Part 4 (2/2)

5. Mrs. Dacier, Mr. Rowe.

6. This made Theodorus Gaza say, that if learning must suffer a general s.h.i.+pwreck, and he had only his choice left him of preserving one author, Plutarch should be the man.

7. With this fault the famous king of Prussia, who is perfectly acquainted with the affairs of the North, charged the florid author of the history of Charles XII. of Sweden. Nor could this historian, as it is said, give any other answer to the complaint of the Hamburghers, that he had notoriously slandered them with regard to their conduct towards the citizens of Altena, than that his fiction was plausible and ingenious, founded in their mutual jealousy, according to the maxim of dramatic writers, _Feign with probability_. Of this cast, indeed, though we have many modern examples, we know, perhaps, none among the authors of antiquity.

8. Thirty thousand various readings were found by Mr. Mills in the Greek New Testament; Dr. Bentley reckoned twenty thousand in Terence, and twice as many as there are verses in the poet Manilius.

Even the most valuable Vatican and Alexandrian ma.n.u.scripts of the Bible abound in faults of the copiers; and editions of works made from single ma.n.u.scripts are always very defective.--witness those of Cornelius Nepos, and the Greek Hesychius. Patrick Young, (called in Latin, Patricius Junius,) when keeper of the king's library at London, scrupled not to erase and alter several words in the most valuable Alexandrian Greek ma.n.u.script copy of the Bible, as is visible to this day. What wonder, then, (how intolerable such liberties are,) if the like has been sometimes done by others in books of less note, with a presumption like that of Dr. Bentley in his amendments of Horace.

9. Prelim Dissert. on St. Matthew.

10. Sine probabilibus autoribus, Conc. t. 7, 954.

11. Can. 62.

12. Regies de la Critique, t. 2, p. 12, 20, et Diss. 3, p. 134.

13. See Mabillon, Disquis. de Cursu Gallic. --1.

14. Tert. l. de Bapt. c. 17.

15. Catal. Vir Ill.u.s.tr. c. 7.

16. See Nat. Alexander, Collet, Henno, &c., in Decalogum de Mendacio.

17. Grot. l. de Antichr. t. 3, Op. Theolog.

18. Gerson, ep. ad Morel.

19. De Loc. Theol. l. 11, c. 5.

20. Diplomat. l. 3, c. 3.

21. Coutant, Vindic. veter. Cod. Confirm. p. 32, 550, &c.

22. Diplom. t. 4, p. 452, &c.

23. Gurdon, Hist. of Parliament, t. 1.

24. Pref. to Not.i.tia Monastica, in folio.

25. Dissert. 3, de Antiq. Acad.

26. How easy was the mistake of a copyist or bookseller, who ascribed the works of some modern Austin to the great doctor of that name? or who, finding several sermons of St. Caesarius annexed in the same copy to those of St. Austin, imagined them all to belong to one t.i.tle?

Several disciples published, under the names of St. Austin, St.

Gregory, or St. Zeno, sermons or comments which they had heard from their mouths: by the same means we have three different editions of the confession of St. Ephrem. We have already seen many works falsely published under the name of Boerhaave, which never came from his pen; as, The Method of Studying Physic, Materia Medica, Praxis Medica, and a spurious edition of his Chemistry, which seem all to come from the pens of his scholars.

27. Among the compilers of the lives of saints, some wanted the discernment of criticism. Simeon Metaphrastes, patrician, first secretary and chancellor to the emperors Leo the Wise, and Constantine Porphyrogenitus, in 912, (of whose collection one hundred and twenty-two lives are still extant,) sometimes altered the style of his authors where it appeared flat or barbarous, and sometimes inserted later additions and interpolations, often not sufficiently warranted, though not by him forged; for Psellus, in his panegyric, furnishes us with many proofs of his piety. See Cave, (Hist. Liter. t. 2, p. 88,) who, with other judicious critics, entertains a much more favorable opinion of Metaphrastes than Baillet. See Metaphrastes vindicated by Leo Allatius. (Diatr. de Nilis, p. 24.) James de Voragine, of the order of St. Dominick, and archbishop of Genoa, author of the _Golden Legend_, in 1290, wrote still with less judgment, and, in imitation of Livy, often made the martyrs speak his own language. Lippoman, bishop of Verona in 1550, and Laurence Surius, a Carthusian monk of Cologne in 1570, sometimes wanted the necessary helps for discernment in the choice of materials. The same is to be said of Ribadeneira, except in the lives of saints who lived near his own time, though a person otherwise well qualified for a writer of sacred biography. Several who have augmented his works in France, Spain, or Italy, labored under the same misfortune and often gathered together whatever the drag-net of time had ama.s.sed. John Capgrave, an Austin friar, some time confessor to the duke of Gloucester, who died at Lynn in Norfolk, in 1484, compiled the legend of the saints of England, from a more ancient collection, the Sanctilogium of John of Tinmouth, a monk of St. Alban's, in 1366, of which a very fair ma.n.u.script copy was, before the last fire, extant in the Cottonian library. By the melting of the glue and warping of the leaves, this book is no longer legible unless some such method be used as that which is employed in unfolding the parched and mouldering ma.n.u.scripts found in the ruins of Herculaneum.

On the other hand, some French critics in sacred biography have tinctured their works with a false and pernicious leaven, and, under the name of criticism, established skepticism.

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CONTENTS.

JANUARY.

1.

THE Circ.u.mcision of our Lord..................... 59 St. Fulgentius, Bishop and Confessor............. 63 St. Odilo, or Olon, Sixth Abbot of Cluni......... 69 St. Almachus, or Telemachus, Martyr.............. 71 St. Eugendus, Abbot.............................. 71 St. Fanchea, or Faine, Virgin, of Ireland........ 72 St. Mochua, or Moncain, alias Claunus, Abbot in Ireland..................................... 72 St. Mochua, alias Cronan, of Bella, Abbot in Ireland........................................ 72

2.

St. Macarius, of Alexandria, Anch.o.r.et............ 73 SS. Martyrs for the Holy Scriptures.............. 76 St. Concordius, Martyr........................... 77 St. Adalard, or Alard, Abbot and Confessor....... 77

3.

St. Peter Balsam, Martyr......................... 80 St. Anterus, Pope................................ 81 St. Gordius, Martyr.............................. 81 St. Genevieve, or Genovefa, Virgin, Patroness of Paris.......................................... 82

4.

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