the publication of the first volume of his larger book. It was then seen, indeed, how clean a sweep he had made of the great majority of Greek manuscripts usually cited in critical editions:—in fact he rejects all in a heap excepting Codd. ABC, the fragments PQTZ (and for some purposes D) of the Gospels; DE of the Acts only; DGH of St. Paul. Yet even now he treats the scheme of his work as if it were already familiarly known, and spends his time in discursive controversy with his opponents and reviewers, whom he chastises with a heartiness which in this country we imputed to downright malice, till Tregelles was so good as to instruct us that in Lachmann it was but “a tone of pleasantry,” the horseplay of coarse German wit (Account of Printed Text, p. 112). The supplementary Prolegomena which preface his second volume of 1850 are certainly more explicit: both from what they teach and from the practical examples they contain, they have probably helped others, as well as myself, in gaining a nearer insight into his whole design. It seems, then, to have been Lachmann’s purpose, discarding the slightest regard for the _textus receptus_ as such, to endeavour to bring the sacred text back to the condition in which it existed during the fourth century, and this in the first instance by documentary aid alone, without regarding for the moment whether the sense produced were probable or improbable, good or bad; but looking solely to his authorities, and following them implicitly wheresoever the numerical majority might carry him. For accomplishing this purpose he possessed but one Greek copy written as early as the fourth century, Cod. B; and of that he not only knew less than has since come to light (and even this is not quite sufficient), but he did not avail himself of Bartolocci’s papers on Cod. B, to which Scholz had already drawn attention. His other codices were not of the fourth century at all, but varying in date from the fifth (ACT) to the ninth (G); and of these few (of C more especially) his assistant or colleague Buttmann’s representation was loose, careless, and unsatisfactory. Of the Greek Fathers, the scanty Greek remains of Irenaeus and the works of Origen are all that are employed; but considerable weight is given to the readings of the Latin version. The Vulgate is printed at length as revised, after a fashion, by Lachmann himself, from the Codices Fuldensis and Amiatinus: the Old Latin manuscripts _abc_, together with the Latin versions accompanying the Greek copies which he receives(234), are treated as primary authorities: of the Western Fathers he quotes Cyprian, Hilary of Poictiers, Lucifer of Cagliari, and in the Apocalypse Primasius also. The Syriac and Egyptian translations he considers himself excused from attending to, by reason of his ignorance of their respective languages.