But then, delay would have been fatal. I saw plainly that unless a sharp blow was delivered immediately, the Citadel would be in the enemy’s hands. I knew also that it was just possible to condense into 60 or 70 closely-printed pages what must _logically_ prove fatal to the “Revision.” So I set to work; and during the long summer days of 1881 (June to September) the foremost of these three Articles was elaborated. When the October number of “the Quarterly” appeared, I comforted myself with the secret consciousness that enough was by this time on record, even had my life been suddenly brought to a close, to secure the ultimate rejection of the “Revision” of 1881. I knew that the “New Greek Text,” (and therefore the “New English Version”), had received its death-blow. It might for a few years drag out a maimed existence; eagerly defended by some,—timidly pleaded for by others. But such efforts could be of no avail. Its days were already numbered. The effect of more and yet more learned investigation,—of more elaborate and more extended inquiry,—_must_ be to convince mankind more and yet more thoroughly that the principles on which it had been constructed were radically unsound. In the end, when partisanship had cooled down, and passion had evaporated, and prejudice had ceased to find an auditory, the “Revision” of 1881 must come to be universally regarded as—what it most certainly is,—_the most astonishing, as well as the most calamitous literary blunder of the Age_. I. I pointed out that “the NEW GREEK TEXT,”—which, in defiance of their instructions,(1) the Revisionists of “the Authorized English Version” had been so ill-advised as to spend ten years in elaborating,—was a wholly untrustworthy performance: was full of the gravest errors from beginning to end: had been constructed throughout on an entirely mistaken Theory. Availing myself of the published confession of one of the Revisionists,(2) I explained the nature of the calamity which had befallen the Revision. I traced the mischief home to its true authors,—Drs. Westcott and Hort; a copy of whose unpublished Text of the N. T. (the most vicious in existence) had been confidentially, and under pledges of the strictest secrecy, placed in the hands of every member of the revising Body.(3) I called attention to the fact that, unacquainted with the difficult and delicate science of Textual Criticism, the Revisionists had, in an evil hour, surrendered themselves to Dr. Hort’s guidance: had preferred his counsels to those of Prebendary Scrivener, (an infinitely more trustworthy guide): and that the work before the public was the piteous—but _inevitable_—result. All this I explained in the October number of the “Quarterly Review” for 1881.(4)