( xxxii )
excepting a very few pages, the whole consists of learned excursions concerning Plato, the best editions of Aristotle, the Nine Sybils, Egyptian Hieroglyphics, &c.
From the manuscript copy of the Edda preserved in the university library of Upsal, hath been published a few years since, a second edition of that work. This MS. which I have often had in my possession, seems to have been of the fourteenth century. It is well preserved, legible, and very entire. Although this copy contains no essential difference from that which Resenius has followed, it notwithstanding afforded me assistance in some obscure passages; for I have not scrupled to add a few words to supply the sense, or to suppress a few others that seemed devoid of it, when I could do it upon manuscript authority: and of this I must beg my readers to take notice, whenever they would compare my version with the original: for if they judge of it by the text of Resenius, they will frequently find me faulty, since I had always an eye to the Upsal MS. of which Mr. Solberg, a young learned Swede, well versed in these subjects, was so good as to furnish me with a correct copy. The text of this MS. being now printed, whoever will be at the trouble, may easily see, that I have never followed this new light, but
