Preface. The death of Dean Burgon in 1888, lamented by a large number of people on the other side of the Atlantic as well as on this, cut him off in the early part of a task for which he had made preparations during more than thirty years. He laid the foundations of his system with much care and caution, discussing it with his friends, such as the late Earl of Selborne to whom he inscribed The Last Twelve Verses, and the present Earl of Cranbrook to whom he dedicated The Revision Revised, for the purpose of sounding the depths of the subject, and of being sure that he was resting upon firm rock. In order to enlarge the general basis of Sacred Textual Criticism, and to treat of the principles of it scientifically and comprehensively, he examined manuscripts widely, making many discoveries at home and in foreign libraries; collated some himself and got many collated by other scholars; encouraged new and critical editions of some of the chief Versions; and above all, he devised and superintended a collection of quotations from the New Testament to be found in the works of the Fathers and in other ecclesiastical writings, going far beyond ordinary indexes, which may be found in sixteen thick volumes amongst the treasures of the British Museum. Various events led him during his life-time to dip into and publish some of his stores, such as in his Last Twelve Verses of St. Mark, his famous Letters to Dr. Scrivener in the Guardian Newspaper, and in The Revision Revised. But he sedulously amassed materials for the greater treatise up to the time of his death. He was then deeply impressed with the incomplete state of his documents; and gave positive instructions solely for the publication of his Text of the Gospels as marked in the margin of one of Scrivener's editions of the New Testament, of his
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