A very short statement of the arrangement and contents of this volume is all that is needed from me by way of preface.

What has been already done by others in the way of cataloguing this Collection is as follows:

Thomas James included a list of 267 MSS. among the Catalogues contained in his Ecloga Oxonio-Cantabrigiensis, published in 1600 (pp. in—126).

This list was reprinted without alteration, save for a few errors in the numbering, in Bernard's Catalogi Mannscriptorum Angliae et Hiberniae, 1697 (Vol. II. pp. 147—155).

Dr Heinrich Schenkl, Professor at the University of Gratz, has given a brief account of such MSS. as were germane to his subject in his excellent book, Bibliotheca Patrum Latinorum Britannica, 1898 (II. Band, ii. Abth. (Fortsetzung), Die Bibliotheken der Colleges in Cambridge, II. pp. 63—82).

Beyond these I believe no systematic attempt has been made to give a detailed account of these Manuscripts, whose principal interest lies in the fact that they constitute the best specimen we have in Cambridge of a mediaeval College library.

At the end of this preface will be found a table which gives the comparative numberings of Thomas James's Catalogue, of Bernard's, and of my own. I have subjoined to this a few notes on volumes now missing, whose former presence in the library is attested either by Thomas James, or by a MS. Catalogue, compiled after a very rough fashion, by Mr Charles Topping in 1760. This volume is now L. 3. 27 in the College library.