A.E. Housman, "Tucker's
Supplices of Aeschylus,"
Classical Review 4.3 (March, 1890) 105-109 (at 105):
The learner who attacks
the play with this commentary will find unfailing help by the way and acquire much information before his journey's end.
The old miserable experiences of the classical
student who wants to understand what he
reads, his lonely fights with difficulties
whose presence the editor has never apprehended, his fruitless quest of a meaning
in notes where the editor has rendered Greek
nonsense into English nonsense and gone on
his way rejoicing, are not repeated.
Id. (at 107):
When Mr. Tucker's [approximately 200] conjectures are not
palaeographically improbable they are apt to
be causeless and even detrimental. Among
the axioms assumed in the preface are
the following: 'the reading in the text
must hold its place until such cause to
the contrary can be shewn as will satisfy
a rigidly impartial tribunal. The onus
probandi lies entirely with the impugner
of the text.' 'The conditions of dispossession are these. It must either be proved
that the reading is an impossibility, or
else that in point of grammar it is so abnormal, or in point of relevance so manifestly inappropriate, as to produce a thorough
conviction that the MS. is in error.' I for
my part should call this much too strict;
but these are Mr. Tucker's principles. His
practice is something quite different: in
practice no word, however good, is safe if Mr.
Tucker can think of a similar word which is
not much worse.
Id. (at 109):
Here I have given proofs enough of the
disasters which attend us when we desist
from the pursuit of truth to follow after
our own inventions. Thus much it was
necessary to say, because the many students
who will I hope resort to this edition for
help and instruction must be warned that
they will find not only what they seek but also
a good deal which they are not to believe.
The book however in spite of its faults
the most useful edition of the Supplices we
have. The purely explanatory part of the
commentary does not contain very much that
is absolutely new, and this is well; for it is
really a far more venturesome thing, if critics would but understand it, to propose a new
rendering than a new reading.