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III. Historical Collation
The present paper has concerned itself with the transcription of a manuscript that forms the copy-text for an edition and also with the list of Alterations appended to such an edited text. It has also surveyed the problems that arise in this list of Alterations when the copy-text is, instead, a printed document and the revisions created during the course of the inscription of the manuscript may lead to considerable differences between its final text and that of the copy-text. In this latter situation a special form of notation involving the use of the double dagger has been suggested for use in the Alterations list that will enable a reader to reconstruct the variant manuscript text and its revisions with reference only to the copy-text as printed. On the other hand, the suggested convention of the single dagger requires reference to an Historical Collation for a full understanding of variants involving a rejected manuscript reading.
In the special list of emendations to a printed-document copy-text no need ordinarily arises to record the inscriptional variants within an adopted manuscript reading since these are not usually pertinent to the essential matter at hand—the simple record of the emendation of the copy-text from another source. It is understood that all rejected readings of the copy-text that result from emendation will also form a part of the Historical Collation when they are substantive, and that variants created during the inscription of the final manuscript reading used as an emendation will be listed in the record of Alterations in the Manuscript.
sympathy;] MS [alt. fr. comma]; ~: I
The purpose of an Historical Collation is to list all rejected readings in the authoritative documents collated, whether substantives only, or in some editions, according to the circumstances, accidentals as well as substantives. By convention the lemma repeats the reading of the edited text and to the right of the bracket appear the rejected readings with their sigla. Also by convention any collated document that agrees with the lemma is not listed to the right of the bracket but instead only the variants. Thus when the sigil for a collated document is not present, the reader must take it that its reading—in contrast to the others recorded—is that of the edited text. The illustrations below assume that the collated documents comprise a manuscript and three printed editions, I, II, and III.
- right] wrong MS right] wrong MS, I
- right] wrong II-III right] wrong MS, I-III
When a manuscript is present but a printed document has been selected as copy-text, a certain number of the rejected manuscript variants will represent the original and unaltered inscription; but others will be drawn from the final version of the manuscript text altered during the course of inscription or review. In such a situation an editor has two choices:
(1) Especially if the preserved manuscript paralleling the copy-text (of, let us say, a book) is not extensive, or if the amount of alteration is relatively small, an editor may make no attempt to conflate the appropriate information in the list of Alterations with the entries in the Historical Collation but instead he may offer two discrete lists, each of which must be consulted for the specific information it contains. Hence insofar as separate information about the same reading is present in both lists, both must be consulted independently according to the special needs of the reader. That is, supposing that the book copy-text read daffodil but the MS read narcissus which had been interlined above deleted crocus, the HC reading would be 000.00 daffodil] narcissus MS. The Alterations list would record: †000.00 daffodil] narcissus [ab. del. 'crocus']. The virtue of this double system is that all inscriptional alterations in the MS are recorded in one place so that the list of Alterations is complete. The defects are the expense of setting two entries instead of one and the fact that in order to reconstruct the manuscript in all its details the reader must consult two separate and sometimes overlapping parts of the apparatus. For instance, when he looks at the HC he knows only that narcissus was the final reading of the manuscript; he has no means of knowing whether this was the original and only reading or whether, as in the example, narcissus was a revision of crocus: this latter information would be ascertainable only by checking the page-line reference and lemma daffodil to see if it appeared in the list of Alterations. On the whole, when the amount of duplication of entries, each with only partial information, is not serious, this system works satisfactorily and without undue extra expense. Moreover, if an editor chose he could signal to the user of the Historical Collation by some arbitrary sign like ‡ prefixed to the page-line reference that further information about this entry was available in the Alterations list and thus save the reader the labor of collating the two, as in ‡000.00 daffodil] narcissus MS. The system of double listing is that adopted in the edition of
(2) On the other hand, an extensively worked-over and revised manuscript is preserved for all of the eight chapters of A Pluralistic Universe, enforcing an extremely lengthy and expensive apparatus of variants in the HC but especially in the list of Alterations. In this edition an effort was made to reduce the amount of duplication between the HC and Alterations by adopting the system that, wherever practicable, alterations would supplement the appropriate entries in the HC instead of being isolated in the separate Alterations list. In the simplest cases the HC would read, according to this system, 000.00 or] & [insrtd.] MS instead of HC ‡000.00 or] & MS and an Alterations entry †000.00 or] & [insrtd.]. Correspondingly, no difficulty would be encountered in the HC entry 000.00 order by] ['an' del.] order, MS instead of HC ‡000.00 order by] order, MS and Alterations 000.00 order] aft. del. 'an'. Also, 000.00 like a vast] only a vast [ab. del. 'like a great'] MS instead of HC ‡000.00 like] only MS and Alterations ††000.00 only a vast] ab. del. 'like a great'. Or, in a case where the book text read leaving the disorderly parts out;, 000.00 leaving . . . out;] *leaving the disorder out [intrl.] MS instead of HC ‡000.00 disorderly parts] disorder MS and Alt. †000.00 leaving . . . out;] intrl.
Not all situations are susceptible of improvement or clarity, however, by such combination. In the following example the book text read the gradual wearing away by internal friction of portions that originally interfered. The MS agreed with the book through friction of. at which point James first wrote interfering tendencies., inserted originally before it, but then deleted the augmented phrase and continued his inscription with forces that originally interfered. so that in the MS final text the only variant is forces for portions. Some editors might well prefer to break up the record conventionally into HC ‡000.00 portions] forces MS (using the arbitrary sign ‡ to let the reader know that further information would be found in the Alterations) †000.00 portions . . . interfered.] aft. del. 'originally [insrtd.] interfering tendencies.' The combined HC entry would be lengthy and the real point of difference between lemma and MS reading would be somewhat obscured by 000.00 portions . . . interfered.] ['originally [insrtd.] interfering tendencies.' del.] forces that originally interfered. MS. In another example, when the only variant appropriate for notice in the HC is also part of a lengthy MS alteration that otherwise agrees with the book text, the attempt to combine entries in the HC may
The occurrence of such complex cases very difficult indeed to combine into any sort of clear HC entry suggests that not every occurrence of textual variation accompanied by alteration can be included, with the alteration, in the Historical Collation in a suitable manner and thus that full consistency is almost impossible to achieve. This is not necessarily a disqualification, however, for the use of the arbitrary signal ‡ readily steers the reader to the Alterations list when for particular reasons the account of alteration has been omitted from the HC.
One may sum up by remarking that under either system the Historical Collation contains the full record of differences between the book copy-text and the final text of the manuscript. Some editors may feel that the retention of this integrity of record in the Historical Collation, with the economy (and occasional illumination) of the association of MS alterations when practicable with this notation outweighs the disadvantage of the fact that the list of Alterations is thereby denuded, in part, of information proper to its full record. Experience suggests, indeed, that sometimes a moiety, if not a majority, of the cases where alteration accompanies textual variation can be transferred to the HC by a combined entry. One needs to consider, thus, that the difficulty may be more apparent than real, for in any event a reader must consult both lists to be able to reconstruct every detail of MS variation from the copy-text, including all alterations. And even if a scholar is for the moment intent only on reconstructing the alterations made in the course of the manuscript's inscription, reference to the HC for single dagger entries in the Alterations and to the text for
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