CRITICAL INVESTIGATION OF AUTHORSHIP
It would be absurd to look for information about a fact in the papers of
some one who knew nothing, and could know nothing, about it. The first
questions, then, which we ask when we are confronted with a document is:
Where does it come from? who is the author of it? what is its date? A
document in respect of which we necessarily are in total ignorance of
the author, the place, and the date is good for nothing.
This truth, which seems elementary, has only been adequately recognised
in our own day. Such is the natural [Greek: hakrishia] of man, that those
who were the first to make a habit of inquiring into the authorship of
documents prided themselves, and justly, on the advance they had made.
Most modern documents contain a precise indication of their authorship:
in our days, books, newspaper articles, official papers, and even
private writings, are, in general, dated and signed. Many ancient
documents, on the other hand, are anonymous, without date, and have no
sufficient indication of their place of origin.
The spontaneous tendency of the human mind is to place confidence in the
indications of authorship, when there are any. On the cover and in the
preface of the _Chatiments_, Victor Hugo is named as the author;
therefore Victor Hugo is the author of the _Chatiments_. In such and
such a picture gallery we see an unsigned picture whose frame has been
furnished by the management with a tablet bearing the name of Leonardo
da Vinci; therefore Leonardo da Vinci painted this picture. A poem with
the title _Philomena_ is found under the name of Saint Bonaventura in M.
Clement's _Extraits des poetes chretiens_, in most editions of Saint
Bonaventura's "works," and in a great number of mediaeval manuscripts;
therefore _Philomena_ was written by Saint Bonaventura, and "we may
gather thence much precious knowledge of the very soul" of this holy
man.[79] Vrain-Lucas offered to M. Chasles autographs of Vercingetorix,
Cleopatra, and Saint Mary Magdalene, duly signed, and with the
flourishes complete:[80] here, thought M. Chasles, are autographs of
Vercingetorix, Cleopatra, and Saint Mary Magdalene. This is one of the
most universal, and at the same time indestructible, forms of public
credulity.
Experience and reflection have shown the necessity of methodically
checking these instinctive impulses of confiding trust. The autographs
of Vercingetorix, Cleopatra, and Mary Magdalene had been manufactured by
Vrain-Lucas. The _Philomena_, attributed by mediaeval scribes now to
Saint Bonaventura, now to Louis of Granada, now to John Hoveden, now to
John Peckham, is perhaps by none of these authors, and certainly not by
the first-named. Paintings in which there is not the least gleam of
talent have, in the most celebrated galleries of Italy, been tricked
out, without the least shadow of proof, with the glorious name of
Leonardo. On the other hand, it is perfectly true that Victor Hugo is
the author of the _Chatiments_. The conclusion is, that the most precise
indications of authorship are never sufficient _by themselves_. They
only afford a presumption, strong or weak--very strong, in general,
where modern documents are concerned, often very weak in the case of
ancient documents. False indications of authorship exist, some foisted
upon insignificant works in order to enhance their value, some appended
to works of merit in order to serve the reputation of a particular
person, or to mystify posterity; and there are a hundred other motives
which may easily be imagined, and of which a list has been drawn up:[81]
the "pseudepigraphic" literature of antiquity and the middle ages is
enormous. There are, in addition, documents which are forged from
beginning to end; the forgers have naturally furnished them with very
precise indications of their alleged authorship. Verification is
therefore necessary. But how is it to be had? When the apparent
authorship of a document is suspected, we use for its verification the
same method which serves to fix, as far as possible, the origin of
documents which are furnished with no indications at all on this head.
As the procedure is the same in both cases, it is not necessary to
distinguish further between them.
I. The chief instrument used in the investigation of authorship is the
_internal analysis_ of the document under consideration, performed with
a view to bring out any indications it may contain of a nature to supply
information about the author, and the time and place in which he lived.
First of all we examine the handwriting of the document. Saint
Bonaventura was born in 1221; if poems attributed to him are contained
in manuscripts executed in the eleventh century, we have in this
circumstance an excellent proof that the attribution is ill-founded: no
document of which there exists a copy in eleventh-century handwriting
can be posterior in date to the eleventh century. Then we examine the
language. It is known that certain forms have only been used in certain
places and at certain dates. Most forgers have betrayed themselves by
ignorance of facts of this kind; they let slip modern words or phrases.
It has been possible to establish the fact that certain Phoenician
inscriptions, found in South America, were earlier than a certain German
dissertation on a point of Phoenician syntax. In the case of official
instruments we examine the formulae. If a document which purports to be a
Merovingian charter does not exhibit the ordinary formulae of genuine
Merovingian charters it must be spurious. Lastly, we note all the
positive data which occur in the document--the facts which are mentioned
or alluded to. When these facts are otherwise known, from sources which
a forger could not have had at his disposal, the _bona fides_ of the
document is established, and the date fixed approximately between the
most recent event of which the author shows knowledge, and the next
following event which he does not mention but would have done if he had
known of it. Arguments may also be founded on the circumstance that
particular facts are mentioned with approval, or particular opinions
expressed, and help us to make a conjectural estimate of the status, the
environment, and the character of the author.
When the internal analysis of a document is carefully performed, it
generally gives us a tolerably accurate notion of its authorship. By
means of a methodical comparison, instituted between the various
elements of the documents analysed and the corresponding elements of
similar documents whose authorship was known with certainty, the
detection of many a forgery[82] has been rendered possible, and
additional information acquired about the circumstances under which most
genuine documents have been produced.
The results obtained by internal analysis are supplemented and verified
by collecting all the external evidence relative to the document under
criticism which can be found scattered over the documents of the same or
later epochs--quotations, biographical details about the author, and so
on. Sometimes there is a significant absence of any such information:
the fact that an alleged Merovingian charter has not been quoted by
anybody before the seventeenth century, and has only been seen by a
seventeenth-century scholar who has been convicted of fraud, suggests
the thought that it is modern.
II. Hitherto we have considered only the simplest case, in which the
document under examination is the work of a single author. But many
documents have, at different times, received additions which it is
important to distinguish from the original text, in order that we may
not attribute to X, the author of the text, what really belongs to Y or
Z, his unforeseen collaborators.[83] There are two kinds of
additions--interpolations and continuations. To interpolate is to insert
into the text words or sentences which were not in the author's
manuscript.[84] Usually interpolations are accidental, due to the
negligence of the copyist, and explicable as the introduction into the
text of interlinear glosses or marginal notes; but there are cases where
some one has deliberately added to (or substituted for) the author's
text words or sentences out of his own head, for the sake of
completeness, ornament, or emphasis. If we had before us the manuscript
in which the deliberate interpolation was made, the appearance of the
added matter and the traces of erasure would make the case clear at
once. But the first interpolated copy has nearly always been lost, and
in the copies derived from it every trace of addition or substitution
has disappeared. There is no need to define "continuations." It is well
known that many chronicles of the middle ages have been "continued" by
various writers, none of whom took the trouble to indicate where his own
work began or ended.
Sometimes interpolations and continuations can be very readily
distinguished in the course of the operations for restoring a text of
which there are several copies, when it so happens that some of these
copies reproduce the primitive text as it was before any addition was
made to it. But if all the copies are founded on previous copies which
already contained the interpolations or continuations, recourse must be
had to internal analysis. Is the style uniform throughout the document?
Does the book breathe one and the same spirit from cover to cover? Are
there no contradictions, no gaps in the sequence of ideas? In practice,
when the continuators or interpolators have been men of well-marked
personality and decided views, analysis will separate the original from
the additions as cleanly as a pair of scissors. When the whole is
written in a level, colourless style, the lines of division are not so
easy to see; it is then better to confess the fact than to multiply
hypotheses.
III. The critical investigation of authorship is not finished as soon as
a document has been accurately or approximately localised in space and
time, and as much information as possible obtained about the author or
authors.[85] Here is a book: we wish to ascertain the origin of the
information contained in it, that is, to be in a position to appreciate
its value; is it enough to know that it was written in 1890, at Paris,
by So-and-so? Perhaps So-and-so copied slavishly, without mentioning the
fact, an earlier work, written in 1850. The responsible guarantor of the
borrowed parts is not So-and-so, but the author of 1850. Plagiarism, it
is true, is now rare, forbidden by the law, and considered
dishonourable; formerly it was common, tolerated, and unpunished. Many
historical documents, with every appearance of originality, are nothing
but unavowed repetitions of earlier documents, and historians
occasionally experience, in this connection, remarkable disillusions.
Certain passages in Eginhard, a ninth-century chronicler, are borrowed
from Suetonius: they have nothing to do with the history of the ninth
century; how if the fact had not been discovered? An event is attested
three times, by three chroniclers; but these three attestations, which
agree so admirably, are really only one if it is ascertained that two of
the three chroniclers copied the third, or that the three parallel
accounts have been drawn from one and the same source. Pontifical
letters and Imperial charters of the middle ages contain eloquent
passages which must not be taken seriously; they are part of the
official style, and were copied word for word from chancery formularies.
It belongs to the investigation of authorship to discover, as far as
possible, the _sources_ utilised by the authors of documents.
The problem thus presented to us has some resemblance to that of the
restoration of texts of which we have already spoken. In both cases we
proceed on the assumption that identical readings have a common source:
a number of different scribes, in transcribing a text, will not make
exactly the same mistakes in exactly the same places; a number of
different writers, relating the same facts, will not have viewed them
from exactly the same standpoint, nor will they say the same things in
exactly the same language. The great complexity of historical events
makes it extremely improbable that two independent observers should
narrate them in the same manner. We endeavour to group the documents
into families in the same way as we make families of manuscripts.
Similarly, we are enabled in the result to draw up genealogical tables.
The examiners who correct the compositions of candidates for the
bachelor's degree sometimes notice that the papers of two candidates who
sat next each other bear a family likeness. If they have a mind to find
out which is derived from the other, they have no difficulty in doing
so, in spite of the petty artifices (slight modifications, expansions,
abstracts, additions, suppressions, transpositions) which the plagiarist
multiplies in order to throw suspicion off the scent The two guilty ones
are sufficiently betrayed by their common errors; the more culpable of
the two is detected by the slips he will have made, and especially by
the errors in his own papers which are due to peculiarities in those of
his accommodating friend. Similarly when two ancient documents are in
question: when the author of one has copied directly from the other, the
filiation is generally easy to establish; the plagiarist, whether he
abridges or expands, nearly always betrays himself sooner or later.[86]
When there are three documents in a family their mutual relationships
are sometimes harder to specify. Let A, B, and C be the documents.
Suppose A is the common source: perhaps B and C copied it independently;
perhaps C only knew A through the medium of B, or B knew it only through
C. If B and C have abridged the common source in different ways, they
are evidently independent. When B depends on C, or _vice versa_, we have
the simplest case, treated in the preceding paragraph. But suppose the
author of C combined A and B, while B had already used A: the genealogy
begins to get complicated. It is more complicated still when there are
four, five, or more documents in a family, for the number of possible
combinations increases with great rapidity. However, if too many
intermediate links have not been lost, criticism succeeds in
disentangling the relationships by persistent and ingenious applications
of the method of repeated comparisons. Modern scholars (Krusch, for
example, who has made a speciality of Merovingian hagiography) have
recently constructed, by the use of this method, precise genealogies of
the utmost solidity.[87] The results of the critical investigation of
authorship, as applied to the filiation of documents, are of two kinds.
Firstly, lost documents are reconstructed. Suppose two chroniclers, B
and C, have used, each in his own way, a common source X, which has now
disappeared. We may form an idea of X by piecing together the fragments
of it which occur imbedded in B and C, just as we form an idea of a lost
manuscript by comparing the partial copies of it which have been
preserved. On the other hand, criticism destroys the authority of a host
of "authentic" documents--that is, documents which no one suspects of
having been falsified--by showing that they are derivative, that they
are worth whatever their sources may be worth, and that, when they
embellish their sources with imaginary details and rhetorical
flourishes, they are worth just nothing at all. In Germany and England
editors of documents have introduced the excellent system of printing
borrowed passages in small characters, and original passages whose
source is unknown in larger characters. Thanks to this system it is
possible to see at a glance that celebrated chronicles, which are often
(very wrongly) quoted, are mere compilations, of no value in themselves:
thus the _Flores historiarum_ of the self-styled Matthew of Westminster,
perhaps the most popular of the English mediaeval chronicles, are almost
entirely taken from original works by Wendover and Matthew of Paris.[88]
IV. The critical investigation of authorship saves historians from huge
blunders. Its results are striking. By eliminating spurious documents,
by detecting false ascriptions, by determining the conditions of
production of documents which had been defaced by time, and by
connecting them with their sources,[89] it has rendered services of such
magnitude that to-day it is regarded as having a special right to the
name of "criticism." It is usual to say of an historian that he "fails
in criticism" when he neglects to distinguish between documents, when he
never mistrusts traditional ascriptions, and when he accepts, as if
afraid to lose a single one, all the pieces of information, ancient or
modern, good or bad, which come to him, from whatever quarter.[90]
This view is perfectly just. We must not, however, be satisfied with
this form of criticism, and we must not abuse it.
We must not abuse it. The extreme of distrust, in these matters, is
almost as mischievous as the extreme of credulity. Pere Hardouin, who
attributed the works of Vergil and Horace to mediaeval monks, was every
whit as ridiculous as the victim of Vrain-Lucas. It is an abuse of the
methods of this species of criticism to apply them, as has been done,
indiscriminately, for the mere pleasure of it. The bunglers who have
used this species of criticism to brand as spurious perfectly genuine
documents, such as the writings of Hroswitha, the _Ligurinus_, and the
bull _Unam Sanctam_,[91] or to establish imaginary filiations between
certain annals, on the strength of superficial indications, would have
discredited criticism before now if that had been possible. It is
praiseworthy, certainly, to react against those who never raise a doubt
about the authorship of a document; but it is carrying the reaction too
far to take an exclusive interest in periods of history which depend on
documents of uncertain authorship. The only reason why the documents of
modern and contemporary history are found less interesting than those of
antiquity and the early middle ages, is that the identity which nearly
always obtains between their apparent and their real authorship leaves
no room for those knotty problems of attribution in which the _virtuosi_
of criticism are accustomed to display their skill.[92]
Nor must we be content with it. The critical investigation of
authorship, like textual criticism, is preparatory, and its results
negative. Its final aim and crowning achievement is to get rid of
documents which are not documents, and which would have misled us; that
is all. "It teaches us not to use bad documents; it does not teach us
how to turn good ones to account."[93] It is not the whole of
"historical criticism;" it is only one stone in the edifice.[94]