Few, I think, on reading this simple and truthful description, could fail to place some confidence in results thus patiently and laboriously arrived at. Few, I think, could forbear a smile when they call to mind the passionate vituperation which at first was lavished on the critical efforts of the Revisers of the text that bears the scarcely correct name of the _textus ab omnibus receptus_. But what I have specified was only the first part of our responsible work. By the memoranda of agreement between the English Companies and the American Committee, it had to be communicated to the American Company of the Revisers of the Authorised Version of the New Testament, among whom were some whose names were well and honorably known in connexion with textual criticism. Our work, with the American criticisms and suggestions, had then to undergo the second revision. The greater part of the decisions relating to the text that were arrived at in the first revision were accepted as final; but many were reopened at the second revision, and the critical experience of the Company, necessarily improved as it had been by the first revision, finally tested by the two-thirds majority the reopened decisions which at the first revision had been carried by simple majorities. The results of this second revision were then, in accordance with the agreement, communicated to the American Company; but, in the sequel, as will be seen in the lists of the final differences between ourselves and the American Company, the critical differences were but few, and, so far as I can remember, of no serious importance. The critical labours of the Revisers did not however terminate with the second revision. The cases were many where the evidence for the readings either adopted or retained in the text was only slightly stronger than that of readings which were in competition with it. Of this it was obviously necessary that some final intimation should be given to the reader, as the subsequent discovery of additional evidence might be held by a competent critic to invalidate the right of the adopted reading to hold its place in the text. This intimation could only be given by a final marginal note, for which, as we know, by the arrangement of the University Presses (see p. 66), our page was now available. These notes were objected to by one of our critics as quite unprecedented additions; but it will be remembered that there are such notes in the margin of the Authorised Version, though of course few in number (thirty-five, according to Dr. Scrivener), textual criticism in 1611 being only in its infancy.