MSS (manuscript)

“ Corruptions originating in a MS belonging to one primary array may be adopted and incorporated in transcripts from other MSS of the same or of other primary arrays. An error introduced by the scribe of L1 in one century, and unknown to L2 M1 M2 may in a later century be attested by all the then extant representatives of L1 L2 M1, those of M2 alone being free from it, the reason being that, perhaps through the instrumentality of some popular text which has adopted it, it has found its way into intermediate descendants of L2 and of M1. ”

“ Accumulated evidence may be said to establish itself in the light of investigation and experience and becomes more and more a certainty when considered, reviewed and discussed in connection with a chronological history of the "gall" inks since they came into semi-official and other uses centuries ago. Descriptions of MSS. containing ink writings hundreds of years old, many of them as legible as when first written, are silent witnesses whose testimony cannot be assailed. ”

“ It may be said that even a perfect bibliography of MSS. will not obviate travel on the part of those who wish to consult MSS. and not merely to be aware of their existence. This is true enough, but it does not affect the argument that in view of the imperfect catalogues of MSS. in many libraries, just as many journeys may be necessary to make a good index of them as to learn their contents. ”

“ A printer will know how this may occur, in arranging his lines into pages; but what is the corrector about?
The most trying part perhaps of a compositor’s duty is to decipher the writing of some authors whose manuscripts have to be set up in type. No one can conceive, merely judging from the interchange of ordinary letters between relations and acquaintances, the large amount of badly written manuscript which reaches the printing-offices. ”

“ In the work of these primitive scribes all the punctuation is found, by the modern investigator with his optical instruments and chemical tests, to have been inserted by the writers' ingenious and serviceable collaborator, the common house-fly -- Musca maledicta. In transcribing these ancient MSS, for the purpose of either making the work their own or preserving what they naturally regard as divine revelations, later writers reverently and accurately copy whatever marks they find upon the papyrus or parchment, to the unspeakable enhancement of the lucidity of the thought and value of the work. ”

“ Here and there we see it just blaze, and then sink into mediocrity. He is too redundant and tiresome.... 'Tis a great disadvantage to read them in MS., as one cannot readily turn to passages; but life is too short to be peeping into other peoples' MSS. I prefer your prose to your verse. Let me know if you receive it safely, and pray give no notion to any one that I have seen the MS."
Mr. D'Israeli to John Murray.
"It is a most disagreeable office to give opinions on MSS.; one reads them at a moment when one has other things in one's head—then one is obliged to fatigue the brain with thinking ”

“ In the case of authors who wrote before the invention of printing, scholars are familiar with the process of comparing the various MSS. of a single work in order from such a comparison to reconstruct the archetype or original MS., from which the various existing MSS. are derived. Similarly in Folk-Lore, by comparing the different versions of a single tale, it may be possible to arrive, with tolerable certainty, at the original story, of which the different versions are more or less imperfect and incorrect representations. ”

“ A word may be said here as to the means of distinguishing the liturgical MSS., and obtaining an idea of their place of origin. It ought not to be necessary, but, as a matter of fact, there are many persons of fair education, and possessing no inconsiderable familiarity with manuscripts, who call every Book of Hours a "Missal," and who cannot distinguish between a Breviary and a Missal. ”

“ The discrepancy in style and contents between the MS. stories and those of the people leads me to believe that the stories in the MSS. are not so much old Aryan folk-tales written down by scholars as the inventions of individual brains, consciously inventing, as modern novelists do. ”

“ There are two main reasons in favour of the separation of serials, periodicals, or whatever other name we may give the class. The theoretical reason is, that they are not like other books, and that the rules for one will not apply to the other. It is agreed, on all hands, that MSS. should be separated from printed books, and yet a MS. is often more like a printed book than a journal is like a distinct treatise. I mean that in the one case the difference is merely one of production,—print or writing,—and in the other it is a structural difference of the mode of composition. ”

“ With a sigh over my lost joke, I did as I was bidden, and soon, after a vigorous shaking and the removal of a cork which I had not previously noticed, the substance within issued forth through the bottle's neck.
"Dear me," said I. "It appears to be manuscript."
"Let me see," said Hans. "Ah," he observed, "it is writing. Why did you say it was manuscript?"
"That is writing," I explained. ”

“ When we reflect how strangely rare copies of whole editions of comparatively modern books have grown, we ought not to find it difficult to realise that hundreds of unique MSS. would utterly pass out of being through fire, water, and violence in the blustrous Middle Ages. With them would perish the sole record of some episodes which our after-times have never heard of, and likewise the only documentary evidence of others that, until the invention of printing, would be handed on to later ages by tradition. ”

“ Even if it be taken as a possible alternative that they originated with the scribes of the second century, we must still either follow our best MSS or rewrite the orthography by blind conjecture. The simpler supposition that in the main they were transmitted from the autographs need not however be questioned. The unclassical forms or spellings of our MSS were certainly current in the apostolic age, as is proved by inscriptions ”

“ When a Manuscript is about to be sent to the Press, it should be finally and carefully read over by the Author, who should mark any directions he may wish attended to in the Printing, and with his pen make any words plain which may happen to be obscure, by doing which, he will frequently prevent those errors of the Press which often change the sense of a passage, and are liable to escape detection. ”

“ I have catalogued the pictures and the china, the armour and the various curios, after a style of my own, with the history, so far as possible, of each of the masters, the date and a copy of such criticisms as have appeared in the press. The catalogues, you observe, are all written by hand.”
She pored over the vellum-bound manuscript book which he had been carrying, turning the pages, and glancing at the extracts written with great care in a stiff, clerkly handwriting. ”

“ The Legend of Good Women. Previously edited by me in 1889, when I made the curious discovery that the MSS. can be divided into two sets of types, which may be called A and B; that type A is considerably the better; and yet, that no MS. of type A had ever before been made the basis of an edition! The natural result was the easy correction of many corrupt passages, the publication of the Prologue in its earlier as well as in its later form, and the addition of a few previously unknown lines. As regards the Notes, the most help was obtained from the edition by Prof. ”

“ But I own, with Concern, that it is quite beyond my Power, to procure such a Number of Types as will be requisite to give this Satisfaction; therefore, let those who are willing and equal to such an Expence, set the Printer to work. I promise to deliver him the Manuscript on Demand. I cannot help thinking, but that the Malice of the World is at its highest Pitch. ”

“ To pin in scraps of closely written paper and backs of envelopes adds to the security for failure, and produces a rich anger in the publisher’s reader or the editor.
The cultivation of a bad handwriting is an elementary precaution, often overlooked. Few need to be warned against having their MSS. typewritten, this gives them a chance of being read with ease and interest, and this must be neglected by all who have really set their hearts on failure. In the higher matters of education it is well to be as ignorant as possible. ”

“ I grasped nothing tangible, and the chair appeared quite empty, while still the scratching of the pen continued; and as I walked away from the window the apparition appeared as plain as ever. Every line of the figure was clear as if in life. At last while I watched, the sound of writing ceased, and the figure vanished from my view, leaving the roll of manuscript just as it had been before I fell asleep.
"Rushing up to the mantelpiece I seized a box of matches, hurriedly lighted a candle, and approached the desk, and there found the Service written out in full in a strange handwriting. ”

“ A doubt has often forced itself upon my mind when turning over the "crackling leaves" of many ancient MSS., whether the peculiarity mentioned by Montfaucon, and described as parchment from which former writing had been erased, may not be owing, in many cases, to its mode of preparation. It is true, a great proportion of the membrane on which the writings of the middle ages are inscribed, appear rough and uneven, but I could not detect, through many manuscripts of a hundred folios—all of which evinced this roughness—the unobliterated remains of a single letter. ”

“ The room was noisy with typewriters, and nobody heard my "Please, can you tell me." At last one of the machines stopped, and the operator thought he heard something in the pause. He looked up through his own smoke. I guess he thought he saw something, for he stared. It troubled me a little to have him stare so. I realized suddenly that the hand in which I carried my manuscript was moist, and I was afraid it would make marks on the paper. I held out the manuscript to the editor, explaining that it was a poem about George Washington, and would he please print it in the "Transcript." ”

“ Of course I do not wish to be referred to information contained in well-known collections, such as Thurloe, Rushworth, Whitelock, and the Parliamentary Histories, nor to the Deptford MSS. in the Tower, the Admiralty papers in the State Paper Office, or the Ashmole MSS. at Oxford. I am also acquainted, of course, with several papers in the national collection of MSS. at the British Museum throwing light on the subject; but while these MSS. remain in their present state, it would be very rash in any man to say what is not to be found in them. ”

“ And though calligraphy is a means to many ends, a fine MS. has a beauty of its own that—if two arts may be compared—surpasses that of the finest printing. This in itself would justify the transcribing and preservation of much good literature in this beautiful form (besides the preparation of “Illuminated Addresses,” Service Books, Heraldic and other MSS.) and make the practice of formal writing desirable. And furthermore as the old-fashioned notion that a legible hand is a mark of bad breeding dies out, it may be that our current handwriting will take legibility and beauty from such practice. ”

“ The MSS. are doubtless, generally speaking, of great value; yet very far indeed from being equal, either in number or in intrinsic worth, to those in the Royal Library at Paris. It is also to be deeply regretted, that, both of these MSS. and printed books--with the exception of the ponderous and digressive work of Lambecius upon the former,--there should be NO printed catalogue raisonné. ”

“ The editor knows that no professional submits manuscripts in handwriting, that no professional writes upon both sides of the sheet, and that no professional omits to enclose an addressed stamped envelope in which to return the manuscript to its author if it proves unavailable for the magazine's use. Why brand yourself as a novice even before the manuscript reader has seen your first sentence? ”

“ I pondered long on the meaning of his instructions when he gave it to me, and kept the manuscript same years, hesitating what to do with it.
At length I came to the conclusion, knowing his idiosyncrasy well, that his fear was only lest any one should know who the writer was; and feeling that it would be sinful to destroy such a history. I copied the manuscript and destroyed the original. He died relationless. No one now can trace the author; no names are mentioned in the book, though they were given freely in the margin of his manuscript, and I alone know to whom the initials refer. ”

“ Any one who has had any experience in the hand-copying of large amounts of manuscript will see how impossible it is to avoid errors, even with the most careful checking over. It is not probable that any two copies of any manuscript book were ever exactly alike. It is true that the invention of printing did not automatically remove errors. ”

“ The service rendered by printing to engraving, it may be parenthetically remarked, is a great set-off against the injury it inflicted upon art in the shape of pictorial illustration. All these circumstances indicate the strong influence of the scribe upon the printer; and it is perhaps not surprising that the latter should for some time have followed the example of his predecessor, and given no title except occasionally the brief heading which frequently precedes the first chapter of a manuscript. ”