BEN JONSON'S CONVERSATIONS.
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—In your issue of November 3rd your reviewer praises the Bodley Head Quarto edition of Ben Jonson's Discoveries and Conversations with William Drummond of Hawthorn den. I have not examined the text of the Dis- coveries; but the Conversations appear to me to be carelessly edited on an unsound principle. That principle is apparently to reproduce the text of Sibbald's MS. without any emenda- tion; every reader is to be his own editor. There is no doubt that in the past some editors have aimed at displaying their own knowledge rather than at lessening their readers' ignor- ance; but there is no justification for jettisoning editorial work altogether. To multiply error is surely the sorriest form of pedantry. An editor at his lowest is a skilled artisan ; a reproducer at his highest is but in unskilled labourer.
In this particular ease the .reproducer does not seem to have done his or her work with any great care. I have counted forty-nine mistakes in the text, some of them serious, some trivial, but none venial in what pretends to be an exact reproduction.. As examples of the more serious Ones, I may instance the following : page 3, " he detesteth all other things," should be "he detesteth all other Rinses"; page 5, " Virgilium " should be " Vigilium " ;- page 6, `` cunning " should be " funning " ; page 14, "He can get Horoscopes," should be "He can set Horoscopes " ; the word " owne " has dropped out before "dish," and " brailing " should be " brauling ". '; -page 22, " breath " should be `.`. broath " ;- and page 25, -" Heywood" should be "Heyward." - Considering that the Conversations only occupy twenty-six pages in this edition, the number of errors is very large. The edition is, in my opinion, a piece of unskilled labour, not even conscien- tiously performed, and I shall continue to pin my faith to the new Patterson edition, dearer 'tis true, but 'worth every penny it costs for its sound scholarship.– -I am, Sir, dpc.,
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