Textual Criticism

If we have done our work properly, the texts that we arrive at for X and for Y will be freer from error than the texts of the separate members of the families B, C and D, and E, F, G respectively, and that of Z freer from error than that authenti cated by any existing MS.

The procedure, however, is by no means always so simple. That a text may be improved by the comparison of different MSS.

is not a modern discovery. It has long been known, and the knowledge has led to the production of what are known as con flated manuscripts or Misch-codices. These are MSS. produced by "crossing" or "intermixture." In the following stemma M and N are "mixed" or "conflated" MSS., being formed by the blend ing of readings from the "pure" or "unmixed" codices A, B and D, E respectively. Intermixture may take place to any extent ; and the more of it there has been, the more difficult does it become to trace the transmission of a text. Whether crossing improves a given text or not depends ultimately on the knowledge and the judgment of the crosser ; and these will vary indefinitely.

Non-extant Manuscripts.

Some of the most valuable of ancient MSS. have disappeared since their discovery in modern times. When this has happened we have to rely upon mere copies, many times of inferior quality, or upon the information which old scholars have given us respecting them. In this case what we have are not "collations," for the art of collation was not under stood till the i 9th century, but selections or "excerpts" of read ings which we have reason to fear are often imperfect and errone ous. Further, it must not be assumed that all readings which are cited as being "ex vetustis codicibus" ("from ancient MSS.") are necessarily from older or better MSS. than we now possess, or indeed from MSS. at all. Scholars since the Renaissance have not always been above inventing codices to obtain currency for their own conjectures. The codices of Bosius (1535-8o) are just as imaginary as the "old plays" which appear as the source of so many of the quotations that head the chapters of the Waverley novels, and suspicion rests on Barth, Lambinus and others.

Some texts and portions of texts of ancient writers are now known only from printed books. The metrical treatise of Terenti anus is now preserved in the editio princeps (1497) alone. All known MSS. of Silius Italicus have a considerable gap in the 8th book, first filled up on the authority of Jac. Constantius (i503), and not printed with the rest of the poem till the edition of Aldus (1523). By the methodical employment of these means we shall arrive at a text different from any existing one. It will not be the best one, possible or existing, nor necessarily even a good one. But it will be the most ancient one according to the direct line of transmission, and the purest in the sense of being the freest from traceable errors of copying and unauthorized improvements.

The invention of printing has naturally limited the province of textual criticism, and modified its operations. The writer's autograph, if it is preserved after it has been through the hands of the printer, has seldom more than an antiquarian value. As a source for the text it is superseded by the printed edition, and if there is more than one, then by the latest printed edition which has been revised in proof by the author, or, in certain cases, by his representative; and the task of the textual critic is restricted to the detection of "misprints," in other words, of errors which the compositor (the modern analogue to the scribe) has made in "setting up" the manuscript, and which have escaped the notice of the proof-reader and the author or his representative. If, however, this revision has been neglected or incompetently per formed, the number of such mistakes may be considerable.

Another question with which the textual critic of modern authors must be prepared to deal is the relative importance of different editions, each of which may have a prima facie claim to be con sidered authentic. Thus Shakespearian criticism must decide be tween the evidence of the first folio and the quartos; the critic of Shelley's poems must consider what weight is to be attached to the readings in the posthumous edition by Mrs. Shelley, and in unpublished transcripts of various poems. Where there is great or complicated divergence between the editions, as in the case of Marlowe's Faustus, the production of a resultant text which may be relied upon to represent the ultimate intention of the author is well-nigh impossible. For the bettering of the transmitted text we can call in aids of a partial or subsidiary character which are known in general as testimonia. Such are anthologies or collec tions of extracts. The oldest authority for an epithalamium of Catullus (62) is an anthology at Paris written in the 9th century. Translations from one language into another may help to fix the reading of the original, or this again that of the translation. In Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, ii. 5, 54: Child of Light ! thy limbs are burning Through the vest which seems to hide them "limbs" is supported against "lips" (ed. i.) by membre in the Italian prose version made by Shelley himself ; and similarly in 1. 52 "looks" (not "locks") by the rendering sguardi. In direct quotations, either of passages or single words, and either with or without the author's name, we must be sure that the writer is quoting exactly. Parodies, discreetly used, may prove of service in restoring the form of what is parodied or this in restor ing the parody. So also obvious imitations, especially in a highly imitative literature such as Latin poetry.