Textual Criticism

Omissions through Simple Negligence.

Groups of letters, words, syllables and lines are often omitted without any con tributory cause. Short words or such as are not necessary to the sense are especially prone thus to disappear.

Examples of this are : Shelley's Prometheus, iii. 7o, No refuge ! No appeal ! Sink with me [then] Cenci i. i, 26, Respited [me] from Hell ! So may the Devil Respite their souls from Heaven ! Repetitions: Dittography.—Letters, groups of letters, words and lines may be written twice (or even oftener) instead of once. Other repetitions of words already written and anticipations of words yet to be written are also found, through the scribe's eye wandering into the preceding or the following context. Wherever the word or group of words repeated is not the one that he has just copied loss is liable to occur. Dittography is common enough in manuscripts, but is usually detected in reading proofs. In the sole MS. of Cicero's treatise De Republica, 2, 33, 57, secutus appears as secututus secutus. Other kinds of repetition are Shelley's Witch of Atlas, 6Il seq.: Like one asleep in a green hermitage, With gentle sleep about its eye-lids playing • (sleep for smiles has come from the previous line).

Confusions of Words.

Words are not only changed through confusion of single letters or abbreviations, but also through general resemblance or (a semi-voluntary change) through simi larity of meaning. Shelley, Prometheus, ii. 2, 53 : "There streams a plume-uplifting wind" for "steams." In Shelley's lines, "When the lamp is shattered," vv. 5-6, When the lute is broken, Sweet tones are remembered not the printed edition had "notes" for "tones." In Mrs. Gaskell's Cranford, ch. xiv. (near the end), "The lunch—a hot savoury mutton-chop, and a little of the cold loin sliced and fried—was now brought in" is the reading of most if not all the editions ; but loin should be "lion," the reference being to the pudding, "a lion with currant eyes," described earlier in the chapter.

The same character frequently attaches to transpositions of words and parts of words. The copyist does not as a general rule consciously intend a change, but he falls into one through the influence of dominant associations. He substitutes an order of words which, in respect of syntax, metre or rhythm is more familiar to him.

Faulty Divisions of Words.

These will generally imply an exemplar in which the words were without any division or without a sufficient one. Under this head we may class errors which arise from the omission or the insertion of such marks as the apos trophe and the hyphen. Examples of wrong division of words are

Chaucer's House of Fame, iii. 1,975, "Of good or misgovernement" which should be "mis (i.e., bad) governement"; Shelley's Pro metheus, Hi. 2, 22, "Round many peopled continents" for "many peopled," ib. 26, "the light laden moon" for "light-laden." With this we may class faulty division of sentences. Wrong punctua tion is a common error and usually easy to correct. As an example of mispunctuation we may take Shelley's Triumph of Life, 188 seqq.: "if thou can'st, forbear To join the dance, which I had well forborne" Said the grim Feature of my thought "Aware I will unfold" for said the grim Feature (of my thought aware) "I will unfold." Grammatical Assimilations.—These are often purely me chanical errors ; but they may be semi-voluntary or even volun tary, the copyist desiring to set the syntax right, as for example in Shelley's Mask of Anarchy, 28o seq.: the daily strife With common wants and common cares Which sow the human heart with tares, for "sows." Insertions (or Omissions) of Seemingly Unimportant Words.—These, inasmuch as they must often import some judg ment on the sense of the passage copied, will be frequently semi voluntary if not voluntary. Examples are Shelley, Prometheus, iii. i, 5. "The soul of man like [an] unextinguished fire." So in Triumph of Life, 265: Whom from the flock of conquerors Fame singled out for her thunder-bearing minion, "out" seems to be due to the compositor.

False Recollections.—The passage which a copyist is repro ducing may suggest to him something else and he will write down what is thus in his mind instead of what is before his eyes. There is a noteworthy instance in Horace, Odes, iii. 18,ii seqq. : festus in pratis vacat otioso cum Bove pagus where some MSS. give "pardus," a reminiscence of Isaiah xi. 6, "The leopard (pardus) shall lie down with the kid." Incorporation of Marginalia.—The copyist may errone ously suppose that something written in the margin, between the lines or at the top or the foot of the page which he is copying, is intended to be placed in the text. The words so incorporated may appear side by side with the genuine reading or they may expel it. In Horace, Odes, hi. 27, 47, "amati cornua monstri" (of the bull which carried off Europa), more than one MS. has "cornua Lauri," an explanation of monstri. The celebrated passage about the three heavenly witnesses inserted in the Epistle of St. John (v. 2) seems to have been originally a comment explanatory of the text.