It will easily be understood, therefore, that the•chief, if not the stile interest of pal impsests MSS. lies in the ancient writing which they had contained, and that their value to literature mainly depends on the degree of legibleness which the ancient writing still retains. It is difficult to make this fully intelligible to the reader without an actual inspection, but the facsimile on the previous page will furnish a sufficient idea. The particular passage selected for the illustration is from page 62 of the Vatican MS., from which Mai deciphered the fragments of the De Republica. The darker letters are those of the modern MS.; the faint lines are, as may be supposed, those of the original codex. Although so much more faint than the modern writing, they can be read with facility on account of their greater size. We shall. transcribe texts in ordinary characters. The original was as follows: EST IGITUR INVIT APRICANITS RESP.
(The ordinary contraction for Respublica.) The corresponding lines of the modern MS., which is from St. Augustine's commentary on the psalms, are: homo est quia et omnes Xpi'avt. (Christiania membra sent xpi. (Christi) membra Xpi. quid cantant. Amant DesIderando cantant. Aliquando.
In this specimen, as very commonly occurs, the original writing is much larger than the modern; the modern lines and letters do not cover those of the old MS., but they follow the same order. In other specimens the new writing is transverse; in sonic, the old page is turned upside down. Sometimes, where the old page is divided into colimins, the new writing is carried over them all in a single line; sometimes the old page is doubled, so as to form two pages in the new MS. Sometimes it is cut into two or even three pages. The most perplexing case of all for the decipherer is that in which the new let ters are of the same size, and are written upon the same lines with those of the original MS. Examples of this are rare, and even when they occur, the difference between the form of the ancient characters, which are ordinarily uncial, and that of the modern, is in itself a great aid to the decipherer. Some variety, also, is found in the language of the palimpsests. In those which are found in the western libraries, the new writing is almost invariably Latin, while the original is sometimes Greek, and sometimes Latin. In the palimpsests discovered in the east the original is commonly Greek, the new writing being sometimes Greek, sometimes Syriac, sometimes Armenian ; and one palimp sest, the material of which is papyrus, is found in which the original was the enchorial Egyptian language, while the modern writing is Greek.
The possibility of turning palimpsest MSS. to account as a means of extending our store of ancient literature was suggested as far back as the days of iNlontfaticon; but the idea was not turned to practical account till the latter part of the 18th century. The first palimpsest editor was a German scholar, Dr. Paul Bruns, who having discov ered that one of the Vatican MSS. was a palimpsest, the effaced matter of which was a fragment of the 91st book of Livy's Roman History, printed it at Hamburg in 1773. In the field of discovery thus opened by Bruns but little progress was made until the fol lowing century, when Dr. Barrett of Trinity college, Dublin, published his palimpsest fragments of St. Matthew, and when palimpsest literature at once rose into interest and importance in the hands of the celebrated Angelo Mai (q.v.). A detailed account of Mai's successes will be given hereafter, when we shall enumerate the principal publica tions in this curious department of letters; and under his own name will be found the history of his personal labors. The great historian Niebuhr about the same time applied himself to the subject, and was followed by Blume, Pertz, Caupp, and other German scholars, whose labors, however, were for the most part confined to the department of ancient Boman law. More recently, the discoveries of Dr. Tischendorf in biblical liter ature. and those of Dr. Cureton as well in sacred as in profane literature, have con tributed still more to add importance to the palimpsest' MSS. which have been supposed to exist in the monasteries of the Levant. Herr Mono has had similar success in the department of liturgical literature, and Dr. Frederick Augustus Pertz, son of the scholar already mentioned, may be said to have carried to its highest point the interest which attaches to these cations researches, by editing from a palimpsest a very considerable series of fragments of the Roman annalist, Gains Granius Licinianus.
It remains to enumerate briefly the most important palimpsest publications which have hitherto appeared, distributed according to the language of the effaced original.