Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/481

 Reviews and Notes 477 two main parts, viz. a general introduction, or a discussion of the manuscript as a whole, and a special introduction, or a des- cription of the different texts composing it. Two further parts are added in the German version, viz. a critical edition of five homilies (pp. 87-148) and a list of supplementary lexical notes (pp. 149-179). Of this Introduction it is impossible to speak too highly. Every page of it shows the hand of the trained expert and saga- cious philologist, who weighs impartially every fact capable of throwing light on a problem and who proceeds to his conclu- sions in a manner which is likely to convince and certain to instruct. 1 Of the five sections of the general introduction, the one on the provenance and history of the manuscript naturally commands our especial interest. How did this Anglo-Saxon manuscript come to reach Vercelli? Various answers have been supplied by previous investigators. Forster examines the different hypotheses which have been proposed, or might be proposed, and in particular takes issue with the famous 'Guala theory,' ingeniously developed by Cook, which may be found conveniently stated in Krapp's edition of Andreas (pp. X-XIV) and very briefly summarized in Cook's edition of The Dream of the Rood (pp. V .). That the so-called Vercelli codex should have been taken from England to Italy by Cardinal Guala Bicchieri, Papal Legate in England from 1216 to 1218, or should have found its way to Vercelli in consequence of the cultural relations established by him between the two countries, is indeed admitted as a possibility. But, while doing full justice to the arguments in favor of this widely accepted theory, Forster brings forward a number of more or less serious objec- tions. Thus, the style of the church of St. Andrew at Vercelli which was founded by Guala, has been shown by the French archeologist C. Enlart to point not to England, but directly to the North of France. Again, there is no evidence to indicate that the volume ever belonged to the church of St. Andrew; it is preserved in the cathedral library of Vercelli and, in all probability, formed part of it at least as early as 1602. More- over, Cardinal Guala was a man exclusively interested in French scholarship and culture, who filled the monastery of St. Andrew with French Augustinians and who cannot be supposed to have had the slightest understanding of Anglo- Saxon manuscripts. In fact, even native Englishmen of his time were sorely deficient in that respect, and it is pretty safe to say that the period from the thirteenth to the fifteenth 1 It is to be regretted that the Italian printing office did not take the trouble to provide the Anglo-Saxon characters/) and 5; th and dh are poor substitutes in a learned treatise on an Anglo-Saxon manuscript.