late type: but the foundation and an overwhelming proportion of the text remained always Erasmian, sometimes slightly modified on Complutensian authority; except in a few editions which had a Complutensian base. After a while this arbitrary and uncritical variation gave way to a comparative fixity equally fortuitous, having no more trustworthy basis than the external beauty of two editions brought out by famous printers, a Paris folio of 1550 edited and printed by R. Estienne, and an Elzevir (Leyden) 24mo of 1624, 1633, &c., repeating an unsatisfactory revision of Estienne's mainly Erasmian text made by the reformer Beza. The reader of the second Elzevir edition is informed that he has before him "the text now received by all"; and thus the name 'Received Text' arose. Reprints more or less accurate of one or other of these two typographical standards constitute the traditional printed text of the New Testament even now.
16. About the middle of the seventeenth century the preparation for effectual criticism began. The impulse proceeded from English scholars, such as Fell, Walton, and Mill; and seems to have originated in the gift of the Alexandrine MS to Charles I by Cyril Lucar, the Patriarch of Constantinople, in 1628. France contributed a powerful auxiliary in Simon, whose writings (1689—1695) had a large share in discrediting acquiescence in the accepted texts. The history of criticism from this time could hardly be made intelligible here: it will be briefly sketched further on, when explanations have been given of the task that had to be performed, and the problems that had to be solved. In the course of the eighteenth century several imperfect and halting attempts were made, chiefly in Germany, to apply evidence
