Laudator Temporis Acti

Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve, "Brief Mention," American Journal of Philology 26.1 (1905) 111-119 (at 113):

The fact is that though I was trained by scholars who were far from averse to conjectural criticism, the hosts of extemporaneous restorations, or, as a good friend of mine would call them, 'autoschediastic repristinations', such as are poured forth by the veteran Blaydes and other scholars, have bewildered me so that I have settled down glumly to making the best of tradition...

From the article on "Blaydes, Frederick Henry Marvell (1818-1908)" in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography:

Scholarship meant for Blaydes what it had meant for Elmsley at Oxford, for Porson and Dobree at Cambridge. With the later and more literary school of Sir Richard Jebb in England and von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff in Germany he had small sympathy. He likewise considered the study of Chaucer and Shakespeare a waste of time. Verbal criticism and the discovery of corrupt passages mainly occupied him, and his fertile and venturesome habit of emendation exposed his work to disparagement (N. Wecklein in Berliner philologische Wochenschrift, 28/20, 1908). Yet a good many of his emendations have been approved by later editors, most recently by Sir Hugh Lloyd-Jones and N.G. Wilson in their Sophocles (Oxford Classical Texts, 1990), in which many of Blaydes's proposals are either accepted in the text or thought worthy of mention in the apparatus criticus. Blaydes's own views on the editing of classical texts are to be found in the introduction to his Sophocles (vol. 1) and in the preface to The Philoctetes of Sophocles (1870).

See N. Wecklein, review of Blaydes, Analecta tragica Graeca (Halle, 1906), in Berliner philologische Wochenschrift, 28. Jahrgang, Nr. 20 (May 16, 1908) 609:

Über den Fabrikbetrieb von Blaydes noch ein Wort zu sagen ist überflüssig. Lästig ist dieser Betrieb nur für den, welcher es als seine Pflicht erachtet, die Bücher zu lesen und immer wieder das gleiche zu lesen.

Habe ich früher schon meiner Hochachtung für den Scharfsinn und die Gelehrsamkeit des Verf. Ausdruck gegeben, so muß ich auch das phänomenale Gedächtnis des hochbetagten Herrn rühmen, der bei jeder Stelle augenscheinlich an Parallelstellen erinnert wird. So fiel ihm z. B. bei Aesch. Αg. 807 τῷ δ ̓ ἐναντίῳ κύτει .. χειρὸς οὐ πληρουμένῳ Aristoph. Ach. 459 δὸς ἓν μόνον κοτυλίσκιον τὸ χεῖλος ἀποκεκρουμένον ein, und so ergab sich ihm die Konjektur χείλος ἀποκεκρουμένῳ. Merkwürdig ist bei diesem Texte nur, daß die Götter im Olymp Urnen mit abgebrochenem Rande benutzen.

Die vorliegenden Analecta geben kritische und exegetische Bemerkungen, vorzugsweise mehr oder weniger passende Parallelstellen zu allen Dramen und auch zu den Fragmenten der drei Tragiker. Nachträge und Zusätze zu den früheren Ausgaben könnte man mit Dank hinnehmen. Wenn aber z. B. in der umfangreichen Ausgabe des Agamemnon vom Jahre 1898 zu 520 angemerkt ist φαιδροῖς ἰδόντες Auratus oder zu 575 leg. τῷδ' ἔχομεν aut potius ἔστιν, warum müssen wir jetzt wieder φαιδροῖσι τοισίδ'] Qu. φαιδροῖς ἰδόντες und εἰκὸς] Qu. ἔχομεν lesen? Wert hat weder das eine noch das andere.

Frederick H.M. Blaydes, ed., The Philoctetes of Sophocles (London: Williams and Norgate, 1870), pp. v-vi:

This plan of conjectural emendation, which is so keenly disparaged and gainsaid by some scholars of the ultra-conservative school, who blindly prefer any ms. authority to the dictates of reason and common sense, I feel more and more persuaded is the only remaining chance left us of restoring the text. Even if any new mss. of our Poet, and that of very early date, were contrary to all expectation to turn up in some out-of-the-way library or monastery, I apprehend the benefit to be derived from them would be inconsiderable, and that they would exhibit the very same inveterate corruptions which we find in those we already have.

What sort of a text should we have, I would ask, if we were to confine ourselves to the readings of any one or more mss., and dispense altogether with conjectural emendations? Let any one make the experiment for himself. Now, if a hundred conjectures be welcomed as necessary, why should others, if worthy of acceptance, be refused? It has required much time. and labour to bring the text of our Poet even to the state in which it now is; and, as each revolving year passes, we may reasonably expect some additional light. While therefore I have been most scrupulously careful to introduce nothing into the text itself but what rests either on good authority or great probability, I have, more especially in obscure passages, indulged pretty freely in conjecture. For the sake of brevity and convenience I have generally prefixed to these proposed conjectures the letters Qu. Many of these however are of a more or less tentative character, thrown out for the consideration of others and all are not advanced with an equal degree of confidence.