Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T06:08:54.958Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“If Shadows Be a Picture's Excellence”: An Experiment in Critical Bibliography

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Edwin Wolf
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Some years ago Dr. W. W. Greg in an article, “Bibliography—An Apologia”, ably presented the aims and scope of analytical bibliography. Among the phases of that science which he treated at some length was critical bibliography, the study of the transmission of texts. As a bibliographer he emphasized the value of the critical or bibliographical approach, “the humble collation of textual variations and reconstruction of scribal steps”, as contrasted to the metacritical, the intuitional and personal selection of the best or most authentic. Although Dr. Greg's concept applies to the transmission of all texts, I am limiting my study, for the sake of illustration, to a particular case.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 63 , Issue 3 , September 1948 , pp. 831 - 857
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1948

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Library, 4th Ser., xiii (1932), 113–143.

2 Elsie Vaughan Hitchcock, ed., The life and death of Sr Thomas Moore, by Nicholas Harpsfield (London, 1932), p. xxv, describes the steps which must be taken to arrive at authoritative readings.

3 Library, 4th Ser., xxvi (1945), 101.

4 Leishman, pp. 102-103. His frank reliance upon metacritical reasoning is given in the statement prefixed to the readings “which my judgement considers as ‘superior’ and ‘inferior’.”

5 Leishman, p. 101.

6 Leishman, p. 106. Two Reliquiae readings are adopted “which never found their way into circulation, for neither in pure nor corrupted form do they appear in any of the manuscripts and printed texts except the Westminster Drollery (which, as I have said, is mainly a reprint of the Reliquiae version).” I find it difficult to believe that an authentic reading, stemming from the author, does not exist in some MS version, more nearly contemporary to the poem's composition, when such versions exist in great numbers. Perhaps the source of my disagreement with Leishman is in the text we are seeking. An authentic text may not always be the best, although the best may be authentic. He assumes perfection on the part of Wotton, an assumption which may or may not be warranted, but is seemingly unsupported by bibliographical evidence.

7 Leishman, p. 113.

8 Hitchcock, op. cit., pp. xxi-xliv.

9 Hitchcock, p. xxii.

10 A. B. Grosart, éd., Complete Poems of John Donne, D.D. (privately ptd., 1872), i, 242–245, from Sir John Simeon, Unpublished Poems of Donne, Miscellanies of the Philobiblon Soc. (London, 1856-57), in, no. 3, p. 19; . K. Chambers, ed., Poems of John Donne (London, 1896), n, 267, under “Doubtful Poems”, without a definite source for his text given; H. J. C. Grierson, ed., Poems of John Donne (Oxford, 1912), i, 460, a composite text based on B.M. Add. MS. 11811, under “Poems attributed to Donne in MSS.”

11 Op. cit., ii, 279, Harleian MS. 6057, f. 9, and B.M. Add. MS. 21433, f. 109.

12 C. H. Herford, Percy and Evelyn Simpson, eds., Ben Jonson (Oxford, 1947), viii, 425.

13 See texts B, L, and X below.

14 Chambers gives Lansdowne MS. 777, f. 71, B.M. Add. MS. 11811, f. 33, Harleian MS. 6931, f. 8, and see texts D, E, U, W, and Y. A. H. Bullen, ed., Speculum Amantis (privately ptd., 1895), p. 30, notes, “Probably by Walton Poole. It has also been assigned on doubtful MS authority to Dr. Donne.”

15 Chambers gives Sloane MS. 1792, f. 23, Egerton MS. 923, f. 61, B.M. Add. MS. 30982, f. 152, and Trinity College, Dublin, MS. G. 2.21, f. 428, and see texts ', F, G, K, N, T, W, X, and Y. In V, p. 109,1 found an acrostic poem, “On Mrs. Poole comonly called the Lady Poole.”

16 Chambers, II, 279-280, gives an inaccurate family tree, but admits that it may be inaccurate. He found a record only of Walton Poole I, who matriculated at Trinity College, Oxford, 29 January 1579/80 at the age of 15, but as can be seen from the annexed genealogy this Walton was the uncle of the author. Chambers' information, which shows two Beata (or Beatrix) Brydges married to two different Sir Henry Pooles, may have come from The Visitation of the County of Gloucester taken in the year 1623 (London: Harleian Society, 1885), pp. 125-126, where such is shown. There is no evidence in the genealogy of the Brydges family given in Sir Egerton Brydges, Collins' Peerage of England (London, 1812), VI, 724, that there were two Beatas who married Pooles. There is only a reference to Beatrice, daughter of William, 4th Lord Chandos, who married Sir Henry Poole of Saper-ton. The genealogy of the Pooles of Saperton can best be reconstructed from the documents recorded in the Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society for 1928, pp. 200–223; that of the Pooles of Okesey from Wiltshire Notes and Queries (1896), i, 331–332. I annex an abbreviated genealogy to show the interrelationship of the Brydges and two Poole families.

17 Annalia Dvbrensia. Vpon the yeerely celebration of Mr. Robert Doners Olimpick Games upon Cotswold-Hills (London, 1636), sig. H4. On the title Gent, is placed after Poole's name.

18 Among these are “My first love whom all beauties did adorn”, attributed to Walton Poole in Rosenbach MS. 190, p. 79, and Folger MS. 1.27, p. 16, first printed in the works of Thomas Carew (1640), p. 172, and included in the 1696 edition of Suckling's poems; “Why should passion lead the blind”, Rosenbach MS. 190, p. 3; “Can Christendom's great champion sink away” (on the death of James I), Folger MS. 1. 27, p. 58; “Fair madam, cast those diamonds away”, Rosenbach MS. 190, p. 155, and Folger MS. 1. 27, p. 18; “Within this pile of earth Gustavus lies”, Rosenbach MS. 195, p. 73; and “Black hair, curious black, so black that it exceedeth”, Rosenbach MS. 190, p. 79.

19 On 1 April 1640 Sir Nevill Poole granted the reversion of a piece of land to Walton Poole, Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society for 1928, p. 300.

20 Beata Poole is mentioned in the will of her father-in-law who died in August 1616, Transactions, etc., p. 220.

21 Anne, daughter of Sir Henry Poole by his second wife, Anne Withypool of Suffolk, was born 10 August 1637.

22 See genealogical table.

23 See texts F and X below. 24 DNB (1886), vii, 160–161.

25 Through the courtesy of Dr. A. S. W. Rosenbach I have used these MSS which are in the possession of the Rosenbach Company. I cite them by the numbers in the catalogue, English Poetry to 1700 (Philadelphia and New York, 1941).

26 This is a MS in my own possession.

27 My thanks are due to Curt F. Biihler of the Pierpont Morgan Library for the use of this MS, and for his help in revising this article.

28 From a copy formerly in the possession of the Rosenbach Company.

29 Bullen's text is taken from Rawlinson MS. Poet. 199.

30 Sir John Simeon mentions three MSS but does not specify from which his version was printed. Grosart printed the poem (1872), i, 242, directly from Simeon's text, and Chambers (1896), ii, 267, seems to have followed him, although he lists nine MSS in which he found the poem. Where these versions agree I have used the symbol O; where they vary among themselves I have designated the variations as O1, O2, and O3, respectively.

31 The poem also appears in the 2nd ed. (1660), p. 61, and 3rd ed. (1671), p. 159. The 1655 text comes from a transcript supplied me by Gertrude L. Woodward from the copy in the Newberry Library, that of 1660 from the Folger copy, and that of 1671 from a transcript sent me by Donald Wing from the copy at Yale. Where the three editions agree, I use the symbol P; where there are variants between the editions, I have designated them as 1, P2, and P3, respectively. If these volumes are like other books of the same period, there are possibly further variants among different copies of the same edition representing typographical errors and corrections; these I have not attempted to collate.

32 Although this volume, edited by John Donne the younger, purports to be the work of William, Earl of Pembroke, and Sir Benjamin Rudyerd, it is patently a miscellaneous collection of poems by many different authors, and the attribution of this poem to Rudyerd there has no validity.

33 Grierson based his text upon B.M. Add. MS. 11811, but his version is an eclectic one, with readings taken according to the editor's taste from the other MSS which he had seen. In some cases he notes variant readings and where these occur I have used R1 to designate his own text, and R2 and R3 the variants.

34 For the use of the Folger MSS I am greatly indebted to James G. McManaway and Giles E. Dawson, who were kind and helpful in many ways.

35 Several curious scored-through readings in this MS I have designated as U2.

36 .M. Add. MSS. 11811, 21433, 2S707, and 30982, Harleian MSS. 3910, 6057, and 6931, Sloane MS. 1792, Lansdowne MS. 777, Egerton MS. 923, Trinity College, Dublin, MS. G.2.21, and Rawlinson MS. Poet. 199.

37 My hypotheses are the basis of the difference between my method and that of Leish-man. In particular, he would not agree with the second.

38 It should be noted that I do not recommend that a simple majority reading be adopted, for it is obvious, as Hitchcock points out, p. xxii, that if two texts, a and, derive from the same source and a has six descendents, none, the majority of seven has no greater authority. Later, p. xxv, she points out that the weight of authority lies a posteriori with the evidence of the best MSS.

391 have actually followed the three stages emphasized by Westcott and Hort and elaborated by Hitchcock, pp. xxiv-xxv, “First, provisional judgement of readings on intrinsic, a priori evidence; then, estimate of manuscript authority and relationship by these readings; then, final decision of readings.” It will be seen that I have set down my final decision first, and then given an estimate of the authority and relationship, but in working out the problem, I of course followed the Hitchcock order of procedure.

40 This is not a genealogical grouping, but a qualitative one. Hitchcock, pp. xxv–xxx, points out that errors occur independently in unrelated MSS, that independent changes by a critical copyist may confuse the evidence, and that two or more versions may have been compared and so mixed. Consequently, it is important to establish a qualitative group which may, and in this case does, cut across genealogical lines.

41 Leishman, p. 101.

42 have omitted Grierson's text R, because it is a composite one, but it will be seen to agree most frequently with COQa.

43 All MSS in this group name Mrs. Poole as the subject of the verse, and in addition to these A, H, X, and Y, which would seem to indicate early sources for all these MSS, since the heroine's name would grow increasingly less important.

44 Freud discusses this subject specifically in three chapters of Psycho-Pathology of Every day Life: v, Mistakes in Speech, vi, Mistakes in Reading and Writing, and x, Errors; see The Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud, ed. A. A. Brill (New York, 1938), pp. 69-94, 141–146.

45 Freud, op. cit., p. 144.

46 Ronald . McKerrow, An Introduction to Bibliography (Oxford, 1928), pp. 241–245, discusses briefly composition from dictation, and concludes that, while such a procedure was sometimes employed, it was probably not usual.

47 The study of variants in printed books has been made in England chiefly by Greg and McKerrow, and in this country by Fredson T. Bowers, Curt F. Buhler, Charlton Hinman, William A. Jackson, Francis R. Johnson, James G. McManaway, and Edwin E. Wil-loughby; and a copious literature on the subject by these scholars and others exists in the publications of various learned societies.

48 McKerrow, pp. 252–254, speaks of some instances of misreading, and, pp. 341–350, adds in an appendix a valuable chapter, “A Note on Elizabethan Handwriting.”

49 Examples are their and the for that in line 10, the, thine, and these for your in line 18, the for those in line 19, thy and the for your in line 29, That for The and vice versa in lines 31, 32 and 33, and That and Your for The in line 44. A cursory examination of the variants listed in Hitchcock, op. cit., John Sparrow, ed., Poems of Bishop Henry King (Nonesuch Press, 1925), and G. Thorn-Drury, ed., Poems of Thomas Randolph (Haslewood Press, 1929) shows quantities of similar variants. There are also frequent cases of the other most common ones, such as inflectionary changes, transposition, and the interchangeable use of words like which and that, or and and, might and would, etc.

50 This is the first of three reasons given by Hitchcock, p. xxvi, for contradictory affinities among MSS. She there mentions several examples similar to those which I have noted.

51 By Mrs. James G. McManaway, who noted the number of transpositional changes while helping her husband with his editorial work on Spenser.

52 Examples would be the nonsense spelling neromancy in line 14, the omission of the article in line 18, the omission of are in line 21, the omission of all in line 31, yet for that (yl) in line 32, and he for her in line 37. Simple typographical errors, such as thine in line 4, lift in line 21, and whire in line 44, have the same origins, and I do not speak of them separately.

53 Leishman, pp. 106–107: “all, or nearly all, of the corruptions in the various manuscripts and printed versions outside the Reliquiae seem more likely to have been due to mishearing or misremembering, conscious or unconscious alteration, by persons who had got some more or less authentic version by heart, and repeated it to or transcribed it for their friends, than to the carelessness of that critical and editorial whipping-boy, the scribe.”

54 “Dame Nature” is one of the unique Reliquiae readings noted by Leishman, p. 106.

55 “The corruptions of an intelligent scribe” are mentioned by Hitchcock, p. xxvii, as the second reason for variation. Her third reason is a corollary of this, the contamination or mixture of MSS due to the comparison of two or more texts.

56 Parnassus Biceps or Several Choice Pieces of Poetry (1927), p. 180.