As regards the use of testimonia, it may be observed to begin with that their value must depend on the trustworthiness of the texts of the writers from whom they are taken, and further upon that of the text used by the translator, the excerptor or the quoter, about which we can know nothing for certain, though we may sometimes make probable inferences. In the case of quota tions we must allow for failures of memory. Many times in the course of his investigations the critic will be confronted with problems which cannot be resolved by considerations of tran scriptional or documental probability.
This leads us to consider intrinsic probability. By this is meant the likelihood that the writer of our text would at the time of writing have written, or not have written, a particular thing. Two questions which may be separated, though they are not en tirely distinct, are here involved. What was the meaning of the writer? And how did he express it? The sense may be clear though the words may no longer be determinable. A reading may be impugned on a number of grounds: that it gives no sense or an inappropriate sense ; that it involves a usage or an idiom not current at the assumed time of writing, or foreign to the reputed author, or to the style in which he then was writing; that it involves some metrical or rhythmical anomaly; or that the con nexion of thought which it produces is incoherent or disorderly. These charges cannot be played off against each other. It is no answer to the objection that a reading in some Roman poet makes nonsense to say that its Latinity is perfect or its metre excellent. But they may reinforce each other, and to such corroboration great weight must be assigned.
To set the meaning of a passage in a foreign language before us we must frequently have recourse to translation. But this method of representation is a very imperfect one ; we may easily impose on ourselves and others by strained and ambiguous ren derings. A more subtle danger to which we are especially liable in the case of a dead language is that of our acquiescing in a sense which satisfies us but which would not have satisfied the ancient writer. Above all we must avoid applying our own standards of taste, style and morality to the judgment of the text before us. The textual critic has no concern with what the writer ought to have thought or said; his business is solely with what he did say or think or might have said or thought. Among the legitimate reasons for suspecting the correctness of a text are patent contra dictions in a passage or its immediate neighbourhood, proved and inexplicable deviations from the standards for forms, construc tions and usages (mere rarity or singularity is not enough), weak and purposeless repetitions of a word (if there is no reason for attributing these to the writer), violations of the laws of metre and rhythm as observed by the author, obvious breaks in the thought (incoherence) or disorderly sequence in the same (double or multiple incoherence). Where the critic has ascertained the
earliest form of a reading in his text, he will apply to it the tests of intrinsic probability. No part of a text can be considered exempt from this scrutiny, though for a very large part of it, it may be dispensed with.
After every such critical examination four conclusions are possible—acceptance, doubt, rejection, or alteration. In other words, a critic may deliberately pronounce that what stands in the text represents what the author wrote or might well have written, that it is doubtful whether it does, that it certainly does not, or, in the last event, that it may be replaced with certainty by something that does. In the three first cases his judgment will be governed by considerations of intrinsic probability alone : but in the last it must regard transcriptional probability as well. No alteration of a text, or emendation, is entitled to approval unless, in addition to providing the sense and diction required, it also presents a reading which the evidence furnished by the tradition shows might not improbably have been corrupted to what stands in the text. These tests, and these alone, are emendations bound to satisfy; but others are often tacitly imposed upon them. Of this the transposition of lines is the most notable example. This kind of change is troublesome to estimate and inconvenient to adopt, as it involves placing passages where we are not accus tomed to look for them; but to the question, did the author write the passage here or there? the matter of our trouble or inconvenience is wholly irrelevant. There is, however, one class of cases in which no conclusion may be drawn, documental and intrinsic probability both failing us. This is where the alterna tive readings, neither of which can have come from the other, have equal external support and equal intrinsic merit. Isolated discrepancies of this kind may be due to some accident to our text at a period now beyond our power to trace. Numerous and striking discrepancies may be due to the fact that there was more than one edition or recension of it in early times, or to the author's leaving his work in such a condition that such discrep ancies must inevitably gain currency. In the case of dramas, different acting editions will give rise to them.