52 ERRATA RECEPTA. 



ingly displayed ; just one or two lines. Then came a broad belt of 

 Tery dense matter, in small Roman, Italic and Greek type, abounding 

 with strange symbols of reference to codices, and editions, and unce- 

 remonious curtailments of distinguished names. Here was the or^ 

 chesta Martis, the arena of conflict with editors defunct and living. 

 The gulf below was a kind of valley of decision, filled up by two nar- 

 row columns, of a height or length varying according to circumstan- 

 ces ; built, so to speak, of paragraphs of curt and compact Latin, the 

 vehicle of a comment usually objurgatory and defiant. 



This kind of treatment of the leading writers of antiquity has now, 

 to some extent, exhausted itself. On very many of the points long 

 under discussion, reasonable conclusions have been come to ; and the 

 student is at last permitted to examine his author in peace, mastering 

 the substance of the composition before him with mind undistracted 

 by the wranglings of critical advisers. 



The text of the principal writers having been thus, in a consider- 

 able degree, settled, the turn of the lesser authorities has come. The 

 minor poets, and historians; the geographers, physicists, and gram- 

 marians, together with the series of the so-called Byzantine writers, 

 are, probably, at this moment, as corrupt as were Thucydides or Livy, 

 at the time of the Revival of Letters. All their productions, how- 

 ever, contain matter which, when read aright, is of value to him who 

 would, in every point, rehabilitate the past. Hitherward, then, other 

 fields being now tolerably well beaten over, it is to the general advan- 

 tage that the inquisitive spirit of man should direct itself ; and, it is 

 to be hoped and expected that it will take no rest until here, also, re- 

 sults satisfactory to the common understanding are arrived at. 



Our literature, in that large department of it which has descended 

 to us through manuscripts, is thus, it will be seen, even to this day, 

 still in a transition-state. Like modern society, it is the inheritor of 

 some subtle and complex errors ; but, like modern society, also, it is 

 awake to their existence, and bent on their extinction. — The forgeries 

 and interpolations which, at certain periods, proved so hostile to the 

 happiness and mental freedom of men, would never have been at- 

 tempted had the printing-press been in operation at the tinie. Such 

 productions as the later Sibylline books, and the Decretals, attributed 

 to Isidore of Seville, could only have gained currency through the 

 secret contrivances of solitary scribes. When a production is genuine, 

 but overlaid with the incrustations of time, there is nothing like put- 



