Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/292

 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL AND TEXTUAL PROBLEMS OF THE ENGLISH MIRACLE CYCLES. III. CHRIST AND THE DOCTORS: INTER-RELATION OF THE CYCLES. HE comparative study of the English miracle cycles may be said to date from the discovery of. the manuscript of the York plays and its publication by Miss Toulmin Smith in 1885. It then appeared that several of the plays contained in that collection were substantially the same as the corresponding pieces preserved in the Towneley manuscript of what is now commonly regarded as the Wakefield cycle. This naturally aroused curiosity as to the mutual relation of the two collections. Further investigation soon established that the points of similarity were more numerous than Miss Smith had supposed, and also that they differed curiously in their nature. Beside the plays in which the texts are substantially or in large part identical, are others which either, on the one hand, contain close verbal parallels in