Textual criticism, above the level of linguistic trivialities, often depends on the editor's readiness to say, "I know this author, and what the manuscripts have here is not consistent with the way his mind works." To the opponent who demands proof the editor can only say, "Live with the author, as I have done, for the next ten years or so, and then come back and tell me what you think."
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
Pages
▼
Wednesday, April 15, 2015
Textual Criticism
K.J. Dover (1920-2010), Lysias and the Corpus Lysiacum (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), p. 96, n. 2: