6. On the Continent a similar result was attained by the enterprising Dutch printers Bonaventura and Abraham ELZEVIR of Leyden. What scholars had a hand in their edition, if we may speak of scholars at all in this connection, is not known. In 1624 the Elzevirs published, in a handy form and beautifully printed, an edition the text of which was taken mainly from Beza’s octavo edition of 1565. In their Preface to a new issue in 1633 they said “textum ergo habes nunc ab omnibus receptum, in quo nihil immutatum aut corruptum damus,” while they professed that even the smallest errors—“vel minutissimae mendae”—had been eliminated with judgment and care. By means of this catchword they actually succeeded in making their text the most widely disseminated of all during 200 years. The English Bible Society alone have issued not fewer than 351,495 copies of it in the 90 years of their existence, and at the present time are still printing this text alone. They issued 12,200 copies of it in the year 1894. For several centuries, therefore, thousands of Christian scholars have contented themselves with a text based ultimately on two or three late manuscripts lying at the command of the first editors—Stephen, Erasmus, and Ximenes—a text, moreover, in which the erroneous readings of Erasmus, already referred to, are retained to this day. LITERATURE.—Scrivener, ii. 193. Hoskier ... (C) _a full and exact comparison of the Elzevir editions of 1624 and 1633, doubling the number of the real variants hitherto known, and exhibiting the support given in the one case and in the other by the subsequent editions of 1641, 1656, 1662, 1670, and 1678_. On the Elzevirs see G. Berghman, _Nouvelles Études sur la Bibliographie Elzevirienne. Supplément à l’ouvrage sur les Elzevier de M. Alphonse Willems_, Stockholm, 1897. Also, A. de Reume, _Recherches historiques, généalogiques et bibliographiques sur les Elzevier_, Brussels. Facsimile of the edition of 1633 in Schaff’s _Companion_. [Sidenote: Critical attempts.]