University of Virginia Library

I

Three statements of editorial policy for historical editions appeared within the space of five years in the early 1950s; all three have been influential, and an understanding of modern American documentary editing must begin with them. The first, and the most influential, was Julian P. Boyd's account of his "Editorial Method" (pp. xxv-xxxviii) in the first volume of The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, published by Princeton University Press in 1950.[19] Boyd states that his general aim is "rigidly to

adhere to scrupulous exactness in the presentation of the texts as Jefferson wrote them" (p. xxviii), but he recognizes that "complete exactitude is impossible in transmuting handwriting into print"; he has therefore worked out a "standard methodology which, though sometimes consciously inconsistent, is nevertheless precise" (p. xxix). From this, one assumes that the only changes to be introduced are those necessitated by the typography. As soon as he starts to explain the methodology, however, one begins to wonder how it supports his aim of adhering to the text with "scrupulous exactness." He says that he is going to follow a "middle course" between "facsimile reproduction" and "complete modernization," except in the case of business papers and of certain important documents (like the Declaration of Independence), which are to be "presented literally." There are thus two categories of material, accorded different treatment: letters and ordinary documents, presented with some degree of "conventionalization";[20] and business papers and important documents, presented as literally as print allows. Only the treatment of the second category would seem to fulfill the goal of presenting with "scrupulous exactness" the texts "as Jefferson wrote them" or of providing "as accurate a text as possible" which preserves "as many of Jefferson's distinctive mannerisms of writing as can be done" (p. xxix).

In the first, and larger, category, spelling, grammar, and capitalization remain unchanged, except that each sentence is made to begin with a capital letter (in contrast to Jefferson's practice). As for punctuation, however, "for the sake of clarity this literal policy will be less rigorously applied" (p. xxx): periods are supplied, when lacking at the ends of sentences, and unnecessary dashes, such as those which follow periods, are deleted.[21] Although this alteration of punctuation is minimal, one may well ask what is gained by eliminating these dashes; they could not cause a modern reader to misinterpret the sense, and, if they are a characteristic of Jefferson's style, to delete them is at best to modernize and at worst to risk losing a nuance of meaning. More troublesome is the treatment of abbreviations and contractions. They are "normally" expanded,

with the exception of those designating money or units of measure and weight, those standing for proper names, and a miscellaneous group containing such forms as "wou'd," "do." (for "ditto"), and "&c." (though "&" alone is altered to "and"). The rationale for this arbitrary list of abbreviated forms to be retained is not clear, especially since Boyd recognizes that some of them will require editorial expansion in brackets. If there is a value in preserving these contractions, why should others be expanded silently? Boyd gives an example to show Jefferson's extensive use of abbreviations in hurried jottings: "wd hve retird immedly hd h. nt bn infmd" is expanded into "would have retired immediately had he not been informed" (p. xxxi). The expanded text, Boyd argues, "represents the kind of clear and readable form that Jefferson himself would have used for a document intended for formal presentation in print. It makes for clarity and readability and yet sacrifices nothing of Jefferson's words or meaning." But the document was not in fact intended for formal presentation, and to smooth its text out silently is to conceal the essential nature of the preserved document. And if the nature of a document is misrepresented, even if the literal "meaning" is preserved, can one say absolutely that the meaning has in no way been sacrificed? It is true that a long passage full of such abbreviations would slow the reader down, but the reader's convenience is surely not the primary consideration here. The argument presented for expanding contractions like "wd" and "hd" could just as well be applied to "Wmsbgh," yet contractions of geographical names are allowed to stand. Perhaps this distinction is one of the conscious inconsistencies Boyd alludes to, but the reason for it remains unclear. It is disturbing because it would seem to reflect a wavering between two editorial approaches—an indecisiveness whether to transcribe or to normalize.

Three basic decisions about the nature of the edition are implicit in what has been said up to this point. One is that the text is to be critical, in the sense that it incorporates certain kinds of changes dictated by the editor's judgment. A second is that the original text will not be fully recoverable from the data provided; some editorial changes, in other words, will not be recorded. And the third is that the edited text will not be "clear text"—that is, it will incorporate bracketed editorial insertions. These decisions also evidently underlie the treatment of substantive matters, which Boyd turns to next. Conjectured readings are placed in roman type in square brackets and editorial comments (such as "In the margin") appear in italics in square brackets. Such intrusions suggest precision, and it is therefore unfortunate that a bracketed reading in roman type followed by a question mark can mean two different things: either a conjecture at a point where the manuscript is mutilated

and part of the text is missing or else an attempt to read a faded passage or one that is "too illegible to be deciphered with certainty" (p. xxxii).[22] Obvious errors in the original texts are corrected, again indicating that the edited text is a critical one. In writings by Jefferson, the original readings in these instances are provided in notes; in writintgs by others (such as letters to Jefferson), the original readings are not reported—"though," Boyd adds, "if an error has psychological significance it will be allowed to stand, with a note when required." Once it is recognized, however, that errors can have psychological significance, it becomes hard to justify a policy that conceals any of them. And this treatment of errors—emending the text and recording the original readings in notes—is a further reflection of editorial indecisiveness, for it represents a third approach in contrast to the treatment of conjectured readings and of some contractions. In the case of errors, the text is emended but is kept free of editorial symbols; conjectured readings are also placed in the text but are marked there as such; and certain contractions remain unemended but are explained by an editorial insertion in the text. Finally, if two or more copies or drafts of a document exist, variant or canceled readings are reported in notes only when they are "significant." (The variants in fact may not always be known, for it is stated a few pages later that "The editorial policy does not call for full collation of every document extant in more than one version" [p. xxxvi].)[23] Nothing is said about the possibility that a variant reading could call attention to an error in the copy-text, which might then be emended with that variant reading. Of course, if the editorial policy regards each edited text as an edition of a single copy of a document, emendations from other copies would not be allowed. But emendation to correct "obvious errors" is permitted here, and such a category is naturally a subjective one. Can a policy be logically defended which allows the correction of errors that a given editor discovers without recourse to another copy of the text but does not permit the correction of errors that he locates only through examination of another copy? Any procedure that might be called "eclectic" is automatically rejected by some editors. But if a text is not to be presented literally, then the editor's judgment is involved in determining at each point what ought to be in the text;[24] and it is hard to draw a line between being critical (using one's judgment) and being eclectic (considering readings which come from outside a given copy of a text, whether from the editor's head or from another copy of the text). Perhaps such a line could, with careful definition, be worked out; but Boyd's discussion does not acknowledge the existence of this problem, though it implicitly raises the issue.

All these points, one must remember, relate to the treatment of letters and "ordinary documents." The other category of texts, "documents of major importance," are handled very differently. They are presented literally, exactly as found in the document supplying the copy-text—though with bracketed editorial insertions when required for clarification. Variant readings, as before, appear in notes; but all of them, not just the "significant" ones, are recorded. Canceled passages, however, are now given in the text, in italics within angle brackets, placed before the revised wording. Aside from the fact that it is unclear why canceled matter should be reported within the text for major documents and in notes for ordinary documents, the approach employed for the major documents is far simpler and more satisfactory than that for the ordinary documents. With the major documents, no complicated rules are necessary, and yet the reader knows exactly what he is using (with one exception to be noted below); with the ordinary documents, in spite of the complex guidelines, he cannot always know the reading of the original or what evidence is available in other copies or drafts. It may be true that fewer people will be interested in textual details about the ordinary documents; but, if those documents are less important, why should considerable editorial effort be expended to make them more conveniently readable, especially when that effort serves to conceal some evidence that could conceivably be of use? The juxtaposition of the two kinds of texts is in itself somewhat awkward; and the straightforward handling of the major documents makes the compromises involved in the treatment of the ordinary documents appear all the more unsatisfactory by contrast.

There is, however, one serious weakness in the presentation of the major documents: the system used for recording canceled passages. The simple insertion of canceled matter in angle brackets cannot possibly inform the reader in many cases of the true textual situation, especially when no provision is made for labeling which words or syllables are entered above the line. For instance, in the edited text of Jefferson's first draft of the Virginia constitution of 1776, the following appears:

"unless suspended in their operation for his <con> assent" (p. 338, lines 4-5). One would naturally assume that Jefferson had started to write "consent," changed his mind after writing the first syllable, then marked it out and wrote "assent." But a check of the manuscript (reproduced facing p. 414) shows that Jefferson actually wrote "consent" and at some time after that crossed out the first syllable and inserted "as" above it.[25] The printed transcription not only misrepresents the manuscript but fails to show that the revision may have occurred at a time later than that of the original inscription. A few lines later occurs the phrase "endeavoring to prevent the population of our country <by> & for that purpose obstructing the laws" (338.16-17); Jefferson's revision becomes clear only when one knows that "& for that purpose" was inserted above the line at the time when "by" was deleted. Beginning in the next line the edited text contains a phrase that is bound to leave readers even more puzzled: "raising the conditions of new appropriati<ng>ons <new> of lands" (338.18-19). One can of course read the final text here; but if one wishes to know how it read earlier, one cannot simply add the bracketed letters, because no indication has been given of what words or letters were added at the time when the bracketed material was canceled. The manuscript shows that Jefferson first wrote "conditions of appropriating lands." After this "of" the word "new" is careted in; "on" is written over the "ng" and followed by "s"; and after that another caret points to "new of" with the "new" marked out. Thus Jefferson first revised his wording to "conditions of appropriating new lands"; then he further altered it to "conditions of new appropriations of lands." These examples are enough to show that the system is inadequate; reporting cancellations in this way serves little purpose because it does not provide enough information to allow one to reconstruct the stages of revision.[26]

What I have been saying about the textual policy of the Jefferson edition is not meant to cast doubt on the accomplishment of this edition in other respects. It is surely a great achievement in its assemblage and arrangement of material, its exemplary historical annotation, and its generally efficient physical presentation (with each document followed by concise descriptive, explanatory, and—in some cases—textual notes). And it deserves to be praised for the role it has played in causing serious scholarly attention to be turned to the full-scale editing of important statesmen's papers—it has eloquently demonstrated why the scholarly

editor must place "the exacting claims of history" above "the amenities and a respect for the privacy and feelings of individuals" (p. xxviii). What is to be regretted is that an edition in such a strategic position of influence is so unsophisticated in its handling of the actual text. There is no single right way to edit a text, but the editorial policy of the Jefferson edition does not suggest that the alternatives have been clearly thought through. As a result, there is indecision as to whether the text is to be literal or critical, whether it is to be modernized or unmodernized, and whether it is to incorporate apparatus or have the apparatus appended. The reason given for retaining "&c." is that "it was widely used in eighteenth-century printing" (p. xxxi), but Jefferson's "&" is expanded in ordinary documents to "and," presumably because it would not have appeared in an eighteenth-century printed version. Yet, as Boyd recognizes, an editor cannot undertake to capitalize various nouns for Jefferson, even though Jefferson's "extreme economy" in the use of capitals was a matter in which he "differed from his contemporaries" (p. xxx). Is the question of how a given letter or private note would have appeared in print in the eighteenth century even a relevant one, when such documents were not intended for print? The way Jefferson wrote them, however unconventional it may have been, is what the reader is interested in. This view prevails part of the time, since the editor has thought it worthwhile to transcribe the major documents literally. But at other times there seems to be a feeling that formal matters are really not important and that a partially "conventionalized" rendering is all the reader needs. The statement of editorial method, in short, reflects no coherent textual rationale.

Two years later Clarence E. Carter published Historical Editing (1952), a 51-page pamphlet which in some ways is the counterpart, for the historical field, of the CEAA's Statement of Editorial Principles and Procedures (1967, 1972). Although it was not meant to be an official statement of the NHPC (as the CEAA's pamphlet was a committee position paper), it was published as Bulletin No. 7 of the National Archives and was written by a man with extensive editorial experience in connection with a government project, The Territorial Papers of the United States (1934- ). Unlike the CEAA's pamphlet, which emphasizes printed texts and devotes most of its space to discussion of textual matters, Carter's booklet deals with manuscript texts and spends only ten pages on textual questions. Carter refers favorably to Boyd's work early in his discussion (pp. 10-11), but it is clear that Carter's position is more conservative than Boyd's and that he places a higher value on the formal aspects of a text.

Carter begins his account of "Textual Criticism" (pp. 20-25) with

the problem of establishing the authenticity of a document, and then he turns to "the operation designed to clear up such corruptions as may have entered it" (p. 23). This statement suggests that the kind of edited text which Carter envisions is a critical one, not an exact transcription. The matter soon becomes less clear, however. Although he admits that originals may contain errors, he discusses emendations only in regard to copies. He implies that originals are not to be emended, because even in the copy retained by the writer "no editorial emendations are permissible": "it is an official record, and the only resort is to call attention to the presence of specific errors" (p. 24). A copy made by someone else, in contrast, may be emended—but whether silently or not is uncertain. "Conjectural emendations," he says, "are recommended only when it is clear that the errors are due to the inadvertence of the scribe." But, he goes on, "such emendations should be plainly identified as such in footnotes or by editorial brackets in the text" (p. 23). Yet on the next page he says that "slips of the pen" by the copyist can be corrected by "unidentified emendations." Apparently the second category is meant to consist of obvious errors, such as "the transposition of letters in words, or the repetition of words or lines," and the first of less obvious errors. But such a distinction is not definite enough to provide a workable basis for deciding which emendations are to be silent. There is a curious mixture here of strictness and leniency: nothing, not even errors, can be altered in a text from a document in the author's hand; but scribal copies can be emended, sometimes silently. This mixture also reflects an indecision similar to Boyd's about the nature of the editor's task—whether it is to produce an exact transcription of a surviving document or a critical text not identical with the text in any single extant document. The issue emerges squarely in Carter's paragraph on "the occasional needs to reconstruct a document when two or more textual versions are encountered, each of which possesses attributes which stamp it as authentic" (p. 24). The word "reconstruct" suggests the production of an emended text; but his "harmonizing of the various versions" amounts to "the choice of the one which seems to be the most complete one of chronological priority," with readings from the other versions placed in brackets or in footnotes.[27]

Carter says nothing further about emendation but instead turns to "Transcription" (pp. 25-30), where the emphasis is clearly on what he calls "exact copy." His comments are based on a thorough understanding of the value of retaining the original punctuation and spelling; he cites some useful examples illustrating the importance of punctuation

in official documents (p. 26) and notes that the "interest in bad spelling lies partially in that it indicates the current pronunciation" (p. 28).[28] He believes that superscript letters, ligatures, abbreviations, date-lines, addresses, signatures, and the like should all be reproduced exactly.[29] Canceled matter, he says, can be inserted into the text, appropriately marked, or reported in notes—but not simply ignored. To eliminate these passages, as he rightly points out, "omits an element that often indicates what was actually passing through the mind of the writer which he concluded not to set down, and of course it also represents carelessness in many instances—a not unimportant facet of a writer's character" (p. 29). Carter's discussion of "Transcription," taken by itself, sets forth an intelligent and well-considered approach, which is admirably put in practice in his own work on The Territorial Papers (commented on further below).

Although he stresses objectivity here and throughout, he is aware that subjective judgment enters into transcription. When a mark of punctuation is not clearly identifiable, for instance, "it becomes the editor's responsibility to determine from the sense of the passage what was probably intended, and to proceed accordingly" (p. 26). This view is more realistic than the one expressed at the end of the preceding section, where he says that "the editor must eschew any and all forms of interpretation; he cannot deal with his documents in a subjective manner" (p. 25). What he is primarily getting at in this earlier statement is that the editor should not interpret the facts presented in his text, leaving that task for "the historian who uses the edited documents as a basis of historical composition." He is adamant on this point: "It cannot be too strongly emphasized that the editor's sole responsibility, after having established the purity of the documents, is to reproduce them with meticulous accuracy." Despite his insistence, the issue is not so easily settled, for it can be argued that the editor, having thought deeply about the text, is in the best position to suggest interpretations of it in his

annotation. In any case, this question does not affect texual policy. But Carter does not perhaps sufficiently recognize the extent to which judgment inevitably enters the editorial process, especially when emendation is allowed. His discussion, like many others in the historical field, neglects printed texts and (perhaps partly for that reason) fails to confront adequately the issues involved in an editor's decision to produce a critical text; the issues are present even when the only choice for copy-text is a holograph letter, but they may call themselves more forcibly to the editor's attention when he has more occasion to deal with multiple versions of a text. Nevertheless, Carter's comments are generally sensible, as far as they go, and he at least takes notice of—if he does not fully pursue—the problems of choosing a copy-text when one is faced with several copies, none of which is in the author's hand, or with multiple possibly authoritative texts. Certainly his views on punctuation and spelling and on the necessity for recording variants deserve to be heeded more than they have been.

A third influential statement on historical editing was published two years after Carter's, in the Harvard Guide to American History (ed. Oscar Handlin et al., 1954)—which contained a short section on "The Editing and Printing of Manuscripts" (pp. 95-104), prepared primarily by Samuel Eliot Morison. Because of the wide circulation which the Guide has achieved, a great many people have been exposed to this discussion, and it has often been referred to in historical literature as a standard account of editing. When the Guide was revised in 1974 (ed. Frank Freidel et al.), the editors apparently saw no need to alter this section, for it was retained in practically identical form ("Editing and Printing," pp. 27-36).[30] Yet it is a superficial treatment of editing which, like Boyd's and Carter's, oversimplifies or fails to touch basic questions which any editor must consider.

The discussion attempts "to set forth general principles of editing American documents" and begins with the usual point that "printing is unable to reproduce a longhand manuscript exactly." But from there on, difficulties arise. Three methods of preparing texts are announced—called the Literal, the Expanded, and the Modernized—and a preliminary section offers directions that apply to all three. Some of these directions are overly precise and unnecessary—such as specifying that a salutation should be printed in small capitals or that the date line, regardless

of where it appears in the original, should consistently be "printed either in italics under the heading, or at the end" (I.2). What such directions do reveal is that some silent alterations of the original are to be allowed—even in the Literal Method, since these directions apply to all the methods. Three other preliminary directions indicate further—and more objectionable—silent alterations. When a manuscript is torn or illegible, editorial comments are to be inserted in italics within brackets and conjectured readings in roman type within brackets, as Boyd recommended; but, unlike Boyd, the Guide claims that "if only one to four letters [of a long word] are missing, brackets are unnecessary and pedantic" (I.3)—on the grounds that the editor can be sure in those cases of what had originally been written. Yet obviously one cannot really be certain what spelling was used; not to indicate in some way what the editor has done misrepresents the surviving evidence by offering as a fact what is actually an inference.[31] Another direction calls for inserting "[sic]" after "a very strange spelling or mistake of the original writer" (I.5), implying that mistakes are not to be emended. yet the same direction states, "One may correct, without notice, obvious slips of the writer's pen such as 'an an hour ago.'" As in Carter's discussion, nothing explicit is said about what distinguishes errors to be silently corrected from those to be retained. The two categories in fact represent very different approaches to editing, and their juxtaposition here requires further explanation. Still another direction, dealing with manuscript alterations, asserts that "canceled passages are omitted unless they contain something of particular interest, when they may be inserted in a footnote" (I.7). No discussion of what value canceled passages may have is given, nor of what might cause some to be of particular interest; if the point had been taken up and analyzed, the difficulty of regarding any cancellations in a letter or journal as insignificant would have become apparent.[32]

The subsection on the Literal Method begins with the statement, "Follow the manuscript absolutely in spelling, capitalization, and punctuation"—unaccompanied by an explanation of how this directive is consistent with such earlier rules, applicable to all methods, as the one permitting silent corrections of slips of the pen. And it is immediately followed by a troublesome exception: "in very illiterate manuscripts,

where little or no punctuation is used, a minimum necessary to understand the text may be supplied; and in documents where the writer begins practically every word with a capital, the editor may use his discretion" (II.1). Although the editor is told that he should state "the practice followed" in a preliminary note, there is no requirement for him to record his alterations. Obviously the point of a literal method is to reproduce the text of a document exactly as it stands; if a manuscript is "illiterate," the reader of a literal text of it will expect to see the characteristics that make it illiterate. There is no logic in setting up a category called "Literal Method" and then saying that an editor can, in extreme cases, make changes for the convenience of the reader and still produce a literal text. Even if there were really much difficulty in reading a text in which most words are capitalized, the ease of readibility is not a criterion for a literal text. A few changes, of purely typographic significance, can be defended in a literal text, such as the elimination of the long "s"—a literal text, after all, is to be distinguished from a type-facsimile. Manuscript abbreviations, however, constitute a difficult category: one would expect an abbreviation to be reproduced, not expanded, in a literal text, and yet some abbreviations would require specially cast types to be printed. The rule given here is to print abbreviations and contractions "exactly as written within the limitations of available type" (II.4) and otherwise to expand them without brackets (II.5). This procedure is defensible as a practical compromise; but unfortunately the impression is given that an editor need not explain exactly what he has altered in this respect.

For the so-called Expanded Method, taken up next, the Guide recommends Boyd's practice, though it prefers more expansion of abbreviations and more standardization of designations for money, weights, and measures. In fact, most of the discussion is concerned with the treatment of abbreviations, the general policy being to "spell out all abbreviations except those still used today . . . and those of months, proper names, and titles" (III.2). No rationale is given for the aims of the Expanded Method, but since the goal is not to produce a modernized text (that is the subject of the third method) it is not clear why the present-day currency of an abbreviation is relevant. Nor is it clear just what changes are to be made silently. All sentences are to begin with a capital and end with a period, "no matter what the writer does" (III.1); these changes and most expansions of abbreviations are apparently to be made without comment, but supplied letters which follow the last one in a superscript abbreviation are, inexplicably, to be enclosed in brackets ("m°" becomes "mo[nth]"). Except for the treatment of the opening and closing of sentences, the original capitalization and punctuation are to be retained

(III.1), and the spelling as well, even if inconsistent (III.5); the point in standardizing the money, weight, and measure designations, therefore, becomes less clear by contrast.[33] Indeed, the point of the Expanded Method as a whole is puzzling. It is not, as one might at first suppose of an emended but unmodernized text, to correct errors, nor is it to produce consistency, except in a few minor respects; it is simply, as the name indicates, to expand some of the abbreviations. But this expansion does not really constitute a separate "method"; it is more accurately regarded as a form of annotation. One could just as well have a literal text with the explanations of the abbreviations in brackets or notes; indeed, such a procedure would be preferable to the uncertainties suggested here. If the Expanded Method were truly a different method of editing, it would have to involve a basically different approach to the text—a critical approach, for instance, in which the text is emended to correct errors and resolve cruxes. Despite the confusions of the section on the Expanded Method, it ends with a salutary caution: Ironically this closing statement, which contradicts the opening point of the section ("always capitalize the first word and put a period at the end of the sentence no matter what the writer does"), is the most sensible one in the whole discussion.[34]

The subsection on the Modernized Method requires little comment. Modernization is said to be for "the average reader who is put off by obsolete spelling and erratic punctuation." The extent to which the average reader is "put off" by such features of a text is probably not so great as many editors seem to think. In any case, the modernization

recommended here is a confused concept. The first direction is the expected one: "Modernize the spelling, capitalization, and punctuation, but pay scrupulous respect to the language" (IV.1)—although one might not expect the additional statement, "Paragraphs and sentences that are too long may be broken up." What is confusing, however, is that the same instruction also contains this sentence: "Where the original writer has obviously omitted a word like not, or, for instance, has written east when you know he means west, the editor may add or correct a word; but he should place it within square brackets." The correction of errors is an entirely separate matter from modernization, and the two should not be linked together here as aspects of the same "method." One can modernize a text without correcting errors, and one can emend without modernizing. An introduction to editorial method which does not make this distinction will only encourage illogical thinking.

The confusions which underlie the Guide's whole discussion are epitomized in the concluding remarks on "Choice of Method" (VI). The choice is said to depend "partly on the kind of document in question, but mainly on practical considerations, especially on the purpose of the publication." The nature of the document does determine whether expansion of abbreviations or modernization is required, once it has been decided that the edition is aimed at an audience which would require such alterations; but that decision comes first, since for some purposes only the literal approach will suffice, regardless of the complexities of the document. To say that documents of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries "full of contractions" should be printed literally "in a publication destined for scholarly readers only" is both to underestimate the capacities of a wider audience and to ignore completely the possibility of accompanying a literal text with textual annotation. But why anyone, scholar or not, needs an unmodernized text does not seem to be fully grasped: an expanded text is said to be better for the student than a modernized one "because the wording, spelling, and punctuation of the original give it a certain flavor"—a statement suggesting only a trivial interest in these matters (and again including "wording" as one of the concerns of modernization). The assertion that "for a new edition of some classic such as the Virginia 'Lament for Mr. Nathaniel Bacon,' or the poetry of Edward Taylor, the Modernized Method is best" shows a complete failure to understand the serious reasons for being interested in spelling and punctuation and implies that those features are of less concern in "literary" than in "historical" documents. (An earlier similar comment claims that the "texts of recent editions of Shakespeare, Dryden, and the King James Bible have been established

by this [modernized] method"—as if modernizing could "establish" a text, instead of being a way of altering a text, once established.)[35] The motto offered at the end of the section is in the spirit of the rest of the discussion: "Accuracy without Pedantry. / Consistency first, last, and always." The accuracy required for establishing a text may be regarded as pedantry by some, without affecting its desirability, and what excessive accuracy might be is not defined. If consistency of editorial treatment is the prime virtue, then surely a logical consistency of editorial rationale is a necessity; the Guide in this respect sets a poor example.[36]

These three statements of editorial method were not the only ones available to historical editors of the 1950s and 1960s. Thirty years earlier, for instance, the Anglo-American Historical Committee produced a two-part "Report"[37] —the first dealing with medieval and the second with modern documents—which was in many ways an intelligent and carefully considered statement. Unfortunately it recommended modernizing punctuation for all documents;[38] but, unlike some later treatments, it recognized the importance of recording cancellations and revisions and of providing a detailed account of the practice of the manuscript text in any respect in which the editor alters it.[39] Boyd, Carter,

and the Harvard Guide, however, are more important for anyone examining the NHPRC editions. Boyd's edition led the way for the later editions and was taken as a model, and the other two discussions followed in quick succession at a time when some of the later editions were being organized. The first and third especially have had a considerable influence on a large number of American editions, which either refer to them explicitly or are modeled on other editions that follow their recommendations. If that were not the case, they would hardly deserve the attention given them here; but their deficiencies have apparently not been regarded as obvious. The discussion in the Guide is the least satisfactory, as Carter's is the best, of the group; all three have serious shortcomings, but the one with the most merit ironically has been cited the least often. A recognition of the indecisiveness of these discussions— particularly the two most influential ones—in regard to editorial theory and procedure suggests what a weak foundation they provide for the massive superstructure later erected.