46 
ISLAND OF PATMOS. ' 
Discovery 
of the 
Patmos 
Plato. 
CHAP, like a negotiation was going on. The author, 
meanwhile, continued to inspect the heap ; and 
had soon selected the fairest specimen of Gre- 
cian calligraphy which has descended to modern 
times. It was a copy of the twenty-four first 
Dialogues of Plato, written throughout, upon 
vellum, in the same exquisite character; con- 
cluding with a date, and the name of the 
calligraphist. The whole of this could not be 
ascertained at the instant 1 . It was a single 
(1) This Manuscript, after the author's return to England, remained 
in the hands of his friend, the late Professor Parson, until his death. 
It is now, with the other MSS. from Patmos, &c. in the Bodleian 
Library at Oxford. For further particulars concerning 1 it, the reader 
is therefore referred to the Catalogue of all the MSS. brought from 
Greeceby the author, written by the celebrated Professor Gaisford, and 
printed at the Clarendon Press in 1812; a work which has impressed 
every scholar with the most profound admiration of the writer's 
learning and great critical acumen. Reference may also be made to 
the observations of ONE, who could best have appretiated Professor 
Gais/orcTsi surprising talents; namely, of the illustrious PORSON him- 
self ; as they are now published in his Adversaria, by his successor 
Professor Monk, and the Rev. Charles Blomfield ; the learned editors, 
respectively, of Euripides and of ^Eschylus. To mention every person 
who has contributed to the celebrity of this inestimable volume, 
would be to enumerate the names of almost all the eminent Greek 
scholars in the kingdom. Of the importance of the marginal notes, 
and the curious fragments they contained from Greek Plays that are 
lost, together with a variety of particulars relating to the other 
Manuscripts here mentioned, the author does not intend to add a 
syllable : it \ver6 presumptive and superfluous to do so, after the 
observations already published upon the subject. His only aim is, to 
give a general narrative of the manner in which he succeeded in 
rescuing these Manuscripts from rottenness and certain destruction 
in the Monastery. 
