It will easily be understood, therefore, that the chief, if not the sole, interest of palimpsest manuscripts lies in the ancient writing which they had contained, and that their value to lit erature mainly depends on the degree of legibil ity which the ancient writing still retains. Very commonly the original writing is much larger than the modern; the modern lines and letters do not cover those of the old manuscript, but follow the same order. In other specimens the new writing is transverse, and in some the old page is turned upside down. Sometimes, where the old page is divided into columns, 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 manuscript. 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 letters are of the same size, and are written upon the same lines with those of the original manuscript. In the case of Latin palimpsests, it is generally true that lower minuscule writing, when legible at all, is scarce ly worth the trouble of reading. The valuable manuscripts are in capitals or uncials. Some variety, also, is found in the language of the palimpsests. In those which were originally 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 some times Greek, sometimes Syriac, sometimes Arme nian.
The possibility of making use of palimpsest' manuscripts in order to increase our store of ancient literature was suggested as far back as the days of Montfaucon; but the idea was not turned to practical aecount till the latter part of the eighteenth century. The first pa limpsest editor was a German scholar, Dr. Paul Brims, who discovered that one of the Vatican manuscripts was a palimpsest. the effaced matter of which was a fragment of the ninety-first book of Livy's Homan History, and printed this frag ment at Hamburg in 1773. In the field of discovery thus opened by Bruns, but little prog ress was made until the following century, when Barrett. of Trinity College, Dublin. published his palimpsest fragments of Saint Matthew, and when palimpsest literature rose to importance in the hands of the celebrated Angelo Mai (q.v.). The great historian Niebuhr about the same time applied himself to the subject, and was followed by Blume. Pertz, Gaupp, Mommsen. Studemund, and other German scholars, whose labors, how ever, were for the most part confined to the de partment of ancient Roman law. Tisehendorf's (q.v.) labors drew attention to the biblical texts thus preserved. and Cureton's examinations of Syriac and other Eastern manuscripts showed the importance of this field, where the most valuable result has been the discovery in the monastery at Mount Sinai of an early Syriac version of the Gospels under some lives of female saints.