Frailty of understanding is in itself no proper target for scorn and mockery. But the unintelligent forfeit their claim to compassion when they begin to indulge in self-complacent airs, and to call themselves sane critics, meaning that they are mechanics. And when, relying upon their numbers, they pass from self-complacency to insolence, and reprove their betters for using the brains which God has not denied them, they dry up the fount of pity.
If a hale man walks along the street upon two sound legs, he is not liable to be chased by crowds of cripples vociferating ‗Go home and fetch your crutch.‘ If a reasoning man edits a classic rationally, he is. What a critic is, and what advantage he has over those who are not critics, can easily be shown by one example. Cicero‘s oration pro rege Deiotaro was edited between 1830 and 1840 by Klotz, Soldan, and Benecke. The best MS then known was the Erfurtensis, and all three editors pounced on this authority and clung to it, believing themselves safe. In 1841, Madvig, maintaining reason against superstition in Cicero‘s text as I now maintain it in Juvenal‘s, impugned 17 readings adopted from the Erfurtensis by these editors, and upheld the readings of inferior MSS. We now possess MSS still better than the Erfurtensis, and in 12 of the 17 places they contradict it; they confirm the inferior MSS and the superior critic.
But there are editors destitute of this discriminating faculty, so destitute that they cannot even conceive it to exist; and these are entangled in a task for which nature has neglected to equip them. What are they now to do? Set to and try to learn their trade? That is forbidden by sloth. Stand back and leave room for their superiors? That is forbidden by vanity. They must have a rule, a machine to do their thinking for them. If the rule is true, so much the better; if false, that cannot be helped: but one thing is necessary, a rule. A hundred years ago it was their rule to count the MSS and trust the majority. But this pillow was snatched from under them by the great critics of the 19 th century, and the truth that MSS must be weighed, not counted, is now too widely known to be ignored.
The sluggard has lost his pillow, but he has kept his nature, and must needs find something else to loll on; so he fabricates, to suit the change of season, his precious precept of following one MS wherever possible. Engendered by infirmity and designed for comfort, no wonder if it misses the truth at which it was never aimed. Its aim was purely humanitarian: to rescue incompetent editors alike from the toil of editing and from the shame of acknowledging that they cannot edit.
If a hale man walks along the street upon two sound legs, he is not liable to be chased by crowds of cripples vociferating ‗Go home and fetch your crutch.‘ If a reasoning man edits a classic rationally, he is. What a critic is, and what advantage he has over those who are not critics, can easily be shown by one example. Cicero‘s oration pro rege Deiotaro was edited between 1830 and 1840 by Klotz, Soldan, and Benecke. The best MS then known was the Erfurtensis, and all three editors pounced on this authority and clung to it, believing themselves safe. In 1841, Madvig, maintaining reason against superstition in Cicero‘s text as I now maintain it in Juvenal‘s, impugned 17 readings adopted from the Erfurtensis by these editors, and upheld the readings of inferior MSS. We now possess MSS still better than the Erfurtensis, and in 12 of the 17 places they contradict it; they confirm the inferior MSS and the superior critic.
But there are editors destitute of this discriminating faculty, so destitute that they cannot even conceive it to exist; and these are entangled in a task for which nature has neglected to equip them. What are they now to do? Set to and try to learn their trade? That is forbidden by sloth. Stand back and leave room for their superiors? That is forbidden by vanity. They must have a rule, a machine to do their thinking for them. If the rule is true, so much the better; if false, that cannot be helped: but one thing is necessary, a rule. A hundred years ago it was their rule to count the MSS and trust the majority. But this pillow was snatched from under them by the great critics of the 19 th century, and the truth that MSS must be weighed, not counted, is now too widely known to be ignored.
The sluggard has lost his pillow, but he has kept his nature, and must needs find something else to loll on; so he fabricates, to suit the change of season, his precious precept of following one MS wherever possible. Engendered by infirmity and designed for comfort, no wonder if it misses the truth at which it was never aimed. Its aim was purely humanitarian: to rescue incompetent editors alike from the toil of editing and from the shame of acknowledging that they cannot edit.
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