a gap
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 of 500 years between their firfl appearance in the 
 world and their appearance to us in the fhape 
 of a MS., which, however clean and frefh and 
 bright when originally written twelve centuries 
 ago, is now dirty and dufty and worm-eaten, 
 and very probably mutilated and torn. 
 
 But next comes the queftion : As we are not 
 likely to adopt the Abbe Hardouin's theory, and 
 afTume that the work in queftion was the forgery 
 of a clever monk, we a{k, What was the original 
 which the writer had before him when he made 
 the copy, and what has become of it ? As to the 
 latter part of the queftion I fear we muft anfwer 
 it by faying that it has become duft and afhes — 
 either wilfully or accidentally deftroyed or 
 crumbled into nothingnefs by the flow procefs 
 of decay. Nor can we in moft cafes even guefs 
 what the identical MS. was of which our exijiing 
 MS. is a copy. By this I mean that unlefs the 
 writer has happened to furnifh the information, 
 which is, I believe, very feldom, we cannot tell
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 what was the date of the MS. which he had 
 before him when he made our exifting copy. 
 Moft probably, or, indeed, almoft certainly, that 
 was itfelf a copy of an older document which was 
 alfo a copy, and fo on until we reach in imagi- 
 nation the firft original MS. which appeared on 
 the fhelves of the Sofii — the Murrays and the 
 Longmans of ancient Rome. 
 
 There are, I believe, about fifteen known 
 manufcripts of the Hiftory of Herodotus, one 
 of the oldeft of which is in the library of 
 Emmanuel College, Cambridge ; but I do not 
 think that its age is put higher than the tenth 
 century, and it cannot be compared in antiquity 
 with the Virgil of the Vatican, which is fuppofed 
 to have been written in the fifth century. The 
 older manufcripts from which thefe have been 
 copied are all deftroyed, and on thefe we muft 
 rely, after a critical collation of other manufcripts 
 ot later dates, for the purity and accuracy of the 
 printed text.
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 So far, then, as external evidence goes, we 
 ftart with a MS. of, let us fay, the fixth century, 
 although that is exceedingly old, and we want to 
 know what guarantee we have of its authenticity 
 and genuinenefs ? By authenticity is meant that 
 the original work was really written by the author 
 whofe name it bears ; and by genuinenefs that 
 the account it purports to give is bond fide and 
 not a forgery. 
 
 Now, if the work in queftion is one which was 
 little known and never quoted by contemporary 
 writers at the time of or foon after its firft 
 appearance, it is obvious that we have no 
 guarantee for either its authenticity or genuine- 
 nefs, except fuch as is afforded by the internal 
 evidence of ftyle, or our faith in the honefty of 
 the unknown copyift to whom we owe the 
 exiftence of the MS. we pofTefs. And if this 
 MS. is the only one that exifts we have no other 
 means of tefting its truthfulnefs, and we muft 
 take it on trufl for what it purports to be. I
 
 HTSTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 need not fay that many forgeries have been 
 perpetrated which impofed upon the fimpllcity 
 of former ages, but which have been detedted 
 and expofed by the critical acumen of later times. 
 Amongft thefe, perhaps, the moft notable and 
 startling — as they have certainly been the moft 
 important in their confequences — have been the 
 pretended Donation of Conftantine forged in the 
 eighth century, the Ifidorian Decretals in the 
 ninth, and Gratian's Decretum in the twelfth, of 
 which you will find a full account in the work 
 called *'The Popes and the Council, by Janus," 
 attributed to Dr. Dollinger, 
 
 A curious inftance, not exactly of forgery, but 
 of an abfolute miftake, occurred in the cafe of a 
 MS. preferved In the Arfenal Library at Paris, 
 which was fuppofed to contain fome hieroglyphics 
 of the Red-Skin Indians in America, and was 
 brought from that country in the laft century. 
 Quite recently a facfimile of this document was 
 publifhed by the Abbe Domenech, in the belief
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. ^ 
 
 that it was genuine, but it is believed to be 
 nothing but the fantaftic production of fome 
 German fchoolboy, whofe parents were fettled in 
 the States, and who fcrawled in fport the figures 
 which were taken for a pi6lure language. 
 
 The cafe, however, is different with works 
 which from the firft have enjoyed a confiderable 
 reputation, and have been often quoted by feveral 
 writers. For we have two diftind kinds of 
 evidence in their favour. Firft, we can compare 
 the quotations which are fcattered throughout 
 other manufcripts on other fubjects which 
 purport to cite pafTages from the works in 
 queftion, and fee whether the particular MS. 
 before us correfponds. And, fecondly, we 
 generally have a variety of manufcripts, all 
 purporting to contain the fame identical work, 
 fo that we can by comparing, or as it is called by 
 collating, thefe together, come to a tolerably juft 
 conclufion as to the genuinenefs of the manu- 
 fcripts. It is inconceivable that there ftiould be
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 fimultaneous forgeries of the fame work at 
 different places widely feparated from each other, 
 and equally inconceivable that the quotations 
 from a particular work, in other manufcripts, 
 which treat of different fubjeds, fhould agree, 
 unlefs the writers had accefs to the fame docu- 
 ments — or at all events documents of which 
 each was a corred copy of one original. 
 
 In illuflration of this I may take the cafe of 
 the Homeric text. The firfl printed edition of 
 the Iliad and OdyfTey was taken from manu- 
 fcripts which were comparatively modern. Lately, 
 however, much older papyri have been difcovered 
 containing more or lefs of the text, and fome of 
 thefe were written before the commencement of 
 the Chriflian era. And yet what do we find ? 
 The printed text in our books agrees with the 
 written text in thefe ancient records that have been 
 fleeping the fleep of centuries in forgotten corners 
 of monafteries ; and this proves to demonflration 
 that what we cherifh as the ail-but- infpired poetry 
 
 10
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 of Homer is the fame as that which charmed the 
 Greeks more than two thoufand years ago. 
 
 A moment's conlideration will fhow you how 
 thefe remarks apply to the cafe of the four 
 Gofpels and other books of the New Teftament. 
 Thus St. Auguftine, in his reply to Fauftus, 
 reminds him ,that whoever had firft attempted a 
 corruption of the Scriptures, would have imme- 
 diately been confuted by a multitude of ancient 
 manufcripts which were in the hands of all 
 Chriftians. And Irenasus, who wrote at the end 
 of the fecond century of our era, refers in his 
 work on the Gnoftic herefies to about 400 
 pafTages in the Gofpels juft as we have them now. 
 
 As I am addreffing a legal audience, and men 
 who are accuftomed to deal with evidence, I need 
 hardly point out that no multiplication of manu- 
 fcripts adds anything to their authority, if they 
 are all fhown to have been derived from the fame 
 original. So long as that original exifts in rerum 
 naiurdj it is the primary evidence, and the copies 
 
 II
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 add no more to its weight than the repetition of 
 hearfay goffip adds to the weight of an original 
 ftatement. But the unlearned public are apt to 
 forget this, and to fancy that mere repetition of 
 itfelf gives authority. Of courfe, if the original 
 has ceafed to exift, and we find a number of 
 independent manufcripts concurring in agree- 
 ment, we have a perfed right to affume that 
 there has been fuch an original which has dif- 
 appeared ; for the contrary hypothefis would 
 involve the abfurdity of fuppofing that a number 
 of different men in the middle ages in different 
 parts of Europe had either confpired together to 
 produce a forgery, or had, by a miracle, all hit 
 upon exadlly the fame compofition. I need not 
 ftop to illuftrate this, but juft fancy a dozen 
 mediaeval monks fitting down in feparate monaf- 
 teries and producing each out of his own head, or 
 even in concert, the Republic of Plato or the 
 iEneid of Virgil ! 
 
 There is one point to be noticed of great 
 
 12
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 importance as regards the difference between 
 manufcripts and printed books in confldering the 
 queftion of accuracy of text. When an edition 
 of a book is printed^ each copy is a perfed fac- 
 fimile of the other ; and if we know the contents 
 of one, we know the contents of all. They are 
 like coins of the fame value with the fame ftamp 
 and all of the fame currency. But not fo in the 
 cafe of manufcripts. What affurance have we 
 that a number of them purporting to be copies 
 of the fame original are really exadl copies ? 
 This of courfe muft depend upon the fkill, care, 
 and honefty of every individual tranfcriber, and 
 the queftion can only be determined by a careful 
 collation of them with the original, if it exifts — 
 or if not, then by comparing them all together 
 and afcertaining how far they agree and in what 
 particulars they differ. It does not follow 
 becaufe a book is printed from an ancient MS. 
 that we have the genuine or even the beft text. 
 It may happen that the editor was uncritical or 
 
 13
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 carelefs, or he may not have chofen the moft 
 truftvvorthy out of feveral manufcripts purporting 
 to contain the fame work, or he may not have 
 properly collated them where they differ. I 
 may mention as an example Bradion's great 
 work, the firft printed edition of which was 
 publifhed in folio in 1569. The anonymous 
 editor fays that he had compared and ufed 
 several manufcripts. But for reafons which I 
 cannot now explain, owing to the narrow limits 
 within which I muft confine myfelf, it is toler- 
 ably certain that manufcripts of Bradlon exift 
 which that ancient editor never saw — and in 
 order to afcertain whether we might not have a 
 better and more accurate text of the author of 
 De Legibus et Conjuetudinibus Anglia^ it would 
 be neceflary to collate all thefe and rejedt errors 
 which are due to the careleffnefs and miftakes of 
 tranfcribers. 
 
 All who have copied writings know how eafy 
 it is to make fuch miftakes, and the immenfe 
 
 14
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 number of various readings which are found in 
 various manufcripts, all purporting to be copies 
 of the fame work, fhow how frequently errors 
 have crept in. And it is one of the moft 
 interefting of literary tafks to eliminate thefe 
 errors, and get a pure and perfed: text. It may 
 feem rather paradoxical to affert it, but it is 
 neverthelefs true, that the corredion of the 
 miftakes of copyifts has been almoft reduced to a 
 fcience — and there are certain canons of criticifm 
 which enable the ftudent of ancient manufcripts 
 to determine with tolerable accuracy what are 
 miftakes, and alfo the mode in which they have 
 found their way into the text. 
 
 I will mention what are known to be the chief 
 fources of error. 
 
 (i) Imperfedions in the original MS. which 
 would caufe different copyifts to fupply the 
 defedtive words or lines from their own conjec- 
 tures, and as it may be aflumed that each con- 
 jedlure makes fenfe of the paiTage, we get a 
 
 15
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 variety of readings of which it is often very 
 difficult to afcertain the true one. 
 
 (2) A tranfcriber might have the original 
 read out to him, and he might miftake the found 
 of a word — or the reader might mif-pronounce 
 the word. 
 
 (3) A tranfcriber might miftake fimilar letters. 
 Thus in copying Greek charadlers, he might 
 eafily miftake O for 0, T for r, and I believe 
 that in Hebrew the chances of miftakes of this 
 kind are much greater. In the 2nd Book of 
 Kings, chap. xx. verfe 12, we have the name of 
 the King of Babylon written Berodach — but in 
 the 39th chap, of Ifaiah it is written Merodach. 
 
 (4) A tranfcriber might miftake a contradlion 
 of which there are many in the ancient Greek 
 manufcripts. An inftance of this is fuppofed to 
 occur in Romans xii. 11, where for ro) Kuptco, 
 "the Lord," three manufcripts read rco Katpw, 
 *' the time ; " the contra6lion being Kco which 
 would ftand for either word. 
 
 1.6
 
 / / 
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 (5) As the text of the oldeft manufcripts had 
 no divifions between the letters, and all the 
 words run Into each other, it would be very eafy 
 to make a wrong divifion, fo as to form wrong 
 words. And in illuftration of this I may 
 mention a very amufing jeu d'efprit which I 
 once faw of the late Sir George Cornewall 
 Lewis, who, to ridicule the fanciful conjedures 
 of the Egyptologifts, wrote in the old ftyle 
 without any diviiion between the words, the 
 famous nurfery rhymes : 
 
 Heydiddlethecatandthefiddleth 
 
 ecowjumpedoverthemoonthelit 
 tledoglaughedtoseesuchsportandt 
 
 hedishranawaywiththespoon. 
 
 And in an ingenious Latin eflay he pretended to 
 make out that this was a facred infcription in 
 fome ancient language — of which, if I recoiled: 
 right, the firft word " Hey " was a form of the 
 word 0eos, or God. 
 
 (6) A tranfcriber would be very apt to fix a 
 
 17 c
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 fhort pafTage in his memory and then write it 
 down, but in fo doing he might eafily fubftitute 
 a fynonymous word or fentence. An inftance 
 of this is given by Michaelis in Rev. xvii. 17, 
 where for reAeo-^r? ra pr]ixaTa, feven manufcripts 
 have TeXeadr^aovTai ot, Xoyot, which has of courfe 
 exadly the fame meaning. 
 
 (7) When the fame word ftands in different 
 places in a page or a paffage, a copyift who has, 
 for the purpofe of writing, taken his eye off the 
 MS., may eafily on next looking at the text 
 catch with his eye the later of the fame two 
 words, and thinking it to be the one down to 
 which he has already written, he will proceed in 
 his work and will in reality have omitted the 
 intervening paffage. An inftance of this almoft 
 undoubtedly occurs in Judges xvi. 13, and 
 another in the Codex Alexandrinus, where in 
 1 Cor. vi. 2 — 6, becaufe eAaxiorwi; ends ver. 2, 
 and 07710-70)1; ends ver. 6, the whole of the text 
 lying between thefe two words is omitted, the
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 eye of the tranfcriber having paffed from the firft 
 tarcoy to the fecond. 
 
 I might mention feveral other fources of error 
 of a like kind ; but time prefTes, and I will 
 fpecify only one more, which is a very fertile 
 caufe of miftake, and that is the afTumption of 
 marginal glofles into the text. One copyift 
 would give in the margin of his MS. his ex- 
 planation of a difficult pafTage, and another 
 following him would fuppofe this to have been 
 a part of the original work accidentally omitted 
 and incorporate it in the text. 
 
 As an inftance of the way in which error thus 
 creeps in — and is proved to be an error — I may 
 mention the verfe relating to the three Heavenly 
 Witneffes in the Epiflle of St. John (i., v. 7). 
 This is univerfally admitted by all Biblical 
 fcholars to be fpurious : but why ? In the firft 
 place it is no where quoted by the great con- 
 troverfial writers of the fourth and fifth century, 
 which is inconceivable if it was known to them 
 
 19 c 2
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 and confidered to be genuine. Secondly, its 
 origin is betrayed not only by its varieties of 
 form in different Latin manufcripts, but alfo by 
 the fact that it occurs fometimes before and 
 fometimes after the mention of the three 
 witnefles — "the spirit, and the water, and the 
 blood " — which it was no doubt intended to 
 explain. The truth is, that it was the glofs of 
 fome copyift, who wifhed to give a theological 
 interpretation to the three witnefTes, and it was 
 afterwards by miftake incorporated in the text. 
 But in our early Bibles, fuch as Tyndale's and 
 Coverdale's, the fpurious words are placed in 
 brackets, and printed in a different type ; while 
 in Luther's German tranflation of the Bible, and 
 in the Zurich Latin Bible of 1543, they were 
 wholly omitted. I believe that they were firft 
 printed uniformly with the refl of the context in 
 the Bifhops' Bible, and our authorifed verfion 
 followed the bad precedent. 
 
 The verfe is not found in any of the exifting 
 
 20
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 Uncial manufcripts which are always the oldeft, 
 but it is found in fome of the Curjive manufcripts 
 which are, as we know, of a later date. Nor is 
 it found in any old verfions except the Latin ; 
 not in the Philoxenian, Thebaic, iEthiopic, or 
 Arabic, and where it does occur, it is met with 
 in such a variety of forms and changes of por- 
 tion that Porfon was juftified in faying that a 
 pafTage which changes fhapes fafter than Proteus 
 or Empufa may fairly warrant a difbelief in its 
 genuinenefs. 
 
 We muft not, however, be too much alarmed 
 by this array of poffible caufes of error — for as I 
 faid before the acutenefs of modern criticifm can 
 generally detetfl corruptions. And it has been 
 truly faid that there is perhaps more probability 
 that genuine paiTages of ancient authors fhould 
 fall under fufpicion, than that any actually 
 fpurious portions fhould entirely efcape it. 
 You will find fome ufeful remarks as to deter- 
 mining the real date of a MS. even where the 
 
 21
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 writer has through carelefTnefs or from any other 
 caufe mif-ftated it, in Kemble's Introduction to 
 his Codex Diplomaticus Mvi Saxoniciy or Collec- 
 tions of Anglo-Saxon Charters and Wills (In- 
 trodudl. vol. i. p. Ixvii., et seq.). 
 
 The moft ancient materials ufed for writing 
 upon were ftone and metal ; and, flridtly speaking, 
 thefe are " manufcripts," becaufe written upon 
 with the hand. I need hardly remind you of 
 the Tables of Stone which Mofes brought down 
 from the Mount, and the cuneiform infcriptions 
 at Nineveh brought to light by Mr. Layard. 
 Herodotus mentions a letter engraved on ftone 
 plates, which Themiftocles fent to the lonians, 
 about 500 years B.C. ; and we have ample 
 proofs of the cuftom in the Behiftun and Da- 
 mietta ftones, and the different tablets of brafs 
 which have been found containing laws and de- 
 crees and pubUc records. I have feen on the 
 Acropolis of Athens a marble column which is 
 covered with ancient writing, as old, perhaps, as 
 
 22 
 
 I 
 
 i
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 the time of Pericles. The laws of Solon are 
 faid to have been infcribed on blocks of wood ; 
 but that material is too perifhable to ftand the 
 wear and tear of time. 
 
 But at a later period, and for ordinary pur- 
 pofes, both the Greeks and the Romans ufed 
 waxen tablets and vellum and papyrus, and 
 paper manufadlured from cotton. 
 
 Of each of thefe I may fay rapidly a few words. 
 ( I ) The tabula were thin oblong pieces of wood 
 covered over with wax, with raifed margins or 
 little projeding knobs at the corners to prevent 
 them from cohering, and fo obliterating what 
 was written on the wax by means of a fharp 
 pointed inftrument of bone or ivory, or wood 
 or metal, called 2ijiilus ; hence the modern word 
 " ftyle." I have feen a great number of thefe 
 in one of the libraries or mufeums in Italy — I 
 think at Rome. And moft perifhable as the 
 tabula were, two are faid to have been difcovered 
 in a perfedl ftate of prefervation in fome gold
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 mines in Tranfylvania ; but they have on good 
 grounds been pronounced to be forgeries. I 
 believe that there is another (moft probably alfo 
 fpurious) at Berne in Switzerland, which I tried 
 to fee, but was unable to do fo, owing to the 
 accidental abfence of the librarian. 
 
 Waxen tablets continued to be ufed in the 
 Middle Agts ; but the oldeft of thefe now ex- 
 tant is not earlier than the year 1301 a.d., and 
 is preferved in the Mufeum at Florence. 
 
 (2) Vellum or parchment is faid to have been 
 invented by Eumenes, King of Pergamos, in 
 Afia Minor, and hence its name. It was manu- 
 fadlured, as at prefent, from the fkins of animals, 
 of which that of the afs is the fofteft and fineft. 
 The ancients ufually wrote on only one fide of 
 the parchment, and the other was ftained with 
 fafFron colour or the cedrus. It was generally 
 formed into a long roll, and wrapped round a 
 ftick, whence it was called volumen. At each 
 end of the ftick were balls or bofles, called um- 
 
 24
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 bilici or cornua, juft as we fee In the mounted 
 maps fold at the prefent day. 
 
 (3) The papyrus was an Egyptian rufh or 
 reed, out of which paper was manufa(5tured ; and 
 in the time of Auguftus there were eight manu- 
 faftories of this at Rome. It was often formed 
 into the fhape of a volumenj but fometimes 
 divided into leaves like a modern book, which 
 was called a codex. 
 
 (4) Paper was alfo manufadlured from cotton 
 {Charta Eomhycina)^ which the Germans call 
 by the expreffive name of Baumwoll or Tree- 
 wool, but the material is very perifhable ; and 
 the ufe of linen rags for the purpofe was wholly 
 unknown to the ancients. Indeed they did not 
 underftand the manufacture of flax at all, even 
 if they pofTefTed the plant. 
 
 In one of De Quincey's Eflays he ftarts what 
 will be confidered a paradox, when he afTerts that 
 the art of printing was difcovered by the ancients. 
 He fays : *' It had been difcovered repeatedly. 
 
 25
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 " The art which multiplied the legends upon a 
 '' coin or medal had, in effedl, anticipated the 
 " art of printing. It was an art, this typogra- 
 " phic myftery, which awoke and went to fleep 
 " many times over from mere defedt of mate- 
 " rials. Not the defedt of typography as an art, 
 " but the defed of faper as a material for keep- 
 " ing this art in motion. There lies thereafon, 
 " as Dr. Whately moft truly obferves, why 
 " printed books had no exiftence amongft the 
 " Greeks of Pericles, or afterwards amongft 
 " the Romans of Cicero. And why was there 
 " no paper ? The common reafon, applying 
 " to both countries, was the want of linen rags, 
 '^ and that want arofe from the univerfal habit 
 " of wearing woollen garments. . . . How 
 " defperate, he continues, muft have been the 
 " bankruptcy at Athens in all materials for 
 " receiving the records of thoughts, when we 
 " find a polifhed people having no better 
 " tickets or cards for conveying their fenti- 
 
 26
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 '' ments to the public than fliells." From this 
 we all know came the word ojiracifm, for civil 
 banifhment, becaufe the votes were marked on 
 an oftracon or fhell. And I may mention that 
 there are in the Britifh Mufeum tickets of ad- 
 miflion to the gladiatorial fhows juft like tickets 
 of admiflion to our theatres, only they confift of 
 little oblong pieces of lead, fome of which, at 
 the requeft of ProfeiTor Schlitzl, I had imprefled 
 on india-rubber and fent to him at Bonn, as he 
 wifhed to ufe them for his great work on the 
 Hiftory of the Latin Language. For this 
 trifling fervice he has paid me, in his Latin 
 preface, a very undeferved compliment ; but he 
 faid that he was much puzzled to know how to 
 defignate me as Queen's Counfel in that language. 
 The ufe of writing in Greece for the purpofes 
 of public hiilorical reglftration was very limited 
 until the fixth century before Chrifl;. Thucydides 
 defcribes the Athenians as knowing the hiilory 
 of their country during the period of Pififtratus 
 
 27
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 and his fons by hearfay accounts; that is, oral 
 tradition, and not from written documents. We 
 all know that the coliedlion and arrangement of 
 the Homeric poems have been attributed by 
 antiquity to Solon, and Pififtratus aflifted by his 
 fons. They flourifhed about 550 B.C. But 
 whether thefe poems exifled previoufly in manu- 
 fcript, or were preferved folely by the recitations 
 of the Rhapfodoi^ is a queftion which, fince the 
 appearance of the Prolegomena of the German 
 critic Wolf at the end of the laft century, has 
 been keenly debated by able fcholars. And 
 what are we to think of Lycurgus, who is faid 
 to have introduced the "Iliad" into Sparta more 
 than two centuries before ? Is it poiTible to 
 believe that he got hold of a copy at a time 
 when the art of writing, except in the rudeft 
 form, feems to have been unknown ? 
 
 A few notices of the ufe of writing at Rome, 
 prior to the conflagration of the city by the 
 Gauls in the year 390 b.c, occur in the old 
 
 28
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 hiftorians. Amongft thefe I may mention the 
 forged letters of Sextus Tarquin, at Gabii, attri- 
 buted to him by Dionyfius of Halicarnaflus (IV. 
 57), and the written copy of a law prepared by 
 a tribune in the time of Coriolanus. Appius, 
 the Decemvir, is faid to have fent a letter to the 
 camp, and we know the ftory that he firft faw 
 the young Virginia — his unhappy vidim — in a 
 fchool near the Forum. In that mofl: learned 
 and valuable work on the Credibility of Early 
 Roman Hijlory, by Sir George Cornewall Lewis 
 — where, however, perhaps he has pufhed hif- 
 torical fcepticifm a little too far — he fums up 
 the refult of a laborious inquiry on the fubjed of 
 the Public Records of the Roman State in the 
 two following propofitions : — 
 
 (i) That little ufe was made of the art of 
 writing at Rome for the contemporary regiftra- 
 tion of hiftorlcal events before the year 390 b.c, 
 the date of the capture of the city by the Gauls. 
 
 (2) That fuch hiftorical records as exifted at 
 
 29
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 the time, whether public or private, for the moft 
 part perilhed in the conflagration of the city. 
 
 The Romans underftood the art of embel- 
 lifliing their books, i.e., their manufcripts, with 
 portraits — which, however, were not photographs. 
 Pliny mentions that Varro wrote the lives of 
 700 illuflrious Romans, which he enriched with 
 their portraits. And we learn from Cornelius 
 Nepos that Atticus, the friend of Cicero, 
 
 "The Roman friend of Rome's least mortal mind," 
 
 was the author of a work on the adlions of the 
 great men of Rome, which he ornamented with 
 their portraits. 
 
 There is one curious fad to notice with refped 
 to the manufcripts of Rome, which is, that they 
 were fometimes written in fhort-hand, to which 
 the term Stenography has been given. There 
 were no reporters employed in Ancient Rome; 
 but on the occafion of the difcovery of the con- 
 fpiracy of Catiline, Cicero diredted four of the 
 30
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 Senators to take down the queftlons and anfwers, 
 and the ftatements of the informers. 
 
 Indeed, the introdudlion of the art of fhort- 
 hand writing has been afcribed to Tiro, the 
 favorite and accomplifhed freedman of Cicero, 
 and the characters have been called Tironian 
 Notes. According to Plutarch, it was fo much 
 in its infancy, that Cicero himfelf didated the 
 abbreviations and figns to be ufed on the par- 
 ticular occafion to which I have referred. At 
 all events, we may be tolerably fure that the art 
 is not fo old as Funccius would have us believe, 
 who aflures us in his treatife, De Scriptura 
 VeteruMy that Adam was a fkilful fhort-hand 
 writer. 
 
 In the middle ages this kind of writing was 
 much ufed, and feveral of the Anglo-Saxon 
 manufcripts contain it. It is, I believe, by no 
 means difficult to decipher. At leaft, fo I 
 was informed by that induftrious Anglo-Saxon 
 fcholar, the late John Kemble. 
 
 31
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 Great expedlations were raifed when the 
 burled cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii were 
 difinterred after their fleep of feventeen centuries, 
 and a difcovery was made of manufcript papyri 
 at Herculaneum. Thefe were calcined by fire 
 and mafTed together, juft as we fee the leaves of 
 a book which has been fubjed to the adlion of 
 the flames. In fa6l, they were little more than 
 cinders ; but by means of a moft ingenious 
 procefs, which I believe was the ufe of an ex- 
 quifitejy thin circular faw, the leaves were fepa- 
 rated, and the letters came out black, on the 
 black but unfhining paper. Sir Humphry 
 Davy thought that he had difcovered a chymical 
 procefs by which the burnt leaves might be 
 rendered legible ; but after repeated experiments 
 he was obliged to pronounce it a failure, owing 
 to the injured ftate of the manufcripts. 
 
 Another procefs was to faften to the outer 
 edge of a MS. feme threads of filk, which were 
 wound round pegs in a fmall frame, and thefe 
 
 32 
 
 1 
 I
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 pegs were turned with the utmoft precaution 
 until the whole MS. \yolimen'\ was unrolled. 
 I remember reading in Dr. WolfFs journey to 
 Bokhara that he defcribes a very fimilar procefs 
 by which long worms, that had burrowed their 
 way into his feet, were gradually extraded ; the 
 danger being left any of them fhould break, 
 which would have brought on inflammation, and 
 poffibly death. 
 
 The refults, however, have not been fatisfac- 
 tory. A treatife of Philodemus on Mufic^ 
 written in Greek, although the author was a 
 Roman and a contemporary of Cicero, was re- 
 covered, and a few fragments of other works ; 
 but I am not aware that any part of the loft 
 writings of the great authors of Greece or Rome 
 has as yet been found, either in Herculaneum 
 or Pompeii. In vain has the learned world 
 fighed for a difcovery of the loft books of Livy 
 and Polybius, and apparently it muft continue 
 to figh in vain. 
 
 33 D
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 I believe that fcholars are by no means agreed 
 as to which is the oldefl: known MS. in the 
 world ; but it may fafely be faid that it will be 
 found amongft the papyri recovered from the 
 Egyptian tombs, dating as far back as the times 
 of the Pharaohs. 
 
 In the Introdudlion to the great work of 
 Silveftre Sur la P aUographie Univerjelle^ which 
 has been tranflated and publifhed in this country 
 by Sir Frederick Madden, the late keeper of 
 manufcripts in the Britifh Mufeum, it is faid 
 that Montfaucon, the well known Benedidline 
 explorer of ancient manufcripts, had never feen 
 a Greek MS. written in ink with a pen or 
 calamus on papyrus or vellum, which was older 
 than the fourth century of the Chriftian era. 
 But Silveftre has publifhed fpecimens of Greek 
 uncial and curfive writing, which are as early 
 as the third and fecond centuries before Chrift. 
 One of them is a letter from Diofcorides to 
 Dorion, relating to complaints againft the col- 
 
 34 
 
 A
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 ledors of the Egyptian exchequer for extor- 
 tionate pradlices, juft as we fee letters in the 
 l^imes at the prefent day complaining of the 
 income-tax colle6tors. It confifts of a fingle 
 leaf of papyrus, and is affigned by Sir Frederick 
 Madden to the third century before Chrift. 
 Another, in a character which can only doubt- 
 fully be called curfive, is a petition to King 
 Ptolemy, relating to two twin-fifters employed 
 in the temple of Serapis — not quite fo ancient 
 as the former one, but fuppofed to have been 
 written in the fecond century before Chrift. It 
 is a papyrus, and was found, like the other, in 
 Egypt. It is now in the Mufeum of the Louvre, 
 in Paris. A fragment alfo of the Iliad, on 
 papyrus, was difcovered in 1825 in the ifland of 
 Elephante, in Upper Egypt, which is fuppofed to 
 have been written in the time of the Ptolemies. 
 
 There are two remarkable fragments of manu- 
 fcripts of the Iliad in England, one of which is 
 afcribed to the firft century before Chrift. It 
 
 35 D 2
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 belongs to Mr. Bankes, and is a papyrus roll, 
 containing the laft book of the Iliad except the 
 firft 126 lines. The other is a pal impfeft, writ- 
 ten on vellum, and is in the Britifh Mufeum. 
 The upper or later text is Syriac, and probably 
 of the ninth century ; but the original writing 
 beneath is in fine fquare Greek uncials, and con- 
 tains about 4000 lines of the Iliad, written not 
 later than the fixth century. I believe that at 
 this moment the truftees of the Britifh Mufeum 
 are in negotiation for the purchafe of a fragment 
 of a MS. of the Iliad of the firft century. 
 
 Montfaucon, indeed, believed that no MS. 
 can be fiiown to be of an older date than a 
 Greek MS. which is in the Imperial Library at 
 Vienna. The date of this is, happily, placed 
 beyond controverfy by a fubfcription affixed to 
 it, ftating that it was written by the order of the 
 Emprefs Juliana Anicia, B.C. 505, and amongft 
 the embelliftiments there is a portrait of the 
 Emprefs. 
 
 36
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 But putting afide the few fragments that are 
 fuppofed to be older than the Christian era, there 
 can be no doubt that amongft the very oldeft 
 manufcripts in the world, muft be placed thofe of 
 Virgil and Terence in the Vatican, Thefe are 
 confidered to be of even earlier date than the 
 MS. of Diofcorides, and they have been gene- 
 rally afcribed to the fifth century. They are 
 both illuftrated. That of Virgil has been attri- 
 buted by Mabillon and Winckelman to the time 
 of Conftantine the Great, and whatever the 
 exa6l date may be, the Terence is nearly as old. 
 Upon one of the leaves of the latter, the learned 
 Politian wrote, " I, Angelo Politian, a man by 
 " no means incurious about antiquity, confefs 
 *' that I have never feen fo old a MS." It is a 
 fquare quarto of vellum, and ornamented with 
 paintings. I may mention alfo the Livy in the 
 Imperial Library at Vienna, which confifts of 
 1 93 leaves, containing the books of the fifth 
 Decade ; written partly in uncial, and partly in 
 
 32S§9G
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 capital letters, without punduation, and without 
 divifion of words, both fure figns of antiquity. 
 
 There is ftill extant in the Britifli Mufeum, a 
 fragment of a MS. of the Book of Genefis, 
 which, according to tradition, the fertile fource 
 of error, adually belonged to Origen ; but is 
 probably of the fifth or fixth century. It was 
 almoft deftroyed by fire in 1731, but it formerly 
 contained 2 50 pictures. In that curious reper- 
 tory of learning, the Nouveau Traite de Diplo- 
 matique^ publifhed by the Benedidines in 1757 
 (vol. iii, p. 59, n. 1), it is mentioned that Ter- 
 tullian declares he had feen an autograph of St. 
 Paul's Epiftles. And I may notice in pafling, 
 that St. Paul feems to have written a bold, large 
 hand. At leaf!;, so we may conjedlure from 
 the expreffion in Gal. vi. 11: ^'See TTr]XUoLs 
 ypaixixaaiv I have Written to you with my own 
 hand," which is improperly rendered in our 
 tranflation, ''See how large a letter I have 
 written," whereas it really means " See in what 
 
 38
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 large charaders I have written." St. Paul 
 usually didlated his Epiftles to an amanuenfis, 
 and to prevent forgery, he added the concluding 
 benedi(5lion with his own hand, as in Rom. xvi. 
 2 2, 2 Theff. iii. 17, 18, i Cor. xvi. 21. In 
 the fame work, reference is alfo made to the 
 anecdote told by Aulus Gellius, that there was 
 extant in his time an autograph of Virgil's 
 Second Book of the iEneid, which was fold for 
 twenty little ftatuettes of gold. I need not fay 
 that no fuch manufcripts exift now. The 
 learned authors of this work ftate that anti- 
 quaries do not afcribe any exifting MS. to an 
 earlier date than the third century ; but they add 
 that there are no certain proofs of fo ancient a 
 pedigree. There is or was at Venice, a copy 
 of the Gofpel of St. Mark, which, according to 
 tradition, was written by the Evangelift's own 
 hand. Of courfe this is a fable, but Montfaucon 
 admits that he never faw a MS. which breathed 
 a more venerable antiquity. It is a Latin text, 
 
 39
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 which is a tolerably conclufive proof that St. 
 Mark had nothing to do with it, although fome 
 writers have afferted that the charaders are 
 Greek. It is written on papyrus and orna- 
 mented with filver. 
 
 To determine, however, the age of a MS., is 
 one of the niceft queftions with which the critical 
 faculty has to deal, and although there are 
 certain criteria of age which are familiar to the 
 initiated, the antiquarian ftudent is often guided 
 rather by inftinft, than by rules which he would 
 be able to make intelligible to thofe who are not 
 familiar with thefe dufty records. It is fome- 
 thing like the inftind which enables a connoifleur 
 in paintings to decide whether a pidure is an 
 original or a copy, and to affign it to a par- 
 ticular mafter. 
 
 Inftead, however, of murmuring at the lofs of 
 ancient valuable manufcripts, we ought rather to 
 be thankful that fo many have been fpared. 
 When we confider the numerous caufes of de- 
 
 40
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 ftrucflion, fuch as fire, war, and wilful mifchief, 
 and, above all, the devouring tooth of time, 
 tempus edax rerum, we may well wonder that the 
 Libraries of Europe are fo rich in thefe perifh- 
 able records. There is a paflage in Maitland's 
 Dark Ages on this fubjedl, which is worth 
 quoting (p. 276) : 
 
 " If the reader has fairly confidered the pro- 
 " bable efFeds of wars and fires, aided by the 
 " more flow and filent, but inceflant operations 
 '* of Time, aflifted by damp and all the auxiliaries 
 " which he has employed when the negligence 
 " of man has left manufcripts at his mercy ; if 
 " he has refledled that more than 600 years have 
 '* elapfed fince the clofe of that period of which 
 '*we are now fpeaking, during all which time 
 " the work of deftrudtion has been going on ; 
 "if he has at all realifed thefe fads, furely I 
 " might confidently appeal to him whether it is 
 '^ very far fhort of a miracle that any manu- 
 " fcripts of that or of any earlier period fhould 
 
 41
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 *' have furvived to the prefent time." (See also 
 Palgrave's Hift. Normandy, i. 421.) 
 
 There is another caufe of the deftrudlon of 
 old manufcripts, and I am forry to fay that it 
 mufl: be laid to the charge of the bookbinders 
 when the Art of Printing was difcovered. I dare 
 fay that many of you have noticed, as I have 
 often done, that if the leather cover of an old 
 book becomes torn or rotten, there appears be- 
 neath a piece of parchment covered with writing. 
 The truth is, that the binders ufed without mercy 
 old manufcripts for the purpofe, and they bought 
 them by wholefale, knowing and caring little 
 whether they contained fome wretched monkifh 
 legend, or the loft books of the Hiftory of Livy. 
 
 One of the ableft critics of the laft century, 
 Oberlin, difcovered feveral curious fragments in 
 the covers of old books in the Library of the 
 Univerfity of Strafburg, of which he was the 
 keeper. Amongft thefe were leaves of Virgil, 
 Horace, Ovid, Lucan, and Prifcian ; fome an- 
 
 42
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 cient Dutch poems (not very valuable, I fhould 
 think), and the German romances of Triftan 
 and Barlaam. In a fimilar manner were found, 
 in the Library of the Abbey of St. Germain des 
 Pres, fourteen leaves of the Greek Epiftles of 
 St. Paul, now in the Bibliotheque at Paris, or 
 rather there are only twelve, for two were de- 
 ftroyed or loft during the fire in the Library of 
 the Abbey in Auguft, 1794. A copy of them 
 has been publifhed by Silveftre in his work Sur 
 la Pal^ographie Univerfelle^ and it is confidered 
 one of the moft ancient and interefting of thefe 
 monuments of antiquity. It is affigned to a 
 period not later than the fixth century. It is a 
 palimpfeft, of which I fhall fpeak by-and-by, and 
 feems to have been written over in the tenth or 
 eleventh century. The original MS. of Magna 
 Charta was refcued by Sir Robert Cotton from a 
 tailor, who was on the point of cutting it up for 
 meafures ; and a ftory fomewhat apocryphal is 
 told of the titles of the 8th, loth, and nth 
 
 43
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 Decades of Livy being found on fome racket- 
 bats at Saumur. 
 
 Pope Gregory I. Is faid to have burned all 
 the MS. copies of Livy upon which he could 
 lay his hands ; and the fame work of deftruciHon 
 is attributed to Pope Gregory VII. with refpecft 
 to the works of Varro, left Auguftine, who had 
 copied from that author a part of his treatife, 
 De Ci'vitate Dei, fhould be convidted of pla- 
 giarifm. But two of the greateft calamities 
 which befel the remains of claflic literature were 
 the fires which deftroyed the library in the Bafi- 
 lica of the Greek emperors at Conftantinople, 
 and the library of Alexandria, if we may credit 
 tradition ; but with refped to the latter, Gibbon 
 fays, " I am ftrongly tempted to deny both the 
 *' fad: and the confequences." 
 
 The oldeft manufcripts are written in uncial 
 letters, without any divifion of words or punc- 
 tuation, or accents when the charaders are Greek. 
 I may mention in paffing, that the origin of this 
 
 44
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 word uncial is by no means clear, and has been 
 the fubjed of fome learned controverfy. The 
 diftindion between capital and uncial writing is 
 this. The letters in the former are for the moft 
 part vertical or horizontal, whilft in the latter 
 they are chiefly rounded, and exhibit a tendency 
 towards greater expedition in the ftyle. Uncial 
 writing was continued as late as the ninth century, 
 when a curfive or running hand was introduced, 
 and thofe who ufed it were called tachygraphi, or 
 fwift writers. In order to write ftraight, the 
 fcribes drew fine parallel lines with either fome 
 hard fharp inftrument or lead ; juft as Pliny tells 
 us the ancients ufed to do. Argento, ^re, plumboj 
 linea ducuntur. (Hift. Nat. lib. xxxiii. 3, § 19.) 
 As regards the orthography of thefe ancient 
 manufcripts, it is often extremely faulty. The 
 Latin was corrupted by the ignorance of the 
 monks, and words were written in a manner 
 which would have horrified Cicero or Quindlilian. 
 I will mention a few of the mofl: frequent errors. 
 
 45
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 The letter b is fubftituted for p : thus we have 
 ohtimiis for optimus ; b for v, as in vibens for 
 vivensy cibitate for civitate ; e for t, as in eeiam 
 for eitam ; k or q for qu, as in ki for qui, and 
 equs for equus ; t for d, as in sel for sedy and quit 
 for ^w/i. Lette.'-s are dropped out, as in Jibia 
 for fibula ; juftt iox jujfit ; domni for domini ; and 
 so on. Sometimes letters are tranfpofed, as we 
 find quantam for tamquam ; infula for inlu/a ; 
 veles for leves ; and ejfe for fefe. 
 
 The abbreviations are at firft very puzzling, 
 and it requires feme pradlice to interpret them. 
 The letter S ftands for feveral words, fuch as 
 Salutem, Signum, Sigillum ; P for Pater, Ponti- 
 fex, Papa ; F for Frater, Filius, and fo forth. 
 A.M. means Ave Maria; B.M., Beata Maria; 
 D.B., Dux Britannias ; E.R., Ecclefia Romana ; 
 J.C., Juris Confultus; O.S.B., Ordo Societatis 
 Benedidi; S.M.E., Sandla Mater Ecclefia. 
 Double letters are ufed to indicate the plural, 
 as A.N.N, for anni ; D.N.N, for Domini; 
 
 46 

 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 O.O. for omnes ; P.P. for Patres, Papas. With 
 thefe, however, muft not be confounded the F.F. 
 to fignify the Pandedls, the origin of which is 
 different. 
 
 The contraftions alfb are numerous and em- 
 barrassing. Thus we have ms for minus ; dr for 
 dicitur ; mo for modo ; ft for funt ; tc for tunc, 
 and a hoft of others. 
 
 The coftly ornaments which were lavifhed on 
 feme of the old manufcripts fhow in what efti- 
 mation they were held. They were, as Maitland 
 fays in his Dark Ages (p. 68), "illuminated 
 " and gilded with almoft Incredible induftry, 
 " bound in or covered with plates of gold, filver, 
 " or carved ivory, adorned with gems, and even 
 " enriched with relics." An Ele<5tor of Bavaria 
 is faid to have offered a town for a fingle MS. ; 
 but the monks, coniidering that he could retake 
 the town whenever he pleafed, declined to make 
 the exchange. Beccadelli wrote to Alfonfo, 
 King of Naples, and offered him for fome books 
 
 47
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 of Livy 1 20 crowns of gold apiece. Gaguin, in 
 France, authorifed a friend at Rome to give too 
 crowns of gold for a Concordance ; and on the 
 laft leaf of a folio MS. of the Roman de la Rose 
 is written in old French, " This book coft the 
 '' Palais de Paris" {i.e. I fuppofe the Palais de 
 Juftice) " 40 crowns of gold sans mentyr.'" The 
 Abbot Angelbert gave to the Abbey of St. 
 Regnier, in the year 814, a copy of the Gofpels 
 written in letters of gold, with filver plates mar- 
 velloufly adorned with gold and precious ftones. 
 The Emperor Henry II. prefented to the 
 Monaftery of Monte Cafino a copy of the 
 Gofpels covered on the fide with gold and 
 precious gems, written in uncial charafters, and 
 illuminated with gold. There is an Evangelia- 
 rium written in letters of gold in the Laurentian 
 Library at Florence ; and we have in the Britifh 
 Mufeum a Codex Aureus, which I advife you 
 to go and look at as a marvel of beauty and pen- 
 manfhip. It is of the ninth century, and contains 
 
 48 
 
 1
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 the four Gofpels. It Is fuppofed to have belonged 
 to Charlemagne. It is not gilded, but written 
 with golden ink, the ufe of which dates back as 
 far as the period of profane antiquity. One of 
 the moft beautiful fpecimens is the MS. contain- 
 ing the Latin Gofpels, which was kept in the 
 treafury of the Church of St. Medard at Soiflbns. 
 And I may add that it was not uncommon to 
 employ purple vellum, on which filver characters 
 were written. I have, through the courtefy of 
 Mr. Bond, the keeper of the manufcripts, seen 
 one of thefe in the Britifh Mufeum; but the 
 filver has become oxydized, and the confequence 
 is that the writing now is quite black. But it is 
 unneceiTary to purfue this part of the subjedt 
 farther, for I dare fay many who are now prefent 
 have feen in different libraries of Europe fplendid 
 fpecimens of ancient manufcripts, adorned with 
 gold and gems and brilliant colours. 
 
 Charles Lamb, in one of his effays, facetioufly 
 divided mankind into two diftind races — the men 
 
 49 E
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 who borrow and the men who lend ; and he fays 
 that the mofl: formidable alienators are your 
 borrowers of books. " Thofe mutilators of 
 *' colledions, fpoilers of the fymmetry of (helves 
 " and creators of odd volumes." The old 
 monks were very particular in this refped. As 
 a general rule the greateft care was taken of the 
 manufcripts of a monaftery, and it was not an 
 uncommon pradice to anathematife any perfon 
 who might fteal it or remove it from the houfe. 
 Thus we find written in Latin, in a MS. of fome 
 of the works of Auguftine and Ambrofe, in the 
 Bodleian Library at Oxford : 
 
 " This book belongs to St. Mary of Robertf- 
 " bridge : whoever fhall fteal it, or fell it, or in 
 " any way alienate it from the houfe or mutilate 
 " it, let him be anathema-maranatha. Amen."" 
 
 And underneath is written, alfo in Latin, by 
 another hand : 
 
 " I, John, Bifhop of Exeter, know not where 
 " the aforefiid houfe is, nor have I ftolen this 
 
 50
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 " book, but I have acquired it in a lawful 
 way." 
 
 Another of fuch fubfcriptions ends thus : 
 ** Whofoever removes this Volume from this 
 " fame mentioned Convent, may the anger of the 
 ** Lord overtake him in this world and in the 
 " next to all eternity. Amen.*' 
 
 In Selden's treatife Ad Fletam, he quotes a 
 document relating to a loan of a MS. of Bradlon, 
 which was borrowed in the year 1277 by the 
 Archdeacon of Scarborough from the Bifhop of 
 Bath, and which he promifed to return on the 
 Feftival of St. John the Baptift in the following 
 year. In teftimony of which he fays, " My feal 
 " is affixed to thefe prefents." Selden, Ad 
 Fie tarn J 2, § 2. 
 
 I may here mention that once I had occafion 
 to confult the late well-known phyfician. Dr. 
 Chambers, and while waiting in his library I took 
 down a book, in which I found written on a fly- 
 \ leaf, " Hunc Librum Gulielmus Chambers, 
 
 51 E 2
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 " Samueli Duckworth clam furripult ; " which 
 would have been an awkward piece of evidence 
 in a criminal court. 
 
 In the Defcriptive Catalogue of materials 
 relating to the Hijiory of Great Britain and 
 Ireland, by Sir Thomas Hardy, Deputy 
 Keeper of the Public Records, there is a very 
 interefting account of the mode in which manu- 
 fcripts were compiled in the old monafteries. 
 
 Attached to each monaftery of any magnitude 
 was a Scriptorium., or writing-room, in which the 
 monks belonging to the houfe fat to copy what- 
 ever was given them by their fuperiors : not 
 unlike the law-ftationers at the prefent day. 
 Some of the Anglo-Saxon monks were celebrated 
 for their fkill in penmanfhip, and amongft them 
 Dunftan, of whom William of Malmefbury fays 
 that he was remarkably clever in writing and 
 illuminating. A few charters in his handwriting 
 now exift in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. 
 Boniface on one occafion requefted the Abbefs 
 
 52
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 Eadburga to caufe a copy of the Gofpels to be 
 written in letters of gold and fent to him in 
 Germany, that his converts might be imprefled 
 with a reverence for the Holy Scriptures. And 
 a MS., written in letters of gold on purple 
 vellum, was bellowed on York Minfter by 
 Wilfrid. 
 
 Artificial light from lamps or candles was 
 not allowed in the Scriptorium, left oil or greafe 
 or any other accident fhould damage the manu- 
 fcripts, and ftringent rules were in force to prevent 
 idlenefs or inattention. Special artifts were em- 
 ployed to infert the rubrics and defign the 
 embellifhments, and all who have examined 
 ancient manufcripts muft have been ftruck with 
 the extraordinary beauty of the workmanihip 
 of many of them. The general fuperintendence 
 of the monks, while engaged in their literary 
 tafk, was committed to the armariuSy who feems 
 to have aded very much like a modern librarian. 
 He was refponfible for the fafe cuftody of the 
 
 53
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 manufcripts ; and if a book were borrowed by 
 another monaftery, he received a guarantee for 
 its fafe return, which fometimes confifted in the 
 depofit of a book, i,e.^ a MS. of equivalent value. 
 In the year 147 1, when Louis XI. borrowed 
 the works of Rafis, the Arabian phyfician, 
 from the Faculty of Medicine in Paris, he not 
 only depofited as fecurity a quantity of plate, 
 but was obliged to get a nobleman to join with 
 him in executing a deed by which he bound 
 himfelf, under a heavy penalty, to return them. 
 
 The writing materials of the monks were 
 parchment, ink, pen-knives, chalk, and pumice- 
 ftone for rubbing the parchment, awls to mark 
 the lines, and a ruler and a plummet, the ufe of 
 the laft of which was as a weight to keep down the 
 vellum, which, we know, would be apt to curl up. 
 
 In the Scriptorium, the rule of abfolute filence 
 prevailed, and there is a chapter in Martene the 
 Benediaine, headed Be Sikntio et Signis, which 
 gives the Regulations on the fubjed. Inftead 
 
 54
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 of fpeaking, the monks were to ufe certain 
 fignals. Thus, if one of them wanted a MifTal 
 or the Gofpels, he was to make a fign of the 
 crofs ; but if he wanted a pagan work, he was 
 to fcratch his ear with his hand like a dog, to 
 fhow contempt for the Infidels. The fign for a 
 tra(5t was to lay one hand on the abdomen, and 
 the other on the mouth, and for a Pfalter, to 
 place the hands on the head in the form of a 
 crown. 
 
 In fome of the larger monafteries there were, 
 befides the large writing-room, fmallery^r/p/or/^, 
 or " fnuggeries," where one or two perfons at 
 moft could carry on their literary labours. 
 Thefe were generally appropriated to the more 
 learned members of the community for the 
 purpofe of ftudy and compofition. And it was 
 in {\xch. fcriptoria that William of Malmefbury, 
 Henry of Huntingdon, Roger of Wendover, 
 Matthew Paris, and the Venerable Beda com- 
 piled their Chronicles. For the tafk of tran- 
 
 55
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 fcribing was by no means confined to the 
 inferior monks, but there were many lordly 
 Abbots and Priors of whom it might be faid, 
 as was faid of Theodoric, Abbot of St. Evroul, 
 in Normandy, in the middle of the eleventh 
 century, in jingling verse : 
 
 Ipfe manu propria fcribendo volumina plura 
 Ecclefiae natis dedit exemplum bonitatis. 
 
 Amongft thefe I might mention the name of 
 Fulgentius, the Bifhop of Rufpa, who was 
 famed for his fkill in the writer's art. A 
 pleafing and graphic account of one of thefe 
 fcriptoria is given by Nicholas, the Secretary of 
 St. Bernard, 
 
 " Its door opened," he fays, " into the apart- 
 " ments of the novices, where commonly a large 
 '* number of perfons, diftinguifhed by rank as well 
 "as by literature, had put on the new man in 
 " newnefs of life. On the right was the cloifter of 
 *' the monks, appropriated to the recreation of the 
 
 56
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 ' more advanced part of the community. Here, 
 ^ under the ftridleft difcipline, they Individually 
 ' opened the books of divine eloquence, not to 
 ^ winnow out the treafures of knowledge, but to 
 ' draw forth the treafures of love, of compundlion 
 ' and of devotion. On the left extended the 
 ^ infirmary, and the place of exercife for the fick, 
 ^ where their bodies, weakened and wearied by 
 ' the feverities of the rule, were refrefhed with 
 ' better food, until cured, or, at leaft, reftored 
 
 * to better health, they rejoined the congregation 
 ' who laboured and prayed, did violence to the 
 ' Kingdom of Heaven and took it by force. 
 
 * But it muft not be fuppofed," he continues, 
 
 * that my little tenement is to be defpifed ; for 
 ^ it is a place to be defired, and is pleafant to 
 ' look upon and comfortable for retirement. It 
 
 * is filled with moft choice and divine books, at 
 ' the delightful view of which I feel contempt 
 'for the vanity of this world. This place is 
 ' afligned to me for reading, writing, and com- 
 
 57
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 " pofing ; for meditating and praying and adoring 
 " the Lord of Might." 
 
 ** Meanwhile along the cloifter's painted fide, 
 
 The monks — each bending lonr upon his book 
 With head on hand reclined — their ftudies plied ; 
 
 Forbid to parley, or in front to look, 
 Lengthways theii regulated feats they took : 
 
 The ftrutting prior gazed with pompous mien. 
 And wakeful tongue, prepared with prompt rebuke 
 
 If monk afleep in fheltering hood was feen j 
 He wary often peeped beneath that ruffet fcreen. 
 
 Hard by, againft the window's adverfe light. 
 
 Where defks were wont in length of row to ftand. 
 The gowned artificers inclined to write ; 
 
 The pen of filver gliftened in the hand ; 
 Some on their fingers rhyming Latin fcanned ; 
 
 Some textile gold from balls unwinding drew, 
 And on ftrained velvet ftately portraits planned ; 
 
 Here arms, there faces, (hone in embryo view 
 At laft to glittering life the total figures grew." 
 
 I do not know how it may ftrike others, but 
 to my mind there is fomething very interefting 
 in the thought of thefe old monks purfuing their 
 filent labours in the darknefs of the middle ages, 
 and keeping alive the flickering lamp of learning 
 
 58
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 which without them, would have been hopeleffly 
 extinguifhed. 
 
 If I might venture upon a different illuftra- 
 tion, I would compare the mediaeval manufcripts 
 to the planks of a wooden bridge thrown acrofs 
 the wide river of Time, and connecting the 
 banks on either iide, on one of which in the 
 far diftance ftand the Acropolis of Athens and 
 the Capitol of Rome, and on the other the 
 printing prefTes of Modern Europe. The 
 planks are broken, and rotten, and flippery, but 
 without them there could be no paflage over the 
 yawning gulf. We muft mourn indeed over the 
 wretched perverfity of tafte which led them fo 
 often to efface the glorious remains of Greece 
 and Rome, and write over them lying legends of 
 faints, or the dull records of monafteries ; but 
 they are hardly to be blamed for this which with 
 them was a work of piety and confcience. For 
 in thofe days it was thought a wafte of time to 
 copy the claflic authors. He who did io, to 
 
 59
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 quote the words of Johannes Sarifburienfis, was 
 looked upon as " more flugglfh than an afs and 
 " heavier than lead." Non modo afella tardiory 
 Jed ohtufior plumho. And we muft remember 
 that they did not toil for money or for fame, for 
 they knew that in all probability the name of the 
 humble fcribe who copied the MS. would remain 
 for ever unknown. It was with them only a 
 labour of love or a call of duty, and let us be 
 thankful that they performed it. 
 
 Special benefadlions were from time to time 
 made to thefe Scriptoria to defray the coft of 
 vellum and to procure the tranfcription of 
 manufcripts. Thus in the Evefham Chartulary 
 it is ftated that to the precentor belongs the 
 manor of Hampton, from which he receives 
 annually 5J., befides \qs, %d. from the tithes of 
 Stoke and Alcafter, out of which he is to find all 
 the ink and vellum for the fcribes of the monaf- 
 tery, colours for illuminating, and whatever is 
 neceffary for binding the books. The Scrip- 
 
 60
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 torium of a monaftery at Bury St. Edmunds was 
 endowed with two mills, and one at Ely with 
 tithes and a mefluage, "ad faciendos et emen- 
 "dandos libros." 
 
 The diligence and induftry of fome of thefe 
 old Monks were extraordinary. Thus Ortho- 
 lonus, who was an inmate of a monaftery at 
 Ratifbon, tells us in an account of his life that 
 befides the books he copied to give away for the 
 edification of thofe who afked for them, and of 
 others to whom he gave them unafked, he copied 
 nineteen miftals, three books of the Gofpels, two 
 ledlionaries, four fervice books, and a great 
 variety of other books. Nor mufl we forget the 
 Nuns. Diemudis, who lived towards the latter 
 end of the eleventh century, in a double monaf- 
 tery at Weflbbrun in Bavaria — i.e., a monaftery 
 divided into two parts, one for monks, and the 
 other for nuns — was a moft exemplary fcribe, and 
 was celebrated for the beauty of her penmanftiip. 
 I am really afraid to give a lift of all the works 
 
 6i
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 which this holy maid wrote out with her own 
 hand, for their number and magnitude almoft 
 exceed belief. But I may mention that they 
 comprifed two copies of the Bible, the Commen- 
 tary of Origen on the Old Teftament, the 
 Letters, Treatises, and ConfefTions of St. 
 Auguftine, the Epiftles of St. Jerome, and the 
 Ecclefiaftical Hiftory of Eufebius. We can 
 hardly be furprifed if exceflive application to 
 this kind of clofe work, fometimes affedled the 
 brain. In the Gejia Abbatum there is an 
 account of a monkifh fcribe of fome note whofe 
 head feems to have been turned by it, for he 
 began to give himfelf ftrange airs — (mirabiliter 
 
 Juferbire) ; and in order to take down his con- 
 ceit, the Abbot had him flogged until the blood 
 poured down from his body {iijque ad copiqfam 
 
 Janguinis effufwnem)^ but as this remedy failed, 
 he was put into a cell and kept there in chains 
 until his death. 
 
 The labour of the copyift was immenfe. It 
 
 62
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 has been feelingly defcribed by our own William 
 Caxton, " Thus end I this book : and for as 
 *^ moche as in wrytyng of the fame my peane is 
 " worn, myn hande wery and myn eyne dimmed 
 " with over moche lookyng on the whit paper 
 " and that age crepeth on me dayly — " 
 
 And when we fee the printed edition of the 
 work of fome old author who wrote before the 
 invention of printing, with its clear and luxurious 
 type, we are apt to forget the labour and the 
 Ikill that have been beftowed by fcholars in re- 
 covering the text. Perhaps the MS. has been a 
 palimpfeft, or the leaves have been torn and 
 mixed in glorious confufion ; for it is by no 
 means uncommon to find manufcripts faflened 
 in bundles with diiferent fubje6ls intermingled, 
 juft as if we cut up two or three books, fhook 
 the leaves in a bag, and then bound them in the 
 fame diforder. 
 
 Many, indeed moft of the old manufcripts are, 
 as might be expected, anonymous — that is, the 
 
 63
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 name of the author or tranfcriber Is unknown. 
 And In the cafe of the monkifh Chronicles the 
 labour was performed by different hands at 
 fucceffive times, of whofe names it generally 
 happens that no record now remains. Some- 
 times, however, there occurs a notice of the 
 writer, as, for Inftance, a fentence like the fol- 
 lowing In the Chronicles of St. Alban's : 
 "Dominus Rogerus de Wendover Prior ali- 
 "quando de Belvero hue ufque chronica fua 
 "digeffit. Incipit frater Matthaeus Parlfienfis." 
 I dare fay that many of you have read a 
 very interefting book called Monafteries of the 
 Levant, by the Honourable Robert Curzon, 
 who vlfited the old convents of Egypt, Pales- 
 tine, and Mount Athos, for the exprefs purpofe 
 of difcovering, and. If pofTible, coUeding ancient 
 manufcripts. The refult was not very fatisfac- 
 tory, and the author fays that " fo thoroughly 
 *' were thefe ancient libraries explored In the fif- 
 * ' teenth century, that no unknown claflic author 
 
 64
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 " has been dlfcovered, nor has any MS. been 
 ''found of greater antiquity than fome already 
 "known in the Britifh Mufeum and other 
 *' Libraries." 
 
 We fhall fee, however, that there was at this 
 time lying hid in an Eaftern monaftery one of 
 the moft precious treafures which has ever yet 
 rewarded the zeal and induftry of the explorer. 
 One valuable MS. indeed, containing fome of 
 the loft works of Eufebius, Mr. Curzon did fee 
 in a convent of AbyfTmian monks at Souriani 
 amidft the Natron Lakes. But unfortunately 
 for him he did not at the time know what it 
 was, and as his faddle-bags were full of Coptic 
 and Syriac manufcripts, fifhed out of the oil 
 cellar, he left it behind. Since then, however, 
 the whole of the manufcripts of the library of 
 this convent have been purchafed for the Britifh 
 Mufeum, and amongft them the MS. of part 
 of the works of Eufebius in Syriac, the date 
 of which is the beginning of the fifth cen- 
 
 65 F
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 tury, has been publifhed at Cambridge by 
 Dr. Lee. 
 
 I will now fpeak of a curious and important 
 part of my fubjed, I mean the Palimpfefts — the 
 literal meaning of which is "twice-rubbed." 
 And it is applied to a MS. to fignify that it has 
 been twice cleaned or twice written — in fact, 
 rescribed. The term was not unknown to the 
 ancients, but it was generally ufed by them in a 
 different fenfe from that in which we fpeak of it 
 now. They applied it to leaves or books which 
 were fo prepared that one writing could be eafily 
 expunged to make room for another. But the 
 modern ufe of the term is reftri(5led to manu- 
 fcripts upon which the original writing has been 
 rubbed out to make room for a different work 
 altogether, which, like an upper ftratum, overlies 
 the other, and on the application of acid, the 
 older writing becomes faintly vifible. Some 
 critics, however, with good reafon, think that 
 the ancients did treat their MS. very much as 
 
 66
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRFPTS. 
 
 the monks did, and that pahmpfefts in the 
 modern fenfe of the term, were perfedlv well 
 known to them. There is a pafTage in one of 
 Cicero's letters which I need not now quote, but 
 which feems to point to this conclufion ; and fo 
 it was confidered by Cardinal Mai {Ad Familiar eSy 
 vii. 1 8). 
 
 The ink generally ufed by the ancients was 
 made of lampblack, mixed with gum. It was 
 extremely black, and of great durability ; but it 
 did not fink into the paper or parchment and fo 
 could be eafily wafhed off by a wet fponge or 
 cloth. We can readily imagine how this opened 
 a door to forgery and fraud ; and Pliny tells us 
 that it was ufual in his time to mix vinegar with 
 the ink, in order to make it combine chymically 
 with the paper. This, he fays, in fome degree 
 anfwered its purpofe ; but afterwards vitriolic 
 ink was fubftituted, which poflefled the quality of 
 finking into the paper, but has the difadvantage 
 of becoming paler and paler as time goes on, 
 
 67 F 2
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS, 
 
 until, as the MS. grows yellow with age, it 
 difappears altogether. Afterwards a compound 
 kind of ink was madeufe of, in v/hich the later 
 and frefheft looking manufcripts were written. 
 The palimpfeft manufcripts muft have been 
 written chiefly with vitriolic ink, for the words 
 that had been rubbed out and written over are 
 rendered legible by the application of an infufion 
 of galls. It is pofTible that fome manufcripts 
 flill exift which were originally written with the 
 old carbonic ink, and contained precious remains 
 of lofl: claffics ; but the writing in that ink was 
 replaced by writing in vitriolic ink, and this 
 again has been effaced by the pumice fl:one, and 
 its place is occupied by the writing which now 
 appears. 
 
 It is difficult for thofe who have not feen a 
 real palimpfeft to form an idea of the almoft 
 hopelefs obfcurity which fhrouds and conceals 
 the original MS. ; and I know few greater 
 triumphs of ingenuity and fkill than have been 
 
 68
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 obtained by fcholars who have devoted them- 
 felves to the arduous tafk of deciphering the 
 originals. By -and -by I will exhibit fome 
 fpecimens in iiluftration of this. 
 
 The firfl: refcribed or re-written MS. of which 
 any important ufe was made feems to have been 
 the Codex Ephrem, or Codex Regius of Paris, 
 which was firft pointed out for critical examina- 
 tion by the learned Montfaucon. The MS. is 
 in a very mutilated ftate, and has now only 
 209 leaves, which are confufed together and 
 mifplaced — with fo many gaps or lacunay that 
 fometimes fcarcely a fingle word can be de- 
 ciphered in a whole page. It contains parts 
 of the works of Ephrem the Syrian, in Greek, 
 in a charadler and ftyle which have been afligned 
 by critics to the fixth or feventh century. But 
 below appears to have been written previoufly, 
 in the MS. in its perfed ftate, the whole of the 
 Old and New Teftament, and from it the 
 German fcholar Wetftein collated all that could 
 
 69
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 be found in it of the text of the New Teftament. 
 I fhall have occafion, however, to fay more about 
 this Codex before I conclude. The next dif- 
 covery of an important palimpfeft was made by 
 Knittel, the Archdeacon of Wolfenbuttel, in the 
 middle of the laft century. He found in a MS. 
 of the Origines of Ifidorus, under the more recent 
 writing, the tranflation of the Epiftle to the 
 Romans into the Gothic language, made by 
 Ulfilas, the Bifhop of Gothland, in the fourth 
 century ; and with the help of another MS., 
 called the Codex Argenteus, in the fame library, 
 fo called from its being written chiefly in letters 
 of filver, he was enabled to publifh a tolerably 
 perfedl edition of the whole work in quarto. 
 
 Soon afterwards Paul Bruno difcovered at 
 Rome, in a palimpfeft of the Vatican, a frag- 
 ment of the 91ft Book of Livy, containing a 
 portion of the narrative of the war with 
 Sertorius, in Spain. Dr. Barrett, alfo of 
 Trinity College, Dublin, publifhed in 1801 a 
 
 70
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 volume containing a great part of the Gofpel 
 of St. Matthew, written in uncial letters, which 
 he copied from a palimpfeft in the library of 
 that college. This palimpfeft appeared to have 
 been re-written in the twelfth or thirteenth 
 century, upon portions of much more ancient 
 books. 
 
 But the greateft difcoveries of palimpfefts are 
 due to the illuftrious fcholar. Cardinal Angelo 
 Mai, who was born in Lombardy in the year 
 1779, and you will find an interefting account 
 of him and his literary refearches in Cardinal 
 Wifeman's RecolleBions of the Laft Four Popes 
 (p. 484 to 487). He fays: — 
 
 " The peculiarity of Mai's wonderful dif- 
 " covery confifted in the reading of manufcripts 
 " twice written, or, as they are more fcientifically 
 '^ called, palimpfeft. A book, for inftance, may 
 ' * have been very properly catalogued as containing 
 " the commentaries or fermons of fome Abbot of 
 " the eleventh or twelfth century, works of which 
 
 71.
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 *' there may be several other tranfcrlpts in the 
 " library. Edited or not it is improbable that the 
 " volume has been or will be looked into during 
 " a generation. But the lens-like eye of a Don 
 " Angelo peers into it and it becomes a treafure- 
 " trove. The writer of the middle ages had 
 " taken down from the fhelves a work which he 
 " confidered of fmall value — perhaps there were 
 " duplicates of it — fome letters, for inftance, of a 
 " heathen emperor to his tutor, and had fcrubbed, 
 " as he thought, the parchment clean both of its 
 " inky and of its moral denigration, and then had 
 " written over it the recent production of some 
 " favourite author. It is this under-writing that 
 ** Mai fcanned with a fagacious eye ; perhaps it 
 " was like the lines of a repainted canvas, which, 
 " in courfe of time, came through the more 
 " evanefcent tints fuperadded, a leg or arm crop- 
 *' ping out through the mouth of an impaffioned 
 *' head by the fecond artift ; and he could trace 
 " clearly the large forms of uncial letters of the 
 
 72
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 ' fourth or fifth century fprawling through two 
 ' lines of a neatly written brevier ; or the fcouring 
 ' had been more thoroughly done, and then a 
 ' wafh of gallic acid revived the pallid reed- 
 ' ftrokes of the earlier fcribe. Ingenuity, pa- 
 ' tience, learning, and immenfe perfeverance were 
 ^ requifite for the procefs. Often only uncon- 
 ' neded paflages were found, half a fentence in 
 
 * one page which the next did not continue, but 
 ' the reft of which might, perhaps, be found 
 ^ in another MS. 300 numbers off; fometimes 
 ^ portions of various works were jumbled together 
 ^ under one later produdion, upfide down, back 
 ' to back like fhuffled cards, while perhaps not 
 
 * one page contained the * Incipit,' or the * Ex- 
 ' pliciter feliciter liber I. de ,* fo as to give a 
 
 * clue to what thefe fragments contained. Learn- 
 ' ing was then, indeed, neceflary ; for conjedlure 
 ^ often gave the firft intimation of what had been 
 ^ difcovered, from the ftyle or from the fentence 
 ' having been fortunately embalmedor petrified by 
 
 73
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 quotation in fome later author. In this way did 
 Mai labour on ; looking through the tangled 
 mafs of confufed materials, catching up the ends 
 of different threads, and purfuing them with 
 patient diligence, till he had drawn each, broken 
 or perfeft as it happened to exift. After one 
 minor publication of a palimpfeft, he began in 
 1813 and continued till 18 19 to pour out an 
 unintermitting ftream of volumes, containing 
 works or portions of works, loft, as it was 
 fuppofed, irrecoverably. Various orations of 
 Cicero; the loft writings of Julius Fronto ; un- 
 publifhed letters of Marcus Aurelius, Antoninus 
 Pius, Lucius Verus, and Appian ; fragments of 
 fpeeches by Aurelius Symmachus ; the Hiftory 
 of Dionyfius of Halicarnaftus, from the 12th 
 to the 20th Book ; inedited fragments of Philo ; 
 ancient commentaries on Virgil ; two books of 
 Eufebius ; Chronicles ; the Itineraries of Alex- 
 ander and of Conftantius Auguftus, fon of the 
 Emperor Conftantine ; three books of Julius 
 
 74
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 ^^ Valerius on the adlions of Alexander the Great; 
 ^' the 6th and 14th SybilHne Books ; finally, 
 '^ the celebrated Gothic verfions, by Ulfilas, of 
 '* St. Paul and other parts of Scripture ; such 
 *^ were the principal works recovered and pub- 
 ^' lifiied, with notes, prefaces, and tranflations, 
 " by this indefatigable fcholar at the period juft 
 " mentioned of fix years. It was a work in which 
 *' he could have little or no afliftance from others; 
 " in fa6l, it was an art exclufively his own." 
 
 To this account I may add what Cardinal Mai 
 tells us of his firft difcovery of the three orations 
 of Cicero : — " Whilft I was examining thefe 
 *^ manufcripts, I remarked that one which con- 
 *' tained fome of the writings of Sedulius, a 
 " Chriftian poet, was a palimpfeft. * Immortal 
 " God!' I fuddenly exclaimed, 'what do I fee 
 *' ' at laft .? Behold Cicero ! Behold the light of 
 " ' Roman eloquence furrounded with the bafeft 
 " ' darknefs!'" and fo forth. 
 • In the lift given by Cardinal Wifeman, he 
 
 75
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 does not mention the De Republicd of Cicero, 
 perhaps the moft valuable of all the difcoveries 
 of Cardinal Mai. It was fuppofed to be 
 hopeleffly loft to the world, and in fad, prac- 
 tically was fo, except in fragments preferved by 
 quotations to be found in the writings of 
 Ladantius, Auguftine, Nonnius and others. 
 But Mai found in a Palimpfeft MS. in the 
 Vatican, containing various treatifes of St. 
 Auguftine, the long miffing books of the De 
 Republicd buried underneath the lines of the 
 MS. And in 182 1, he publifhed a printed 
 edition of the work with copious notes and 
 illuftrations. It came to the Vatican, from the 
 Abbey of St. Columbanus, at Bobio in Lom- 
 bardy, and is fuppofed to be one of the oldeft 
 of the known Latin manufcripts. Indeed, 
 Cardinal Mai refers it to the fecond or third 
 century of our era. I may add alfo to the lift, 
 the difcovery of feveral of the comedies of 
 Plautus, and a fragment of the Vidularia^ a 
 
 76
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 comedy now loft. The ancient writing of this 
 MS. is defcribed as exceedingly beautiful, and it 
 is fuppofed to be as old as the time of the 
 Antonines. If fo, it muft be one of the very 
 oldeft manufcripts in exiftence. It was written 
 over with part of the Old Teftament in Latin, 
 the charadlers of which are conjectured to belong 
 to the feventh century. 
 
 I might mention other works which we owe 
 to the indefatigable induftry of Cardinal Mai, 
 but I muft haften on to call attention to one 
 of the moft interefting and remarkable dif- 
 coveries in palimpfefts which have yet been 
 made. I allude to the difinterment of the Gaii 
 Injlitutiones^ or Inftitutes of Gaius. 
 
 In the year 1816, the profoundly learned 
 fcholar Niebuhr, was on his way through Italy 
 as Ambaflador to the Papal See, and as he pafTed 
 through Vienna, he ftrolled into the Chapter 
 Library there and began curioufly to examine 
 fome of the manufcripts. Amongft thefe, was 
 
 11
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 one in which had been copied part of the 
 writings of St. Jerome; but Niebuhr deteded 
 traces of an older writing beneath the lines, and 
 was able to make out fome words which fatiffied 
 him that they belonged to the work of a Roman 
 Juris-Confult. He could only devote two days 
 to the tafk, but in that time, with the lightning 
 quicknefs of his critical intelledt, he felt aiTured 
 that the MS. was a palimpfeft containing the 
 loft work of Gaius. He immediately wrote to 
 Savigny at Berlin, and communicated to him his 
 difcovery, the refult of which we have now in a 
 tolerably perfedl edition of the Inftitutes of 
 Gaius. The chymical agents employed brought 
 out the original writing with fufficient clearnefs, 
 but unfortunately the tranfcriber of the works 
 of St. Jerome, who had ufed the old parchment 
 for the purpofe, had in feveral places erafed 
 words and pafTages with a knife, fo that complete 
 reftoration was hopelefs. I hold in my hand, 
 Lachmann's edition of the work, at the end of
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 which are fome fac-fimiles of the palimpfeft. I 
 may mention alfo, that in the fame Library was 
 difcovered another paHmpfeft containing a frag- 
 ment of the work of another old Juris-Confult, 
 De Jure Fi/ci, or '* The Rights of the Crown in 
 " refpedt of Property," but it is in a miferably 
 mutilated condition. And as I am here alluding 
 to the recovery of the remains of ancient Roman 
 writers, I may in paffing, notice that the firft 
 complete copy of the Inftitutes of Quinctilian, 
 was found by Poggio in 14 14, buried beneath a 
 heap of rubbifh in the Monaftery of St. Gall, in 
 Switzerland. 
 
 After the difcovery of the Inftitutes of Gaius, 
 Profeffor Peyfon found in the Public Library 
 at Turin, a mutilated and undefcribed MS. 
 volume in large odiavo, which on an attentive 
 examination he afcertained to be a palimpfeft. 
 The vifible writing on the furface, was a Latin 
 verfion of a narrative of the exploits of Alex- 
 ander the Great, written originally in Greek ; 
 
 79
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 but, by applying a proper acid, this writing 
 was effaced, the more ancient characters below 
 became legible, and they proved to be a frag- 
 ment of the 6th Book of the Theodofian Code. 
 
 I will next fay a few words on the ajmoft 
 inexhauftible fubjed: of Biblical manufcrlpts, but 
 I feel that it Is fomething like an abfurdlty to 
 attempt to deal with It even In the moft rapid 
 and perfunctory manner confidering the limits 
 within which I am neceflarily confined. I could 
 eafily occupy your attention for feveral whole 
 days on this moft interefting part of my fubjed:, 
 and a ledlure which fhould exhauft the queftlon, 
 might almoft equal in length the Attorney- 
 General's fpeech in the Tichborne cafe. I muft 
 therefore content myfelf with noticing only a 
 few of the more fallent points of the enquiry. 
 
 FIrft, I will fpeak of the manufcrlpts of the 
 Old Teftament; but before doing fo, let me 
 mention the word Mqforah^ which you have fo 
 often feen in the margin of the facred volume. 
 
 80
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 It has been pronounced to be the moft ftupen- 
 dous monument in the whole hiftory of litera- 
 ture of minute and perfevering labour. The 
 Maforites, were Jewifh grammarians or literati, 
 who lived after the commencement of the Chris- 
 tian era. They counted all the verfes (which 
 they originated), words, and letters of the 24 
 books of the Old Teftament. They diftinguifhed 
 the verfes where they thought something had 
 been forgotten, the words which they believed 
 were changed, the letters they thought fuper- 
 fluous, the repetitions of the fame verfes, the 
 number of times that the fame word is found in 
 the beginning, middle, and end of a verfe. All 
 these they counted, and made an accurate enu- 
 meration of them, fo that, if it is pofTible for 
 human ingenuity to fecure accuracy in the text 
 of manufcripts it was fecured by the crawling 
 induftry of the Maforites. 
 
 Now, as to the comparative ages of the exift- 
 ing Hebrew manufcripts of the Bible. I dare 
 
 81 G
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 not fpeak pofitively on a queftion about which 
 many learned men differ, and I can only indicate 
 the general opinion. One MS., which is a 
 Pentateuch roll, unpointed, was brought from 
 Derben or Dagheftan, and if we may believe the 
 fubfcription, was written previoufly to the year 
 A.D. 580, and if fo, it is the oldeft known 
 Biblical Hebrew MS. in exiftence. But con- 
 fider this: the year 580 after Chrift is the firft 
 ftarting point we have for an exifting record. 
 Beyond that all is darknefs and void, fo far as 
 regards Hebrew properly fo called. 
 
 The Hebrew manufcripts of the Bible are 
 divided into two claffes. ( i ) Rolls ufed in the 
 Synagogue ; and (2) Square ones, which are to 
 be found in private colledlions. All the beft 
 manufcripts, are derived from five which are con- 
 fidered ftandards. ( i ) The Codex of Hillel, of 
 unknown antiquity; (2) The Codex of Ben 
 Afher; (3) The Codex of Ben Naphtali; (4) 
 The Codex of Jericho ; (5) The Codex of 
 
 82
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 Sinai, which, however, muft not be confounded 
 with the Codex Sinaiticus of Tifchendorf, of 
 which I fhall fpeak prefently. The rules laid 
 down by the Jews with refpedt to their manu- 
 fcripts are curious. They are to be written 
 upon parchment, made from the fkin of a clean 
 animal, and tied together by firings of a fimilar 
 fubftance. Each fkin is to contain a certain 
 number of columns of a precife length and 
 breadth, with a certain number of words. They 
 are to be written with the pureft ink, and no 
 word is to be written by heart, or with points ; 
 and they are firft to be orally pronounced by the 
 copyifl. Before he writes the name of God, he 
 is to wafh his pen. In the Synagogue Rolls, no 
 fort of illumination is allowed, but fuch em- 
 bellilhments are permitted in manufcripts for 
 private ufe. 
 
 The Samaritan copy of the Pentateuch, written 
 in capital letters in the peculiar charader of 
 Samaria, was difcovered in the early part of the 
 
 83 G 2
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 feventeenth century, having been loft for more than 
 looo years. It is referred to by fome of the 
 Chriftian fathers, and amongft others by Origen 
 and Jerome, but after the time of the lafl-named 
 father no trace of its exiftence can be found until 
 the year 1616 a.d. when Petrus a Valle bought 
 a complete copy of the MS. at Damafcus, and it 
 was fent to the Library of the Oratory in Paris. 
 Between, however, the years 1620 and 1630, 
 Archbifhop Ufher obtained from the Eaft fix 
 additional copies of this Pentateuch. 
 
 The Editio Princeps of the Hebrew Bible was 
 that printed at Sorreno in 1488, under the care 
 of Abraham ben Cheyim. Only nine copies of 
 this are known to exift, and the only two copies 
 in England are in the Bodleian Library and the 
 library of Exeter College, Oxford. 
 
 A collation or comparifon of the ancient 
 Biblical manufcripts was made fucceflively by 
 Matthias, Jablonfki, Van der Hooght, Mich- 
 aelis, and Houbigant ; but all thefe were eclipfed 
 
 84
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 by the labours of Dr. Kennicott, who publifhed 
 his firft volume of the Scriptures in 1776, and 
 his fecond in 1780. He and his coadjutors 
 examined upwards of 600 Hebrew manufcripts 
 and fixteen copies of the Samaritan Pentateuch. 
 A few years afterwards Dr. Roffi, the Profeflbr 
 of Hebrew at Parma, publifhed the various 
 readings of 739 manufcripts, and 310 editions. 
 He collated no lefs than 1346 manufcripts, and 
 352 editions, which contained altogether feveral 
 hundred thoufand various readings. And yet it 
 is fatisfadory to know that not one fmgle 
 dodrine of Revelation is afFeded by them. 
 
 There are more than 400 old manufcripts 
 fcattered over Europe and the Eaft, which con- 
 tain more or lefs of the Greek text — that is, the 
 Septuagint tranflation of the Old Teftament ; 
 but not ten of thefe contain the whole. Some 
 of them comprife both the Old and the New 
 Teftaments ; and amongft them precedence, in 
 point of antiquity, muft now be given to the 
 
 85
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 Codex Sinaiticus, which was obtained by Tifchen- 
 dorf from the Convent of St. Catherine on 
 Mount Sinai, in 1859. It contains a great part 
 of the Old Teftament, the whole of the New 
 Teftament, the Epiftle of Barnabas, and part of 
 the Shepherd of Plermas, and is affigned to the 
 fourth century. The account which Tifchendorf 
 gives of this, his mofl important difcovery, is fo 
 interefting that with your permifTion I will read 
 a few pafTages. 
 
 " It was in April, 1844, that I embarked at 
 *^ Leghorn for Egypt. The defire which I felt 
 " to difcover fome precious remains of any 
 " manufcripts, more efpecially Biblical, of a date 
 " which would carry us back to the early times 
 " of Chriftianity, was realifed beyond my ex- 
 " pedations. It was at the foot of Mount 
 *' Sinai, in the Convent of St. Catherine, that I 
 " difcovered the pearl of all my refearches. In 
 '' vifiting the library of the monaftery, in the 
 ''month of May, 1844, I perceived in the 
 
 86
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 " middle of the great hall a large and wide 
 " bafket full of old parchments, and the librarian, 
 "who was a man of information, told me that 
 " two heaps of papers like this, mouldered by 
 " time, had been already committed to the flames. 
 " What was my furprife to find amid this heap 
 "of papers a confiderable number of fheets of a 
 " copy of the Old Teftament in Greek, which 
 " seemed to me to be one of the mofl: ancient 
 " that I had ever feen. The authorities of the 
 " convent allowed me to pofTefs myfelf of a third 
 "of thefe parchments, or about forty-five fheets, 
 " all the more readily as they were deftlned for 
 " the fire. But I could not get them to yield up 
 '■^ pofleflion of the remainder. The too lively 
 " fatisfadion which I had difplayed, had aroufed 
 " their fufpicions as to the value of this manu- 
 *' fcript. I tranfcribed a page of the text of 
 " Ifaiah and Jeremiah, and enjoined on the 
 " monks to take religious care of all fuch 
 " remains which might fall in their way 
 
 87
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 " I refolved, therefore, to return to the Eaft 
 'to copy this pricelefs manufcript. Having 
 'fet out from Leipzig in January, 1853, I 
 
 * embarked at Triefte for Egypt, and in the 
 'month of February I ftood, for the fecond 
 ' time, in the Convent of Sinai. This fecond 
 'journey was more fuccefsful even than the 
 ' firft, from the difcoveries that I made of rare 
 ' BibHcal manufcripts ; but I was not able to 
 ' difcover any further traces of the treafure of 
 ' 1 844. I forget : I found in a roll of papers 
 ' a little fragment which, written over on both 
 ' fides, contained eleven fhort lines of the firft 
 ' book of Mofes, which convinced me that the 
 ' manufcript originally contained the entire Old 
 
 * Testament, but that the greater part had been 
 ' long fince defliroyed 
 
 " By the end of the month of January I had 
 'reached the Convent of Mount Sinai. The 
 ' miffion with which I was entrufted entitled me 
 ' to expedt every coniideration and attention.
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 *< The prior, on faluting me, exprelTed a wifh 
 '' that I might fucceed in difcovering frefh fup- 
 '■'■ ports for the truth. His kind expreffion of 
 '' goodwill was verified even beyond his expec- 
 " tations. 
 
 " After having devoted a few days in turning 
 " over the manufcripts of the convent, not with- 
 '^out alighting here and there on fome precious 
 '* parchment or other, I told my Bedouins, on 
 "the 4th February, to hold themfelves in readi- 
 " nefs to fet out with their dromedaries for Cairo 
 '*on the yth, when an entirely fortuitous cir- 
 *'cumftance carried me at once to the goal of all 
 " my delires. On the afternoon of this day, I 
 '*was taking a walk with the fteward of the 
 " convent in the neighbourhood, and as we 
 " returned towards funfet he begged me to take 
 " fome refrefhment with him in his cell. Scarcely 
 " had he entered the room, when, refuming our 
 " former subjed of converfation, he faid, * And 
 " ' I too, have read a Septuagint, /. e. a copy of 
 
 89
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 " ^ the Greek tranflation made by the Seventy ; ' 
 "and fo faying, he took down from the corner 
 '•'■ of the room a bulky kind of volume wrapped 
 " up in a red cloth, and laid it before me. I 
 " unrolled the cover, and difcovered, to my great 
 " furprife, not only thofe very fragments which, 
 "fifteen years before, I had taken out of the 
 " bafket, but alfo other parts of the Old Tefta- 
 " ment, the New Teftament complete, and, in 
 "addition, the Epiftle of Barnabas, and a part 
 " of the Paftor of Hermas. Full of joy, which 
 " this time I had the felf-command to conceal 
 " from the fteward and the reft of the com- 
 " munity, I afked, as if in a carelefs way, for 
 " permiffion to take the manufcript into my 
 " fleeping chamber to look over it more at 
 " leifure. There by myfelf I could give way to 
 " the tranfport of joy which I felt. I knew that 
 " I held in my hand the moft precious Biblical 
 "treafure in exiftence — a document whofe age 
 '* and importance exceeded that of all the manu- 
 
 90
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 " fcripts which I had ever examined during 
 ''twenty years' ftudy of the fubjed:. I cannot 
 " now, I confefs, recall all the emotions which 
 "I felt in that exciting moment with fuch a 
 "diamond in my poffeffion. Though my lamp 
 "was dim and the night cold, I fat down at 
 " once to tranfcribe the Epiftle of Barnabas. 
 " For two centuries fearch has been made in vain 
 ''for the original Greek of the firft part of this 
 " Epiftle, which has been only known through a 
 "very faulty Latin tranflation. 
 
 *'.... On the 27th of September I returned 
 " to Cairo. The monks and archbifhop then 
 " warmly exprefled their thanks for my zealous 
 "efforts in their caufe, and the following day I 
 "received from them, under the form of a loan, 
 " the Sinaitic Bible, to carry it to St. Peterfburg, 
 "and there to have it copied as accurately as 
 "poffible 
 
 " In the month of October, 1862,! repaired to 
 " St. Peterfburg to prefent this addition to their
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 *' Majefties. The Emperor, who had liberally 
 *' provided for the coft, and who approved the 
 *' propofal of this fuperb MS. appearing on the 
 **^ celebration of the Millenary Jubilee of the 
 *' Ruffian monarchy, has diftributed impreffions 
 "of it throughout the Chriftian world, which, 
 "without diftindion of creed, have exprefled 
 " their recognition of its value. Even the Pope, 
 " in an autograph letter, has fent to the editor 
 " his congratulations and admiration. It is only 
 " a few montlis ago that the two moft celebrated 
 " Univerfities of England, Cambridge and 
 " Oxford, defired to fhew me honour by confer- 
 " ring on me their higheft academic degree. ' I 
 "^ would rather,' said an old man — himfelf of 
 "the higheft diftindion for learning — *I would 
 "* rather have difcovered this Sinaitic manu- 
 " * fcript than the Koh-i-noor of the Queen of 
 " ' England.' 
 
 " But that which I think more highly of than 
 '' all thefe flattering diftindions, is the convidion 
 
 92
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 " that Providence has given to our age, in which 
 ''attacks on Christianity are fo common, the 
 *' Sinaitic Bible, to be to us a full and clear light 
 " as to what is the Word written by God, and to 
 " aflift us in defending the truth by eftablifhing 
 " its authentic form." 
 
 The MS. is now in the Library at St. 
 Peterfburg. 
 
 Next to this ranks the Codex Alexandrinus in 
 the Britifh Mufeum, of which we have in the 
 Temple Church printed copies, with a valuable 
 preface by Mr. Cowper, giving an account of it. 
 
 This MS. formerly belonged to Cyril Lucar, 
 at one time Patriarch of Alexandria, afterwards 
 of Constantinople, where he was put to death by 
 the Sultan. He prefented it to our King, 
 Charles I., in 1629, and it is now in the Britifh 
 Mufeum. The portion containing the New 
 Testament is a volume meafuring rather more 
 than ten inches high and fourteen inches wide. 
 The material is thin, fine, beautiful vellum, and 
 
 93
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 the writing is in uncial letters. The great age 
 of the MS. has, in parts, caufed the charadters 
 to fade to fuch a degree that they cannot be read 
 without the aid of a lens and in a ftrong light, 
 and the ferruginous nature of the ink has caufed 
 an infinite number of minute holes in the parch- 
 ment, which give it the appearance of lace work. 
 The firft few pages are miffing, and the exifting 
 MS. commences with the 6th verfe of the 25th 
 Chapter of St. Matthew. There is no regular 
 divifion of words, and the pundluation is, to a 
 great extent, arbitrary, and there are neither 
 accents nor afpirates. It exhibits traces of 
 varieties of penmanfhip, as though it had been 
 tranfcribed by different hands, and it is the 
 opinion of eminent critics that it was copied 
 from feveral manufcripts, each containing a 
 portion of the original text, I cannot go into 
 the queftion of the miftakes in orthography, 
 which are very numerous, but I may mention 
 that as they moftly belong to what is called an 
 
 94
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 Alexandrian dialed, the prefumption is that 
 it was written in Egypt. Indeed, the tradition 
 is that it was written by a noble Egyptian lady 
 named Thecla in the fourth century. This MS. 
 afFords a good opportunity for noticing how an 
 Important dodrine may be aiFected by the 
 queftion of a fingle letter. In i Tim. Hi. i6, we 
 read in our Bibles, '■^ God was manifefted In the 
 " flejdi." Now as to the original of this, three 
 various readings have been contended for. 
 Thefe are — 
 
 o ((pavepcaOr] ^.^ ,,^. ,^^ '/-^-,. 
 
 OS €(pavepM6r] ,— ^.^ < 
 
 0eos e(pavepo)dr} 
 
 The firft reading is certainly not that of the 
 Codex Alexandrinus, for the s after the o is quite 
 confpicuous. But whether the word is os or 
 ©COS is very difficult to determine. It muft be 
 remembered that ©e^s was generally written In a 
 contracted form 0? with a horizontal line over the 
 letters. The horizontal line is there in the MS. 
 
 95
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 now, but it Is modern, and it is impoffible to 
 fay whether it overHes a more ancient line or 
 not. But is the capital letter or O ? On 
 this depends whether the word is ©eos ^' God " 
 or OS ''who." I have examined the MS., but 
 I do not prefume to determine the queftion. I 
 will, however, read what is faid by Mr. Cowper 
 in his introduction to the printed edition of the 
 Codex Alexandrinus. 
 
 " The confifts of a circle tolerably well de- 
 '' fined, and by the original fcribe, but the tranf- 
 "verfe line is only what may be called a mere 
 ''fhadow, as if a pen almoft dry had touched it, 
 " and that recently. So thin is the vellum, that 
 " the fliadow, as we have called it, may really not 
 " be a portion of the letter, and probably no 
 " human eye will be ever able to determine 
 '' whether the tranfverfe line was originally there; 
 " that is, whether the fcribe wrote omicron or 
 " theta." There is an interefting account of the 
 adual ftate of this MS., in Cowper's Introduc- 
 
 96
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 tion to his edition of it, which I will read. 
 (Introduct. p. xviii.) 
 
 '^ There is no doubt that the Alexandrine 
 *' Codex has fufFered fince it came into this 
 " country. The New Teftament has been read 
 " and confulted far more than the Old, at all 
 " times, and is therefore more worn. The work 
 " of the binder we have already mentioned. 
 " The critics and collators from Patrick Junius 
 "downwards, have not at all handled it fo care- 
 " fully as they might have done. It is, however, 
 " to t em-pus edax rerum^ whofe filent operation 
 " has continued inceffantly, that we would fpe- 
 *'cially refer. Some things are now illegible, 
 " which muft have been viiible even down to the 
 "time when Woide made his tranfcript. He 
 " himfelf noticed the difference of the Codex in 
 " fome particulars from what it had been at an 
 "earlier date. The frequent manipulations to 
 " which the volume was formerly fubjeded, 
 " apart from diredl contact with fingers, feems 
 
 97 «
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 '' to have caufed minute particles of ink to fly off 
 ' in an impalpable and imperceptible powder. 
 ' To this procefs, Griefbach feems to allude in a 
 ^ paffage already quoted, when he fays * curfim 
 ' ' tantum infpexi, ne et tempus meum et ipfas 
 ' * quoque membranas pretiofiffimas inutiliter 
 ' ' contereremdetereremque.' Ofcourfe, not only 
 ' the ink, but the vellum itfelf has gone off in 
 * the fame form, adding to the number and mag- 
 ' nitude of the little holes above mentioned. 
 ' However gently the manufcript is handled, it 
 ' muft be deteriorated, and (hould therefore only 
 ' be confulted for fome really pra6lical purpofe. 
 ' The circumftance is to be regretted, but it is 
 ' inevitable and irremediable. We are glad to 
 ' know that the Codex is in wife hands, and that 
 ' it has been of late years more flridtly guarded ; 
 ' and if thofe who have the keeping of it knew 
 ' how many minute lines, points, and particles 
 ' have vanirhed fmce the date of Woide's edition, 
 ' they would feel, perhaps, even more than they 
 
 98
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 " do, the importance of the reftrldion. The fad 
 " that the volume is flowly fuffering, is none the 
 " lefs real, becaufe it can be afcertained only at 
 " comparatively diftant intervals. However, it 
 " is gratifying to know that fucceflive collations 
 " have determined almoft every one of its read- 
 " ings, and indeed, all that can be determined : 
 ''the value of thefe collations muft increafe as 
 *' years elapfe, and the difficulty and danger of 
 "reading the original increafe." 
 
 Next to the Codex Alexandrinus, is the Codex 
 Vaticanus, which has been in the Library of the 
 Vatican fince the middle of the fifteenth century. 
 It contains the Old and the New Teftaments ; 
 but after the 9th chapter of Hebrews, the reft 
 of the books have been added at a fomewhat 
 later date. 
 
 Tifchendorf affigns the Codex Vaticanus to a 
 period earlier than St. Jerome; that is, earlier 
 than the latter part of the fourth century. He 
 grounds this opinion on the form of the cha- 
 
 99 
 
 H 2
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 raders, the fimplicity and variety of the punc- 
 tuation, and the abfence of larger uncial letters. 
 The force of thefe reafons can only be appreci- 
 ated by thofe who are learned in the lore of 
 manufcripts. 
 
 The Codex is written in uncial or capital 
 letters, with three columns on each page, and 
 the colour of the ink and uniform shape of the 
 letters, feem to prove that it was tranfcribed by 
 one and the fame copyift, who from certain 
 peculiarities in fpelling and language, is fuppofed 
 to have been a native of Egypt. In many of 
 its readings, it differs materially from the Codex 
 Alexandrinus, and befides the lofs of the portion 
 of the New Teftament as originally written, 
 feveral parts of the Old Teftament are now 
 miffing. 
 
 The fourth in order, which I fhall notice, is, 
 the Codex Ephrem, in what ufed to be called the 
 Royal or Imperial Library of Paris. It is a 
 palimpfeft, and contains fragments of the Septu- 
 
 100
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 agint and of every part of the New Teftament. 
 In the twelfth century the original writing was 
 effaced, and fome Greek writings of Ephrem 
 Syrus, were put over it. It was brought from 
 the Eaft to Florence at the beginning of the lix- 
 teenth century, and was carried to Paris by 
 Catherine de Medici, famous, or rather in- 
 famous, for the Maffacre of St. Bartholomew. 
 
 It may intereft you if I read Dr. Tifchendorf 's 
 account of his fuccefsful attempt to decipher it. 
 He fays : — 
 
 " There lay in one of the libraries of Paris 
 " one of the moil important manufcripts then 
 " known of the Greek text. This parchment 
 " MS., the writing of which, of the date of the 
 " fifth century, had been retouched and renewed 
 " in the feventh, and again in the ninth century, 
 " had, in the twelfth century, been fubmitted to a 
 'f twofold procefs. It had been wafhed and 
 "pumiced, to write on it the treatifes of an old 
 " father of the Church of the name of Ephrem. 
 
 lOI
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 " Five centuries later a Swifs theologian of the 
 " name of Wetftein, had attempted to decipher 
 " a few traces of the original MS. ; and, later 
 " ftill, another theologian, Griefbach of Jena, 
 ''came to try his fkill on it, although the 
 " librarian aflured him that it was impoffible for 
 " mortal eye to redifcover a trace of a writing 
 " which had perifhed for fix centuries. In fpite 
 '' of thefe unfuccefsful attempts, the French 
 *' Government had recourfe to powerful chymical 
 "re-agents, to bring out the effaced charadlers. 
 "But a Leipzig theologian, who was then at 
 " Paris, was fo unfuccefsful in this new attempt, 
 " that he afTerted that it was impoffible to pro- 
 " duce an edition of this text, as the MS. was 
 " quite illegible. It was after all thefe attempts 
 " that I began, in 1 841-2, to try my fkill at the 
 " MS., and had the good fortune to decipher it 
 " completely, and even to diftinguifh between 
 " the dates of the different writers who had been 
 " engaged on the MS." 
 
 102
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 To the Codex Vatlcanus, the Codex Alexan- 
 drlnus, and the Codex Ephrem, muft be added 
 the Codex Frederic Auguftus, difcovered by 
 TIfchendorf, and publifhed by him in 1 846. He 
 found it in an Eaftern monaftery amidft torn and 
 tattered fragments, "/« abject is lacerorum reli- 
 quiis." It is, I believe, now in the Library at 
 Leipzig. It contains only fragments of the Old 
 Teftament, and until the Codex Sinaiticus was 
 difcovered, was believed to be the oldefl: MS. 
 of the Greek Teftament in exiftence. Tifchen- 
 dorf called it a Codex omnium qui in Europa 
 Juferfunt facile antiquijjimus. It confifts of 
 forty-three folios, or eighty-fix pages of very 
 thin vellum, written with tawny coloured ink. 
 Tifchendorf is difpofed to aflign to this MS. as 
 high an antiquity as the early part of the fourth 
 century. 
 
 But here I muft ftop. I have already enume- 
 rated the most important manufcripts of the New 
 Teftament text, and I have not time to mention 
 
 103
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 the great variety of originals or palimpfefts which 
 contain fragments of the Greek Scriptures. I 
 will only fpecify one of them, the Codex Bezae, 
 fo called becaufe it was prefented to the Univer- 
 fity Library at Cambridge by Beza in 158 1. 
 He procured it, in 1562, from the monaftery of 
 St. Irenasus at Lyons. It is on parchment, and 
 contains the Gofpels and A6ts, with a Latin 
 verfion. It is thought to have been written in 
 France, and by a Latin tranfcriber, who was 
 ignorant of Greek. I believe that in point of 
 authority it ranks very low ; but as to its age it 
 is fuppofed to have been written in the latter end 
 of the fifth or fixth century. 
 
 I will in conclufion fay a few words about 
 VerJionSj a word fo often met with in books, but 
 not always accurately under flood. 
 
 A verfion is in fa6l nothing but a tranflation. 
 It is the rendering of an original MS. into 
 another language. The books of the New 
 Teftament were originally written in Greek, 
 
 104
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 unlefs indeed we except that of the Gofpel of 
 St. Matthew, as to which there are ftrong 
 grounds for believing that the original was 
 Hebrew or Aramaic. Before very long the 
 original documents were tranflated into the ver- 
 nacular of different nations. Of thefe feven 
 belong to the Eaft, and five to the Weft. The 
 Eaftern verfions are the Egyptian, the Ethiopian, 
 the Arabian, the Armenian, the Georgian, the 
 Perfian, and the Syrian. The Weftern are the 
 Latin, the Gothic, the Sclavonic, the Anglo- 
 Saxon, and the Frankifh. But although all 
 thefe are of great antiquity, they are by no 
 means of equal value ; and with regard to fome 
 of them it is by no means certain that they were 
 dired: tranflations from the original Greek and 
 not the tranflations of a Latin tranflation. I 
 cannot, of courfe, attempt here to go into the 
 queftion of the reafons why fome are more 
 valuable than others : and I muft content myfelf 
 with ftating that there are four verfions of 
 
 105
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 paramount authority — the Syriac, the Egyptian, 
 the Latin, and the Gothic. 
 
 Thefe old verfions enable us to teft, to a 
 certain extent, the accuracy of the manufcripts 
 which profefs to be copies of the original Greek, 
 and to determine between various readings which 
 is likely to be the true one. For inftance, fup- 
 pofe that there is a word or paflage in which 
 they differ from each other, — by turning to the 
 tranflation we can often decide, with tolerable 
 accuracy, what was the word or paffage which 
 the tranflator had before him, and thus in 
 imagination reftore the text, although the MS. 
 which contained it has long iince mouldered into 
 duft. 
 
 The Syriac verfion is believed to have been 
 made in the fecond century; the Egyptian in 
 the third, and in three dialedls, of which that of 
 Memphis only has been found, except in fome 
 fragments of extremely old manufcripts. 
 
 The Latin verfion is the well-known Vulgate, 
 
 io6
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 which was executed by St. Jerome in the latter 
 part of the fourth century (about 383 a.d.), at 
 the bidding of Pope Damafus. It was not 
 publicly, and if I may fo fpeak, officially fanc- 
 tioned by the Holy See until the year 1592, 
 when Clement VIII. was Pope. I fhould be 
 very forry to get into a controverfy with Roman 
 Catholics as to the genuinenefs of the text, but 
 I cannot help mentioning that Tifchendorf, the 
 greateft living authority on the fubjedl of 
 manufcripts, fays that it differs confiderably 
 from the original tranflation of Jerome, as is 
 proved by a comparifon of it with the oldeft 
 exifting manufcripts. The moft ancient of thefe 
 is the Codex Armentinus, in the library at 
 Florence, and the date affigned to it is the 
 middle of the fixth century, lefs than two 
 hundred years after the original MS. written 
 by St. Jerome. 
 
 Before he undertook his tranflation of the 
 Old Teftament, there was in exiftence a Latin 
 
 107
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 verfion, which had been made from the Sep- 
 tuagint. But he refolved to revife the text in 
 conformity with the original Hebrew, and his 
 bold attempt met with the fiercefl: oppofition. 
 Even St. Auguftine endeavoured to deter him. 
 Men were afraid that injury might be done to 
 the faith if a new verfion were made from a 
 different text from that which was in common 
 ufe. But Jerome perfevered. He fays, " I 
 " could afford to defpife them, if I flood upon my 
 "rights, for a lyre is played in vain to an afs ;" 
 and the refult was that he produced a tranflation, 
 which gradually won its way, and at laft came 
 into fuch univerfal ufe that it was known by the 
 name of the Vulgate. 
 
 The Gothic verfion was a tranflation diredly 
 from the Greek, made by Ulfilas, the Bifhop 
 of Gothland, in the middle of the fourth century. 
 Three of the manufcripts containing fragments 
 of it are palimpfefls. 
 
 One word more as to the ufe of thefe verfions. 
 
 io8
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 Of courfe they are inferior to exad: copies of the 
 originals in the fame language. But where the 
 originals no longer exift, and in the cafe of the 
 New Teftament no fuch now do exift, they are 
 extremely ufeful in checking, fo to fpeak, the 
 accuracy of what purport to be copies. 
 
 The hiftory of the Septuagint verfion is in- 
 volved in much obfcurity. The old tradition 
 which was for a long time explicitly believed, 
 was that feventy-two learned Jews were feleded 
 by King Ptolemy, in Alexandria, and that to 
 them was committed the tafk of tranllating the 
 Old Teftament into Greek. This is the account 
 given by Ariftasus, in a letter addreffed to his 
 brother Philocrates, and it was accepted as 
 truth for many ages. But modern criticifm 
 has refufed to accept the narrative as true. 
 Bentley called the Ariftasus ftory " a clumfy 
 cheat ;" and all that can be affumed as tolerably 
 certain is that the verfion was made at 
 Alexandria in the time of the earlier Ptolemies, 
 
 109
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 and that the Pentateuch alone was tranflated at 
 firft. 
 
 An important queftion is, What were the docu- 
 ments which the tranflators had before them ? 
 Firft, let me notice that the feveral books can be 
 iliewn from internal evidence to have been 
 tranflated by different perfons, without any 
 comprehenfive verfion to harmonize the feveral 
 parts. The writers feem to have been imper- 
 fedly acquainted with Hebrew, and there is a 
 plentiful fprinkling of Egyptian words. It has 
 been thought by fome critics that the tranflators 
 ufed not the original Hebrew, but a Chaldean 
 verfion, or that, at all events, the Pentateuch 
 was tranflated from a Samaritan MS. It is, in 
 fad, impoffible to fay whence the original text of 
 the Septuagint was derived, and we mufl content 
 ourfelves with the exifting manufcripts, which, 
 although themfelves only copies of older works, 
 are all that now remains. 
 
 Befides the manufcripts I have mentioned, 
 
 no
 
 HIS-TORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 which contain more or less of the Septuagint 
 verfion of the Old Teftament, I will fpecify a 
 few which are written in uncial charaders, and 
 are of great antiquity. The bed known are the 
 Codex Turicenfis, a papyrus in the British Mu- 
 feum, and containing the Pfalms of David ; the 
 Codex Cottonianus ; the Codex Colbertinus ; the 
 Codex Argenteus ; and the Codex Ambrofianus. 
 The Codex Cottonianus once belonged, accord- 
 ing to tradition, (credat Judasus !) to Origen 
 himfelf, and was brought from Philippi- by two 
 Greek bifhops, who prefented it to Henry VIII. 
 It was almoft deftroyed by fire in the year 1731, 
 and the remaining fragments are in the BritiiK 
 Mufeum and the library of the Baptift Academy 
 at Briftol. They contain fome curious pidlures, 
 with which the MS. was illuminated. The Codex 
 Argenteus, written in filver letters on purple 
 vellum, is in the Imperial Library at Vienna, 
 and confifts of only twenty-fix leaves, ornamented 
 with forty-eight miniature paintings. It is af- 
 
 III
 
 HISTORY OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 figned by Tifchendorf to the beginning of the 
 feventh century. 
 
 Sed nos immenfum spatiis confecimus aequor, 
 Et jam tempus equum fumantia folvere coUa. 
 
 " But we have crofTed a vaft extent of plain, 
 And now 'tis time to draw our panting horfes' rein." 
 
 And fo I conclude this lecture with many 
 apologies for detaining you fo long. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 BKADBURY, EVANS, ANU CO,, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS, 
 
 vRs. . y 
 
 r
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 Los Angeles 
 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
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