PREFACE.

This volume has grown in my hands during the last eighteen months. If I had contented myself with a short commentary, it might have appeared sooner and in a slighter form. But in addition to the full and careful illustration required for the matter of Quintilian’s Tenth Book, the criticism of the text has become so important as to call for separate treatment. It has engaged, within recent years, a large share of the attention of some of the foremost scholars on the Continent. Even while this volume was passing through the press, fresh evidence of their continued activity was received in the shape of two valuable papers—an article by Moriz Kiderlin in one of the current numbers of the Rheinisches Museum, and Becher’s ‘Zum zehnten Buch des Quintilianus’ in the Programm des Königlichen Gymnasiums zu Aurich for Easter, 1891. The latter I have found especially interesting, as confirming many of the conclusions at which, with the help of one of the manuscripts in the British Museum (Harl. 4995), I had arrived in regard to textual difficulties.

The importance ascribed to another English codex (Harl. 2664) will, I venture to think, be held to be justified by the account of it given in the Introduction. After I had examined it for myself, a collation of it was kindly put at my disposal by Mr. L. C. Purser, of Trinity College, Dublin, to whom I take this opportunity of rendering my best thanks. I am indebted also to M. Ch. Fierville, Censeur des études au Lycée Charlemagne, for sending me his collation of four important Paris manuscripts (Pratensis, Puteanus, 7231 and 7696), and also of the Spanish Salmantinus. As to the other codices which I have been at the trouble of collating personally, it will not be imagined that any mistaken estimate has been formed of their value. If some of them throw little fresh light on existing difficulties, they have each a bearing on the history of the constitution of the text; and it seemed desirable to complete, by some account of them, the elaborate description of the Manuscripts of Quintilian given by M. Fierville in his latest volume.

A reference to the list of authorities consulted will show the extent of the obligations incurred to other editors and critics. Kruger’s third edition has been especially useful. And though Professor Mayor’s commentary extends only to the fifty-sixth section of the first chapter, I trust I have profited by the example of scholarly thoroughness which he set me in the part of the work which he was able to overtake. His Analysis has also been largely followed.

For convenience of reference, a table of places has been added in which the text of this edition differs from that of Halm and of Meister. Special attention has been paid to the matter of punctuation, in regard to which German methods have not been adopted.

One or two of my own conjectural emendations I have presumed to insert in the text, and others are suggested in the Critical Notes. Perhaps the most important is sic dicere for the MS. inicere at 7 §29.

If my volume should strike any student as having been prepared on too elaborate a scale, I trust it will be remembered that Quintilian is a neglected author, for whom nothing has been done in this country (with the exception of Professor Mayor’s incomplete edition of the Tenth Book) since the beginning of the present century. Perhaps its publication may help to clear the way for a final issue of the whole text of the Institutio.

W. P.

Dundee, 26th June, 1891.