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Take another illustration. When John Leland, in Henry VIII.’s reign, visited the library of Canterbury Cathedral, he saw there part of the Old Testament in Greek–chiefly the poetical books and the Psalter. He does not mention the Pentateuch. Nevertheless, it can be shown that that was also there, for among the Canonici MSS. in the Bodleian is one of the thirteenth century containing Genesis to Ruth in Greek, which has on a margin the inscription, legible though erased: “liber ecclesie Christi Cantuarie.” How it left England at the Dissolution one may guess easily enough, but what its fortunes were before it came to light again at Venice I believe there is nothing to show.

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Speaking broadly, then, of the destinies of Greek MSS., I may repeat that they were produced in a comparatively small area, that a great many of the most precious ones were concentrated in one place, and that from the fourteenth century onwards they became objects of desire to the great ones of the earth, who vied with each other in sending special emissaries to collect them. As a result, the greatest treasures were soon locked up in the libraries of princes and prelates, and became less commonly exposed to dispersion and sale than Latin books. We must remember, too, that as a rule the monasteries of Western Europe did not collect Greek MSS.; they possessed a chance one here and there, as we have seen, but rather as curiosities than as books to be used.[A] To the noble and the scholar there was a flavour of distinction about a Greek MS. which was wanting to all but the most venerable and beautiful of the Latin ones.

[FOOTNOTE A: Let not the 400 MSS. given by Coislin to the Abbey of St. Germain des Pres at Paris be quoted against me. They were the collection of a great noble, the Chancellor Seguier, and the library to which they were presented was practically a public one, whose permanence was seemingly assured. ]

There is still much to be done in the investigation of the history and relationships of Greek MSS. In spite of the numberless editions of the great authors, and the labour that has been lavished upon them, I believe that scholars would agree that in very few cases, if any, is the transmission of the text at all perfectly known. For some writings we have too little MS. evidence, for some so much as to be embarrassing. In no case can we afford to neglect and to leave unrecorded anything that a MS. can tell us as to its place of origin, its scribe, or its owners. Names and scribblings on fly-leaves, which to one student suggest nothing, may combine in the memory of another into a coherent piece of history, and show him the home of the book at a particular date, and by consequence unveil a whole section of the story of its wanderings. With one little instance of this kind I will bring to an end my remarks on this first and shorter portion of my subject. In the library of Corpus Christi College at Cambridge is a Greek Psalter written in the middle of the twelfth century. On one of its last pages is scribbled in Greek letters by a later hand the name of John Farley (“[Greek: Hiohannes pharlehi]”). Only about five-and-twenty volumes away from this stands a MS. containing letters written by the University of Oxford on public occasions. One of these is signed by J. Farley. A little enquiry elicits the fact that John Farley was official scribe of that University near the end of the fifteenth century. The Greek Psalter, then, was pretty certainly at Oxford in Farley’s time. What do we know of Greek MSS. then at Oxford? We know that Bishop Robert Grosseteste of Lincoln owned such things, and that he bequeathed his books to the Franciscans of Oxford at his death in 1254; and when we examine the Psalter again, we find that it is full of notes in a hand which occurs in other Greek MSS. known to have belonged to Grosseteste, and which I take to be Grosseteste’s autograph. So the mere occurrence of John Farley’s name helps us to write the history of the book from within a hundred years of its making until the present day. Procured by Grosseteste some time before 1254, it passes to Oxford, and remains there till the Grey Friar’s Convent is dissolved by Henry VIII. Then there is a gap of a generation at most. Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury, acquires it (believing it, absurdly enough, to have belonged to Archbishop Theodore in the seventh century), and bequeaths it to his college of Corpus Christi in 1574.