Chapter III: Section I: External Criticism

CHAPTER II

TEXTUAL CRITICISM

Errors in the reproduction of documents: their frequency under the most favourable conditions--Mistakes of copyists--"Sound" and "corrupt" texts 71

Necessity of emendation--The method subject to fixed rules 73

Methods of textual criticism: (_a_) original preserved; (_b_) a single copy preserved, conjectural emendation; (_c_) several copies preserved, comparison of errors, families of manuscripts 75

Different degrees of difficulty of textual criticism: its results negative--The "emendation game"--What still remains to be done 83

CHAPTER III

CRITICAL INVESTIGATION OF AUTHORSHIP PAGE Natural tendency to accept indications of authorship--Examples of false attributions--Necessity of verification--Application of internal criticism 87

Interpolations and continuations--Evidence of style 92

Plagiarism and borrowings by authors from each other--The filiation of statements--The investigation of sources 93

Importance of investigations of authorship--The extreme of distrust to be avoided--Criticism only a means to an end 98

CHAPTER IV

CRITICAL CLASSIFICATION OF SOURCES

Importance of classification--The first impulse wrong--The note-book system not the best--Nor the ledger-system--Nor the "system" of trusting the memory 101

The system of slips the best--Its drawbacks--Means of obviating them--The advantage of good "private librarianship" 103

Methods of work vary according to the object aimed at--The compiling of _Regesta_ or of a _Corpus_--Classification by time, place, species, and form 105

Chronological arrangement to be used when possible--Geographical arrangement best for inscriptions--When these fail, alphabetical order of "incipit"--Logical order useful for some special purposes--Not for a _Corpus_ or for _Regesta_ 107