14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. The eight oldest of the MSS. preserved in the Royal Library in Vienna, viz. Nos. 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 120, 121, in Endlicher's Catal. My quotations from these MSS. in the course of the following work amount to eighty one. These MSS. also have never, so far as I know, been quoted by any of Virgil's editors. The remaining Virgilian MSS. in this library, being more modern, I did not collate at all.

22. A very beautiful MS., preserved in the library of the Convent at Kloster-Neuburg near Vienna. The handsomest, I think, of all the Virgilian MSS. I have ever seen; on parchment, folio, and in perfect preservation. It seems to have been wholly unknown to the Virgilian editors. In the Library Catal. it is set down as of the 12th Century. I have quoted the readings of this MS. in fifteen places.

23. 24. 25. The three MSS. preserved in the Ambrosian Library at Milan, viz. Nos. 79 and 107 in the Catal., and the Petrarchian. The first I have quoted in six, the second in two, and the third in twenty two, places. None of these MSS. has been quoted by any of the Virgilian editors. The last mentioned I denominate Petrarchian, because it belonged to Petrarch, who, it is said, caused it to be made for his own use. It contains numerous observations in Petrarch's own hand-writing, which however I found it impossible to decypher. It is not likely that they throw any light whatever on the Virgilian text. This MS. has an allegorical frontispiece said to have been painted by the hand of Simon Memmi.

Besides the above Virgilian MSS. I have occasionally consulted, and on two or three occasions quoted, the MS. of Servius preserved in the Royal Library in Dresden.

Circumstances having prevented me from consulting

the Vatican MSS. I have quoted the Vatican Fragment and the Roman, from Bottari.

In the Laurentian Library in Florence is a copy of the Roman Princeps of Virgil which I have quoted on one occasion only.

The Royal Library at Dresden contains one of the only two existing copies of the edition of Virgil published at Modena in 1475. It is stated by Brunet (Manuel du Libraire) that this edition is a mere copy of the Milan Ed. of 1474. This latter edition I have never seen, and am acquainted with only through its Variantes as cited by Maittaire; but having compared those Variantes with the Modena Ed. I find sufficient discrepancy between them and that edition to make me believe that the latter is, not a copy of the Milan Ed., but an improved edition formed mainly on the Milan Ed. as a basis. In proof of the correctness of which opinion I shall only cite En. III. 329; where according to Maittaire, the Milan Ed. reads "me famulamque famulo," but where I find in the Modena Ed. the much better reading "me famulam famuloque." So much care seems to me to have been taken in the formation of the text of the Modena Ed. that I esteem it as of greater authority than many of the MSS. and have accordingly made much use of it, and quoted it very frequently in the course of the following work. I may add that it is a beautifully printed book, and, being at the same time the first book ever printed in Modena, affords astounding evidence of the small progress made in the art of printing beautifully and correctly, I will not say in the art of printing quickly and cheaply, since the first invention of the printing press. This edition seems to have been wholly unknown both to Maittaire and De Bure.

The Dresden Library contains also a copy of that extremely rare book (not even so much as mentioned by Brunet in his enumeration of the works of Pierius)

Castigationes et Varietates Virgilianae Lectionis per Johan. Pierium Valerianum, Romae, 1521 (altered with pen to 1534). When I have had occasion to quote this work, I have taken care to quote the author's own words (never quoted by Burmann or Heyne), believing that very few indeed of my readers will have an opportunity to consult the author himself. The Dresden copy of this extremely rare, and at the same time intrinsically excellent, work belonged to Fabricius, and bears his Autograph: Georgius Fabricius, Chem. Patavii, mense Julio. M. D. XXXX. This therefore is the identical copy of Pierius whence Fabricius obtained the Varietates which he inserted into his edition of Virgil published at Basle in 1547, a copy of which edition is in the Dresden Library and has been frequently consulted by me for the sake of Donatus's commentary printed in full (for the first time) in that edition, commonly called (from the name of the printer) the Henrico-Petri Edition.

I have frequently had occasion to quote Henry Stephens's Ed. 1583 (the place where printed not stated). The Dresden Library copy (the only one I have ever seen) of this edition belonged to Taubmann, and bears his autograph corrections for his own edition, of which it formed the basis.

I have made much use of Bersmann's Ed. Leipzig, 1596. This edition is valuable in as much as it contains in the margin the Varietates of a MS. lent to Bersmann by Louis Camerarius.

I have made constant use of the edition of Daniel Heinsius, Leyden, 1636. This rare book is generally stated to be very incorrect, and to be admired only by book collectors on account of its rarity and the beauty of its typography: "Peu exacte." BRUNET, Manuel du Libraire. "Referatur sane illa, si ita placet, inter rariores Elzevirianas; interioris tamen indolis bona habet nulla." HEYNE. This is, I think, an

unjust judgment. I have found it to be not only beautifully, but correctly, printed, and I frequently prefer its readings to those of the edition of Nicholas Heinsius; See Comm. En. I. 744.

The edition of Nicholas Heinsius which I have used is that of Utrecht, 1704.

The Epistolae Graecanicae Mutuae, which I have occasionally quoted, is a collection of Letters attributed to various celebrated Greeks, edited, and furnished with a Latin translation, by Cujacius, and bearing the imprint: Aurel. Allobr. 1606.

The edition of Petronius to which I refer, is that of Hadrianides, Amsterdam, 1669; the edition of Apuleius, that of Hildebrand, Leipzig, 1842.

§ II.

How I have been received by Virgilian editors and other learned men.

In order to obtain further information respecting my Author, I have visited several of his principal living editors. In Sept. 1850, I walked all the way from Utrecht to Helversum and back, in one day, in order to see Peerlkamp. This visit was wholly fruitless. found a man so entirely engrossed by his own views as to have no room for those of any one else: one of the worst arguers and least rational men, not to be mad, whom I ever met; in one word, exactly what one might a priori suppose the editor of Peerlkamp's Virgil to be, a man wholly destitute, not merely of all literary taste, but all literary judgment.

In 1846, I became acquainted with Phil. E. Wagner, at Dresden. I had for four years such intimacy with him as it was possible to have with a man, who however unreserved and incautious in his published

criticisms, is, to a remarkable degree, the very opposite in his conversation. I communicated to him freely several of my discoveries respecting the meaning of his and my Author; they made no impression on him. I remember in particular with respect to En. II. 521, that he objected to my view of that passage, that the word 'defensor' could not be applied to an inanimate object. I produced to him, the very next day, the word 'defensor' applied by Cesar to piles sunk in a river in order to break the current. Instead of being pleased or convinced, he replied: "How happy you are in your citations!" Phil. E. Wagner is one of the most minute and accurate of Latin grammarians. His eyes are microscopic. If there is a minute bubble floating on the cup, he is the man to detect it, lay hold on it, and explore its interior with the point of a pin or bristle; but ask him is the wine red or white, new or old, sweet or sour, and he does not know what you mean. To Wagner the Eneis is not a poem, but an accidence for teaching schoolboys Latin. His forty one Quaestiones Virgilianae are about what, do you think, gentle reader? about Virgil's splendid imagery? about his extraordinary purity and dignity of diction? about his merits or defects relatively considered to those of Homer, Hesiod, Apollonius, Lucretius, Milton, or Dante? about the plan or scope of the Eneis, or of the Georgics? About Eneas, or Turnus, or Dido, Rome, Carthage, Greece, or Italy? No, gentle reader; they are about 'At', 'Ab', 'Ac', Ad', 'Is', 'In', 'Ex', 'Os', 'On', 'Quis', 'Qui', 'Hic', 'Jam', 'Nec', 'Ve', 'Et', 'Qui', 'Tum', 'Tunc', 'Iste', 'Ipse', 'Ille', and whether, and on what occasions, 'Natus' should be spelled with a 'G' prefixed. I neither joke, exaggerate, nor pervert; such, no less in spirit than in letter, are the discussions which Ph. E. Wagner has thought proper to dignify with the misnomer, Quaestiones Virgilianae.

Dr. A. Forbiger has inserted into his third edition short notices of, and extracts from, my observations on

b