Page:Gospel of Saint John in West-Saxon.djvu/25

Rh St. John ii, 6 to iii, 34; vi, 19 to vii, 10. These pages are now republished in an Appendix to this Introduction. The Fragment belongs to the first half of the eleventh century and is related to MS. A.

Royal. — MS. Bibl. Reg. 1. A. xiv, a volume of the Royal Library in the British Museum.

Hatton. — MS. Hatton 38 (formerly 65) of the Bodleian Library.

In connection with MS. B, something has already been said of these two twelfth century copies of the Version. The Royal (written probably in the reign of Stephen) is an unskilfully modernized transcript of B, and the Hatton (made presumably in the reign of Henry II) is a further modernization of the Royal. Both copies are therefore without critical value in the study of the Version.

Of the more important questions concerning the relation of the MSS. to the original several may be answered with certainty, others have been only partially answered, and some still remain totally unanswered. It is clear that the MSS. transmit copies of one and the same Version, that the omissions and the scribal errors, and the variations in the forms of the language of these copies are such as could not occur in the translator's own text. It is also clear that the Corpus copy is closer in time and in linguistic features to the original than any other surviving copy, and that it must, therefore, be regarded as