his sincerity. If they did not admire him, they loved him. 'You are on the whole a good man,' said Carlyle, though with terrible perversities.' Forster declared that he had many friends who would be kind to him in distress, but only one who would be equally kind to him in disgrace.' A distinguished German said of him, 'Is it possible that an Englishman can be so loveable?' and Mr. Sumner described him as a member of Parliament, a poet and a man of fashion, a Tory who does not forget the people, and a man of fashion with sensibilities, love of virtue and merit among the simple, the poor, and the lowly.' Lastly, let us cite his own whimsical character of himself, which, though expressed in the language of paradox, is probably, in the main, nearer to the truth than one drawn by any critic could be:

'He was a man of no common imaginative perceptions, who never gave his full conviction to anything but the closest reasoning; of acute sensibilities, who always distrusted the affections; of ideal aspirations and sensual habits; of the most cheerful manners and of the gloomiest philosophy. He hoped little and believed little, but he rarely despaired and never valued unbelief, except as leading to some larger truth and purer conviction' (vol. ii. p. 491).

ART. IX. THE ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT OF THE PRAYER BOOK.

1. Facsimile of the Original Manuscript of the Book of Common Prayer signed by Convocation, December 20th, 1661, and attached to the Act of Uniformity, 1662 (13 & 14 Charles 2. Cap. 4.) Dedicated by special permission to Her Majesty the Queen. (1891.)

2. Facsimile of the Black Letter Prayer Book containing Manuscript alterations and additions made in the year 1661, 'out of which was fairly written' The Book of Common Prayer, subscribed Dec. 20, A.D. 1661, by the Convocation of Canterbury and York, and annexed to the Act of Uniformity 13 & 14 Car. II. c. 4, A.D. 1662. Photozincographed by the Ordnance Survey Office, Southampton (Major-General Sir Henry James, R.E., F.R.S., &c., Director-General), and published for the Royal Commission on Ritual by authority of the Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury. (1871.)

FOR English churchmen there is an undying interest in all that relates to the history of their Book of Common Prayer and the narrow escapes it has run since its first composition in

I 549. It cannot, indeed, be said in any true sense to be the same Prayer Book with either the First or Second Prayer Book of the reign of Edward VI., nor, again, with those of Elizabeth, James I. or Charles I., during the two former of which reigns material alterations and additions were made. Nevertheless, upon the whole, the same type of service has been for the most part preserved, though probably no one, of whatever party in the Church of England, or of whatever opinions, would avow his acceptance of Archbishop Lawrence's dictum that 'the principles upon which our Reformation was conducted were manifestly Lutheran, and in conformity with them was our Liturgy drawn up; or, again, that our Reformation was a movement completed in the reign of Edward VI., 'without suffering any subsequent alteration of importance.' So far from the Prayer Book of 1662 being a true representative of the teaching conveyed in that of 1552, it would be nearer the truth to describe it as indicating some return to the principles of the First book of 1549; and much to be regretted as some churchmen of our day have felt it that at the accession of Elizabeth the preference was given to the Second over the First book of the preceding reign, we are ourselves of opinion that it was a most fortunate circumstance, inasmuch as, had the new book been framed after the model of 1549, Catholic doctrine would have been toned down to meet Protestant prejudices, whereas, as it happens, the expressions of the Second Prayer Book were then accommodated to Catholic belief, and the first upward step was taken from the degraded state in which the Church and her Prayer Book were left at the death of Edward VI. And thus we are enabled to date the beginnings of the recovery from the principles of the Reformation with the commencement of the reign of Elizabeth; beginnings, indeed, slight and scarcely perceptible, but which were destined to bear fruit at the Hampton Court Conference in the reign of James I., and eventually to result in the Prayer Book which is due to the divines of the Savoy Conference. Thus there has been a consistent development in one direction, and that in direct reversal of the process which was going on all through the reign of Edward VI.

It is wonderful to think how the knowledge of Church matters in general, and of the Prayer Book in particular, has been acquired by churchmen in little less than a century from the time when the celebrated Bampton Lectures which we have referred to were preached before the University by the

1 First Bampton Lecture, p. 25.

Regius Professor of Hebrew of that day. Still more wonderful is it to think of the profound ignorance which characterized clergy and laity alike in the early years of the present century.

During the last half-century reprints of Edward's Prayer Books have followed each other in rapid succession, and simultaneously with them there has appeared a considerable number of works specially giving an account of their history and composition. And it seemed as if nothing could be wanting to the further elucidation of the subject after the publication of the Facsimile of the Black Letter Prayer Book of 1636, with all the changes introduced by the Savoy Commissioners in the margins and between the lines. This was issued just twenty years ago, and published for the Royal Commission on Ritual by authority of the Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury. The preface to this book gave a full and particular account of the discovery of the MS. Prayer Book of 1662, originally attached to the Act of Uniformity of 14 Car. II. cap. 4, which had been missing from the year 1819, having become detached from the Act. It was thought possible that it had been burnt, or at least that its discovery was quite hopeless; but permission had been given by Archbishop Moore, nearly a century ago, to use his name for procuring a collation which was partly made and was believed to be in existence in 1845. This collation is now no longer of value, for the original was discovered in 1867, after a diligent search made by the late Dean Stanley, and both the Black Letter Book and the Annexed Book were allowed, by order of the House of Lords, to be taken to the Jerusalem Chamber for the use of the Royal Commission on Ritual. These books, indeed, could not have supplied the commissioners with much information beyond what they might have ascertained from most of the works which professed to give the history of the English Prayer Book, or which, if they should have been unwilling to trust authorities, or preferred judging for themselves from ocular demonstration, they could not have gathered from a comparison of one of the Prayer Books of Elizabeth's time with another of 1662, or of any later date; but it possessed the great advantage of exhibiting both texts at once, and directing attention to every addition, omission, or alteration in the easiest possible way. It also probably represented some minor changes of little importance, of which no writer had thought it worth while to give any account. We will give but one instance-and it certainly is a remarkable one-of the value of having some of these changes impressed upon the

mind by their being oculis subjecta fidelibus. All students of the history of the Prayer Book know of the important alterations in the words used at the consecration of a bishop, which were made in 1661. But, whatever view may be taken of the intention of the words which is in thee by imposition of hands, the words when seen in print, thus,

will impress anyone who sees them much more forcibly than by reading the fact recorded any number of times.

At any rate it will be impressed indelibly on the memory that the divines of the Savoy Conference were careful to destroy any lingering suspicion that at the consecration of a bishop the elect was only put in mind to stir up the grace of God which had been given at some previous time. No amount of comparison, even in parallel columns, would answer the purpose so well. And we even think it would pay some publisher well if he would reprint an imitation of this facsimile book in modern type, with the changes introduced in their proper places. We are sure that candidates for Holy Orders getting up their Prayer Book for an examination would be saved an infinite deal of trouble by such an arrangement.

After what we have said it might have been thought superfluous to issue any more accounts or histories of the compilation of the Prayer Book, inasmuch as it has not been subjected to any alteration since that time, with the single exception of a new 'Calendar of Daily Lessons.' Yet experience has shown the contrary, and Mr. Parker's two valuable publications of the year 1877 have proved that there was yet a great deal more that might be said on the subject. The first of these volumes has supplied us, not only with the exact text of every authorized edition of the PrayerBook, under the title The First Prayer-Book of Edward VI. Compared with the Successive Revisions of the Book of Common Prayer, but has also given the variations, whether undesigned or intentional, that appear sometimes even in the same edition, and more often in different editions printed at different times and in different sizes. The second, which followed it in the same year at a very short interval, was entitled, An Introduction to the History of the Successive Revisions of the Book of Common Prayer, and presents such an elaborate and complete account of the mode in which the Prayer Book reached

its present state, that again it must have been thought by many that nothing more remained to be done in reference to this subject. This work also contained an examination of nearly all the editions that had been printed in the reigns of Elizabeth and her two successors-most of which are extremely scarce-many of them containing unauthorized variations, such as minister for priest, introduced by the efforts of the Puritan party. This catalogue is nearly, though not quite, complete, there having since been found in private collections a few copies which did not then exist in the British Museum or other large public libraries; and it is scarcely probable that every edition has yet been discovered. Mr. Parker had, further, the advantage of coming after the publication of the photozincographed book, which he must have had at his elbow nearly all the time in which he was engaged in the composition of his second volume. Accordingly he has given a detailed account both of the book itself and of the processes by which all the alterations of the preceding Prayer Books were effected. And now, after another interval of fourteen years, we have the beautiful volume that is before us, the book that is technically known as 'The Annexed Book,' of which 750 copies have been lithographed from separate photograms of each page. As all these had been subscribed for, we were a little surprised at finding the work advertised among the Christian Knowledge Society's publications. But no doubt the society has rightly calculated on the probability of the book soon becoming scarce, and has provided a good number of the 750 copies to supply an anticipated demand from its members, as the work will certainly never again be produced in like fashion. Parker had also seen, and has described, 'The Annexed Book,' whose title is at the head of this article; but of course he could not have had the same facilities for comparing and collating this book as he enjoyed as regards the Black Letter Book, from which it is presumed to have been copied. Much less, therefore, has been said by him about this book than about either the 'Convocation Book,' as it is called, or the previously prepared copies written by Sancroft and by Cosin. In what we have to say about the Annexed Book we shall endeavour as much as possible to avoid traversing the ground already occupied by Mr. Parker, though we may in certain cases have to repeat what he has already said. In all cases, however, our observations are the result of an entirely independent investigation, and we shall confine our remarks as much as possible to instituting a comparison, first, between

Mr.