Page:Gospel of Saint John in West-Saxon.djvu/23

folios and reduced many others to fragments. In its present state it lacks the whole of the Gospel of St. Matthew (before the fire Matthew as fer as xxvii, 6 had already been lost) and the Gospel of St. Mark as &r as vii, 21. The first surviving fragment (folio 26) contains about forty words of Mark vii, 22-27. "The fragments increase a little in size from folio 26 to 38."^[1] Luke (which begins with folio 39) lacks one leaf (xxiv, 7—29) and John lacks two (xix, 27 to xx, 22); otherwise these two Gospels are but slightly defective. Between the Gospels of St. Luke and St. John there has been inserted a charter (of earlier date) relating to Malmesbury in Wiltshire; this may be taken as an indication of the original locality of the MS. In a note at the end of the Gospel of St. John, the scribe has revealed his name: Wulfwi mē wrāt.^[2] This copy of the Version must also be assigned to the period in which the preceding two were made; but it is much more closely related to B than to Corp.

A. — MS. Li. 2. 11 of the Cambridge University Library. This copy of the Version is approximately a half century later than the preceding three. Skeat dates it "about A. D. 1050." In addition to the Version, the MS. contains a copy of the Gospel of Nicodemus, and a tract uniting the embassy of Nathan with the legend of St. Veronica. There is also at the end a form of manumission (but of later date) relating to Exeter.

1. For further details see Professor Skeat's account of this MS. (Preface to Mark, pp. viii-x), which has been verified by an examination of the MS.
2. This scribe Wulfwi may be identical with Wolfwinus the scribe of the Paris Psalter, or its archetype; see J. D. Bruce, Publications of the Modern Language Association of America ix, 47-50. The argument for this identification is strengthened by observing the character of the scribal errors in both MSS. Wulfwi's copy of the Gospels abounds in blunders that render it inferior to the other copies. See also Charles Plummer, The Life and Times of Alfred the Great (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1902), p. 150.