Produced by Michael Ciesielski and the Booksmiths at http://www.eBookForge.net [Illustration: HELPS FOR STUDENTS OF HISTORY THE WANDERINGS AND HOMES OF MANUSCRIPTS M. R. JAMES] HELPS FOR STUDENTS OF HISTORY. No. 17 EDITED BY C. JOHNSON, M.A., AND J. P. WHITNEY, D.D., D.C.L. THE WANDERINGS AND HOMES OF MANUSCRIPTS BY M. R. JAMES, LITT.D., F.B.A. PROVOST OF ETON SOMETIME PROVOST OF KING'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE LONDON SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1919 THE WANDERINGS AND HOMES OF MANUSCRIPTS THE Wanderings and Homes of Manuscripts is the title of this book. To have called it the survival and transmission of ancient literature would have been pretentious, but not wholly untruthful. Manuscripts, we all know, are the chief means by which the records and imaginings of twenty centuries have been preserved. It is my purpose to tell where manuscripts were made, and how and in what centres they have been collected, and, incidentally, to suggest some helps for tracing out their history. Naturally the few pages into which the story has to be packed will not give room for any one episode to be treated exhaustively. Enough if I succeed in rousing curiosity and setting some student to work in a field in which an immense amount still remains to be discovered. In treating of so large a subject as this--for it is a large one--it is not a bad plan to begin with the particular and get gradually to the general. SOME SPECIMEN PEDIGREES OF MSS. I take my stand before the moderate-sized bookcase which contains the collection of MSS. belonging to the College of Eton, and with due care draw from the shelves a few of the books which have reposed there since the room was built in 1729.