PATRISTIC

1p., 12mo. On bifolium. Written in a faint, difficult hand, as one might expect from a ninety-six year-old. 'The President of Magdalen presents his Compliments to Mr Twining, and thanks his kind present of the portrait of his learned Uncle, author of one of the best translations into the English language of a great writer. His own great age and attendent

8vo: 120 pp. Unbound. In original grey printed wraps. Lightly foxed, with wraps grubby and creased. Ownership inscription at head of front wrap. 'Published under arrangement with the Author', with a six-page preface by the translator, dated October 1866. The Codex Sinaiticus, now in the British Library, was found by Constantin von Tischendorf on his third visit to the Monastery of Saint Catherine, at the foot of Mount Sinai in Egypt, in 1859. 'I would rather', he writes here, 'have discovered this Sinaitic manuscript than the Koh-i-noor of the Queen off England.'

Both items good on lightly-aged paper. Letter One (12mo, 2 pp): Having considered the question of the fee for a piece of writing, he does 'not know very well what to say. Perhaps you might give me what the Hibbert Journal pays its contributors.' (Docketed in pencil in the margin: 'What is that?') He 'could do the work when the College Session is over - at the end of March'. Asks to be informed 'what is necessary of the arrangements', and to be sent 'the sheets of the book.