motives of my conduct, as well as to impart the plan which my friends proposed to my consideration.

"With every sentiment of grateful esteem, I have the honour to be, my Lord,

"Your Lordship's much obliged and most respectful humble servant, CHARLOTTE BROOKE."

"MY LORD,

Granard, December 19th, 1790. "I have the honour to enclose to your Lordship a printed plan of a work which has long been very near my heart, but which, till lately, I had not the power to

execute.

"The philanthropy of your Lordship's disposition will, I am assured, dispose you to interest yourself in the success of an undertaking, which intends at least the general happiness of humankind. As to myself, I have no personal interest in it, but what may result from the pleasure I shall receive in seeing the efforts of so inconsiderable an individual as I am become useful, in any degree, to my fellow-creatures.

"It is not very long since I addressed your Lordship on my own account, for the favour of your influence. Though the majority of the Royal Academy were adverse to my suit, yet I cannot forget that your Lordship was most friendly to it.

"I have now the pleasure to inform you that Providence has been pleased to restore me a competence; and that, at least in a freedom from want, and from ambition, I am rich; this will account for my having the power to bestow any profits arising from the enclosed in charity. I am, my Lord, with true esteem,

"Your Lordship's much obliged and most obedient servant, CHARLOTTE BROOKE."

1787-1788.

Rev. Dr. BARRETT* to Bp. PERCY. "MY LORD, Trinity College, Dublin, May 26, 1787. "I return your Lordship many thanks, for the favour of your letter, and for the very valuable copy of the Gothic Gospels, which you was so good as to lend me, and which

* Rev. John Barrett, D.D. Vice Provost and Professor of Oriental Languages in Trinity College, Dublin. He published a portion of St. Matthew's Gospel, from a MS. discovered by him, in Trinity College, Dublin; "An Enquiry into the Origin of the Constellations that compose the Zodiac, and the uses they were intended to promote," 1800, 8vo. Essay on the

I received yesterday. I have been enabled by the help of it to detect several errors, respecting the readings of this version, in Wetstein's collation; and which I believe were chiefly owing to the imperfect state in which this version had been published before Mr. Lye's edition. It has also enabled me to observe a great conformity in the readings of this version and of the College MS.; the greatest difference between them being in the Lord's Prayer. And it will give your Lordship a very sensible pleasure to hear that the Coll. MS. may be of use in supplying deficiencies in the Codex Argenteus. For the Coll. MS. supplies several places in the 1st, 2nd, and 4th chapters, whereas the Codex Argenteus does not begin until the 15th verse of the 5th chapter; and it wants all between chapter 11, ver. 25, and chapter 26, ver. 71, being the greatest part of St. Matthew. Now between these two last places the Coll. MS. supplies more than 150 verses; in all which the readings of the Codex Argenteus are totally lost. It also supplies three or four verses in the 1st chapter which are lost in Beza's MS., and about seventeen verses in the 7th and 8th chapters, which two chapters are entirely wanting in Beza's MS. I am very glad to find that the University of Cambridge will publish this MS., between which and the Coll. MS. a most surprising agreement will be found in many places.

"I have been chiefly employed of late in collecting all the evidences I can find that may be useful in helping us to form some conjectures respecting its age, and when you come to town will take the earliest opportunity of submitting them to your Lordship; and am, my Lord, "Your much obliged and most obedient humble servant, "J. BARRETT.

"P.S. It is a very extraordinary chance, that the Coll. MS. should just end at chapter 26, ver. 71, and the Codex Argenteus should begin at that very verse, after a long chasm from the 11th chapter, in which it wants upwards of one half of the Gospel. I believe that Dr. Lort wished to find in Beza's MS. an A similar to the A in our MS.; and I think that it would be most likely to be found in a MS. of the Bodleian, which was given by Archbishop Laud, and contains the Acts, and which belonged to Vene

earlier part of the Life of Swift, with several original pieces ascribed to him," 1808, 8vo. (inserted in Mr. Nichols's Edition of the Dean's Works, 1808.) Dr. Barrett died Nov. 15, 1821. See full Memoirs of him in Gent. Mag. XCI. ii. 472, 642.

rable Bede in the seventh century. This MS. Wetstein thinks to be of the seventh century, and one would be apt to think it was later than the Alexandrian; Mr. Astle places it to the fifth century, and seems to think it more ancient than Beza's MS. which last Wetstein thinks to be the most ancient of them all."

"MY LORD,

Trinity College, Dublin, January 31, 1788. "I had the honour of your letter of Monday, and return many thanks to your Lordship and Sir Cosslet Stothard for the rattle-snake, which I received on Tuesday evening. It will make a valuable addition to our collection of Natural History, as we had no creature of that kind in it; and I took care that it should be immediately put in spirits, and an account of the benefaction entered in the book which Mr. Hamilton keeps for that purpose.

"As your Lordship takes a particular pleasure in everything which may be serviceable to the cause of religion, or tends to the advancement of science, I take the liberty of informing you that I have almost finished the transcribing of the MS., having completed fifty pages out of the sixtyfour which compose it. These I did all in the last summer, and nothing but the intervention of my college business prevented my finishing it entirely. I shall shortly resume it again. Mr. Coxe, the famous traveller, who has examined and described the Codex Argenteus in the third volume of his Travels, has seen our MS. He immediately pronounced, of his own accord, that the leaves of it were exactly of the same colour with those in the Codex Argenteus; and also told Mr. Kirwan, of the Royal Irish Academy, who accompanied him, that he was almost sure the letters had been once either gold or silver; and that he thought it not improbable but it might be part of a MS. which had been even of the fourth century. Another person, a Swede, who came also with Mr. Kirwan and Dr. Hales, affirmed the same thing with respect to the colour of the leaves.

Dr. Hales lent me a late work of Mr. Griesbach, printed in 1785, in which he has corrected many errors of Wetstein, and given us his own observations on the different MSS. and their various readings. The MSS. which he most approves are those marked by Wetstein C and L, (the first being that called Ephrem* in my paper, and one

* This is the celebrated Codex Ephraemi rescriptus, at Paris, of which a facsimile edition was published by Dr. C. Tischendorf, 4to, Lips. 1843-5—F. M.

of the three most ancient; the second, a MS. of the ninth century,) because he finds that they preserve the readings of Origen's celebrated edition made in the third century. The Testament of Beza (marked D by Wetstein) he considers as preserving the readings of an edition equally ancient, but made in the West; for he finds this to agree best with the Western Fathers and the Western Versions, as the former do with the Eastern Fathers and Versions. And he concludes that the most ancient, and probably the true readings, are those where D agrees with the two first mentioned, as this agreement can arise only from the original, common to all three. Now of such readings the number is very great in our MS.; and I might almost venture to say, that, where all those agree with each other, it does everywhere agree with them. In the nineteenth chapter, Wetstein gives, within the compass of about two verses, five readings of Origen, and four of them are found in our MS. It agrees equally well in other places also. It has also not a few, I believe, hitherto unobserved.

"When your Lordship comes to town, I shall do myself the pleasure to wait on you, and hope to be able to produce a complete transcript of the whole; and am, my Lord, your most obedient, humble servant,

"J. BARRETT."

1787.

Sir JOSEPH BANKS* to Bp. PERCY.

"MY LORD, Soho Square, June 24, 1787. "My friend, Mr. Kirwan, † whose literary pursuits and whose success, especially in the chemical line, are known and acknowledged through all Europe, having expressed a wish to be introduced to the literati of Ireland, I have taken the liberty to request your Lordship's good opinion of him, confident that, on acquaintance, you will find him, as I have done in a long acquaintance, much to be esteemed both as a gentleman and a man of letters. I have the honour to be, your Lordship's faithful servant, "Jos. BANKS."

This eminent patron of literature died June 19, 1820, in his 80th year. See a memoir of him in Gent. Mag. XC. i. 574, 637; notices of him in Literary Anecdotes, VII. 20, 509; Literary Illustrations, General Index; and a list of his writings in Watt's Bibliotheca Britannica, p. 69.

+ Richard Kirwan, esq. of Gregg, co. Galway, F.R.S. President of the Dublin Irish Academy, President of the Dublin Literary Society, and member of almost every literary society of Europe, died in Dublin June 22, 1812. See an account of him in Gent. Mag. LXXXII. ii. 198.

THOMAS PERCY,* Esq. to Bishop PERCY.

My HONOURED LORD, Epping Forest, August 8, 1787. "Your kindness made you forgive the fewness of my letters, when I was in ill health and spirits; now I am better in both, it will excuse me, though, by way of atonement, I should fall into the other extreme. I am now at home for the long vacation, and, as I shall have a great deal of time on my hands, I wish to submit my economy of it to your opinion. The more I think upon such subjects, the more I am persuaded that the most useful studies are also the most necessary; and that this rule may be extended even to poetry, which is many degrees further than the generality of mankind do extend it. The vulgar idea of a poet, is a man who must read, write, and be fit for nothing but poetry; he must mind to have something poetically singular in his dress, to keep his books and papers in places where it is impossible to find them, and, as he values his reputation, not to know a word that is said in a room full of company. Upon what principle can this be founded? I fear, upon the very absurd one, that common sense is incompatible with poetry. And yet this same poet is less abstracted than he would be thought, or would perhaps think himself: he can search out a rhyme, or a word with a certain number of syllables, as mechanically as a merchant casts up a sum in his counting-house. When the fit is off, he can mend his pen, and trace out a fairer copy for his friends with abundant composure; and probably he will find phlegm enough to regulate the commas and points in the tedious corrections of the press. If then he can descend from his visionary heaven in so many instances, what should hinder him from getting a little earthly knowledge? The study of the world might furnish him with characters; that of natural philosophy would certainly enlarge his conceptions; that of logic discriminate his ideas; and even the seemingly unpromising mathematics, contribute some propriety and unity to his conceptions. The conversations which I have had on this subject with Mr. Croft * have left me in this opinion, and indeed never found me in a very oppoHe has kindly given me a few memoranda concerning my pursuits in this vacation. A principal one Nephew of Bishop Percy, afterwards D.D. See Literary Illustrations, vol. VII. pp. 54, 192.

site one.

Probably the Rev. Herbert Croft, afterwards Baronet. See portrait, memoir, and letters, of him in Literary Illustrations, vol. V. p. 202-218.