University of Virginia Library

II

(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.).

(b). Errors: printers' literals, misreading of copy.

Section (a) has been demonstrative, seeking to show how a particular editorial policy was put into effect. The appeal of an editor printing the papers referred to can ultimately be only to CP, though he may record, and discuss possible reasons for, variants in the later texts.

Instances in which the transcribers for press have misunderstood technical terms or foreign words call for some little research in order to amend errors. Sometimes omissions in transcription have to be filled from the manuscripts, as in: '. . . boysterous, called Travant, come suddenly . . .' (HRS, 160; a further corruption in this passage was considered above). Here, however, it is possible to restore this particular corruption before consulting the manuscript, since the paper deals with the East Indies and a knowledge of Dutch simplifies our task: read, with CP and R: '. . . boysterous winds, called Travaat. . .' Again, '. . . A sort of wild Lavender . . . grows there [in Teneriffe] in great

quantities on the Rocks' (HRS, 211), where the HRS text follows R over 'wild': CP has 'white'. Sir Philiberto Vernatti, who answers the East Indies questions, was, in spite of his name, English. He speaks (HRS, 168), with reference to a glutinous substance, that it is of a 'Zeequal viscosity'. This is the Dutch 'zeekwal,' jellyfish. Assuming that the homophonic spelling was not the normal Dutch spelling of the period — I have been unable to document it otherwise — this variant may have occurred at some stage when the text was perhaps communicated orally; the same may, with some confidence, be said of 'sivyboa/ sawoeboom' (163, noted in the facsimile edition) and of 'cherna/ cierna' (Italian) on p.208. Several words in Spanish the compositor, in fact, misread:

The ambiguity of the last sentence cannot escape notice. In CP and R a seeming gloss of Legnan (Spanish, leñan, 'wood') which starts 'vel. . .' is erased, and the latter text omits 'and rank', intelligently substituting a semi-colon for the comma after 'of it'.

Other examples of variants in effective punctuation are few (see also (c) below), but we may note the following: 'This greasie Oyl. . . doth by nature so wonderfully adhere to every part else of the [salt-] Peter (it may be ordained for the nutriment and augmentation of it) that the separation of it is the sole cause of the great charge and labour that is required to the refining of Peter' (HRS, 262), where R, the only extant manuscript, inserts a comma after 'may be'; and 'Maxima, Satellitum in Umbra incidentium, a limbo Disci Jovialis distantia . . . hebdomada contingit' (185-186), where CP and R have no comma after 'incidentium'.

We conclude this section, several of whose items may, in interpretation, overlap with those of the next, with a few miscellaneous variants, such as HRS 'candescentibus' (262) for the true reading 'canescentibus' in a passage of Pliny; 'gravulate' for 'granulate' (272; perhaps a literal); 'The Ascension of the Brimstone' (205), which is contextually possible, as against the more tempting 'Accension' of R; 'It will require your patience to observe a few short remains' (262; R, 'remarks') 'out of the same Pliny,'; 'Each Boat hath a certain quantity of square Stones,

upon which Stones' (169; all MSS, 'stands') 'the Divers goe down'; 'English Woad is counted the strongest, it is commonly tryed by staining of white Paper with it, or a white Limed wall' (300; CP, 'lomed wall'); and, with reference to the paper on the eclipses of the moon mentioned above: 'The Knowledge of the Eclipses Quantity and Duration, the Shadows, Curvity and Inclination, &c. conduce only to the former [purpose, sc. the theory of the moon's motion]', where the true reading would appear to be 'the shadow [']s curvity' of the manuscripts. The remaining Latin variants, though important in their own right, are somewhat esoteric, and are therefore relegated to a footnote for reference.[11]

(c): Opportunities for an eclectic text.

Our last category, where some textual errors listed arise probably from copyists' carelessness, gives us the opportunity for some investigation into the source and reliability of the Sloane transcript. As already stated, it seems to have been commissioned for Sloane himself, possibly when the original volume of the Register it duplicates was temporarily misplaced; but the copyist has allowed himself some latitude, for some variants we meet in it appear to be founded on no authority but their own. Often he indulges in tautological paraphrase:

becomes where, it is true, the error may be akin to that noted above which was due to the eye having mistaken the lines of the original, but this does not account elsewhere for the synonym 'squib' for the 'jeer' 'put upon the Portuges' (HRS, 161), nor for 'seed' replacing 'wood' (sc. aloes, which 'comes most from Cambodia, and Siam', 171-172). In the latter instance all manuscripts are changed to the correct reading, 'wood', in a later hand, again probably Birch's, an alteration akin to the erasure, in the Register, of the words 'and Scritores' after the word 'Chests' in the passage in HRS, 165, given as: 'Chests which comes from Jappan into Europe' and to the alteration of the original reading of the manuscripts, 'Pharmocopedia', to conform to HRS 'Pharmocopeia' (167). Likewise the word 'removing', nonsense in its context, has been emended to the correct 'renewing' (Birch, i. 485, has the text correctly as has HRS, 199) in the following (HRS, 232): '[On taking away a pair of bellows thrust into the windpipe of a dissected, yet living, dog, the heart had] convulsive motions; but upon removing the motion of the Bellows, the Heart recovered its former motion.' This may be further evidence for attributing to Birch the Register emendations of Robert Hooke's paper on the weather (HRS, 173ff.); Slo (698, ff. 58-61) seems to be a transcript of R rather than of CP.

Examples of careless mis-copying are, happily, infrequent: only one need be noticed. HRS, 'observabit' (187) for the doubtlessly correct 'aberrabit' of CP and R in the sentence 'Calculus . . . a vero aberrabit' may be compared with the error of 'observe' for 'above' in 'the more Peter you allow it [gunpowder], it will still be the better, till you come to observe Eight parts' (278) to prove that both papers were the work of the same copyist or compositor. In the latter quotation R is again emended to follow the printed text, here of course wrongly.

Small graphical errors rarely affect the sense materially: '. . . People of the Country do take' ('rake,' R) 'it [saltpetre] off the ground' (262-263); '. . . Great Rains may easily bring it to the Lake in Macedonia. . . ' (263), where the Register's 'that Lake' makes clear the point, destroyed in the History text, that the particular lake was one specifically referred to earlier in the paper, citing Pliny: Natural History, X. 107; 'The Stuffs to be dyed are first boyled in Allum-liquors, and the Allum afterwards (as they say) cleared from the said Stuff again' (CP: 'same Stuff'), 'before any Colour at all to be applyed' (288); and 'Some Colours or Stuffs are best dyed by reiterated Dippings ever' (CP: 'even') 'into the same Liquor at several distances of time' (304). Two similar Latin examples are relegated to a footnote for the reason given previously.[12] All manuscript sources agree in the sentence (164): '[Chewing durian] causes a Dirthea, which easily degenerates to a

Tenasmus, by us called Peirsing', where the fourth edition of HRS conjectures and prints 'diarhea'; one hesitates, however, to give the more modern forms 'tenesmos' and 'piercing'. Since the CP draft of the paper about salt-petre is no longer extant we may legitimately make a text compounded of that of HRS and of R, just as editors compound texts of some Shakespearean plays based on the Quarto or Quartos and the Folio; the legitimacy of such a procedure has, of course, been denied. An example is: '. . . Though Peter go alway in Gun-powder, yet if you fulminate it in a Crucible, and burn of[f] the volatile part with Powder of Coal [sc. 'charcoal'], Brimstone, Antimony or Meal, there will remain a Salt' (274-275), where the Register reads 'go all away' in the sense of 'calcine'. Sometimes punctuation can affect the issue: compare with and the following, where the writer is referring to ambergrease: with where the latter perhaps gives the better sense. Finally, readers are invited to take their pick of readings in the following four samples:

Lest the materials presented above be considered ill digested, a word must be said by way of summary. It must be emphasized that they are only samples, intended to show the kind of problem likely to be faced by the editor of a seventeenth century science text: they neither postulate nor prove any thesis. Data are inadequate, for instance, to furnish any clues as to what kind of error, if any, 'T.R.' 's compositors were prone when setting HRS, and the Errata of its first edition are all literals and refer only to Sprat's portion of the book. In what specific tasks, then, may the examples cited be of service? There is much to be done in the publication or republication of seventeenth century science authorities: Boyle, long recognized as an English stylist, needs reprinting; Wren's scientific work has not yet been satisfactorily collected; only recently has the publication of Newton's correspondence been put in hand; and in addition there is the whole corpus of unpublished material by lesser men, British and Continental — it is surprising, moreover, but typical of this state of affairs that although we have a satisfactory biography of Robert Hooke (Margaret 'Espinasse, 1956) we have as yet no collected edition of his works. Rarely, in this discipline, is any one text absolutely authoritative as a source text. One day, nevertheless, we may see the magnum opus of a dictionary, by subjects and by persons, of every major scientific activity in Europe during the century: to such an El Dorado the present paper can only tentatively point the way.