SECTION II, 1916 [481] Trans. R.S.C. 
The Romance of a Manuscript. 
By Sir WILLIAM PETERSON, K.C.M.G., F.R. Sc. 
(Read May Meeting 1916). 
I am not sure that I may not perhaps be seeking to lead The 
Royal Society into a somewhat unfamiliar region when I undertake to 
tell the story of a remarkable find made some years ago now, in 
connection with a study of the manuscripts of Cicero. But when 
pressed to read a paper in this section, I felt that it might not be 
inappropriate if I were to base my contribution on one of the most 
interesting episodes in my own work. The burdens of University 
administration demand, as you will readily understand, some form 
of recreation; and mine has been taken in the study of Latin Palæo- 
graphy. This may help to account for my frequent visits to the other 
side of the Atlantic, as the material for such study is found only in 
European libraries. My most familiar haunts have been London, 
Oxford and Paris. The fact that it is my own research work may also 
be an apology for a somewhat excessive use of the first personal 
pronoun in the introduction to what I have to say. This I trust 
my audience will attribute to the necessity of the situation. 
The motive for a review of results at this time may be found in the 
fact that I am just bringing out a second edition of the Oxford text 
of Cicero’s famous Speeches against Verres. It was in 1901 that I 
announced through the medium of a pamphlet published in the 
Oxford Anecdota Series! the discovery and identification of what 
I venture to characterize as one of the oldest and most important 
of extant manuscripts of several of Cicero’s orations. This announce- 
ment was received in some quarters with considerable scepticism, and 
it was not till I brought out in 1907 a new edition of the text, em- 
bodying in the critical apparatus the result of my discovery, that 
general acceptance was secured, and that scholars everywhere, even 
in Germany, gave in their adhesion to the views thus promulgated.? 
It seems open to me, therefore, in publishing a second edition of the 
Oxford text, to speak now of a hypothesis which has received veri- 
fication, and of a theory that has been converted into fact. 
There is no more romantic chapter in all literary history than 
the search for classical manuscripts that went on in the 14th and 15th 
1 Anecdota Oxoniensia, Classical Series, Part IX. 
See Hall’s Companion to Classical Texts 1913, page 220. 
