[6] Bp. Ellicott in May 1870, and in May 1882.

A word in your private ear, (by your leave) in passing. You seem to have forgotten that, at the time when you entered on the work of Revision, your own estimate of the Texts put forth by these Editors was the reverse of favourable; i.e. was scarcely distinguishable from that of your present correspondent. Lachmann's you described as a text composed on the narrowest and most exclusive principles,—really based on little more than four manuscripts.—The 379 case of Tischendorf (you said) is still more easily disposed of. Which of this most inconstant Critic's texts are we to select? Surely not the last, in which an exaggerated preference for a single manuscript has betrayed him into an almost childlike infirmity of judgment. Surely also not the seventh edition, which exhibits all the instability which a comparatively recent recognition of the authority of cursive manuscripts might be supposed likely to introduce.—As for poor Tregelles, you said:—His critical principles ... are now, perhaps justly, called in question. His text is rigid and mechanical, and sometimes fails to disclose that critical instinct and peculiar scholarly sagacity which⁸⁶³⁸⁶³On Revision, pp. 47-8. have since evidently disclosed themselves in perfection in those Members of the Revising body who, with Bp. Ellicott at their head, systematically outvoted Prebendary Scrivener in the Jerusalem Chamber. But with what consistency, my lord Bishop, do you to-day vaunt the principles of the very men whom yesterday you vilipended precisely because their principles then seemed to yourself so utterly unsatisfactory?