pray for me daily, as I do for you, being sin

cerely,

Revd. Sir,

Your affectionate Brother

and humble Servt.

NARCISSUS DUBLIN.*

Narcissus Marsh was born at Hannington, Wilts, December 20, 1638, of an ancient and respectable family. On his father's side, according to Mr. Harris, (Sir James Ware's Works, fol. 1739. i. 449.) he was descended from a Saxon family, formerly seated in Kent, whence his great grandfather removed; on his mother's from the Coleburns, in Dorsetshire. He received his first education in his native place, and in July, 1654, was placed at Magdalen Hall, Oxford. He took his B.A. degree Feb. 12, 1657, and in 1658, was elected fellow of Exeter College, where he proceeded in his degrees, taking that of D.D. June 23, 1671, at which time he was chaplain to the Earl of Clarendon, a situation he had before filled under Seth Ward, Bishop of Salisbury. In 1673, he was appointed Principal of St. Alban's Hall, by the Duke of Ormond, Chancellor of the University, and executed the duties of his office with such zeal and judgment, that, according to Wood, "he made it flourish more than it had done for many years before, or hath since his departure." By the interest of Dr. Fell, and at the intercession of the Duke of Ormond, King Charles the Second nominated him to succeed Dr. Ward in the Provostship of Dublin College, in December 1678; and in January following he was sworn in. He was shortly after admitted Doctor of Divinity, and in 1683, raised to the Sees of Leighlin and Ferns. Hence he was translated in 1690, to the Arch

LETTER XLIV.

Mr. WANLEY to Dr. CHARLETT.

Alexandrian MSS.-Greek Orthography.

London, Dec. 28, 1700.

HONORED SIR,

SINCE I am to be entrusted with the ordering and keeping the papers of a great

bishopric of Cashell, to Dublin in 1694, and, in 1703, to that of Armagh. After having lived with honour and reputation to himself, and benefit to mankind in general, he died November 2, 1713, at the advanced age of seventyfive, and was buried in a vault in the church-yard of St. Patrick's, Dublin.

Dr. Marsh appears to have expended the greater part of his life and income in acts of benevolence and utility. He not only founded the Library mentioned in the preceeding letter, which he filled with the books of Dr. Edward Stillingfleet, as well as his own collection, but he endowed a hospital at Drogheda for poor widows, greatly encouraged the propagation of the Gospel, repaired many decayed churches within his own diocese, at his own expense, and extended his bounty to other works of munificence and charity. His character is, perhaps, in no place better delineated than in the foregoing letter; but the epitaph, placed on the monument erected to his memory in St. Patrick's church, cannot but confirm the good opinion, every lover of real virtue and unaffected piety, must have already conceived for this amiable prelate.

society; I thought it would be a shame to have my own lie in confusion. Therefore I have spent this whole day in methodizing them, and have not yet much above half done. My Saxon Catalogue shall not suffer by my new business.

Mr. Cook is dead; I send you a Catalogue of his books, many of which (I believe) will go dear. I shall not be at the auction, it interfering with my business.

I will write to the President of St. John's some time the next week, and give you notice thereof, that you may have an opportunity of reading the best account I shall get of a very strange matter.

As to the Alexandrian MS. which is the book whence the Oxford Edition of the Greek Psalter (which you are pleased to write to me about) was copied 'Tis an old and very common observation that the orthography of the Greek language is therein often neglected. And when I used the books some years ago, I found what others said about that matter [to be true.

This seeming negligence may be accounted for two ways. The tradition is that the Alexandrian book (I call the 4 vol. by the name of MS. or book) was written by one Thecla, a devout woman, not long after the first Council of Nice, which, however, is not my opinion, who from

* He bad just been appointed Assistant to the Secretary of the Society for promoting Christian Knowledge.

the uniformity and admirable elegancy of the letters, and the accuracy of the copie, do judge it rather the work of a man, and he a man of understanding too, as well as patience. And 'tis beyond contradiction, that it must have been written either by a woman or by a man. If by the pious Thecla, she might be godly enough, but not any great scholar, perhaps she might not have been so used to the remnants of the Alexandrian Library, (which Ammianus Marcellinus says was remaining in his time) and might (like other women) have got an habit of spelling false. And I know a very ancient Greek MS. in the Bodleian Library, which from the roughness of the character and the miserable false spelling, pointing, and accenting, you would almost swear was the work of one who was more used to handle a needle than a pen. The like roughness may be seen in some Latin prayers, written in capital letters by the hand of a woman, a thousand years ago, and which are now in the Bodleian Library; another book I know in the same library, written in Latin by a nun, about 4 or 5 hundred years ago, fairly enough, but yet faulty. But if this Alex. MS. was written by a man (as I believe it was, not only for the reason above-mentioned, but because this very book was the standard for all the copies of that Patriarchate, for above a thousand years together, in order to have them brought and corrected according to it) there is a more probable

reason to be given for the neglect of the ancient orthography. The Antiquarius* (for that is the proper title of this sort of book-writers) wrote amongst others who wrote at the same time, or he wrote in his cell alone, which is my opinion of the present case. If jointly with others, then one held the original and dictated, and the Antiquarii wrote after him not seeing the original. Now the Greek pronunciation differing from ours, if the Dictator saies rìs, tys, taïs, or toïs, the Antiquarius, who perhaps did not so much regard the sense or connexion, presently wrote down TIC, for the Greeks pronounce (and have long done so) all these words alike. Besides, in time, the orthography changed in the Greek tongue, as it hath done in others. And the Greeks did not undervalue their present language, or way of writing, or endeavour to reform it to the pure Attic of Isocrates or other ancients. Nay, they seemed rather in all their MSS. to write many words, not as they were in the original, but according to the more modern fashion; just as the Normanno-Saxons in transcribing old copics, corrupted the orthography, as a late editor of Chaucer has done; all for the best as they thought. So that these very faults might be the effect of the labor and study of the Antiquarius, in his own chamber. And to instance an old

By the ancients they were called Librarii.