The St. Johns herald., 1890-08-14
The FAYE OF BOOKS
Ups and Downs of Important Literary
 Works Of Antiquity.


 Works of Antiquity.
 The ups and downs of many an impor- tant literary wc-k of antiquity have been most singular. In a very unique way they demonstrate the correctness of the classical dictum ''habent sua fata Ebelli." It is we'll known that the ac- cidental discovery in waste-basket in the Mount Sinai cloister of several leaves of the Codex Sinaiticus led to the finding by Tischendorf of that most fa- nous manuscript of the New Testa- ment. A recent publication by the French savant, Omont, has drawn att ention to the strange fate of another e-l manuscript, and at the same time indicates the laborious methods to which scholars must resort in order to rediscOver some of the lost remains of ancient lteratures. In one of the we'll known cloisters on Mount Athos, where more than twenty thousand Greek man uscripts are preserved and awaiting further research, there existed at one time sixth-century copy of the Pauline epistles. In the thirteenth century monkish ignorance destroyed this. valu- able document. and used the leaves as binding for later and inferior books. A number of these manu- scripts in the seventeeth century found their way to Western Europe, and came into possession of the French Chancellor, Pierre Segnier, and are now found in the Bibliotheque Rationale in Paris. In the year 1715 Montfaucon found in these buildings fourteen leaves of this old cpistle manuscript. Some years later other leaves were found, namely, two in the Synodical Library at Moscow; four in the possession of Bishop Porfri and of the Abbot An tonius, of Kiew; two in the University Library at Turin; nine in the library of the Lawra cloister on Mount Athos. In this way thirty-one lesv of this manu- script had been rediscovered, but scat tered over all Europe. To these Omont has added ten more, one of which was found in the Rumjanzen Museum at Moscow, and nine in the collection which the French specialist in Greek literature, Emmanuel Miller, had found in an Athos cloister, and had been se- cured by the National Library in Paris. Of these nine leaves. however, two had in the beginning of this century in some way or other found their way to St. Petersburg, where also one of the leaves of the nine originally belonging to Bishop Porfri was rediscovered; and of the nine leaves which Duchesne in 1875 found in the cloister Lawra, one is now in Paris.
 Accordingly, the forty-one leaves of this sixth-century manuscript are found scattered in no fewer than eight li- 'raries, namely, twenty-two in the Ma tional Library of Paris, eight in the Lawra cloister on Mount Athos, two in the Synodical Library at Moscow, one in the Rumjanzen Museum at Moscow, three in the Imperial Library at St Petersburg three ia the Aca demy c1 Kiew and two in the unive rsity at Turin. And yet these leaves contain only about one-tenth of all the episties. namely, 234 verses, divided as follows: 16 from I. Corinthians, 42 from 1T. Corin thians, 2s from Galatians, 20 lonians, A from Hebrews, 40 from l. 1AH1ObHys 1rOm II. 1lmOGny anu To from Titus.
 By similar process Prof de Goiie, of Leyden, has succeeded in rediscovering the works of Tabari, who for Arabic his toriography is what Thucydides is for the Greek and Livy for the Latin. His history was supposed to have been lost, with the exception of few fragments. De Goije, through correspondence with nearly all the libraries of Europe and many in the Moslem lands, has been able to gather together again all the parts and portions of this standard work, to which the library of the leading mosque in Tunis furnished the chief contribution. Literary coadjutors are at work in dozens of libraries copying and collating the fragments, and it is supposed that five years will elapse be- fore the whole of this valuable work will be given to the historian and Ori- entaiist.-Harper's Weekly.