THE Wanderings and Homes of Manuscripts is the title of this book. To
have called it the survival and transmission of ancient literature would
have been pretentious, but not wholly untruthful. Manuscripts, we all
know, are the chief means by which the records and imaginings of twenty
centuries have been preserved. It is my purpose to tell where
manuscripts were made, and how and in what centres they have been
collected, and, incidentally, to suggest some helps for tracing out
their history. Naturally the few pages into which the story has to be
packed will not give room for any one episode to be treated
exhaustively. Enough if I succeed in rousing curiosity and setting some
student to work in a field in which an immense amount still remains to
be discovered.
In treating of so large a subject as this--for it is a large one--it is
not a bad plan to begin with the particular and get gradually to the
general.