Page:Notes upon Russia (volume 1, 1851).djvu/38

x Oppenheim division of the Bodleian library contains an incomplete copy of this rare book, being deficient of the first fourteen pages, or one quarter of the whole work. Like most other Hebrew books which issued from the early Constantinople presses, this is but a very poor specimen of correctness and typography. All mistakes of this “princeps” have unfortunately crept into the editions noticed below, Nos. 3, 4, and 10, and have led the translators into error. The rarity constitutes its only value.

This second edition is perhaps rarer still than the first, and having evidently been printed from another manuscript, is indispensably necessary for a critique of the work. The text is much purer than that of the former, and in many instances its readings give a sense, where the former is too corrupt to be understood.

Unfortunately, this edition was unknown to the early translators, B. Arias Montanus and l’Empereur, who would have made fewer mistakes and formed a more correct judgment of our author, had they been able to compare it with that of Constantinople. It forms the groundwork of Mr. Asher’s edition and translation. No public library in France or Germany,—most of which that gentleman personally visited or inquired at by correspondence,—possesses a copy; and the only one now known to exist is in