of the Harley MS. 3,063, which was once in
the library founded late in the fifteenth century at Cues, on the
Moselle, by Cardinal Nicholas of Cues (_Cusanus_). It is one of two
copies of the Latin version of Theodore of Mopsuestia's Commentary on
the Pauline Epistles. The other is a Corbie book at Amiens. Both show
the same gaps and blanks in the text, but the one is not believed to be
a direct copy of the other. Both go back to a common original.

Other Corbie books are at Montpellier. They had a long roundabout
journey to get there. Part of a magnificent collection formed by
successive Bouhiers (seven of whom were Presidents of the Parlement de
Bourgogne, and lived at Dijon), they were bought in 1781 from the heir
of the last Bouhier by the last Abbot but one of Clairvaux. Then, when
Clairvaux was suppressed at the Revolution, its library went to Troyes.
Government commissioners were sent round to look through the
departmental libraries and note the most valuable MSS. and printed
books. One of those who visited Troyes was a Montpellier professor, Dr.
Prunelle. The 300 and odd MSS. which he put aside would, if precedent
had been followed, have gone to Paris, but they did in fact go to the
famous old school of medicine at Montpellier, and there they are at this
day.

One at least of the remarkable collection given by Archbishop Parker to
Corpus Christi College at Cambridge (193), is a Corbie book--a product
evidently of the Corbie _scriptorium_, though it bears on its first leaf
the traces of an inscription of ownership which, illegible as it is,
does seem to be that of another monastery. Parker's is, on the whole, so
English a collection that the presence of this early French book arrests
attention. It does not, however, stand quite alone; there is a rather
similar one (334) which Professor Lindsay tells me is a Laon book of
about the same (eighth-century) date.

Corbie has occupied a considerable space, but it is entitled to do so on
several accounts. The number of early MSS. traceable to it is very
large, their intrinsic interest is high, and for a third reason I may
again quote Professor Lindsay as having decided, from a minute study of
the abbreviations used by Corbie scribes, that Anglo-Saxon influences
were at work in the formation of its peculiar hand.

Corbie was, as I have hinted before, but one of many venerable centres
of learning in the northern half of France. I shall not attempt a list
of them, but go