Page:American Historical Review, Vol. 23.djvu/151

Rh three are different, the one that is in accord with known facts or with common sense is the correct reading. In the case of the most delicate differences where facts and common sense cannot come to his aid, he has frankly fallen back on subjective impression, assuming that reading to be the correct one because it seems to be correct. Obviously this is the only one of the three methods on which there can be much difference of opinion and it constitutes the only weak point in the building up of the critical text. But the original text is not reached, according to Professor Northup, by a mere comparison of the three versions. He believes that "P" and "M" proceeded from a common ancestor, each deriving through one or more intermediate forms. The immediate common ancestor of these two versions and of "H" in turn proceeded from another common ancestor, which itself proceeded from the original, with the possibility of one or more intermediate forms at each stage. Professor Northup does not attempt to construct the barbaric text of the original, but does try to give the original text in an English translation, and probably with fair success. For instance, he concludes, as most historians already have, that "Parias" is the correct reading as against the reading "Lariab" of the "F" version, because found in both "M" and "H". Many of the passages of "H", which have quite generally been considered to be interpolations by Waldseemüller, he decides are part of the original, as some of them are found also in "M", and others seem probable though in neither "P" nor "M". In his translation, he shows by the mechanical devices of brackets and italics the readings adopted from "M" and "H", and at the end of the volume, he gives the variants of the three versions in the language of the version.

With Canovai and Harrisse, Professor Northup believes that the Vespucci documents have not come down to us in the form in which Vespucci penned them, and that the Soderini Letter was at least partly based on a Spanish original. The only wholly autograph letter by Vespucci that has come down is written in correct Spanish, and this Professor Northup accepts as trustworthy evidence that Vespucci was well versed in that language—a not oversound reason, as Vespucci might easily have employed a Spaniard to write the letter for him and have later copied it himself. With better reasoning he believes it unlikely that Vespucci, who had left Italy so late in his life, could have forgotten his native language so thoroughly as to write the bastard jargon of the Soderini Letter. The earliest form of this, he thinks, was a report in Spanish to his Spanish patron, to whom he quite naturally would write first. Later, to save himself time and trouble, he had someone else copy it into Italian. The result was the Soderini version, which was made by a careless translator, whose work often becomes a mere transliteration. However, as Professor Northup admits, the matter is not to be settled in a moment, but should be passed on by a jury of competent Romance philologists. Of real help is the