But it is also possible that a volume
of the _Letters_ at Corbie was twice copied, once at Corvey (_M_) and
once in the neighborhood of Tours (_V_). At any rate, with the help of
_V_, we may reach farther back than Corvey and Germany for the origin of
this class. There are likewise two fragmentary texts, both of brief
extent, Monacensis 14641 (olim Emmeramensis) _saec._ IX, and Leidensis
Vossianus 98 _saec._ IX, the latter partly in Tironian notes. Merrill
regards these as bearing "testimony to the existence of the nine-book
text in the same geographical region," namely Germany.[27] There they
are to-day, in Germany and Holland, but where they were written is
another affair. The Munich fragment is part of a composite volume of
which it occupies only a page or two. The script is continental, and
may well be that of Regensburg, but it shows marked traces of insular
influence, English rather than Irish in character. The work immediately
preceding the fragment is in an insular hand, of the kind practised at
various continental monasteries, such as Fulda; there are certain notes
in the usual continental hand. Evidently the manuscript deserves
consideration in the history of the struggle between the insular and the
continental hands in Germany.[28] The script of the Leyden fragment, on
the other hand, so far as I can judge from a photograph, looks very much
like the mid-century Fleury variety with which I have associated the
Bellovacensis; there can hardly be doubt, at any rate, that De Vries is
correct in assigning it to France, where Voss obtained so many of his
manuscripts.
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