Textual Criticism

The support which a reading gains from the evidence of the directly transmitted text and from the auxiliary testimonia may be called its documental probability. To restore a text from the documental evidence available we must know and weigh the causes which tend to vitiate this evidence in its various kinds. We shall speak first of those which affect the direct transmission of texts. These are either external or internal.

External.--A

text may become illegible through damp or constant thumbing ; portions of it may be torn away; if it is in book form, leaves or whole quires may be detached and either lost or misplaced. When this has taken place on a considerable scale, the critic is helpless; but minor injuries may sometimes be traced and remedied. The weakest parts of a MS. book were the outer margins; hence the beginnings and the ends of lines, whether of verse or prose, were especially liable to injury. It obviously makes a difference upon which side of a leaf, whether on the verso or the recto, a line was written. Hence the determination of the paging of the "archetype" or parent MS. (as was done for the archetype of Lucretius by Lachmann) has more than a merely antiquarian value. In ancient classical MSS. the first letters of poems in verse and paragraphs in prose usually, and the initial letters of lines in verse occasionally, were written separately and by another person than the scribe (who was called the rubrica tor), and therefore were apt to be omitted. Other external cir cumstances may prejudicially affect a text. The copy from which Shelley's Julian and Maddalo was printed was written on very narrow paper, and the punctuation marks at the ends of the lines were frequently omitted.

Internal.

These errors arise from the default of the scribe or copyist, and, in the case of printed books, the compositor. (For the convenience of the general reader these errors have been illustrated as far as possible from English authors and especially from the poems of Shelley [ed. Hutchinson].) They are very numerous. They may be roughly arranged according to the degree in which the volition of the copyist is absent or present, as involuntary or mechanical, semi-voluntary and voluntary; or again as they affect single signs (letters, figures or symbols), words, lines, or even larger units such as sentences or paragraphs.

Simple Errors of the Eye.

(a) Confusions of letters. These are very numerous, and different in different scripts or styles of writing (see PALAEOGRAPHY). Thus the Roman letters E and F

are liable to be confused in capital script, but not in cursive e, f ; C, G, in capitals; c, e in the cursive writing called Caro line minuscule; c, t, in the angular cursive of the 13th century and later. Texts which have had a long history will often show by the letter-confusions which they exhibit that they have passed through several distinct stages of copying. It is to be observed that two different styles of writing are often found in the same manuscript, the difference being utilized for the purposes of distinction. Thus in Greek cursive MSS. notes were often written in uncials. (b) Omissions of letters. (c) Shiftings of letters, sometimes by syllables. This is very common in half intelligent or half mechani cal copying. In printing we get the disarrangement of type which is known as "pie." (d) Confusions of symbols and abbreviations.

(a) Examples of confusion of capital letters from Shelley's poems are: Prometheus, i. 553, "Mark that outcry of despair" for "Hark"; Hellas, 472, "Hold each to the other in loud mock ery" for "Told." Of cursive letters: Marenghi, 13o, "the dim ocean" for "the dun ocean"; Letter to Maria Gisborne 126, seq.: above One chasm of Heaven smiles like the age of Love On the unquiet world for "eye." (b) Translations from Goethe's Faust, sc. ii. 165. "eye" for "eyne" (in spite of the rhyme with 163). (c) Pro metheus, iv. 575, "Neither to change, nor flatter, nor repent," for "falter." In Latin MSS. we often find a mere jumble of letters. (d) Confusion of words through abbreviations is very common in ancient MSS., where they were much employed. At a famous place in the doxology of I. Timothy iii. 16, the MSS.

vary between 6s (or and 0E6s. In uncial writing OC (Os) might easily be miswritten or altered to OC (0€60 or vice versa.

Loss of Letters, Syllables, Words or Lines, through Simi larity of Writing: Homoeography.—When similar letters or groups of letters stand next to each other, one of these is liable to be omitted. This is the simplest case and is called hap lography. An example is Shelley's Cenci, v. 4, 136, "whose love was [as] a bond to all our loves." Similarity operates differently if the similar groups stand in different lines of the exemplar. Then the copyist's eye is apt to slip from the first of two similarly written groups to the second; and he will thus omit all that is between.