be useless the dishonesty and faithlessness of mankind render them necessary. Christians, therefore, may use them; but they must not imitate the heathen practice of engraving upon them instruments of war, which are ill-suited to the peaceful character of the gospel; or indiscreet figures, or idolatrous symbols. The engraving on their seals must be of a Christian character,-a ship sailing with a prosperous breeze, to denote the passage of the Christian over the stormy sea of life to the haven of heaven; a fish, which, by reminding him of the element in which he was baptized, may remind him of his baptismal vow. In like manner as the gentiles represented on their drinking cups the figures of their god, stories borrowed from their heathen mythology, &c., the Christians engraved on their cups the figure of the good Shepherd, bearing the lost sheep on his shoulder, &c." The tradition, then, to which our Traveller appeals in the present instance, is not apostolic, but pagan, tradition-a tradition to which the Romish church has been said, in other instances, to be largely indebted. The early Christians derived from their heathen ancestors the fashion of ornamenting their cups and seals with figures and devices; but, instead of using heathen, they used Christian emblems. Ergo, concludes our Traveller, they venerated images. Having now accompanied him through the second century of Christianity, I shall close my present letter. I am, PHILALETHES CANTABRIGIENSIS.

VINDICATION OF THE EARLY PARISIAN GREEK PRESS.

(Continued from p. 36.)

UPON the whole, then, when Le Long says (Letter to Martin, April, 1720; Journal des Sçavans, lxvii. p. 650; and Emlyn's Works, ii. p. 274), and so many of the Docti et Prudentes say after him,"Robert Estienne declare, p. 36, de sa reponse au Theologiens de Paris, qu'il a remis dans la bibliotheque du Roi les MSS., qu'on lui avoit confiés,"-it is the truth, but not the whole truth. He makes no obscurity, but tells his readers fairly that Robert speaks in this place of MSS. which he had received from the royal library; and this contents him. He acts on Mr. Porson's principle (p. 75), "It was enough to tell them so in general terms.' If he had descended to

particulars, he might have told us the number that Stephanus said he had received from the royal library. But the saying-"les quinze MSS., qu'on lui avoit confiés," would hardly have suited Le Long's undertaking, in this letter, concerning a certain text that stands in all Stephanus's editions, viz., "J'assure seulment icy qu'il n'est dans aucun des MSS. dont Ro. Estienne s'est servi pour l'edition Grecque du N. Test. de 1550." Again, when we are told (Michaelis ii. 792, note 289, referred to above, et passim) "In his Answer to the Paris divines, p. 37 (Wetstenii N. T., vol. ii. p. 724), he declares that he

The Editor takes the liberty of expressing his hope that these learned and admirable letters may be continued, and afterwards separately published.

VOL. IV.-August, 1833.

Y

66

had returned all his MSS.," this is rather more than the truth. Stephanus does not declare that he carried back to the royal library those MSS. that did not belong to it, but to either private persons or to other libraries; he declares that he carried back those fifteen which had been granted to him from thence upon his petition. Still farther, when we read-Letters, p. 235, note 140, referred to above, Michaelis, ii. 795, et passim-of "the eight which he borrowed from the royal library," let it be remembered that these are "ea omnia" of which Robert says in his advertisement at the end of Beza's first edition-" quæ in regis Galliarum bibliotheca extant." You must bear in mind on the perpetual recurrence of this expression-" the eight which he had borrowed,"-that it means eight of those that he had borrowed," namely, those which he selected, first and last, out of the fifteen that he had received, to furnish opposing readings to the text of the folio. For I must hold Stephanus to have been accurate in his statements, till something more shall be brought against him than the bare assumption that he is inaccurate; and I correct the correctors. For Le Long's "octo," I take Stephanus's " quindecim,” and say, "quorum copiam (quindecim) nobis bibliotheca regia facile suppeditavit". -ea omnia quæ in regis Galliarum bibliotheca extant:" and I give to each his own: "the small inaccuracy" of saying eight when the man actually had fifteen, I give to Mr. Porson; the obscurity -the groping in the noon-day as in the night-belongs to Mr. Travis's other illustrious correspondent; whilst I leave the wilful falsehood with its devisers, the gentlemen of the "Monthly Repository;" and I ascribe to Stephanus the intention of giving the actual number of the Regii, that he had before boasted of, ea omnia, which he followed to a letter in the text of his first edition; out of which he selected eight, just as he selected one printed edition out of "cum aliis tum vero Complutensi editione,"-or, as Beza expresses it, in all the editions of his Adnotationes,* "omnibus pene impressis,"-to furnish opposing readings to the text of his folio; in the same manner, also, as we now proceed to shew, he selected the seven other MSS. of the margin out of those" quæ undique corrogare licuit."

Here Mr. Greswell assists us with facts, as he has with the express words of Robert himself, in the case of the royal MSS. It does appear to me most wonderful, that any one should believe he could be so long time preparing for his grand work of the folio, without adding one single MS. to the stock with which he began with merely the general view that Mr. Greswell gives of our " printer and editor's" conduct, of which, as Mr. Porson would express it, he himself boasts in his O mirificam-"qua in cæteris uti solemus diligentiam." But I have declared, as I have always felt, that the opposite to what Wetsten says is the truth, though, as we have seen, adopted by

Adnotationes.] The reader will do well to attend to this distinction; Beza himself very properly numbers his editions from his first Annotations, for these shewed sufficiently what text he would have given. Wetsten takes Beza's own statement, as he ought. Succeeding critics have introduced sad confusion, by rumbering the editions that he gave with a Greek text.

Mr. Porson-" Levitatis ejus hoc est indicium, quod nullo novo testimonio accedente, intraque triennium, tantopere a se ipso dissensit Stephanus."-Prol. 146, 5; Seml. 376. "Levitatis indicium"-aye, lighter than vanity must the mind of Wetsten's dupe be, who can actually be persuaded "nullum novum testimonium accepisse, tantopere a se ipso dissentiente Stephano;" and I have exulted, I have triumphed, in the testimony that we have had from Crito Cantabrigiensis to this retort, where he so flatly contradicts the great man whom he undertakes to vindicate; and asserts, 389, that the three editions, with a few variations, gave the same text throughout, making this the groundwork of his "pretty good defence for those who have hitherto believed that R. Stephens had but one single set of MSS., consisting of sixteen copies [printed and written], for his various readings, as well as for the text of his three editions" (402).

The proof is greatly strengthened by the observation of the Doctil et Prudentes themselves, that Henry Estienne boasts so much of what he had done for his father in the work of collations. What time, and in what country Henry was thus employed; we may learn from Mr. Gresswell's 22nd chapter. We find that Italy was the country where he was sent to make these collations, and that he was kept there almost the whole of the time between the first O mirificam and the folio, passing from one storehouse of MSS. to another. These collations "in Italicis" were not made, as Griesbach represents, xvi. 4. Lond. xxviii., by "octodecim annorum puero," adopting the misrepresentation of Wetsten, 143, 369, Seml.; Henry was not, as Michaelis (ii. 316) is pleased to say, "at that time too young, too impatient, and too little experienced in criticism, for an undertaking of that nature." From these random assertions, we may appeal to the scattered notices which Henry has himself left of his collations, particularly in his Greek Thesaurus. Several of them are collected by Wetsten himself, Prol. 143, 144; Semler, 370-372; and let the reader judge whether Wetsten could actually believe that the collations were made by "tunc temporis octodecim annorum puero," and whether Michaelis could really have thought they betrayed the impatience and inexperience that he is pleased to charge upon their author. These specimens, brought together by no friendly hand, may serve to shew that he was not unworthy of being sent to Italy upon such a work, but that he deserved the encomium which Beza bestowed on a book given him by his father: "ab Henrico Stephano ejus filio et paternæ sedulitatis hærede quam diligentissime collatum." And let it be observed, that the productions of "the Early Parisian Greek Press," under his superintendence afterwards, proved that he had enough of the "paterna sedulitas" to extend his inquiries beyond his father's present object, and to embrace the Greek classic writers also. The exertions, then, of Henry in Italy, might, I think, have saved his father and the intended folio from the apology that Mr. Gresswell offers, i. 330, if we could speak of them only in these general terms. I am aware of the persecutions that Thuanus records, in the passage quoted by Maittaire, Hist. Stephan., p. 71. If these, however, made him remit his own personal exertions in despair, he recovered his spirit and pursued

his grand object with renewed ardour. As Maittaire says, quoting Robert's own Responsio, "Theologis obmutescentibus, opus interruptum repetit, editionem scilicet Novi Testamenti Græcam, majore forma, quam anno sequente perfectam emisit." And let it be observed, that he did not recal his son from Italy; the collator steadily pursued his work, safe from all these storms.

By singular good fortune, however, we are not left to form guesses of our own, what must be the effect of such a man being so employed, and in such a country. It is from Henry's own testimony that we are warranted in what has been already stated; viz., that the original grant of the fifteen MSS., "ea omnia, quæ in regis Galliarum bibliotheca extant," was more than doubled at last. A fact snatched from oblivion, so fortuitously, and so undesignedly-a fact, which speaks so highly to the honour of those, whom Mr. Greswell loves to honour, the Stephani, father and son-so deeply interesting to all who profess to value the writings of the New Testament, ought to have graced the pages of the "View of the Early Parisian Greek Press." Though Henry published a small Greek Testament in 1576 (Greswell, ii. 325), he gives no notice whatsoever of the materials from which his text is formed. At the end of his learned preface, he offers some conjectures of his own, which are animadverted upon by Mill, 1264, 1265; and he contents himself with solemnly assuring his readers, that he had admitted no such alteration in his text. See 6th vol. Critici Sacri, p. xxxi. But Henry published another edition in 1587 (Greswell, ii, 353). Speaking in the preface of the summaries or headings, Kepaλaia, of old MSS., he is fortunately led to say, "Plusquam enim triginta vidi, partim in Regis Galliæ bibliotheca (quorum autoritatem et fidem pater meus in illa cujus paulo ante memini editione secutus est) partim in Italicis, qui eadem iisdem in locis kepalaua habebant." This was known to his father's modern accusers. It is referred to by Wetsten, Prol. 143 and 144; Semler, 369 and 373. In the next paragraph, Henry proceeds to speak of kepaλaia, in Greek hexameters; where he says, "Eos ego cum nuper in mea bibliotheca reperissem potius quam invenissem (vix enim recordabar ex eorum numero quæ pater meus ex illis exemplaribus describenda curaverat, hos etiam esse versus)...." This so decidedly brings into Robert's possession what the "paternæ sedulitatis hæres" had been investigating "in Italicis," in the interval between the publication of the O mirificam and the folio, that Wetsten does not meddle with this part of Henry's testimony, to which, however, his attention had been distinctly called by Bengel, Introd. in Cris. s. xxxix. 13; Appar. p. 82. How then does Wetsten meet the inference that Robert had for his folio this accession to his original stock of materials? He had luckily got an anonymous censurer, who dated these collations of Henry in Italy, "post editionem an. 1550," (Prol. 143, Seml. 370), i. e., after Henry had left Italy, and when the collations could be of no use. Wetsten has an easy task in demolishing such an absurdity; and this is to pass as a proof of his old assumption, that there never were more than the MSS. of the margin of the folio-never but one collation-and that this single collation of this single set was made by Henry "tunc tem

poris 18 annorum puero." "Si Henricus Stephanus codices bibliothecæ regis Galliæ et Italicos contulit, et si pater ejus Robertus ea collatione usus est cum N. T. Græcum et parvo et magno volumine excuderet, manifestissime consequitur illam collationem non post annum 1550, sed ante annum 1546 fuisse factam,"-Prol. 144, Seml. 372, where it will be observed that Wetsten repays his critic in his own coin. His sapient opponent makes Henry collate the MSS. "in Italicis" after he had left the country; Wetsten is even with him, by representing Henry to have collated the MSS. "in Italicis" before he had ever seen the country. "Italicos contulit .... ante annum 1546." And you are to take this as a good and sufficient answer to what Bengel quotes from Henry's Preface," Hæc cum partim sciret, partim facillime scire potuisset J. A. Bengelius, nescio qua de causa ad veterem cantilenam rediens, xvi., inquit, Codices contulerat Robertus; igitur ix. plus minus Henricus." [Bengel takes Beza's reckoning, "xxv. plus minus."] "Nescio qua de causa, says Wetsten, with all possible simplicity. Why, then I will tell you; it was because he took Henry's word for his having seen these MSS. with the same repaλaia in the royal library and in those of Italy; and as for the time of Henry's seeing those in Italy, Bengel would take it to be whilst he was in Italy. "Ad veterem cantilenam rediens," says Wetsten. Aye, you must come back at last to the old tune. Robert declared to the Sorbonne, that the "copia" which the royal library supplied was fifteen; and as he had sixteen for his text, "superioribus diebus," he must have added one to them. As these were collated "iterum et tertio," Henry might be concerned in that work for the second O mirificam, "parvo volumine;" indeed, he has left proof of his knowledge of those royal MSS., which were not taken, first or last, for the margin. But the examinations "in Italicis" were, except in one instance, entirely his own, and they were made ("inter utrumque tempus") neither before he went to Italy, nor after he had left it, but during the time that he resided in that country, and whilst they could be available for the purpose that carried him to search for such MSS.,-as Bengel observes, "memorat nonnulla, quæ ipsius pater ex his exemplaribus describenda curaverat."

We may regret that Henry's statement is so jejune; let us remember, however, that he had no intention of furnishing us with an account of the materials of his father's folio. He is speaking only of the summaries or headings (Kepalaia) of ancient MSS. But if there could be any doubt that his knowledge of those "in Italicis" was obtained by making preparations for the folio, the succeeding statements of transcripts being made for his father, cuts off that doubt completely. Whatsoever, then, was Robert's own personal acquisition, between the editions of 1546 and 1550, the exertions of his son alone, in Italy, had more than doubled the original fifteen of the royal library. Neither the fact, then, of there having been fifteen royal MSS. for the first edition of 1546, nor that of these being more than doubled "in Italicis" for the folio, are given in that full manner in which they would have appeared, if it had been the object to state them. But the value of the testimony, which is thus casually obtained,