The Book of Splendours

Introduction.

this collation. A personal study I made of this ms. manuscript showed me that these doubts were only too well-founded. For example, the passages marked as doubtful, B. d. Str. p. xl, should in no way be read as the indications of Martin would, if taken strictly, seem to indicate. Of the sixteen different cases that I indicated in that place to prove that, according to the indications of Martin, ms. D must have significant gaps, there are in reality only three cases where a gap is found; in the other thirteen cases, it is the indications of Martin that are false or incomplete. On pages xxvi sq. I discussed the different readings of a passage that are found in the edition of Martin p. 127, 27—128, 1, and in mine p. 126, 26—28. I showed how the indications of Martin on the text of ms. D are so unclear that one cannot draw any certain conclusion from them. I have, however, referred to the note of Martin, Variants p. 45: "From line 26, D is covered with erasures," and I drew certain conclusions from it. But in reality, ms. D in that place presents no erasures today. Instead, on the lower part of the page, a piece of paper is glued (amʳ?) on which the current text is written. This piece of paper was not used to repair the folio—for it is in good condition, cf. above, p. xii regarding fol. a?—but to hide the original text. The first line of the following page (fol. amᵛ?) is also covered with a strip of paper, without bearing any text at all. The recent text is less extensive than the original text, so it could fit on the piece of paper glued to the previous page where it even contains one word (lo?) too many. This text (see below p. xlix) and other facts allow us now to conclude that D originally had the same readings as FTGS and not at all, as in some other cases, those of mss. LSa?. On the following page (p. xxvii) I spoke of the different readings of Martin, p. 32, 14—19 (in my edition p. 33, 23—27). There I resolutely refused to believe the indications given by Martin in his Variants. A careful examination shows that the text of D should not be compared to that of PL as I did in that place, but on the contrary is identical to the text provided by B, a fact which is explained now in a very simple manner by