In sending out the fourth and concluding volume of my Catalogue of the Western Manuscripts in the Library of Trinity College, I am troubled with many misgivings as to the character of the whole work. The man who undertakes the task of describing a large and heterogeneous mass of books, ranging in date from the seventh or eighth century to the nineteenth, and not restricted to one language or to even three or four subjects, is necessarily giving many hostages to fortune. He is exposing himself to the onslaughts of every future specialist who has recourse to his laboriously compiled volumes. Absence of references to printed editions of texts, failures to detect the identity of a nameless treatise, omissions of what prove to be important details in the description of miniatures, ignorance of famous heraldic bearings, will all merit and perhaps meet with sharp reproof. If the cataloguer writes a bad hand and is, to say the least, an indifferent corrector of printed proofs, he has yet more to fear. To these errors and failings I plead guilty ; but I have deliberately preferred risking mistakes and producing the best catalogue I could within five years, to consulting all the available experts and postponing publication until the ninth.

Misgivings are, therefore, justifiable in my case ; yet it must be said that so far the experts have treated me with great kindness and forbearance.