recommendation, addressed to me at that time, to presume the non-existence of these notes and publish the Commentary as it was.
Eventually the missing notes were discovered by the Reverend Henry Westcott between the pages of a volume which he had inherited from his father's library.
Meanwhile the heavier and more delicate task of constructing an Introduction, and an Appendix, had been begun on the lines proposed.
It was attended, however, with unusual difficulties owing to the unexpected scantiness of the materials actually extant from the hand of the Bishop. In point of fact those materials consisted mainly of fragmentary notes and jottings, a few summary analyses of projected sections or dissertations, lists of occurrences in the New Testament or elsewhere of words or phrases requiring investigation, and other brief indications of topics to be discussed. Accordingly it soon became evident that only a very small proportion of the language or argument of any such Introduction and supplementary Essays would be of Dr Westcott's workmanship. And the immediate question came to be whether the pen of a disciple might usefully and acceptably provide the desired Prolegomena and Appendix, incorporating all that could be found of Dr Westcott's own conclusions and hints, but without pretence of offering anything less or more than a disciple's elucidation of problems opened, but not continuously treated or always finally resolved, by the departed master.
At this point and on the issue thus declared the judgment of four or five representative exponents of academic opinion in Cambridge was emphatically adverse to the plan originally proposed.
That plan was accordingly abandoned. The book, as now published, may probably be less useful to the general student than it might otherwise have been; Dr Westcott's unfinished work being, like a classic document, of a quality to need, and to justify, ancillary interpretation and focussing. But, if less generally useful, the book, as it stands, will, we have reason to hope, be specifically more acceptable to scholars, at any rate in the University which owes so much to the great teacher, whose vanished hand no other can simulate, even as no pupil, or follower, can re-awaken, however he may yearn once again to hear, the tones of the voice that is still.
It remains to indicate, as briefly as may be, the lines on which the present volume has been compiled.
In place of the full Introduction originally contemplated, I have prefixed to the Text and Notes a nominal Introduction, formally analogous to that which Dr Westcott has given us in his edition of the Epistle to the Hebrews, but, as regards matter, essentially, though unequally, defective in every part.
The section on Text reproduces, with such modification as was necessary or appropriate, the statistical matter of the corresponding section in Hebrews.
Under the section-headings Title and Destination and Date and Place of Writing, a few relevant paragraphs, from original authorities or from Dr Westcott's papers, are printed, and, for the rest, reference is made to Lightfoot's Colossians and Biblical Essays, Hort's Prolegomena and Professor T. K. Abbott's Introduction.
For the section on Canonicity and External Evidence it has seemed reasonable, and sufficient, to print in parallel columns the chief early patristic passages and the portions of the text of Ephesians, which they appear to presuppose; leaving it to the reader to estimate, as he may, in each instance, the alternative probabilities of purposed citation, reminiscence or coincidence. For