Laudator Temporis Acti

Barry Baldwin, "Editing Petronius: Methods and Examples," Acta Classica 31 (1988) 37-50 (at 37, footnote omitted):

Although arranged in discrete notes on particular passages, this paper is not a random miscellany. It comports a theme both coherent and combative, being in the main a stout plea for pragmatism and conservatism against the popular sports of interpolation-hunting and textual emendation engaged in by latter-day Petronian editors and their philological camp followers. True, I would not fight to the death for every phrase beginning id est or scilicet, nor for every last reading in Η (the Codex Traguriensis). But far more are defensible than is allowed in other quarters, and the burden of proof or probability should be transferred back to those who tamper with the text rather than rest upon the shoulders of those who defend it. Above all, such phantoms as Fraenkel's Carolingian interpolator should be exorcised in favour of level-headed consideration of each and every case on its individual merits.