Transpositions of Lines and Passages.—This kind of trans position is really arrested loss. An accidental omission is dis covered, and the person responsible, or another, places what is omitted in the margin, at the foot of the page or in some other part of the text, usually adding a mark to show where it ought to have been. The next copyist may easily overlook this sign and thus the passage may be permanently displaced.
Interpolation.—This is the deliberate alteration of an exem plar by way of substitution, addition or omission, but when it takes the particular form of omission it is naturally very hard to detect. Interpolation then always has a motive. The most fre quent motive is the removal of some difficulty in the sense, ex pression or metre of the text, and especially obvious gaps or corruptions which the interpolator endeavours to fill or to heal. Fraudulent interpolation, whether the fraud be pious or otherwise, does occur, but is comparatively rare. The removal or the miti gation of objectionable matter is also occasionally found. Inter polation is then a voluntary alteration, but in practice it is often hard to distinguish from other changes.
The usual character of scribes' alterations is well illustrated by a passage in Bacon's Advancement of Learning, II. xix., "for these critics have often presumed that that which they under stand not is false set down : as the Priest that where he found it written of St. Paul Demissus est per sportam (Acts ix. 25) mended his book, and made it Demissus est per portam, because sporta was an hard word, and out of his reading." Shelley in Triumph of Life, 201 seq., wrote: And if the spark with which Heaven lit my spirit Had been with proper nutriment supplied, but the printed editions made it "sentiment." Deliberate alteration is sometimes due to disapproval of what stands in the text or even to less creditable reasons. There is an old and seemingly trustworthy tradition that some lines in Homer's "Catalogue of the Ships," Iliad, ii. 553-556 and 558, were introduced there to gratify the vanity or ambition of the Athe nians. Insertions of this or of a similar character may be of almost any length, from a few words to a whole chapter or a complete poem. Literary forgery has never set any bounds to itself, and the history of every literature will supply examples of entire works being foisted upon authors and personages of repute.
Special Conditions Conducing to Corruption.—The chief of these is strangeness or difficulty in the matter to be copied. Proper names, technical expressions, quotations from foreign languages, and frequent change of subject, are all likely to cause difficulty to a scribe and error in his work. Careful and con tinuous regard to the various kinds of errors and defaults that are found in transcription will enable us to judge whether a read ing which it is suggested stood in the archetype of our text is likely to have been corrupted to the reading, or readings, which stand in the extant manuscripts or editions. If it is, we say of this
reading that it is transcriptionally probable.
Some precautions must be observed. First we must rule out any proposal which assumes confusions of letters and abbrevia tions which are not attested for the particular tradition. Secondly, since different scribes are prone to different kinds of error, we must ever bear in mind the particular failings of the scribes responsible for the transmission of our text as these failings are revealed in the apparatus criticus. Maxims of criticism to which we may here refer are that "harder readings are better than easier" and that "the shorter reading is generally the truer." The first maxim is indisputable, provided we understand by "harder" harder to the scribe, and by "easier" easier to the scribe. The characteristic of scribes' emendations or interpolations is that they are superficial. Their mark is that at the time of their making they "combine the appearance of improvement with the absence of its reality" (Westcott and Hort, New Testament, i. p. 27). The second maxim refers to the well known fact that accretions from marginalia, etc., lengthen and also weaken a text.
The virtues of a scribe are honesty and care (or in a single word fidelity) and intelligence. But it is rare to find these com bined in a very high degree, and out of them we can least easily dispense with fidelity. Paradoxical as it may seem, the mechanical corruptions of a stupid but faithful copyist may tell us more than the intelligent copyings of a less faithful one. At certain epochs in the transmission of literature systematic efforts have been made to improve the transmitted texts, and these efforts have naturally been accompanied by a good deal of emendation both successful and unsuccessful. Such an epoch was the revival of Latin and Greek learning in the 15th century, and a modern scholar would for that reason naturally prefer to have a manu script to work on which was written immediately before this epoch to one which was written immediately after it. The fidelity of a scribe has to be judged chiefly by internal tests, and these are best applied to his work in passages where there is no reason able doubt of the correctness of the transmitted text. But there are two tests of a more objective character that may be used— orthography, and indication of lacunae or other faults in his exemplar. A scribe who preserves in his spelling the traces of a bygone age is probably trustworthy. If faithful in small things, he is likely to be faithful in great. A scribe again who scrupu lously records the presence of a lacuna or illegibility in what he is copying, inspires us with confidence in the rest of his work.