Specimina Codicum Latinorum Vaticanorwm. Collegerunt F. Ehrle, S.J., et P.
Liebaert. (Parker et Filius, Oxon.)—These Specimina are fifty in number. The first is from the Vergilius Augusteus, a manuscript in large uncials of the fourth century, if not earlier, the passage beginning "atque alius latum funda iam vorborat amnem." The last is in the handwriting of Pomponius Laatus, an eminent scholar in the latter half of the fifteenth century, and gives the first twenty-three lines of Lucan's Pharsalia, with Scholia in the margin. It is scarcely necessary to say that all are highly interesting, but we may note as especially so No. 5, in which we have an early palimpsest, a fourth- century Cicero Do Republica in large uncials written over with Augustine On the Psalms in an uncial of the seventh or eighth. We observe that the volume is said to be "in usum scholarum." We can well believe that it might be used with no small advan- tage, only, of course, by the most advanced pupils. A scholar not used to the study of MSS. will feel not a little humiliated by the difficulty which he will find in deciphering some of these specimina.
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