Each volume has a Preface, much descriptive matter, and facsimiles of manuscripts (twenty-nine in all), the whole being in complete and almost hopeless disorder, and the general title-page absurdly long. Hence his critical principles (if such they may be termed) must be picked up piecemeal; and it is not very pleasant to observe the sort of influence which hostile controversy exercised over his mind and temper. While yet fresh at his task (1782), anticipating the fair fame his most profitable researches had so well earned, Matthaei is frank, calm, and rational: even at a later period J. D. Michaelis is, in his estimation, the keenest of living judges of codices, and he says so the rather “quod ille vir doctissimus multis modis me, _quâ de causâ ipse ignoro_, partim jocosè, partim seriò, vexavit” (Tom. ii, 1788, p. xxxi). Bengel, whose sentiments were very dissimilar from those of the Moscow Professor, “pro acumine, diligentiâ et religione suâ,” would have arrived at other conclusions, had his Augsburg codices been better (_ibid._, p. xxx). But for Griesbach and his recension-theory no terms of insult are strong enough; “risum vel adeo pueris debet ille Halensis criticus,” who never saw, “_ut credibile est_,” a manuscript even of the tenth century (_ibid._, p. xxiii), yet presumes to dictate to those who have collated seventy. The unhappy consequence was, that one who had taken up this employment in an earnest and candid spirit, possessed with the simple desire to promote the study of sacred literature, could devise no fitter commencement for his latest Preface than this: “Laborem igitur molestum invidiosum et infamem, inter convicia ranarum et latratus canum, aut ferreâ patientiâ aut invictâ pertinaciâ his quindecim annis vel sustinui, vel utcunque potui perfeci, vel denique et fastidio et taedio, ut fortasse non nulli opinantur, deposui et abjeci” (Tom. i, Praef. p. 1): he could find no purer cause for thankfulness, than (what we might have imagined but a very slight mercy) that he had never been commended by those “of whom to be dispraised is no small praise;” or (to use his own more vigorous language) “quod nemo scurra ... nemo denique de grego novorum theologorum, hanc qualemcunque operam meam ausus est ore impuro suo, laudeque contumeliosâ comprobare.” Matthaei’s second edition in three volumes (destitute of the Latin version and most of the critical notes) bears date 1803-7(219). For some cause, now not easy to understand, he hardly gave to this second edition the advantages of his studies during the fifteen years which had elapsed since he completed his first. We saw his labours bestowed on the Zittau N. T. in 1801-2 (Evan. 605). On the last leaf of the third volume of his second edition, writing from Moscow in May, 1805, he speaks of a book containing collations of no less than twenty-four manuscripts, partly fresh, partly corrected, which, when he returned into Russia, he delivered to Augustus Schumann, a bookseller at