Page:An Index of Prohibited Books (1840).djvu/39

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PREFACE.
xxxiii

    pendix, pp. 142, &c. They had been published in the preceding year by Le Moyne. See Jenkyns's Remains of Cranmer, ii. 325, note. The genuineness of the Epistle is now, though reluctantly, admitted by the Benedictine editors of Chrysostom. I propose, however, to be a little more minute upon the subject, and lay before the reader some corroborating phenomena in the copy which I possess. The first leaf, then, containing the title-page, must have been substituted; for the contents of the volume are there enumerated, and the Epistle does not appear. The leaf after the Dedicatory Epistle must likewise be a substitution for the same reason. And here a new and positive deception commences; for the article, following the Epistle in question, has the page 225 assigned to it, though 229 is assigned to that immediately preceding. It was en règle to begin the mystification at due distance from the point of main imposition; and a mistaken number might most hopefully be thrown upon the carelessness of the printer, as has been profitably done in other cases. We now get to the Prefatio, Signat. ĩ (2). This is a substituted leaf, in the place of two leaves, or four pages — from Signat. ĩ (2) recto to ĩ (3) verso. But the curious and elucidating circumstance in my copy is this. The substituted leaves would, of course, be fresher than the rest, and would, in technical phrase, be set off on the opposite page, if, as appears to be the fact in my copy, the two were placed in contact too early. This has been the case in my copy, and must have taken place while the work lay in sheets, or before binding. Now both the sides, or pages, of the substituted leaf of the Prefatio are found set off one upon a leaf (likewise substituted) immediately preceding the Epistle under view, for a reason which will appear; the other on the fly-leaf at the end. We now proceed to the main article, the Epistle itself. It was necessary to dismiss the immediately preceding leaf, because the Epistle began on the verso of that leaf. The Epistle occupied that verso, or page, and four leaves, or eight pages besides. They are numbered, as in the Preface, in Wake's restoration, in the margin. But here was something of a difficulty: the sudden advance of the pages would betray the