Sunday, March 19, 2023

 

Miserable Sinners

Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve, "Brief Mention," American Journal of Philology 31.2 (1910) 234-244 (at 241):
Every now and then Brief Mention adds a paragraph to Dr. Bombaugh's Book of Blunders, but I should dread to put forth a treatise with such a title as Professor POSTGATE'S Flaws in Classical Research (Proceedings of the British Academy, Vol. III). The superscription would remind me too sadly of my own mistakes. True, many scholars follow Maria's programme: 'Cast thy humble slough. Be opposite with a kinsman'. But unfortunately there is always some one to remember the humble slough, and there is always some Sir Toby Belch to hiccup forth a remonstrance. I remember how in years gone by one great apostle of Hellenism made εἱπόμην the middle of εἶπον, and how one of the most savage critics of my day, a veritable canis grammaticus, whose memory comes back to me in the Patou of Rostand's Chantecler, exposed himself time and again to countersnarls. The little notes that I make in Brief Mention are penned in no Malvoliose spirit. I never forgive myself for the slightest slip of the pen, the slightest oversight of the eye, and yet I do derive a certain comfort from the reflection that I am only one of many miserable sinners, and my self-reproach for the inveterate mistakes of my text-books is easier to bear when I recall the persistence of blunders that eluded the vigilance of proofreaders for decennium after decennium like the notorious ἔρχω of Aristophanes, Ranae 111, which was introduced by Brunck in 1783 and retained until the present generation by most of the leading editors.
In Aristophanes the correct reading is ἐχρῶ. I don't know who the "great apostle of Hellenism" was.



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