Since this editor’s system of recensions differed thus widely from Griesbach’s, in suppressing altogether one of his three classes, and in yielding to the third, which the other slighted, a decided preference over its surviving rival, it might have been imagined that the consequences of such discrepancy in theory would have been strongly marked in their effects on his text. That such is not the case, at least to any considerable extent (especially in his second volume), must be imputed in part to Griesbach’s prudent reserve in carrying out his principles to extremity, but yet more to Scholz’s vacillation and evident weakness of judgement. In fact, on his last visit to England in 1845, he distributed among Biblical students here a “Commentatio de virtutibus et vitiis utriusque codicum N. T. familiae,” that he had just delivered on the occasion of some Encaenia at Bonn, in which (after various statements that display either ignorance or inattention respecting the ordinary phenomena of manuscripts which in a veteran collator is really unaccountable(232)) he declares his purpose, chiefly it would seem from considerations of internal evidence, that if ever it should be his lot to prepare another edition of the New Testament, “se plerasque codicum Alexandrinorum lectiones illas quas in margine interiore textui editionis suae Alexandrinas dixit, in textum recepturum” (p. 14). The text which its constructor distrusted, can have but small claim on the faith of others. 14. “Novum Testamentum Graece et Latine, Carolus Lachmannus recensuit, Philippus Buttmannus Ph. F. Graecae lectionis auctoritates apposuit” is the simple title-page of a work, by one of the most eminent philologists of his time, the first volume of which (containing the Gospels) appeared at Berlin (8vo), 1842, the second and concluding one in 1850, whose boldness and originality have procured it, as well for good as for ill, a prominent place in the history of the sacred text. Lachmann had published as early as 1831 a small edition containing only the text of the New Testament, with a list of the readings wherein he differs from that of Elzevir, preceded by a notice of his plan not exceeding a few lines in length, itself so obscurely worded that even to those who happened to understand his meaning it must have read like a riddle whose solution they had been told beforehand; and referring us for fuller information to what he strangely considered “a more convenient place,” a German periodical of the preceding year’s date(233). Authors who take so little pains to explain their fundamental principles of criticism, especially if (as in the present case) these are novel and unexpected, can hardly wonder when their drift and purpose are imperfectly apprehended; so that a little volume, which we now learn had cost Lachmann five years of thought and labour, was confounded, even by the learned, with the mass of common, hasty, and superficial reprints. Nor was the difficulty much removed on