[3] Among
the books lost was possibly a copy of Cicero's Republic.
Only five manuscripts have been found which can be connected
with Selling's library: a fifteenth-century Greek
Psalter, a copy of the Psalms in Hebrew and Latin, a
Euripides, a Livy, and a magnificent Homer.[4] This
Homer we have already referred to in an earlier chapter,
when describing the work of Theodore of Tarsus. The
signature
has now been more plausibly explained,
"The following note," writes Dr. James, "which I found in
Dr. Masters's copy of Stanley's Catalogue, preserved in
[Corpus Christi] College Library, suggests another origin
for this Homer. I have been unable to identify the document
to which reference is made. It should obviously be a
letter of an Italian humanist in the Harleian collection....
Mr. Humphrey Wanley, Librarian to the late Earl of
Oxford, told Mr. Fran. Stanley, son of the author, a little
before his death, that in looking over some papers in the
papers in the Earl's library, he found a Letter from a learned
Italian to his Friend in England, wherein he told him there
was then a very stately Homer just transcribed for Theodorus
Gaza, of whose Illumination he gives him a very particular
description, which answer'd so exactly in every part to that
here set forth, that he [Wanley] was fully perswaded it was
this very Book, and yet the at the bottom of 1st
page order'd to be placed there by Gaza as his own name,
gave occasion to Abp.
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