University of Virginia Library

(a): Editorial changes.

'It is far more dangerous for a corruption to pass unrecognized than for a sound text to be unjustifiably attacked.'[10] Nowhere can this sage pronouncement be more clearly illustrated than in the materials under discussion.

The R version of 'A relation of the Pico Teneriffe' starts the account with the names of persons supplying the information (cf. Birch, I, 393-394). When the style of the passage is tightened for

publication it is with the loss of interesting detail, as when a personal touch is sacrificed:

or

and

Likewise we have: 'A Friend of his' (HRS, 206) for R's 'one Gilbert Lambell a friend of his'. For some reason vivid points of the narrative are sacrificed, as when 'We descended by a Rope. . .' (204) replaces 'They descended, an active Spanyard shewing them the way, by a Rope' of CP and R. Pugh, the original compiler of the notes, speaks (204) of 'a round Pit of water . . . about six fathom deep. We suppose this Water not a Spring, but dissolved Snow blown in. . .', which is condensed from differing originals but omits CP's 'One of Dr Pughs company drank of the water.' R adds: 'One of Dr Pughs company drank of the water as Mr Lambell reports who plumbed it. We suppose this water; for some yeares it lyes so full, one cannot get into the cave.'

Often the truncations do ensure clarity; the statement that

is condensed from yet the graphic unnecessarily becomes (HRS, 213): An occasional explanatory interpolation is helpful; hence the bare term 'curar' of all the manuscripts becomes in HRS (209), 'Curar, to cure a piece of wood', which also substitutes (205) the neater 'perhaps' for the diffident 'happly & as I conjecture' of the manuscripts in: 'This Plant [the cardencha] is also universally spread over the Island [the Gran Canaria], and is perhaps a kind of Euphorbium.' Often it is an apparently pointless omission, as when HRS and R omit (208) both the short sentence in CP: 'Camells are brought from Lancerote [Lanzarote], besides other Cattell' and the detail: '(In the upper Lands the Corne grows so rank, as two men on horseback, riding at a very smale distance, cannot see each other. The Trees of this Iland are universally greene all the whole yeare.)'

The principles guiding those preparing the version for press will appear clear enough from the foregoing, but a few illustrative examples may be added: 'If I light upon it [sc. Batavian volcanic dust],' writes the Society's correspondent in the East Indies (HRS, 159), '[I] shall send you some', or rather, his editors' words; instead of 'some' he has, and all the manuscripts follow him, 'a muster'. His statement (HRS, 160) that '[boisterous winds do not disturb the] Sea or cause a contrary motion in it, being sheltered by these Mountains' is, in its later portion, altered by the Sloane scribe, perhaps to improve the rhythm of the sentence, perhaps to cover an error in copying and to avoid rewriting, to: '. . . Sea, especially being shelter'd by these mountains, and to cause a contrary motion in it' (Slo. 3959, fol. 16f.) Did not all the manuscripts support the text, with the exception of the word 'here', added by the HRS copywriter (161), one could well suspect the following as corrupt:

Another rather puzzling reading but one which, in conjunction with some points above, may support the hypothesis that the copy for HRS was an edited transcript from R, not from CP, is the unnecessary expansion of the clear reading of Slo. and CP: 'It is forbidden strictly under a great penalty to make use of the same' ['suyker-bier'] into: 'It is forbidden strictly under the penalty of a great pain to make use of the same' (HRS, 162). When no answer was returned (there is a deliberate hiatus in CP) to the question as to 'whether in Pegu there is a poison that kills by smell' R waxes literary: 'Nihil respondet', but HRS (165) politely states that 'To this no Answer was return'd', just

as it changes to 'a pattern' (165) the conversational 'a muster' of all the manuscripts, although by error or design it deprives its readers of the exotic term Juserts for 'a certain winged Ant' which (HRS, 167) produces one kind of gumlac. That those who prepared the copy for the scientific portions of the volume were themselves scientists is proved by an addition they made to a sentence in Sir William Petty's paper on dyeing. He wrote (CP): 'The restringent binding materials are alder bark.' Adding a comma after 'alder', they added (HRS, 295): 'Pomegranate Pills, Wallnut rinds and roots, Oaken Sapling Bark, and Saw-dust of the same; Crab-tree Bark, Galls, and Sumach.'

We close this section as it was started, with readings from the paper on the Pico Teneriffe. The criticism levelled by Coleridge at Sprat that in his Life of Cowley he suppressed homely detail and would not show his friend in his slippers and dressing-gown could well apply to the editors of his History too. From the end of the following: 'The rest of us pursued our Journey till we came to the Sugar-loaf, where we begin to travel again in a white sand, being fore-shod with shooes whose single soles are made a finger broader than the upper leather, to encounter this difficult and unstable passage' (HRS, 201) they expunged the vivid: '. . . till they are halfe way up; and then being ascended as farre as the Black Rocks, Dr Pugh (as he relates) went crying all the way having the skin burnt off his foot '(CP). Likewise 'Being ascended as far as the Black Rocks, which are all flat, & lie like a pavement, we climbed within a mile of the very top of the Pico, Mr Clappham, who was the foremost, would have persuaded Mr Cove to descend againe, as he was imagining the top all on fire' (ibid.).