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Title: The Wanderings and Homes of Manuscripts
Helps for Students of History, No. 17.

Author: M. R. James

Release Date: February 25, 2009 [EBook #28187]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Illustration: HELPS FOR STUDENTS OF HISTORY

THE WANDERINGS AND HOMES OF MANUSCRIPTS

M. R. JAMES]

HELPS FOR STUDENTS OF HISTORY. No. 17

EDITED BY C. JOHNSON, M.A., AND J. P. WHITNEY, D.D., D.C.L.

THE WANDERINGS AND HOMES OF MANUSCRIPTS

BY

M. R. JAMES, LITT.D., F.B.A.

PROVOST OF ETON
SOMETIME PROVOST OF KING'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE

LONDON

SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING
CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE

NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

1919

THE WANDERINGS AND HOMES OF MANUSCRIPTS

THE Wanderings and Homes of Manuscripts is the title of this book. To
have called it the survival and transmission of ancient literature would
have been pretentious, but not wholly untruthful. Manuscripts, we all
know, are the chief means by which the records and imaginings of twenty
centuries have been preserved. It is my purpose to tell where
manuscripts were made, and how and in what centres they have been
collected, and, incidentally, to suggest some helps for tracing out
their history. Naturally the few pages into which the story has to be
packed will not give room for any one episode to be treated
exhaustively. Enough if I succeed in rousing curiosity and setting some
student to work in a field in which an immense amount still remains to
be discovered.

In treating of so large a subject as this--for it is a large one--it is
not a bad plan to begin with the particular and get gradually to the
general.

SOME SPECIMEN PEDIGREES OF MSS.

I take my stand before the moderate-sized bookcase which contains the
collection of MSS. belonging to the College of Eton, and with due care
draw from the shelves a few of the books wh