Dittography is common enough in manuscripts but is usually detected in reading proofs. In the unique MS. of Cicero's treatise De Republica, 2, 33, 57, secutus appears as “secututus secutus.” Other kinds of repetition are Shelley's Witch of Atlas, 611 seq., “Like one asleep in a green hermitage, | With gentle sleep about its eyelids playing” (sleep for smiles has come from the previous line); Revolt of Islam, 4749, “Where” for “When” appears to have come from “Where” in 4750 or 4751. Often the word thus extruded is irrecoverable; Ginevra, 125 sqq., “The matin winds from the expanded flowers | Scatter their hoarded incense and awaken | The earth, until the dewy sleep is shaken | From every living heart which it possesses | Through seas and winds, cities and wildernesses”; the second “winds” is a repetition of the first, but what should stand in its place,—“lands” or “strands” or “waves” or something else—no one can say.
Confusions of Words.—Words are not only changed through confusion of single letters or abbreviations, but also through general resemblance or (a semi-voluntary change) through similarity of meaning.
Shelley, Prometheus, ii. 2, 53: “There streams a plume-uplifting wind” for “steams.” In Shelley's lines, When the lamp is shattered, vv. 5-6, “When the lute is broken, | Sweet tones are remembered not,” the printed edition had “notes” for “tones.” In Mrs Gaskell's Cranford, ch. xiv. (near the end), “The lunch—a hot savoury mutton-chop, and a little of the cold loin sliced and fried—was now brought in” is the reading of most if not all the editions; but “loin” should be “lion,” the reference being to the pudding, “a lion with currant eyes,” described earlier in the chapter. In Shelley's “Evening: Ponte al Mare, Pisa,” 20, “By darkest barriers of enormous cloud” for “cinereous”; “Hymn to Mercury” (trans.), 57, “And through the tortoise's hard strong skin” for “stony.” Shelley's “The Boat on the Serchio,” 117, “woods of stunted fir” for “pine” which the rhyme requires; Prince Athanase, 250, “And sea buds burst beneath the waves serene” for “under.”
The same character frequently attaches to transpositions of words and parts of words. The copyist does not as a general rule consciously intend a change, but he falls into one through the influence of dominant associations. He substitutes an order of words which, in respect of syntax, metre or rhythm is more familiar to him.
Transpositions of words, if not purely accidental, as in Chaucer, “Parson's Tale,” p. 689 (ed. Skeat), “God yaf (gave) his benison to Laban by the service of Jacob and to Pharao by the service of Joseph,” where the MSS. transpose Laban and Pharao, are generally to a more usual order, as in Shelley's Witch of Atlas, 65, “She first was changed” to “she was first changed.” An instance of transposition of words in part is in Shelley's “Invocation to Misery,” l. 27, “And mine arm shall be thy pillow,” where the 1st ed. had “thine arm” and “my pillow.”
Faulty Divisions of Words.—These will generally imply an exemplar in which the words were without any division or without a sufficient one. Under this head we may class errors which arise from the omission or the insertion of such marks as the apostrophe and the hyphen.
Examples of wrong division of words. Chaucer's House of Fame, iii., 1975, “Of good or misgovernement” which should be “mis (i.e., bad) governement”; Shelley's Prometheus, iii. 2, 22, “Round many peopled continents” for “many-peopled," ib. 26, “the light laden moon” for “light-laden”; Revolt of Islam, 4805, “Our bark hung there, as one line suspended | Between two heavens,” for “on a line.”
With this we may class faulty division of sentences. Wrong punctuation is a common error and usually easy to correct.
As an example of mispunctuation we may take Shelley's Triumph of Life, 188 sqq., “ ‘If thou can'st, forbear | To join the dance, which I had well forborne’ | Said the grim Feature of my thought ‘Aware | I will unfold,’ ” &c., for “said the grim Feature (of my thought aware) ‘I will unfold.’ ”
Grammatical Assimilations.—These are often purely mechanical errors: but they may be semi-voluntary or even voluntary, the copyist desiring to set the syntax right.
Examples: Shelley's Rosalind and Helen, 63, “A sound from thee, Rosalind dear” instead of there; Mask of Anarchy, 280 seq., “the daily strife | With common wants and common cares | Which sow the human heart with tares,” for “sows.”
Insertions (or Omissions) of Seemingly Unimportant Words.—These, inasmuch as they must often import some judgment on the sense of the passage copied, will be frequently semi-voluntary if not voluntary.
Examples: Shelley, Prometheus, iii. i, 5, “The soul of man like [an] unextinguished fire.” So in Triumph of Life, 265, “Whom from the flock of conquerors | Fame singled out for her thunder-bearing minion,” out seems to be due to the compositor.
False Recollections.—The passage which a copyist is reproducing may suggest to him something else and he will write down what is thus in his mind instead of what is before his eyes.
There is a noteworthy instance in Horace, Odes, iii. 18, 11 seq., “festus in pratis uacat otioso | cum boue pagus” where some MSS. give pardus, a reminiscence of Isaiah xi. 6, “The leopard (pardus) shall lie down with the kid.” In iv. i. 20, for “trabe citrea” many MSS. have “trabe Cypria,” which occurs in i. 1, 13.
Incorporation of Marginalia.—The copyist may erroneously suppose that something written in the margin, between the lines or at the top or the foot of the page which he is copying, is intended to be placed in the text. The words so incorporated may appear side by side with the genuine reading or they may expel it.
In Horace, Odes, iii. 27, 47, “amati | cornua monstri” (of the bull which carried off Europa), more than one MS. has “cornua tauri,” an explanation of monstri. The celebrated passage about the three heavenly witnesses inserted in the Epistle of St John (v. 2) seems to have been originally a comment explanatory of the text.
Transpositions of Lines and Passages.—This kind of transposition is really arrested loss. An accidental omission is discovered, and the person responsible, or another, places what is omitted in the margin at the foot of the page or in some other part of the text, usually adding a mark to show where it ought to have been. The next copyist may easily overlook this sign and thus the passage may be permanently displaced.
In Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, most MSS. place the couplet, “And eek of many another maner cryme | Which nedeth nat rehercen at this tyme,” which should stand after v. 8 of the “Friar's Tale,” in the Prologue to the Tale before the fourth line from the end. In the “Monk's Tale” a block of 88 lines (3565-3652) is transposed in most MSS. to follow 3956.
Interpolation.—This is the deliberate alteration of an exemplar by way of substitution, addition or omission, but when it takes the particular form of omission it is naturally very hard to detect. Interpolation then always has a motive. The most frequent motive is the removal of some difficulty in the sense, expression or metre of the text, and especially obvious gaps or corruptions which the interpolator endeavours to fill or to heal. Fraudulent interpolation, whether the fraud be pious or otherwise, does occur, but is comparatively rare. The removal or the mitigation of objectionable matter is also occasionally found. Interpolation is then a voluntary alteration, but in practice it is often hard to distinguish from other changes in which its motive is absent.
The usual character of scribes' alterations is well illustrated by a passage in Bacon's Advancement of Learning, II. xix., “For these critics have often presumed that that which they understand not is false set down: as the Priest that where he found it written of St Paul Demissus est per sportam” [Acts ix. 25] “mended his book, and made it Demissus est per portam, because sporta was an hard word, and out of his reading.” Shelley in Triumph of Life, 201 seq., wrote, “And if the spark with which Heaven lit my spirit | Had been with proper nutriment supplied,” but the printed editions made it “sentiment.” The transcript used for the printed edition of Marenghi apparently often corrupted what was rare and strange to what was commonplace; e.g., l. 119, “dewglobes” to “dewdrops.” Interpolation is sometimes due to an inopportune use of knowledge, as when a quotation or a narrative is made to agree with what the interpolator has read elsewhere. The text of the Septuagint, a translation of the Old Testament made from MSS. older than those accessible to Origen, was much altered by him in order to make it conform more closely to the Hebrew text with which he was familiar, and in the Synoptic Gospels changes are found, the aim of which is to “harmonize” the accounts given by the different evangelists. Deliberate alteration is occasionally due to disapproval of what stands in the text or even to less creditable reasons. There is an old and seemingly trustworthy tradition that some lines in Homer's “Catalogue of the Ships,” Iliad, ii. 553-555 and 558, were introduced there to gratify the vanity or ambition of the Athenians. Insertions of this or of a similar character may be of almost any length, from a few words to a whole chapter or a complete poem. Literary forgery has never set any bounds to itself, and the history of every literature will supply examples of entire works being foisted upon authors and personages of repute. A notable one was the Epistles of Phalaris, a late Greek forgery, demonstrated to be such by Bentley in a treatise which is a model of what such a demonstration should be.
