Page:Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Antoninus - Volume 1 - Farquharson 1944.pdf/58

 family of excerpts (Mo 2), which is nearly related to A.

Lucas Holste (1596–1661) of Hamburg, the learned custos first of the Barberini collection, then of the Vatican Library, was meanwhile visiting Oxford, Paris, and Florence, studying manuscripts, primarily for his edition of the Greek geographers. When in France he bought the Lyons edition of Marcus and Marinus, and discovering in Florence that the Life of Proclus was existent in its complete form, he contemplated editing both works. He made a proposal to the Elzevirs in 1636 for an edition of the Meditations, to be accompanied by other authors. He was a man of larger projects than performance, and only a part of his store of learning was published by himself or posthumously. In the case of the Meditations, he may have abandoned his project when Gataker's edition appeared. His adversaria on Marcus and Marinus are noted in his copy of the Lyons text, which is now in the Bodleian, a part of the D'Orville purchase of 1805. He has collated the text of the Meditations with a manuscript of the X excerpts at Florence, L. 4, and the Marinus text with Med. Laur. LXXXVI. 3, which he elsewhere says is 'the l