years later Richter sent Bentley a collation of ZL. Bentley already had one in 1693; and, save that he may have revised its readings by the aid of this new one, there is nothing to show that he did anything at all to Manilius after 1699. When the work finally appeared, the Praefatio contained misstatements1 which Bentley should long ago have made impossible. And in the preparation of his text also his laziness is apparent. He collated G himself, yet he merely quotes it at his convenience; and his Apparatus exhibits merely variants from Scaliger's edition. For the other MSS. which he employs he depended upon the labours of other scholars. Those which he knew at first hand were such that a few hours' work at each would be sufficient to show their small value to so skilled a critic. Indeed, he says frankly to Bernard that he wants a collation of Codex Pithoei just in order to impress the public. So much was so great a man defective in application to those lesser labours of scholarship which are the true touchstone of devotion. If out of the thirty years during which the Manilius lay idle Bentley had given one to the serious revision of it he would have made his work twice as good as it is.

2

'Dictator Britannus' is the ill-natured but not undeserved title by which Stoeber (who in 1767 appended to König's reprint of Bentley's text his own commentary upon it) alludes to Bentley. König had intended to print merely Bentley's text. Stoeber adjured him not to give this to the world unaccompanied by the notes of some learned man. 'Placuit consilium,' says Stoeber modestly: König commissioned Stoeber to supply these notes. The commission was given to a man who undoubtedly was learned. But Stoeber's much learning would truly seem to have affected him in the proverbial way. When I read Mr. Housman's estimate of him, I thought that probably, like so many of Mr. Housman's judgements, it was too highly coloured. But I have had Stoeber constantly by me for a long time, and I have read all his notes upon Book II. I can only say that his work seems to me to be scarcely that of a sane man. One reads a line or two of some criticism of Bentley's text, and one says at once, 'Oh, but he cannot have read Bentley's note.' But in the very next line he betrays, by borrowing something from it, that he has done so. Such men

'I refer to the younger Bentley's confusion of V3 and Codex Pithoes. Cf. Introduction II, pp. xliii sqq.

2 Letters, pp. 36-7.

are enigmas. Did He that made Bentley and Scaliger make thee and Franciscus Junius?1

Pingré's text, translation, and notes (1786) have long enjoyed an enviable position. This editor alone among editors of Manilius seems to be hated by no one. How this has come about I do not know. I suppose that Pingré fell upon what in the world of scholarship were quiet times. He was a competent man who had no one more competent ready to rap him over the knuckles for his mistakes, and as he set out modestly to be useful he did not offend, as did Scaliger and Bentley, men of inferior abilities to his own. His notes are few and brief and good. His text may be described as Bentley and water. His translation (somewhat like Poste's translations of Aristotle) leaves always the impression that the translator has understood his author, while how and why he has come to do so remains a mystery. On a difficult construction Pingré's rendering throws no light. Occasionally he corrects Du Fay, and indeed he worked with a better text. Sometimes he lapses into mistakes which Du Fay had avoided.

Jacob's text (1846) has been for half a century the text in which Manilius has been commonly read. It will now undoubtedly be superseded by Breiter, and justly. The text itself is barely readable, but until Bechert it was the only one furnished with an Apparatus Criticus of any value. In addition to recording the MS. variants Jacob recorded also the variants of the edition of Molinius, thereby giving the reader a fair notion of the text of Manilius as it was before Scaliger took it in hand. Occasionally also in his Apparatus he ventured on interpretations of difficult passages; and here, even when he is wrong, he is often useful. The Appendix of diagrams which concludes the volume is also of considerable service, so too the Index. It is not difficult to see, therefore, why Jacob has so long held so strong a position. Nor is he without higher merits. In his Lübeck programme he showed considerable penetration in explaining the transpositions detected

1 Jacob's judgement upon Stoeber is amusing and forcible: 'Ingenium autem eius hominis Terentius describit' (Heaut. Tim. v. 1. 4),

quae sunt dicta in stulto, caudex, stipes, asinus, plumbeus,

in illum nil potest: exsuperat eius stultitia haec omnia. 'Yet,' he adds, 'inuenti sunt qui eum sequi mallent quam Scaligeros atque Bentleios,' De Manilio Poeta, p. 2, b.

2 Despite the fact that the signs of the Zodiac are made to revolve from left to right.

by Scaliger at I. 355, &c. In appraising the value of his different MSS. his marked penchant for Vossianus II, much as it misguided him, betrays a sound instinct for the merits of M. In emendation, though usually clumsy, he was often right. And, speaking generally, it may be said of him that he had a vigorous judgement strangely compounded of good and bad. His feeling for the Latin language was poor.

Jacob's text, as I have just said, will be easily superseded by that of Breiter. Breiter's text I reviewed1 on its appearance in a manner which I think did justice to its merits. Since then I have been using it constantly, and my attention has perhaps naturally been rather much fixed on its defects. But it is not fair to compare any text of Manilius with what one thinks a text should be one should compare it with its existing rivals. And of existing texts of Manilius I still think Breiter's the most serviceable. Of the Commentary which has recently followed the text, I am sorry to be able to speak in terms only of very mixed praise. I have not found it useful to myself; and in Book II, where I have examined it with most care, I have often thought it wrong beyond the limits of what is excusable. Not to go outside this Book-it is not, for example, excusable that at II. 485 Breiter should render consilium ipse suum est as amat se. Not only can the Latin not mean this, but it also involves us in egregiously false astrology; moreover, so far as I know, no previous editor has fallen into Breiter's blunder. Still less is it excusable at II. 722, that in building up a whole series of complicated calculations, he should start from the statement that 'if the moon is in the tenth degree of Aries it will be in the dodecatemory of Sagittarius'. Yet Breiter not only makes this statement, but he bases upon it a new and elaborate interpretation of a whole passage of well known difficulty; while at the same time he prints a numerical table in which all the figures (since they are taken from other authorities) contradict everything that he has said in his notes.

In one or two passages in my Commentary I have called attention to other errrors hardly less notable. And Breiter's Commentary as a whole, leaving as it does the impression that it was finished off with undue haste, is to my mind not worthy of a scholar who has

1 C. Q., 1908, pp. 123 sqq.

in the past deserved well of Manilius. Breiter's death, which followed close upon the publication of his Commentary, is a real misfortune. For he was for half a century a high example of continued devotion to obscure and unrewarded studies.

Bechert's text-in the English Corpus Poetarum-is valuable not so much for itself as for its Apparatus. The text itself is based upon critical presuppositions now generally recognized as false; and in some places it would even seem to have been framed in a spirit of deliberate contrariety. The Apparatus, however, including as it does-and as Breiter's does not-the principal conjectures of editors, is, despite some odd omissions, the best that exists. Owing, however, to the fact that it forms part of a large and unwieldy volume Bechert's edition can never be very usable. The same scholar's dissertation in Leipziger Studien, 1878, pp. 3-61, goes deep and is useful; but, on the subject of the Manilian archetype, it is,2 in the main, I think, wrong.

Of Manilian scholars in this country who are still living it would be unbecoming that I should speak save with some reserve, Foremost among them is Ellis, who, if I may say so, stands to Bentley somewhat as Huet to Scaliger, though naturally his positive services to Manilius are greater than Huet's. His Noctes Manilianae constitutes a sharp and shrewd attack upon Bentley, yet with a fair recognition of Bentley's brilliant qualities. When he wrote the Noctes Ellis had not yet discovered Matritensis, and this, for present-day criticism, imposes a limitation on parts of his book. But the work as a whole is indispensable to the student of Manilius. Perhaps no recent editor brings so much unborrowed learning to the task of interpreting the Astronomica. Some of his emendations, as I. 582 limes for timens, I. 723 nondum for mundum, will take their place in all subsequent

texts.

Postgate's Silua Maniliana, to some extent a counterblast to Ellis' Noctes, is a work which may be read not only with profit but--what is more remarkable in so difficult a subject-without

1 Occasional notes, as II. 788, are admirable. Loth text and commentary are praised discreetly by Moeller, Berl. Phil. Woch., 1910, pp. 493-9. Norden (Einleitung i. d. Altertumswissenschaft, i, p. 569) speaks of them as 'völlig unbrauchbar'. Yet Kleingünther in D. L. Z., 1908, pp. 2077-81, writes: 'Durch ihren hohen wissenschaftlichen Wert tritt Br.'s Ausgabe den Arbeiten Scaligers, Bentleys und Pingrés würdig zur Seite '. 2 As will be seen from my Introduction I.

hardship. It is written in a light and graceful Latin such as is now becoming, alas, rather rare; and it contains much happy illustration and suggestive conjecture. One or two emendations (e. g. I. 739, III. 398) may be regarded as certain. It is perhaps a pity that this Silua is not more ample than it is. For it does not pretend to a sustained exegesis, and hardly goes beyond a collection of 'Suspiciones'. It is probably the only modern book upon Manilius which a feeling reader could wish to have been longer.

Of Mr. Housman's edition of Book I, with its numerous corrections of II-IV, I have said much of what I think elsewhere.1 I regret that some parts of it should have been written by so charming a poet as the author of A Shropshire Lad. Mr. Housman's book has excited a good deal of angry feeling, and it is always a misfortune when such feeling is excited among scholars-whose studies demand for their happy prosecution an even quietude. But this angry feeling will before long die down. And when it has done so, the real merit of Mr. Housman's work will, I think, be widely allowed. Very few editors of Manilius have understood their author so well. And this thorough understanding of Manilius Mr. Housman has not reached without a searching discipline. The greatness of his book is what does not appear in it—the hard work behind it. The external glitter is delusive. It hides an amount of solid and honest labour which the student of Manilius will recognize with increasing clearness in proportion as he himself grows in knowledge of his subject. It is this underlying austerity of learning which gives to Mr. Housman's work its real distinction.

We live in an age of learned pamphlets, and Manilius, like greater men, has had to endure the tender mercies of aspirants to a continental doctorate. I have thought it my duty to peruse so much of the occasional literature upon Manilius as is to be found in the Bodleian Library; and I would not, if I could, accuse with cold words the zeal of the Librarian. My table, as I write, is strewn with sheafs of excerpts from this literature. Richter says somewhere that a book, to be worth reading once, must be worth reading twice. If this is to be true also of a pamphlet, few will be saved. A pamphlet perhaps justifies itself if it can be reador most of it—at all. It is beside my purpose to do more than

1 C. Q., 1908, pp. 123 sqq.