It will be a very great help, particularly to those beginning work in this field, to compare the method and results of investigations pursued in similar and perhaps easier departments of study. Apart from the works of classical philologists, or works like the new edition of Luther’s writings, a great deal of most valuable research has been carried on of late years in the matter of textual criticism, some of it very extensive, some of it less so. Ed. Wölfflin, _e.g._, devoted his attention to the Rule of St. Benedict of Nursia, who died some time after the year 542. [Sidenote: Rule of Benedict.] His Rule, which extends only to eighty-five pages of the Teubner size, is extant in manuscripts dating as far back as the seventh and eighth centuries. By a comparison of these, Wölfflin was convinced that we still possess the Rule essentially in the identical wording of the original vulgar Latin, that Benedict himself had afterwards made certain alterations and additions, and that we have therefore to distinguish several (fortasse tres) editions.[156] Wölfflin purported to give the text of that recension which he took to be the earliest. But we had no more than time to congratulate ourselves on the satisfactory result arrived at by this experienced philologist, when behold, another totally different conclusion was announced by a younger worker in the same field. Wölfflin had done little more than compare the manuscripts, but Lud. Traube applied also the external evidence afforded by the history of the text, and discovered that certain manuscripts that Wölfflin had thrown aside possessed a greater claim to originality.[157] [Sidenote: De Viris Illustribus.] Similarly, E. C. Richardson gave several years to an examination of all the accessible manuscripts of the _De Viris Illustribus_ of Jerome and Gennadius, a work not much larger than the Rule of Benedict. These manuscripts, about 120 in number, he grouped, and then framed his text in accordance with them.[158] While his work was in the press, an edition was published by C. A. Bernoulli, based on some of the manuscripts that Richardson also had used.[159] But from the very first sentence onwards, the two editors follow contradictory authorities, so that while one gives _parvam_ as the correct reading, the other reads _non parvam_. But more than that, the same Part of _Texte und Untersuchungen_ that gave us Richardson’s laborious work contained a second piece of work on the same material—viz., O. v. Gebhardt’s edition of the so-called Greek Sophronius, which is an old version of Jerome’s book. And the last chapter of this version, which is autobiographical, contains indications, according to v. Gebhardt’s Introduction, that Jerome issued two editions of his book, so that, if this be so, an entirely new grouping of the manuscripts becomes necessary. [Sidenote: Julian’s Letters.]