apostolicfathers0201clem - Carmel Apologetics

84 EPISTLES OF S. IGNATIUS.
have proved unsuccessful.
It would not improbably be in the possession
of Ussher at the time of Bp Mountague's death (April 1641); and, if
so, it may have disappeared in the confusion and depredations which
attended the confiscation and seizure of his books by the Parliament,
A.D. 1643 {Life and Works i. p. 229). At all events the many vicissitudes
which his library underwent at this time and after his death,
when it was again plundered {Life ajtd Works i.
p. 303), will easily
account for the loss of the ms ;
and its
recovery now seems almost
beyond hope'.
I have however been able to supply the loss to a great extent
from Ussher's transcript of the Caius ms already mentioned {Didnin,
D. 3. 11), which has been strangely overlooked by previous editors. It
contains a collation of the Montacute ms between the lines or in the
margin. As mere variations of spelling are frequently recorded, Ussher
seems to have intended this collation to be full and exact. At all
events it contains very much which cannot be gathered from his printed
work.
Of the antiquity of this ms we can form no very definite opinion,
now that it is lost. It was plainly quite independent of the Caius ms,
since the correct reading is preserved sometimes in the one and sometimes
in the other. We may infer also that it was the more ancient, as
it was certainly the more accurate, of the two. The simplicity of the
headings, compared with those of the Caius ms, where they sometimes
expand into a table of contents, points to its greater antiquity. Moreover
it most frequently preserves the exact order of the words, as they stand
in the Greek original, whereas in the Caius ms more regard
is
paid
to Latin usage, and the order has often been changed accordingly.
Again, it alone preserves a number of marginal glosses which show
a knowledge of the Greek, and which therefore (we may presume) are
due to the translator himself, who had the original before him. Thus
'
on Sinyrn.
i
sapientes fecit ' '
this annotator writes, unum est verbum
in Grffico [o-oc/)tcravTa],
Latine sapioitificavif (Ussher Aimot. ad loc.
p. 46).
Thus again on Sviyrn. 5 tw Kar' avSpa he gives a gloss, 'Grteci
'
dicunt seamdum virum pro singulwn vel singillatim {Amiof. ad loc.
p. 49). Again on Po/yc. 8 'in et ipsos facere' he explains the grammar,
'regit hpec propositio [1. praepositio] in more Graeco hoc totum ipsos
facere.' Again on Ephes. i '
dilectum tuum nomen quod possedistis
1
In a series of interesting letters in this ms, with others, was taken to Italy
the Academy xx. pp. 10, 53, 404 (July — by Mountague's chaplain Mileson, who
December 1881), the late Rev. J. H. became a Jesuit.
Backhouse gave reasons for thinking that