even for good purposes, is only an instance of a strange phenomenon. We
must not be led only by first impressions as to what is to be taken for
the genuine words of the Gospels. Even if phrases or passages make for
orthodoxy, to accept them if condemned by evidence and history is to
alight upon the quicksands of conjecture.

A curious instance of a fate like this has been supplied by a critic in
the _Athenaeum_, who, when contrasting Dean Burgon's style of writing
with mine to my discredit, quotes a passage of some length as the Dean's
which was really written by me. Surely the principle upheld by our
opponents, that much more importance than we allow should be attributed
to the 'Internal evidence of Readings and Documents,' might have saved
him from error upon a piece of composition which characteristically
proclaimed its own origin. At all events, after this undesigned support,
I am the less inclined to retire from our vantage ground.

But it is gratifying on all accounts to say now, that such
interpolations as in the companion volume I was obliged frequently to
supply in order to fill up gaps in the several MSS. and in integral
portions of the treatise, which through their very frequency would have
there made square brackets unpleasant to our readers, are not required
so often in this part of the work. Accordingly, except in instances of
pure editing or in simple bringing up to date, my own additions or
insertions have been so marked off. It will doubtless afford great
satisfaction to others as well as the admirers of the Dean to know what
was really his own writing: and though some of the MSS., especially
towards the end of the volume, were not left as he would have prepared
them for the press if his life had been prolonged, yet much of the book
will afford, on what he regarded as the chief study of his life,
excellent examples of his style, so vigorously fresh and so happy in
idiomatic and lucid expression.

But the Introduction, and Appendix II on 'Conflation' and the 'Neutral
Text,' have been necessarily contributed by me. I am anxious to invite
attention particularly to the latter essay, because it has been composed
upon request, and also because--unless it contains some extraordinary
mistake--it exhibits to a degree which has amazed me the baselessness of
Dr. Hort's theory.

The manner in which the Dean prepared piecemeal for his book, and the
large number of fragments in which he left his materials, as has