Young applied himself with enthusiasm to the work of collating and examining the Manuscript, with a view to putting forward a literal transcript of its contents in print. Having published at Oxford, in 1633, an edition of the first epistle of Clemens Romanus to the Corinthians, in Greek and Latin, the text of which is included in the Alexandrian MS., he was encouraged to put forward, in 1637, his Catena on Job, which contained the entire text of that book transcribed from the same Codex. This book was printed in the Greek types of the Royal printing office, purchased under the peculiar circumstances already detailed.[379] After this, says Gough, Young “formed the design of printing the entire text of the Codex in facsimile type, of which, in 1643, he printed a Specimen, consisting of the first chapter of Genesis, with notes, and left behind him scholia as far as to the fifteenth chapter of Numbers.”[380]
Of this specimen, unfortunately, no copy can be discovered; although as to the existence of such a document there is no lack of contemporary evidence. In his Prolegomena to the London Polyglot of 1657, Bishop Walton, who had made a careful study of the Codex, and availed himself freely of Young’s notes, distinctly states that he had seen the specimen, and that the proposal to carry through the work had been discouraged by the advice of Young’s friends.[381] Walton shows a few words of the Alexandrian Greek, poorly cut in wood, among the specimens in his Prolegomena: a circumstance which would suggest that in 1657 the matrices used for Junius’ facsimile, if in existence, were not then available.
Walton’s statement was confirmed by Grabe, Mill, and others, who made a study of the Codex and its history; and in 1707 Young’s biographer and successor in the task of preparing the Codex for print, Dr. Thomas Smith, repeated it with the authority of one who had also personally inspected the Specimen.[382] {202}
It has been assumed by later writers that both Walton and Thomas Smith made reference to a proposed facsimile reprint of the Manuscript; and Gough’s circumstantial statement, already quoted (which is adopted by Nichols and copied by others, such as Horne, Edwards, etc.), leaves little doubt that the chapter of Genesis was actually put forward in 1643, in facsimile type, as a specimen of the forthcoming work. The evidence as to the existence of the types receives further countenance from the presence of these matrices in Grover’s foundry, certainly before the year 1700.
Anthony à Wood states that Young’s project excited much curiosity and expectation, and that in 1645 an ordinance was read for printing and publishing the Septuagint, under the direction of Whitelock and Selden. The troublous times which ensued, however, as well as certain doubts as to the fidelity with which the original text was being treated by the transcriber, led to the abandonment of the scheme during Young’s tenure of office, which ceased in 1649. In that year Bulstrode Whitelock became Library Keeper, and consequently custodian of the MS. It would appear, however, from a sentence in one of Usher’s letters,[383] that as late as 1651 Young retained his purpose of publishing the Bible from the text of the Codex, but his death in the following year finally stopped the enterprise.
What became of the specimen chapter of Genesis it is impossible to say. Bishop Walton, as he himself states, acquired possession of the scholia to the end of Numbers and the remainder of Young’s Greek and Latin MSS., Wood informs us, came to the hands of Dr. Owen, Dean of Christ Church, Oxford. Assuming the matrices to have existed, their natural location would be either the Royal Printing Office, or the foundry in which already had been deposited the Greek types and matrices used in the Catena on Job. If, however, they remained in the St. James’s Library, it is possible to conceive of their disappearance for a considerable period, as Whitelock’s principal duties during his term of office appear to have been to check the depredations which in Young’s own time had already deprived the Library of many of its treasures.[384] {203}
At the Restoration, the Keepership of the Library was bestowed on Thomas Rosse, by whom was once more revived the suggestion of reproducing the Alexandria Codex in facsimile, not this time by means of type, but by copper-plate. This circumstance is thus related by Aubrey in his inedited Remains of Gentilism and Judaism, preserved among the Lansdowne MSS. in the British Museum.[385]
“. . . . ye Tecla MS. in St James Library . . . was sent as a Present to King Charles the First, from Cyrillus, Patriark of Constantinople: as a jewell of that antiquity not fit to be kept among Infidels. Mr. . . . Rosse (translator of Statius) was Tutor to ye Duke of Monmouth who gott him the place (of) Library-Keeper at St James’s: he desired K. Cha. I (sic) to be at ye chardge to have it engraven in copper-plates, and told him it would cost but £200; but his Maty would not yeild to it. Mr. Ross sayd ‘that it would appeare glorious in History, after his Maty’s death.’ ‘Pish,’ sayd he, ‘I care not what they say of me in History when I am dead.’ H. Grotius, J. G. Vossius, Heinsius, etc., have made Journeys into England purposely to correct their Greeke Testaments by this Copy in St James’s. Sr Chr. Wren sayd that he would rather have it engraved by an Engraver that could not understand or read Greek, than by one that did.”
The Manuscript was subsequently handed, in 1678, to Dr. Thomas Smith to collate and edit, with a view to its reproduction; but once again the scheme fell through, and (with the exception of Walton’s Polyglot) it was not till Grabe, in 1707, published his Octateuch (accompanying his preface by a small copper-plate specimen of the MS.), that any considerable portion of the Bible appeared from this ancient text.
Of the subsequent successful attempt to produce the entire Manuscript in facsimile type we have spoken elsewhere.[386] Meanwhile, we find from the facts here given, that in 1643 a specimen of a portion of the text of the Codex is said to have been issued in facsimile type; that constant efforts had been made during the latter half of the seventeenth century to carry out Patrick Young’s purpose of reproducing the entire Bible in this form; that in 1657 Bishop Walton was presumably unaware of the existence of any matrices from which to exhibit a specimen of the uncial Greek of the Codex; that Grabe, similarly ignorant, made use of copper-plate in 1707 for a similar purpose; but that prior to the year 1700, concealed under the erroneous name of “Coptic—the new hand,” there existed in the foundry of the Grovers (where already were deposited several of the “King’s House” matrices, as well as those of the Greek fount used in Junius’ Catena on Job in 1637) a set of matrices consisting of a single alphabet of the Alexandrian Greek, which apparently lay undetected until 1758, when that foundry came into the hands of John {204} James, or more probably until 1778, when Rowe Mores applied himself to the task of arranging and cataloguing the various matrices of interest in that miscellaneous collection.