Monday, January 15, 2024
Feet on the Hob Emendation
W.M. Lindsay (1858-1937), Palaeographia Latina, Part II (London: Humphrey Milford, 1923 = St. Andrews University Publications, XVI), p. 53:
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Those classical scholars who occupy themselves with what is called 'feet on the hob' emendation have a poor opinion of the extant MSS. They sit by the fire with Virgil in one hand and a pencil in the other and jot down in the margin any alteration of a word or line which caprice suggests. When this marginal litter has accumulated they send it, under the misleading title 'Emendations', to an indulgent magazine-editor. If any one thinks it worth while to censure them, they justify their action by some argument like this: 'The transmission of Latin texts was wholly capricious and wholly ignorant; one can have no confidence that the traditional form in which we ourselves re-write the passage was what the author wrote; the form in which we ourselves re-write the passage is just as likely to have been the author's form.'
