Page:The Book of Common Prayer.djvu/9

 the MS., are found to differ considerably from that original standard in various details of orthography and punctuation. The causes of this discrepancy cannot be discussed here. A brief statement, however, seems to be required, to explain the character of the so-called Annexed Book, and the method of its present reproduction in type, more particularly in the interest of readers who have not access to the facsimile made in 1891 by special permission of the House of Lords, now the custodians of the MS.

The MS. is written in two styles of handwriting (but not all by the same scribe), the text of the work being in the set hand of the period, and that, as a rule, beautifully clear; whilst the rubrics and other matter are in a more cursive hand, the styles being used interchangeably, as occasion arose, to distinguish certain words or phrases.

To represent the original handwriting, therefore, two kinds of type sufficed, the Roman being adopted for the set or engrossing hand of the text, and the Italic for the cursive of the rubrics; whilst the titles, headlines, sundry words and phrases written large in the text, and the marginal notes—which are not in the set hand nor in the cursive of the rubrics—are reproduced in the Roman or in the Italic according to typographical practice. Such sizes of each type have been selected as would fairly and sufficiently represent the variations of size