the
statement of Basilides that Glaucias was an interpreter of St Peter by
the similar statement of Papias and others that St Mark was an
interpreter of the same apostle--a very innocent piece of information,
one would suppose. On this passage however our author remarks:--

'Now we have here again an illustration of the same misleading
system which we have already condemned, and shall further refer to,
in the introduction after 'Glaucias' of the words '_who as well as
St Mark was_ an interpreter of St Peter.' The words in italics are
the gratuitous addition of Canon Westcott himself, and can only
have been inserted for one of two purposes: (I) to assert the fact
that Glaucias was actually an interpreter of Peter, as tradition
represented Mark to be; or (II) to insinuate to unlearned readers
that Basilides himself acknowledged Mark as well as Glaucias as the
interpreter of Peter. We can hardly suppose the first to have been
the intention, and we regret to be forced back upon the second, and
infer that the temptation to weaken the inferences from the appeal
of Basilides to the uncanonical Glaucias, by coupling with it the
allusion to Mark, was [unconsciously, no doubt] too strong for the
apologist.' [21:2]

Dr Westcott's honour may safely be left to take care of itself. It
stands far too high to be touched by insinuations like these. I only
call attention to the fact that our author has removed Dr Westcott's
inverted commas [22:1], and then founded on the passage so manipulated a
charge of unfair dealing, which could only be sustained in their
absence, and which even then no one but himself would have thought of.
I will not retort upon our author the charge of 'deliberate
falsification,' which he so freely levels at others, for I do not
believe that he had any such intention. The lesson suggested by this
highly characteristic passage is of another kind. It exemplifies the
elaborate looseness which pervades the critical portion of this book. It
illustrates the author's inability to look at things in a
straightforward way. It emphasizes more especially the suspicious temper
of the work, which makes it, as even a favourable reviewer has said,
'painfully sceptical'--a temper which must necessarily vitiate all the
processes of criticism, and which, if freely humoured elsewhere, would
render life intolerable and history impossible [22:2].

It is diffi