which are added above the line, are not corrections, but part of the scribe's regular scheme of writing; most of the vowels (he seems to have had a special fondness for writing o in this way), are added towards the end of the line, and generally when the line is more than usually long. He seems then to have written them thus on purpose to avoid making the line run beyond the limits ruled for it; indeed he has often added them in this way at the end of the line, where, of course, had he been merely correcting a slip, there would have been no reason why he should not have written them in the ordinary manner after the last letter.

Correctors. Besides the original scribe, two later hands have been at work on the margin and text of the MS.

The first is that of the 8th or 9th century scribe (for to this date his hand is assigned by Prof. Meyer) who has added the various notes in the margin, marking such portions of the Gospels as were appointed for lessons on Sundays and Saints' days (see below, p. liii); he has also added the crosses in the text to mark the beginning and ending of the lessons. The ink is black, and the writing big and straggling, ugly to look at, much abbreviated, and extremely difficult to read. I trust, however, that, partly through the kind assistance of Prof. Meyer, I have deciphered these notes, at any rate in most cases, correctly. Of the grammar and orthography of this scribe, all that can be said is that they are worthy of his handwriting. He has also made a few corrections of no critical importance in the text, such as the insertion of letters omitted by the first hand.

One or two slight notes have also been added by a small and neat hand of the 14th century, who has again corrected some faults in orthography by the original scribe, and has written the inscription in the second page of the book, 'lib iste e sce marie sciq' corbiniani frisinge.' This hand has also been guilty of a piece of unintentional humour on the page which ends St. John's Gospel and begins that of St. Luke; the blank spaces above and below the inscription 'secundum iohannem expt amen . . . . incipit secundum lukan' have been as usual ornamented with roughly-drawn figures of animals; so roughly drawn indeed are they, that they seem to have much exercised the later student as to what were the animals they were intended to represent; and he has recorded his conclusion by writing serpentes' against a long object without

с

legs, somewhat resembling a caterpillar, and by ticketing as 'boues a primitive-looking animal with legs and horns. This hand has again made a very few emendations of no critical value in the text.

The Printing of the MS. In editing the text of the Manuscript my aim has been to make the printed text resemble as far as possible the written text of the MS. in its state on leaving the scribe's hand after his final revision. All corrections by the first hand have accordingly been noted in the form which they take in the MS.; when the scribe has written a word wrongly, has discovered his mistake, and added the correct form of the word after, with a line through and dots over the wrong letters, this has been reproduced in print; where he has written letters over incomplete words, they have been placed where he put them; where there has been an erasure, the word erased has been printed, as it is of course uncertain whether the erasure was by the first or by a later hand.

The few corrections made by the second and third hands have been placed not in the texts but in the notes which follow.

The lectionary notes, however, it was thought advisable to print in the actual places they occupy in the MS., as they exercise no critical influence on the text; and to any student of ancient lectionaries it would probably be more convenient to have the lessons ready to hand instead of having to look them up in the notes.

As regards the arrangement of the text in printing, a slight departure from the appearance of the written book was thought advisable for the sake of convenience to the student. In several editions of MSS.1, no less than four written pages have been compressed into one printed page, as in our own; but this has been done by placing the second column opposite to the first, in the same position as in the original book. The objection to this arrangement is that the page is thus broken up into eight short columns, the puzzling effect of which, for purposes of reference, may be seen in the specimen on p. xx. It has seemed more convenient then to print the first and second columns continuously, straight down the page.

In a few other points convenience of printing has also led to a slight departure from the exact appearance of the original book; the initial E. g. the excellent reproduction of Cod. Rehdigeranus, by H. F. Haase (Breslau, 1865–6).

capital letters, especially where the verse number has to be placed over them, are indented slightly within the line instead of projecting into the margin, as they do in the MS.; final m or n, as was noticed above, is usually marked by a line after the letter with a dot under the centre of the line; but it has been found simpler to print the dot under the end of the line; the three or four dots which the scribe has placed at the end of a sentence are written sometimes quite close to each other, sometimes far apart, but in printing it was found necessary to place them at equal distances; indeed, it is obviously impossible to reproduce in a printed edition all such minute characteristics as these of the written Manuscript; but I have taken all the care I could to make the number of the dots in each case correspond to that of the MS., and also throughout the text to make the spaces between the words as nearly as possible representative of the actual spaces left accidentally or designedly by the scribe himself. The sentences written in colour by the scribe are marked by asterisks added on the left-hand margin.

Our facsimile is taken by the collotype process, by the kind permission of Prof. Rendell Harris, from a photograph belonging to him. To him, to Dr. Sanday, to the Bishop of Salisbury, to the Rev. E. W. Watson who revised the 'notulae,' and to all those who have so gladly assisted and advised me in this labour of love, I owe my best thanks.

SALISBURY, Aug. 1887.

SPECIMEN PAGE OF THE MANUSCRIPT.

See below, p. 7.

Fol. 13 b.

Fol.14b.

§ 5. RELATION OF TO OTHER OLD-LATIN TEXTS.

Dr. Hort in his 'Introduction'1 places q among the Italian class of MSS., the third type 'due to various revisions of the European texts, made partly to bring it into accord with such Greek MSS. as chanced to be available, partly to give the Latinity a smoother and more customary aspect. In itself the process was analogous to that by which the European text must have been formed, on the supposition that it was of African parentage; but as we shall see presently, the fundamental text now underwent more serious changes owing to the character of the Greek MSS. chiefly employed.' And again': 'Two other MSS. (ƒ, q), and one or two fragments, must be classed as "Italian". In two points then Dr. Hort would place q along with ƒ (Brixianus), as against such European MSS. as a (Vercellensis), b (Veronensis), ¿ (Vindobonensis), etc.; first in the Latinity, and secondly in the underlying Greek text. I venture to think, however, that, though in the underlying Greek text, q may run with ƒ against a, b, etc., yet in the Latinity this is less the case, and that q represents a somewhat older type of text. It does not indeed, so far as I have been able to examine it, represent any one type of text for long consistently; it agrees sometimes with a against b, though more frequently and noticeably with b against a; occasionally it presents what appear to be genuine African readings, now and then it agrees with the rather peculiar text of D, and occasionally it stands quite alone. Yet the general impression left on the mind as one studies the text is that if it be Italian in its readings, it is European in its renderings; it presents a text which seems either to have been the subject of an earlier and less complete revision than that of f, or else to have been European in its base, while a later corrector has attempted to bring it into conformity with the Italian type, by deleting or inserting such passages as he thought proper. While attempting to correct the readings, however, he has not altered the Latinity so thoroughly as to

1 The New Testament in Greek, vol. ii. p. 79.

2 p. 81.