Page:The Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology, Volume 1, 1854.djvu/52

 42 Journal of Philology. letter, and read fervunt, which Lucretius could surely have used, and which exactly suits the sense of the passage, in. 617, for regionibus omnibus I read hominis regionibus; ho minis and omni- bus are perpetually confused in MSS., and no error is more common in ours than transposition of words ; thus I think that v. 182 will be most simply emended by putting divis before hominum, or after unde est. A very common error in our MSS. is, as might be expected, the omission of words or parts of words, when the letters are similar to or identical with those which immediately precede or follow. I will attempt to emend some passages on this principle, i. 104, I cannot approve of the change of possum into possunt. I believe that the poet means to say he too could invent dreams of horror if he pleased, and that Forbiger is right in comparing verse 400, as far as similarity of expression is concerned. But the passage as it stands is certainly weak. The quarto Leyden MS. has me for jam, the variety could of course easily be accounted for ; but it seems to me that the sentence would be improved by thus uniting both readings: tibi a me fingere possum, "how many dreams can I invent of myself, on my own part :" comp. IV. 468: animus quas ab se protinus addit, "which the mind adds on its own account." n. 168 MSS. have sine numine reddi; " prorsus egregie Marullus rentur," says Lachmann ; yet doubt- less credunt is the right reading; the c is lost in the e of numine ; I have noted the singular frequency with which in our MSS. c and e are absorbed by each other : in the first 500 verses there are at least four instances of this ; and any one conversant with MSS. will know how easily the unt in a contracted form would pass into di. n. 249, notwithstanding what Lachmann says, I read with the older editors recta regione viai; recta has been absorbed in regione. If regio never means " a direction," (though that would appear to be its primitive force), I cannot understand such passages as Cses. Bel. Gal. vn. 46 $ 1 : Oppidi mums ab planicie atque initio ascensus recta regione, si nullus amfractus intercederet, MCC passus aberat, and fifty similar ones. ii. 250, perhaps, qui possit cernere vere is the right reading, the vere absorbed in the last letters of cernere ; so n. 289, editors rightly read ne mens for ne res, the me having been lost in ne. n. 517, for Omnis enim calor ac frigus, I read Extima enim, &c. ; the last letters of the first word have been