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But Dr. Viertel maintains that not only did Petrarch not discover the ms containing the letters ad Fam., but that he did not even know of the existence of these letters. The grounds on which he rests his argument are these:—

(a). Petrarch never refers to the Epp. ad Fam., though he constantly quotes from Epp. ad Att., Quint., Brut.

(b). He never mentions a second discovery in his extant letters.

(c). In the preface to his own letters, 1359, he contrasts the number of his own correspondents with the fewness of the correspondents of ancient letter-writers, referring to Brutus, Atticus, Quintus, and Cicero's son as the correspondents of Cicero.

(d). In 1372 he speaks of the letters of Cicero as comprising tria volumina, plainly those to Atticus, Quintus, and Brutus.

The strongest positive argument against the theory of Viertel is the statement of Blondus that Petrarch epistolas Ciceronis Lentulo inscriptas [i. e. the Epp. ad Fam.] Vercellis reperisse se gloriatus est. But it is not hard to believe that Blondus was in error, and ascribed the finding of the two collections to the finder of one. The words reperisse se gloriatus est probably refer to the first words of the letter of Petrarch to Cicero above mentioned. Blondus probably had not the letter before him, and confused the two finds.

Dr. Viertel holds that the copies of both collections which we possess were copies procured for Coluccio of Florence by Pasquino of Milan. Coluccio's letters bear witness to the fact that such transcripts were made. On the existing copy of the Atticus collection are these words:- Hic liber est Pierii Colucii de Stignano.' It is known that Coluccio regarded Petrarch with an almost idolatrous love and veneration; so that it is next to impossible that he should have suppressed all mention of Petrarch's connexion with the letters, if he had ever even heard a report of his having been the finder of them. It seems to me that Dr. Viertel has proved his case. It was always a puzzle to me how such a scholar as Petrarch should have employed as copyists scribes nearly ignorant of Latin, as certainly were the copyists of M. The discovery of Dr. Viertel removes this stigma from the character of Petrarch, and allays many of one's doubts about the trustworthiness of ancient codices.

(2). The codices Harleiani in the British Museum. They have recently been carefully examined by Franz Rühl, who has given

the results of his inquiry in the Rhein. Mus. 1875, vol. xxx., pp. 26 ff. The best and oldest of these (Harleianus A), which I will call Ha, is numbered 2682, is of folio size, on parchment, belongs to the eleventh century, and consists of twenty-five quaternions. It contains the Epp. ad Fam. ix.-xvi., together with the letter to Augustus Octavianus, the De petitione cons., the Laelius, Cato Maior, De Officiis, the Philippics, the Verrines, the speeches in Sallustium, pro Milone, de Imperio Pompeii, pro Marcello, pro Ligario, and pro Deiotaro; together with some other authors, as Fulgentius de abstrusis sermonibus. Each book of the Epp. ad Fam. has a separate index. The letters and part of the speeches are corrected by two hands throughout.

Ha is independent of M; as is sufficiently shown-(a) by the fact that Ha omits altogether Fam. xi. 13a, which is not referred to in the index to Fam. xi. in Ha. (b) The letters Fam. xii. 22-30 are lumped together as one letter in M, but are given separately in Ha.

But H and M are undoubtedly from the same archetype. The following variants given by Rühl will enable readers to form a judgment of the relation between the two codices :—

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It will be observed that in all these cases Ha has decidedly the better reading. But does that make it the more trustworthy codex? In all these eight places the reading of M has since been restored by conjecture independently of H. May they not owe to conjecture their place in Ha? On the other hand there is one passage where the usual relation between Ha and M is inverted. Fam. ix. 14 shows locatus Ha, locutus M. Here the true reading is certainly iocatus. Ha preserves a reading which makes no sense, but points clearly to the archetype. M gives a

bad conjecture. I do not think that in any other of the places referred to by Rühl the same phenomenon recurs.

The following readings of Ha are certainly conjectures :

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In the following places the probable reading of the archetype may be arrived at by a comparison of the readings of Ha and M:

Fam. xi. 10, 2, hominibus honoris initiat civitas Ha; hominibus iniciat vacuitas M: where the conjecture of Madv., hominibus iniciat vacua civitas, is nearly certainly right.

Fam. xi. 21, 2, scientiam fieri H; sententiam ferri M: where the conjecture of Or., s.c. fieri (i.e. Senatus consultum fieri), seems certain.

xii. 2, fin., sique ad me referent H; sive ad me referent M: the usual reading is sive ad me referent sive non referent. Rühl would read si quidem ad me referent.

The chief lacunae in Ha are the omission of the whole of Fam. ix. 18, and of Fam x. 31, 4, from cum Lepidus to contrarium fuit. In the following places Ha supplies a lacuna in M; and here, too, the remark made above on the first eight quotations fully applies:

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The last three readings are found as early as the edition of Cratander, and are ascribed to codices recentes and codices Lallemandi by the earliest edd.

In the following the words printed in italics are in Ha alone. They seem to me to constitute its best claim to value; for they do not look like the insertions of an editor. The last two illustrate admirably a source of error in ms which might perhaps be called parablepsy. When two identical (or nearly identical) words occur in the same passage, it often happens that the copyist leaves out the words between the two identical words. I print the words which occur in Ha only in italics. In the second and third passages I print in small capitals the words which led to the parablepsy of the copyist. Writers on the New Testament refer to this source of corruption in mss by the phrase corruptio ex homoeoteleuto :—

x. 1, 2, magnae cum diligentiae est tuaeque curae tum etiam fortunae. x. 18, 2, cum collega CONSENTIENTE exercitu concordi et bene de r. p. SENTIENTE sicut milites faciunt.

xii. 14, 3, multo parcius SCRIPSI quam re vera furere inveni. Quod tero aliquid de his SCRIPSI mirari noli.

Here all the words between the two words scripsi are omitted in M, and hence do not appear in Baiter. The words supplied in H seem to me quite genuine. The copyist, perhaps, raised his eyes from his task in writing the first scripsi, making a mental note that the last word he wrote was scripsi; but he wrongly resumed his transcription after the second scripsi, omitting all the intervening words.

The second of the codices Harleiani, H', is numbered 2773. Rühl says it came originally from the Hospital of St. Nicolaus, at Kues. It is on parchment, folio, and in two columns. It belongs to the twelfth century. It contains from the beginning of Fam. i. 1 to the words puto etiam si ullum spem, Fam. viii. 9, 3. tainly independent of M. It wants from Fam. i. solum praesenti, to Fam. ii. 1, dignitate es consecutus. distinction made between the first and second books. Book III is in H called Book 11, Book IV is Book III, and so on. There are no separate indices to each book of the letters, as in Ha.

It is cer9, 20, non There is no Accordingly

Hb and T (The codex Turonensis afterwards to be described) present a remarkable agreement throughout. But they are independent: see Fam. i. 2, 4, where H and M agree in agatur, while T gives agantur. Moreover, T's curious transposition in Fam i.

9, 17, is not in H. Here is a list of agreements between H and T against M:

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It will be observed that in all these places H and T agree in an error, while M has the true reading. The same thing is well illustrated by comparing the dealing of each codex with Fam. i. 9, 18:

optarem te ordatu conde H.

optarem te hortatum contendere T.

auctoremque hortatum contendere M1.

auctorem sequor, tantum contendere M2.

Cicero here refers to the advice of Pseudo-Plato given to the friends of Dion in the seventh letter (330 C-331 D), and to Perdicius in the sixth (322 A-C), though his memory has not served him very accurately.

H' divides the long letter, Fam. 9, into two letters, beginning the latter at certiorem te per litteras, § 4.

(3). The Codex Turonensis, commonly called T, is in the Library of Tours, No. 688. It was included in Haenel's Catalegi librorum manuscriptorum qui in bibliothecis Galliae Helvetiae Belgiae Britanniae magnae Hispaniae Lusitaniae asservantur: Lipsiae, 1829. It is a parchment quarto, in two columns. M. Charles Thurot, in a valuable pamphlet, entitled Notice sur un manuscrit du xiie siècle (published by the Bibliothèque de l'école des hautes études : Paris, 1874), has given a full account of this ms. It has from Fam. i. to Fam. vii. 32, 1, me conferri; omitting from Fam. ii. 16, 4, hac orbis terrarum, to Fam. iv. 3, 4, appareat cum me co. It wants the last three and a-half letters of the second book, the whole of the third, and the first three and a-half of the fourth. Orelli believes it not to be earlier than the end of the fourteenth century, on the not very strong ground that it contains, together with the letters, some of the philosophical works of Cicero, which combination, he says, his experience teaches him to be the mark of a late coder. M. Thurot holds it to be of the end of the twelfth century-(a) on

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