Page:The poems of Gaius Valerius Catullus - Francis Warre Cornish.djvu/9



I began, many years ago, to attempt a translation of Catullus, I had no intention of preparing a text as well. I meant to take the best printed text at hand and adhere to that: but as the work went on, I found myself (a common experience) unable to accept any existing text without modifications. Some editions defer too much to the manuscripts, which are late and bad; others hardly do justice to the work of Italian scholars of the 15th and 16th centuries; and in recent years the authority of Munro, a great but not infallible scholar, has been set too high. So far as I can judge, the best of the current texts is that of Dr Postgate, and I have never departed from it without reluctance.

My principle has been in the main to follow the manuscripts as interpreted by the scholars of the Renaissance, many of whose readings have been universally accepted, and to take account of all modern emendations. Where neither MSS. nor conjectures gave a sufficiently probable reading, I have retained the MS. reading with the sign †. Where a modern emendation seemed to be certain or very probable, I have adopted it with the sign *. Rh