uo 



PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



of inscriptions, formed a large and fairly well-defined 

 task which occupied the many pupils of Hermann and 

 Ritschl for the greater part of the century.^ A large 

 portion of this work could be carried on by those whose 

 main duty was to devote themselves to higher instruction 

 at schools and universities. As such it had a great and 

 elevating influence upon the teaching profession, which 

 no one knew better how to exert, recommend, and 



^ Many striking incidents might 

 be quoted ; one will suffice to show 

 the zeal with which these studies 

 were carried on and the dramatic 

 interest which attached to purely 

 philological work such as the 

 restoration of ancient texts. Her- 

 mann had, in an open letter ad- 

 dressed to Ritschl in 1837, 

 expressed his doubts as to the 

 principles, differing from those of 

 Bentley, which had been employed 

 in an edition of one of the Plays of 

 Plautus. Ritschl had in the mean- 

 time undertaken the examination 

 and collation of the Plautine 

 palimpsest which had been recently 

 discovered by Cardinal Mai in the 

 Ambrosian Library of Milan. 

 These labours had convinced 

 Ritschl of the correctness of Her- 

 mann's views, which amounted 

 almost to a divination. " I still 

 remember," says Koechly {loc. cil., 

 p. 46), "the immense impression 

 which Ritschl's celebrated letter 

 to Hermann on the Ambrosian 

 codex produced upon us students. 

 Written in 1837 in Milan, the 

 letter appeared in August in the 

 same periodical (' Zeitschrift fiir 

 Alterthumswissenschaft '). A few 

 months before this the Professor- 

 elect of Archeeology, Adolf Becker, 

 had started his course in the 

 customary manner with a public 

 disputation ; . . . the dissertation 

 which he defended . . . was 

 mainly intended to uphold the 



traditional Plautine text against 

 the ingenious audacity of Her- 

 maiins metrics and its conse- 

 quences. It was natural that the 

 old teacher — his official opponent — 

 and the new professor should hit 

 each other pretty hard ; whereby 

 the contest ultimately resulted in 

 the establishment of a difference in 

 principles. . . . Hermann adhered 

 to the principles and conclusions 

 of his metrical doctrine, Becker 

 appealed to the traditional text of 

 Plautus in the Palatine manu- 

 scripts which, on the whole, 

 appeared to him to be correct. 

 We had followed the contest with 

 the greatest attention, with eager- 

 ness we expected the decision of 

 Ritschl, who at that moment was 

 occupied in Milan with the thor- 

 ough deciphering of the Ambrosian 

 text. And the decision arrived ; 

 it was that letter which did honour 

 as much to the writer as to the 

 receiver, that letter in which 

 Ritschl, from the corrector tradi- 

 tion of the Ambrosian text, 

 proved that Hermann's ingenious 

 divination, in spite of apparent 

 arbitrariness and audacity, had 

 nevertheless hit upon the right 

 thing, — that it had, in short, in 

 spite of all rational and methodical 

 calculation, celebrated a splendid 

 triumph. What joy on our side, 

 what embarrassed silence on the 

 other!" 



