Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 19.djvu/220

* TEXTUAL CRITICISM. 176 TEXTUAL CRITICISM. century, and some are later, but ordinarily the manuscripts of the fifteenth and sixteenth cen- turies are of little or no value. No existing manuscript is free from error. The scribes often did their work mechanically and ignorantly, so that blunders were easily made: these w<'re then perpetuated and spread by each successive copyist. Such errors may be corrected by comparison with a manuscript which does not contain the iden- tical blunders; but in case all existing manu- scri[)ts are descended from the same incorrect original, the same errors will probably appear in all. In such case, if the subsidiary aids named above fail, the only resort is to conjectural emendation. Or it may happen that a number of manuscripts have different readings in the same passage, all intelligible. The problem then is to determine which of the several readings is the one intended by the author. Errors in manuscripts may be divided into: (1) Errors of Omission, (2) Errors of Insertion. (3) Errors of Substitution, (4) Errors of Transposition, (5) Errors of Emendation, (0) Errors due to the Confusion of Letters or Con- tractions. (1) Errors of Omission. The simplest form of this class of errors is that known as hap- Joc/raplnj. when of two identical letters, syllables, or words only one is written; e.g. Plautus, Miles Gloriosiis 54, si viverent for sivi viverent ; Vergil, Georgics, 4, 311, magis aera cnrpunt for magis magis aera carpiinf. The omission of a syllable, word, or passage may also be due to the inex- cusable carelessness of the scribe, a failure to understand, a defect in the archetype, etc. IMost such omissions come under the head of what is technically known as lipography. Examples are furnished' by Vergil, .Uneid, 4, 491, descere for descendere; 6, 708, indunt for insidunt. The omission of clauses or sentences in prose, or of whole lines in poetry, is frequently occasioned by the similar endings of clauses or verses (homa-oteleuton), or by similar words in the same position within the lines, so that the eye of the scribe jumped from one to the other. In Plautus's Bacchides, the oldest manuscript lacks two entire verses, owing to the fact that v 507 has atque and v. 500 usque in the same position. The texts of Lucretius and Vergil also furnish a number of examples of this kind of error. (2) Errors of Insertion. One of the most common forms of this class of errors is that known as dittography, whereby a letter, syllable, or word is written twice. A case of double dit- tography is furnished by the Palimpsest of Cicero, De Republica, 2, 57, secvtvtvsecvtvs for secutus. Often an explanatory word, gloss, or passage, either interlinear or marginal, is in- serted in the body of the text. Thus in Plau- tus's Truciilentus. v. 79, is an unmetrical line, Phronesium, nam phronesis est Sapientia. which apparently was originally a marginal gloss in explanation of the proper name Phronesium in V. 77. Or any marginal note may be incor- porated by the scribe, such as Caput, chapter, nota, take notice, deest, there is lacking, etc. In some eases insertions have been made with fraudulent intent. There is an ancient tradi- tion that the mention of Athens in the Iliad, 2, 553fl., was interpolated to give the dignity of antiquity to the capital of Attica. Syntactical corrections, both intentional and unintentional; from a difficult to an easier construction are not uncommon; and Renaissance scholars seem often to have been more concerned with making a readable than a correct text, (3) Errors of Substitution. This class of mis- takes may arise from various causes. An ex- planatory gloss may have been substituted for tlie word it explains, as in Vergil, Eclogues, 6, 40, rum per iijuaros errent animalia montis, where some manuscripts have rara per ignotos, etc, ignotos being evidently a gloss substituted by some copyist for the correct ignuros. In the case of archaic writers like Plautus, a classical word may have ousted the early form; an ex- ample is furnished by Ampliitruo, 631, where one manuscript has the classical simul for the archaic siinitu. The earlier form is correctly given by two manuscripts, while the writer of a fourth first copied correctly simltu and tlien changed it to simul. Not infrequently, also, a word has been substituted from the context or from a parallel passage which lingered in the copyist's mind. Further, the mediseval scribes, being monks, might corrupt a passage b}' sub- stituting a word from a similar passage in the Bible. A famous example is that of Horace C, 3, 18, llf., where the monk who was writing a manuscript which afterwards became the arclie- type of a considerable class had in mind Isaiah xi, 6, Imhitahit lupus cum ugno et pardus cum Iwedo nccuhuhit, and so substituted pardus for pagus in the passage festus in pratis vacat otioso cum bove pagus. The most common cause of this class of errors, however, is the confusion of similar words: addit and adit, adessc and ad sese, hospitium and hostium., precor and prcetor, etc. (4) Errors of Transposition. These errors, whether of letters, .syllables, words, or lines, are very common in classical manuscripts. They are due most often to the carelessness of the copy- ist whose eye traveled faster than his pen. Transposed letters and syllables are easily de- tected by an.y one familiar with the language; transpo.sed words are not so readil.y discovered in prose as in verse, where the transposition usually spoils the metre, e.g. the reading of certain manuscripts of Horace C. 3, 13, 14, trrnos tcr attonitus ci/atlios pctet rates will not 'scan,' but the metre is perfect when the corr'ect ci/athos attonilus is read. The transpo- sition of entire lines is generally due to the fact that the copyist carelessly dropped the line or lines, and later, on discovering his error, in- serted the missing lines out of place, often with- out any indication of the misplacement, Lucre- tius and Vergil furnish many excellent examples. Finally, one or more entire pages may be mis- placed either because the scribe carelessly omitted a page or because the sheets of tho archetype had become disturbed before the copy was made. A well-known example of the last is furnished by Lucretius, where the error en- abled Lachmann to determine the size of the lost archetype from which the extant manu- cripts are descended. (5) Errors of Emendation. This class has been touched on under Sections 2 and 3. They occur chiefly in manuscripts dating from the ninth century or later, and are especially com- mon in manuscripts written by Renaissance scholars. These errors may arise simply from the wrong division of words, as in Seneca, Epist.