MISCELLANIES.
MSS. of Casaubon.—There is a short statement respecting certain MSS., now existing, of the great critic Casaubon, in a recent volume of the Parker Society—Whitaker's Disputation on Holy Scripture, edited and translated by Professor Fitzgerald, Professor of Moral Philosophy, Dublin, which I conceive is one of those facts which might be of service at some future time to scholars, from having been recorded in your columns:—
Whitaker having observed—
"One Herman, a most impudent papist, affirms that the scriptures are of no more avail than Aesop's fables, apart from the testimony of the church."—(Parker Soc. transl., p. 276.)
Professor Fitzgerald appends the following "note:"—
"Casaubon, Exercit. Baron. I. xxxiii. had, but doubtfully, attributed this to Pighius; but in a MS. note preserved in Primate Marsh's library, at St. Sepulchre's, Dublin, he corrects himself thus: 'Non est hic, sed quidam Hermannus, ait Wittakerus in Præfat. Controvers. I. Quæst. S. p. 314.' If a new edition of those Exercitations be ever printed, let not these MSS. of that great man, which, with many other valuable records, we owe to the diligence of Stillingfleet and the munificence of Marsh, be forgotten."
T.
Bath