Page:Aristotle s Poetics Butcher.djvu/11

Rh a similar omission of in A$c$ cf. vi. 12. 1450 a 29, , the indispensable negative being added in 'apographa' and found in the Arabic. The emendation not only gives a natural instead of a strained sense to the words, but also fits in better with the general context, as I have argued in Aristotle's Theory of Poetry, etc. (ed. 3 pp. 375-8).

Another conjecture of my own I have ventured to admit into the text. In the much disputed passage, vi. 8. 1450a 12, I read < for of the MSS., following the guidance of Diels and of the Arabic. I regard as a gloss which displaced part of the original phrase (see Critical Notes). As a parallel case I have adduced Rhet. i. 1. 1354a 12,, the reading in the margin of A$c$, ought, I think, to be substituted in the text for the accepted reading. The word is a natural gloss on, but not so  on.

In two other difficult passages the Rhetoric may again be summoned to our aid. In xvii. 1. 1455a 27 I have (as in the first edition) bracketed, the object to be supplied with being, as I take it, the poet, not the audience. This I have now illustrated by another gloss of a precisely similar kind in Rhet. i. 2. 1358a 8, where has long been