80 



Although the paramount value of the Holy Scriptures is such as 

 necessarily to lay the first claim to the researches of the learned, still 

 much time and labour have been most usefully employed upon the 

 manuscript copies of those which are usufJly denominated prophage 

 writings. From fixing the dates and the genuine readings in such 

 copies we arrive at much accurate information, not only of a philological 

 nature, but likewise as to the actual manners, thoughts, and proceedings 

 of the persons therein treated of. 



The date of a manuscript is sometimes inserted at the conclusion by 

 the scribe who wrote it — and of course no testimony can be more con- 

 clusive than this. In some cases not only the year, but the month, day, 

 and hour are given when the work was brought to a conclusion. Of 

 these, several examples are found in our own public libraries and in 

 those of the continent. In other cases the exact date, or a very near 

 approximation to it, is found by internal evidence, as when events con- 

 nected with the history of a monastery or other establishment are 

 chronicled therein. Circumstances may transpire connected with the 

 very patronage of the scribe — of which a very curious example is offered 

 in a beautiful manuscript in the possession of the wiiter. It is a copy 

 of the apocryphal treatise of Aristotle, De Regimine Imperii, made 

 originally for the reigning Pope, Innocent VIII., to whom the writer 

 appears in a highly finished miniature to be presenting it. His Holiness 

 seems finally to have refused to accept the dedication, or possibly omitted 

 to reward the scribe, who thereupon has erased the name of the Pope, 

 and hastily substituted that of Ludovico Sforza. The date, therefore, 

 must have been between A.D. 1484 and 1492, during which years Pope 

 Innocent occupied the chair of St. Peter. 



In the imperial library at Vienna a most valuable manuscript of 

 Dioscorides is deposited, containing many miniatures, among which is a 

 portrait of an Empress seated on a golden throne. Of two squares one 

 is so placed upon the other as to describe the figure of an octagon, 

 within which this portrait appears, and in the eight triangles thus 

 formed by the diagram are written the eight letters which compose the 

 name of the Empress lOYAlANA (Juliana) who signalised herself early 

 in the sixth century by various acts of piety and liberality. At this 

 period therefore the manuscript must have been written in honour of 

 the said Empress. 



An instance has been already adduced wherein the tenure of land in 

 Sicily was adjusted by the fixing of the time when a deed was written. 

 Still more important in deciding adverse claims is the famous survey of 

 England made by order of William the Conqueror and called Domesday 

 hook. Of tliis it is impossible to mistake the date or the authenticity. 



