STATEMENT OF THE CASE, AS TO THE AUTHENTICITY OF ANCIENT BOOKS.
The antiquity and genuineness of the extant remains of ancient
literature may be established by three lines of proof that are
altogether independent of each other; and though, in any particular
instance, one, or even two out of the three should be wanting, the
remaining one may alone be perfectly conclusive:--When the three
concur, they present a redundant demonstration of the facts in question.
The _first_ line of proof relates to the history of certain copies of a
work, which are now in existence.
The _second_--traces the history of a work as it may be collected from
the series of references made to it by succeeding writers.
The _third_--is drawn from the known history of the _language_ in which
the work is extant.
For understanding what belongs to the first of these three lines of
evidence we ought to be acquainted with various particulars relating
to the modes of writing practised among ancient nations, and to the
materials employed, and to what may be called the business-system by
means of which an ancient writer placed himself in communication with
his readers.
In many, or in most of these particulars ancient and modern usages are
very dissimilar. But something more should first be said indicative of
the purpose with a view to which these facts are brought forward.
It need scarcely be said that the antiquity and integrity of a book
can be open to no question, if in any case the existence of any one
copy of it can be traced back, with certainty, to the time of its
first publication. If, for example, a manuscript of a work in the
author’s handwriting were still extant, and if the fact of its being
such could by any means be proved, our argument would be concluded, and
any other evidence must be deemed superfluous. There are however few
such unquestionable _autographs_ to be found, even of modern works,
and none, of any ancient one. Yet the circumstances attending the
preservation and transmission of manuscripts are, in some instances, as
we shall see, such as to prove the antiquity and genuineness of a work
with little less certainty than as if the very first copy of it were in
existence.
But before we enter into the particulars of this proof it should
be mentioned--especially as we intend to follow the order of time
_retrogressively_, that the history of _manuscripts_ need not be traced
through any later period than that of the early part of the fifteenth
century, when most of the classic authors passed through the press.
For the invention of printing has served, as well to ascertain,
beyond doubt, the existence of books at certain dates, as to secure
the text from extensive interpolation and corruption. A printed book
is not susceptible of subsequent interpolation or alteration by the
_pen_: it bears also a date, and the issuing of different editions
of the same work from distant places, would render any falsification
of date in one of them, or any material corruption of the text by an
editor, a nugatory attempt. For example, there are now extant, printed
copies of the history of the Peloponnesian war, dated “Venice, 1502;”
other copies of an edition of the same work are dated “Florence,
1506;” others are dated “Basil, 1540;” and others, printed within a
few years of the same time at Paris and Vienna. On being compared
with each other, these editions are found to agree _in the main_; and
yet to disagree in many small variations of orthography, syntax, or
expression; so as to prove that they were derived independently from
different manuscripts; and not successively from each other. These
printed editions, therefore, sufficiently prove the existence of the
work in the fifteenth century; and also that the text of the modern
editions has not been materially impaired or corrupted during the last
four hundred years.
But let it now be imagined, that there are no other means of
ascertaining the antiquity and genuineness of the classic authors than
such as may be collected from the history of existing manuscripts. Our
object then will be to discover to what age they may clearly be traced;
and to deduce from the facts some sure inference relative to the length
of time during which those works have been passing through the hands
of copyists.
The date of an ancient manuscript may be ascertained by such means as
the following:--
1. Some manuscripts are known to have been carefully preserved in the
libraries where they are now found, for several centuries:--for not
only have they been mentioned in the catalogues of the depositories
to which they belong, but they have been so accurately described by
eminent scholars of succeeding ages, that no doubt can remain of their
identity. Or even if they have changed hands, the particulars of the
successive transfers have been authentically recorded.
2. A large proportion of existing manuscripts are found to be dated by
the hand of the copyists, and in such a manner as to leave no question
as to the time when the copy was executed.
3. Many manuscripts have marginal notes, added evidently by later
hands, which through some incidental allusion to persons, events, or
particular customs, or by the use of peculiar forms of expression,
indicate clearly the age of the notes, and therefore carry that of the
original manuscript somewhat higher.
4. The remote antiquity of a manuscript is often established by the
peculiar circumstance of its existing _beneath_ another writing.
These re-written manuscripts--palimpsests, or rescripts, as they are
termed, afford the most satisfactory proof of antiquity that can be
imagined. Parchment, which has always been a costly material, came to
be greatly enhanced in price at the time when paper, manufactured from
the papyrus of the Nile, began to be scarce, and just before the time
when that formed from cotton--called charta bombycina, was brought
into general use. At the same period, owing to the general decline
of learning, the works of the classic authors fell into very general
neglect. Those, therefore, who were copyists by profession, and the
monks especially, whose libraries often contained large collections of
parchment books, availed themselves of the valuable material which they
possessed, by erasing, or washing out, the original writing, and then
substituting lives of the saints, religious romances, meditations, or
such other inanities as suited the taste of the times. Nevertheless,
often, the faithful skin, tenacious of its pristine honours, retained
the traces of the original writing with sufficient distinctness to
render it still legible. These rescripts, therefore, offer to us a
double proof of the antiquity of the work which first occupied the
parchment; for in most cases the date of the monkish writing is
easily ascertained to be of the twelfth, or even the ninth century.
The writing which _first_ occupied such parchments must, of course,
be dated considerably higher; for it is much more probable that old,
than that recent books should have been selected for the purpose of
erasure. Some invaluable manuscripts of the Holy Scriptures, and not a
few precious fragments of classic literature, have been thus brought to
light.
5. The age of a manuscript may often be ascertained, with little chance
of error, by some such indications as the following:--the quality or
appearance of the ink; the nature of the material; that is to say,
whether it be soft leather, or parchment, or the papyrus of Egypt,
or the bombycine paper; for these materials succeeded each other, in
common use, at periods that are well known;--the peculiar form, size,
and character of the writing; for a regular progression in the modes of
writing may be traced by abundant evidence through every age from the
remotest times;--the style of the ornaments or _illuminations_, as they
are termed, often serves to indicate the age of the book which they
decorate.
From such indications as these, more or less definite and certain,
ancient manuscripts, now extant, are assigned to various periods,
extending from the sixteenth, to the fourth century of the Christian
era; or perhaps, in one or two instances, to the third, or second. Very
few can claim an antiquity so high as the fourth century: but not a few
are safely attributed to the seventh; and a great proportion of those
extant were unquestionably executed in the tenth; while many belong to
the following four hundred years. It is, however, to be observed, that
some manuscripts, executed at so late a time as the thirteenth, or even
the fifteenth century, afford clear internal evidence that, by a single
remove only, the text they contain claims a _real_ antiquity, higher
than that even of the oldest existing copy of the same work. For these
older copies sometimes prove, by the peculiar nature of the corruptions
which have crept into the text, that they have been derived through
a long series of copies; while perhaps the text of the more modern
manuscript possesses such a degree of purity and freedom from all the
usual consequences of frequent transcription, as to make it manifest
that the copy from which it was taken, was so ancient as not to be far
distant from the time of the first publication of the work.
Most, if not all, the Royal and Ecclesiastical and University libraries
in Europe, as well as many private collections, contain great numbers
of these literary relics of antiquity: and some of them could furnish
manuscripts of nearly the entire body of ancient literature. There
are few of the classic authors that are not still extant in _several_
manuscript copies; and of some, the existing copies are almost
numberless.
Although all the larger ancient libraries, such, for example, as
those of Alexandria, of Constantinople, of Athens, and of Rome, were
destroyed by the fanaticism of barbarian conquerors; yet so extensive
a diffusion of the most celebrated works had previously taken place,
throughout the Roman empire, and beyond its limits, that all parts of
Europe and Western Asia abounded with smaller collections, or with
single works in the hands of private persons. When learning had almost
disappeared among the people, monasteries and religious houses became
the chief receptacles of books; for almost every such establishment
included individuals who still cultivated literature and the sciences
with ardour; and who found no difficulty in amassing almost any
quantity of this generally neglected property.
Happily for literature, religious houses were places of greater
security than even the strongholds of the nobles, or the palaces
of kings, which by conquest or revolution were, from time to time,
violently rent from their possessors. Meantime, these sacred seclusions
were usually respected, even by the fiercest invaders. Through a
long course of ages, monasteries were occupied by an order of men
who succeeded each other in a far more tranquil course of transition
than has taken place in any other instance, that might be named. The
property of each establishment (and its literary property was always
highly prized) passed down, from age to age, as if under the hand
of a permanent proprietor, and it was therefore subjected to fewer
dispersions or destructions than the mutability of human affairs
ordinarily permits.
Every church, and every convent and monastery had its library, its
librarian, and its other officers, employed in the conservation of the
books. Connected with the library was the _Scriptorium_--the hall or
chamber where the elder or the educated monks employed themselves in
making copies of such books as were falling into decay; or of such as
there was still some demand for, in the open world.
By means such as these it was that the literature of more enlightened
ages has been preserved from extinction; and when at length learning
revived in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, a large portion
of those long-hoarded volumes flowed into the collections of the
munificent founders of libraries, and there, having become known to the
learned, they were speedily consigned to the immortal custody of the
press.
The places in which these remains of ancient literature had been
preserved, during the middle ages, were too many, and they were too
distant from each other, and they were too little connected by any kind
of intercourse, to admit of a combination or conspiracy having for its
object any supposed purposes of interpolation or corruption. Possessing
therefore as we do, in most cases, copies of the same author, some of
which were drawn from the monasteries of England, others from those of
Spain, and others collected in Egypt, Palestine, or Asia Minor, if, on
comparing them, we find that they agree, except in variations of little
moment, we have an incontestable proof of the care and integrity with
which the business of transcription had generally been conducted. For
it is evident that if the practice of mutilation, interpolation, and
corruption, had to any considerable extent been admitted, the existing
remains of ancient authors, after so long a time, would have retained
scarcely a trace of integrity or uniformity. A licentious practice of
transcription, operating through the course of a thousand or fifteen
hundred years, must have resulted, not in giving us the connected and
consistent works we actually possess, but only a heterogeneous mass of
mangled fragments.
But now, if the general accordance of existing manuscripts attests the
prevailing care, and even the scrupulousness of those through whose
hands they passed, the peculiar nature of the diversities that do exist
among the several copies of the same author, serves to establish a fact
which, if we did not know it by other means, it would be of the highest
importance to prove: namely, that these works _had already descended
through a long course of time, when the existing copies were executed_.
This fact is especially apparent in the case of the earlier Greek
authors; for while some copies retain uniformly the peculiarities of
the dialect in which the author wrote; in others, these peculiarities
are merged in those more common forms of the language which prevailed
after the time of the decline of the Greek literature. These deviations
in orthography, or in construction, from the author’s text, were
evidently made by successive copyists in compliance with the tastes
of purchasers of books in different countries; nor were they likely
to have been effected by transcribers of _the middle ages_, when
these books were no longer in use by readers to whom the language was
vernacular, and to whom, alone, an accordance with the colloquial forms
of the language could be a matter of any importance.
Books in a dead language, and which can be intended for the use of the
learned only, will never be accommodated to the colloquial fashions of
an intermediate period. Let us consider how it would be in an instance
familiar to us. If, for example, in examining two editions of the
poems of Chaucer, one of them should be found to retain the original
peculiarities of orthography, proper to the author’s time, while, in
the other, those peculiarities are all softened down into the forms
adopted in the reign of Elizabeth, we should certainly attribute the
edition to _that_ period rather than suppose the corrections to have
been made by a modern editor.
Again:--some copies of ancient authors present instances in which,
when a passage is compared with the same in another copy, it is easy
to perceive that an early transcriber, having fallen into an error,
more than one succeeding transcriber has attempted a restoration of the
genuine reading; for the _last_ conjectural emendation has plainly been
framed out of two or three prior corrections.
Thus it is, then, that the existing manuscripts of the classic authors
may be traced up, either by direct evidence, or by unquestionable
inferences, very near to the age--and, in many instances--quite
up to the age when these works were universally diffused, were
familiarly known, and were incessantly quoted by other writers; and
when, therefore, the history of each work may easily and abundantly
be collected from the testimony of contemporary and succeeding
authors. The various facts, above alluded to, serve to connect the
literary remains of antiquity--now in our hands, with the period
of their pristine existence:--we traverse the long era of general
ignorance--that wide gulf which separates the intelligence and
civilization of antiquity from the intelligence and civilization of
modern times, and we land, as it were, upon the native soil of these
monuments of Mind, and we once more find ourselves surrounded by that
abundance of evidence which belongs to an advanced state of knowledge.
We need not wish to trace the history of _manuscripts_ further, than to
the confines of that former world of learning and refinement.
Indeed we need not be solicitous to trace the history of these literary
relics a step further than fairly into the midst of the dark ages.
For even if all external and correlative evidence were wanting, and if
nothing were known concerning the classic authors except this--that,
such as they now are, they were extant in the tenth century, more than
enough would be known to make it abundantly certain that these works
were the product of a very different, and of a distant age. The men of
those times might indeed have been the transcribers and conservators,
and perhaps even the admirers, of Thucydides, of Xenophon, of
Aristophanes, of Plato, of Virgil, of Cicero, of Horace, and of
Tacitus; but assuredly they were not the _authors_ of books, such as
those which bear these names. The living pictures of energy, and of
wisdom, and of liberty, which these monuments of taste and genius
contain, could never have been imagined in the cells of a monastery,
nor composed in an age when little was to be seen abroad but ignorance,
violence, and slavery; and little found within but a dreaming
philosophy, and a degrading superstition. It is not the prerogative of
the human mind, however great may be its native powers, to trespass far
beyond the bounds of the scene by which it is immediately surrounded,
or to frame images of things which, in their elements, as well as in
their adjuncts, belong to a system and an economy altogether unknown to
the men of that time. To the genius of man it is given to imitate, to
select, to refine, and to exalt; but not to create.
* * * * *
The general import of the facts that have thus been briefly stated,
is this, namely, that the books now extant, and which are usually
attributed to the Greek and Roman writers, have, such as we find
them, descended from a very remote age. But this general affirmation
must always be understood to include an exception of those smaller
omissions, additions, and alterations in the text, which have taken
place, either by design, or inadvertency, in the course of often
repeated transcriptions.
The actual amount and the importance of these corruptions of the text
of ancient authors is likely to be overrated by general readers,
who seeing that the subject is continually alluded to in critical
works, and knowing that criticisms upon “various readings” often
occupy a space five times exceeding that which is filled by the text,
and that not seldom they become the subject of voluminous and angry
controversies, are led to suppose that questions upon which the learned
are so long and so seriously employed, cannot be otherwise than weighty
and substantial. With a view of correcting this impression, so far as
it may be erroneous, we shall now briefly explain the general nature,
the causes, and the extent of these variations and corruptions.
By far the greater proportion of all “various readings”--perhaps
nineteen out of twenty, are purely of a _verbal_ kind, and they
are such as can claim the attention of none but philologists and
grammarians: a few may deserve the notice of every reader of ancient
literature; and a few demand the consideration of the student of
history. But, taken in a mass, the light in which they should be
regarded is that of their furnishing a significant and conclusive
proof of the care, fidelity, and exactness with which the business
of copying was ordinarily conducted. For it is certain that nothing
less than a high degree, as well of technical correctness, as of
professional integrity, on the part of those who practised this craft,
could have conveyed the text of ancient authors through a period--in
some instances--of two thousand years, with alterations so trivial as
are those which, for the most part, are found actually to have taken
place.
When the discrepancies of manuscripts of an author are such as
materially to affect the sense of a passage in itself important, so as
to demand the exercise of discrimination on the part of the student
of history, it becomes necessary to understand, and to bear in mind,
what were probably the most common sources of such diversities. The
following may be named as the most common causes of the various
readings which are met with in comparing several copies of the same
ancient author.
1. Nothing can be more probable than that authors who long survived
the first publication of their works, should, from time to time,
issue revised copies of them; and each of these altered copies would,
if the work were in continual request, and were widely diffused,
become the parent, as we may say, of _a family_ of copies. Thus it
would be that, without any fault on the part of the transcribers,
a considerable amount of such diversities would be originated, and
perpetuated. A large proportion, perhaps, of those variations which
occupy the diligence and acumen of editors and critics, and for the
rectification of which so many learned conjectures are often hazarded,
have, in fact, arisen from the author’s own hand in revising the copies
which, at intervals, he delivered to his amanuenses. The perpetual
opportunity afforded for introducing corrections, when a book was
continually in request, would not fail to encourage, in fastidious
authors, the habit of frequent revision: meantime transcribers, in
distant countries, might have no opportunity to collate the earlier
with the later exemplars. This source of various readings seems to have
been too little adverted to by critics; though it might serve to solve
some perplexing questions relative to the genuineness of particular
expressions or sentences, which have fallen under suspicion from their
non-existence in certain manuscripts.
2. Some errors would, of course, arise from the mere inattention,
carelessness, or the ignorance of transcribers; and yet fewer,
probably, than may at first be imagined; for besides that those
who spent their lives in this occupation would generally acquire a
high degree of technical accuracy of eye, ear, and hand, and that
correctness and legibility must have been the qualities upon which,
principally, the marketable value of books depended; it is known that
in the monasteries, from whence the greater part of all existing
manuscripts proceeded, there were persons, qualified by their superior
learning for the task, whose office it was to revise every book that
issued from the Scriptorium. Errors of inadvertency must, nevertheless,
have occurred. If the author to be transcribed was read by one person,
while several wrote from his voice, the process would be open, not
only to the mistakes of the reader’s eye, and to those of the writer’s
hand; but especially to those of the writer’s ear; for words, similar
in sound, might often be substituted, one for the other. Instances of
this sort are of frequent occurrence, and the knowledge of the probable
cause often serves to suggest the proper correction. If the writer read
for himself, he would be liable to mistake letters of similar shape--to
mistake the _sense_ by a wrong division of words in his manner of
reading, in consequence of which he might involuntarily accommodate the
orthography or the syntax to the supposed sense. The frequent use of
contractions in writing was a very common source of errors; for many of
these abbreviations were extremely complicated, obscure, and ambiguous,
so that an unskilful copyist was very likely to mistake one word for
another. No parts of ancient books have suffered so much from errors
of inadvertency as those which relate to _numbers_; for as one numeral
letter was easily mistaken for another, and as neither the sense of
the passage, nor the rules of orthography, nor of syntax, suggested
the genuine reading, when once an error had arisen, it would most
often be perpetuated, without remedy. It is, therefore, almost always
unsafe to rest the stress of an argument upon any statement of numbers
in ancient writers, unless some correlative computation confirms the
reading of the text. Hence nothing can be more frivolous or unfair than
to raise an objection against the veracity or accuracy of an historian,
upon some apparent incompatibility in his statement of numbers.
Difficulties of this sort it is much better to attribute, at once, to a
corruption of the text, than to discuss them with ill-spent assiduity.
3. The assumption of short marginal notes into the text, appears to
have been a frequent source of various readings. When such notes
supplied ellipses in the author’s language, or when they conduced much
to the perspicuity of an obscure passage, the copyist would be very
likely to incorporate the exegetical phrase, rather than that it should
either be lost to the reader, or should deform the margin.
4. Transcribers frequently thought themselves free to substitute modern
for obsolete words or phrases; and sometimes they consulted the wishes
of their customers, by exchanging the forms of one dialect (of the
Greek) for those of another; or, more often, for the common forms of
the language. Alterations of this kind have often been the occasion of
bringing authentic works under needless suspicion; for when the text
has contained words or phrases which are known to belong to a later age
than that of the supposed author, such incongruities have seemed to
afford proofs of spuriousness.
5. Intentional omissions, interpolations, or alterations, were
unquestionably sometimes ventured on by transcribers. But so many are
the means we possess for detecting any such wilful corruptions--drawn
from a comparison of different manuscripts, or from the incongruity
of the interpolated passage, that there is perhaps, altogether, more
probability that, from some accidental peculiarity of style, genuine
passages of ancient authors should fall under suspicion, than that
any actually spurious portions should entirely escape suspicion and
detection.
Of the above-mentioned sources of the various readings found in the
text of ancient authors, it should be remembered that the operation of
the _first_ was confined to the short term of the author’s life; nor
indeed, whatever may be the amount or importance of variations arising
from _this_ source, must they go to swell the number of _corruptions_
of the text. The _second_ source of variations was indeed open during
the lapse of many centuries; yet it has always been held in check by
the diligent collation of copies, on the part of industrious critics,
from age to age: and a large proportion of errors, arising from mere
inadvertency, are either so palpable as to suggest the means of their
own correction; or they are so trivial as to merit no attention,
except from those who charge themselves with the responsibilities
of an editor. There is, besides, reason to believe that not a few
existing copies of the most celebrated authors, present a text that has
passed through the process of transcription not oftener than once or
twice; and that each time the copy has been executed with scrupulous
exactness. Variations arising from the _third_ and _fourth_ sources,
have perhaps occasioned to critics and editors more perplexity than
those springing from any other cause; and yet these differences are
rarely of any moment, so far as the sense of the author is concerned:
they can be deemed important only when they tend to perplex the
question of the date or the genuineness of a book. Corruptions of the
_fifth_ class must be acknowledged materially to affect the credit
and value of ancient literature, so far as there can be any reason to
suspect their existence; and every diligent student of history will
think the investigation of cases of this kind deserving of his utmost
attention.