Introduction to the Study of History Part 3

(_b_) Second case. The original has been lost; only a single copy of it is known. It is necessary to be cautious, for the probability is that this copy contains errors.

Texts degenerate in accordance with certain laws. A great deal of pains has been taken to discover and cla.s.sify the causes and the ordinary forms of the differences which are observed between originals and copies; and hence rules have been deduced which may be applied to the conjectural restoration of those pa.s.sages in a unique copy of a lost original which are certainly corrupt (because unintelligible), or are so in all probability.

Alterations of an original occurring in a copy--"traditional variants,"

as they are called--are due either to fraud or to error. Some copyists have deliberately modified or suppressed pa.s.sages.[70] Nearly all copyists have committed errors of judgment or accidental errors. Errors of judgment when half-educated and not wholly intelligent copyists have thought it their duty to correct pa.s.sages and words in the original which they could not understand.[71] Accidental errors when they misread while copying, or misheard while writing from dictation, or when they involuntarily made slips of the pen.

Modifications arising from fraud or errors of judgment are often very difficult to rectify, or even to discover. Some accidental errors (the omission of several lines, for example) are irreparable in the case we are considering, that of a unique copy. But most accidental errors can be detected by any one who knows the ordinary forms: confusions of sense, letters, and words, transpositions of words, letters, and syllables, dittography (unmeaning repet.i.tion of letters or syllables), haplography (syllables or words written once only where they should have been written twice), false divisions between words, badly punctuated sentences, and other mistakes of the same kind. Errors of these various types have been made by the scribes of every country and every age, irrespectively of the handwriting and language of the originals. But some confusions of letters occur frequently in copies of uncial originals, and others in copies of minuscule originals. Confusions of sense and of words are explained by a.n.a.logies of vocabulary or p.r.o.nunciation, which naturally vary from language to language and from epoch to epoch. The general theory of conjectural emendation reduces to the sketch we have just given; there is no general apprenticeship to the art. What a man learns is not to restore any text that may be put before him, but Greek texts, Latin texts, French texts, and so on, as the case may be; for the conjectural emendation of a text presupposes, besides general notions on the processes by which texts degenerate, a profound knowledge of (1) a special language; (2) a special handwriting; (3) _the confusions (of sense, letters, and words) which were habitual to those who copied texts of that language written in that style of handwriting_.

To aid in the apprenticeship to the conjectural emendation of Greek and Latin texts, tabulated lists (alphabetical and systematic) of various readings, frequent confusions, and probable corrections, have been drawn up.[72] It is true that they cannot take the place of practical work, done under the guidance of experts, but they are of very great use to the experts themselves.[73]

It would be easy to give a list of happy emendations. The most satisfactory are those whose correctness is obvious palaeographically, as is the case with the cla.s.sical emendation by Madvig of the text of Seneca's Letters (89, 4). The old reading was: "Philosophia unde dicta sit, apparet; ipso enim nomine fatetur. Quidam et sapientiam ita quidam finierunt, ut dicerent divinorum et humanorum sapientiam ..."--which does not make sense. It used to be supposed that words had dropped out between _ita_ and _quidam_. Madvig pictured to himself the text of the lost archetype, which was written in capitals, and in which, as was usual before the eighth century, the words were not separated (_scriptio continua_), nor the sentences punctuated; he asked himself whether the copyist, with such an archetype before him, had not divided the words at random, and he had no difficulty in reading: "...ipso enim nomine fatetur quid amet. Sapientiam ita quidam finierunt...." Bla.s.s, Reinach, and Lindsay, in the works referred to in the note, mention several other masterly and elegant emendations. Nor have the h.e.l.lenists and Latinists any monopoly; equally brilliant emendations might be culled from the works of Orientalists, Romancists, and Germanists, now that texts of Oriental, Romance, and Germanic languages have been subjected to verbal criticism. We have already stated that scholarly corrections are possible even in the text of quite modern doc.u.ments, reproduced typographically under the most favourable conditions.

Perhaps no one, in our day, has equalled Madvig in the art of conjectural emendation. But Madvig himself had no high opinion of the work of modern scholarship. He thought that the humanists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were, in this respect, better trained than modern scholars. The conjectural emendation of Greek and Latin texts is, in fact, a branch of sport, success in which is proportionate not only to a man's ingenuity and palaeographical instinct, but also to the correctness, rapidity, and delicacy of his appreciation of the niceties of the cla.s.sical languages. Now, the early scholars were undoubtedly too bold, but they were more intimately familiar with the cla.s.sical languages than our modern scholars are.

However that may be, there can be no doubt that numerous texts which have been preserved, in corrupt form, in unique copies, have resisted, and will continue to resist, the efforts of criticism. Very often criticism ascertains the fact of the text having been altered, states what the sense requires, and then prudently stops, every trace of the original reading having been obscured by a confused tangle of successive corrections and errors which it is hopeless to attempt to unravel. The scholars who devote themselves to the fascinating pursuit of conjectural criticism are liable, in their ardour, to suspect perfectly innocent readings, and, in desperate pa.s.sages, to propose adventurous hypotheses.

They are well aware of this, and therefore make it a rule to draw a very clear distinction, in their editions, between readings found in ma.n.u.scripts and their own restorations of the text.

(_c_) Third case. We possess several copies, which differ from each other, of a doc.u.ment whose original is lost. Here modern scholars have a marked advantage over their predecessors: besides being better informed, they set about the comparison of copies more methodically. The object is, as in the preceding case, to reconstruct the archetype as exactly as possible.

The scholars of earlier days had to struggle, as novices have to struggle now, in a case of this kind, against a very natural and a very reprehensible impulse--to use the first copy that comes to hand, whatever its character may happen to be. The second impulse is not much better--to use the oldest copy out of several of different date. In theory, and very often in practice, the relative age of the copies is of no importance; a sixteenth-century ma.n.u.script which reproduces a good lost copy of the eleventh century is much more valuable than a faulty and retouched copy made in the twelfth or thirteenth century. The third impulse is still far from being good; it is to count the attested readings and decide by the majority. Suppose there are twenty copies of a text; the reading A is attested eighteen times, the reading B twice.

To make this a reason for choosing A is to make the gratuitous a.s.sumption that all the ma.n.u.scripts have the same authority. This is an error of judgment; for if seventeen of the eighteen ma.n.u.scripts which give the reading A have been copied from the eighteenth, the reading A is in reality attested only once; and the only question is whether it is intrinsically better or worse than the reading B.

It has been recognised that the only rational procedure is to begin by determining in what relation the copies stand to each other. For this purpose we adopt as our starting-point the incontrovertible axiom that all the copies which contain the same mistakes in the same pa.s.sages must have been either copied from each other or all derived from a copy containing those mistakes. It is inconceivable that several copyists, independently reproducing an original free from errors, should all introduce exactly the same errors; ident.i.ty of errors attests community of origin. We shall cast aside without scruple all the copies derived from a single ma.n.u.script which has been preserved. Evidently they can have no value beyond what is possessed by their common source; if they differ from it, it can only be in virtue of new errors; it would be waste of time to study their variations. Having eliminated these, we have before us none but independent copies, which have been made directly from the archetype, or secondary copies whose source (a copy taken directly from the archetype) has been lost. In order to group the secondary copies into _families_, each of which shall represent what is substantially the same tradition, we again have recourse to the comparison of errors. By this method we can generally draw up without too much trouble a complete genealogical table (_stemma codic.u.m_) of the preserved copies, which will bring out very clearly their relative importance. This is not the place to discuss the difficult cases where, in consequence of too great a number of intermediaries having been lost, or from ancient copyists having arbitrarily blended the texts of different traditions, the operation becomes extremely laborious or impracticable. Besides, in these extreme cases there is no new method involved: the comparison of corresponding pa.s.sages is a powerful instrument, but it is the only one which criticism has at its disposal for this task.

When the genealogical tree of the ma.n.u.scripts has been drawn up, we endeavour to restore the text of the archetype by comparing the different traditions. If these agree and give a satisfactory text, there is no difficulty. If they differ, we decide between them. If they accidentally agree in giving a defective text, we have recourse to conjectural emendation, as if there were only one copy.

It is, theoretically, much more advantageous to have several independent copies of a lost original than to have only one, for the mere mechanical comparison of the different readings is often enough to remove obscurities which the uncertain light of conjectural criticism would never have illuminated. However, an abundance of ma.n.u.scripts is an embarra.s.sment rather than a help when the work of grouping them has been left undone or done badly; nothing can be more unsatisfactory than the arbitrary and hybrid restorations which are founded on copies whose relations to each other and to the archetype have not been ascertained beforehand. On the other hand, the application of rational methods requires, in some cases, a formidable expenditure of time and labour.

Some works are preserved in hundreds of copies all differing from each other; sometimes (as in the case of the Gospels) the variants of a text of quite moderate extent are to be counted by thousands; several years of a.s.siduous labour are necessary for the preparation of a critical edition of some mediaeval romances. And after all this labour, all these collations and comparisons, can we be sure that the text of the romance is sensibly better than it would have been if there had been only two or three ma.n.u.scripts to work upon? No. Some critical editions, owing to the apparent wealth of material applicable to the work, demand a mechanical effort which is altogether out of proportion to the positive results which are its reward.

"Critical editions" founded on several copies of a lost original ought to supply the public with the means of verifying the "_stemma codic.u.m_"

which the editor has drawn up, and should give the rejected variants in the notes. By this means competent readers are, at the worst, put in possession, if not of the best possible text, at least of the materials for constructing it.[74]

II. The results of textual criticism--a kind of cleaning and mending--are purely negative. By the aid of conjecture, or by the aid of conjecture and comparison combined, we are enabled to construct, not necessarily a good text, but the best text possible, of doc.u.ments whose original is lost. What we thus effect is the elimination of corrupt and advent.i.tious readings likely to cause error, and the recognition of suspected pa.s.sages as such. But it is obvious that no new information is supplied by this process. The text of a doc.u.ment which has been restored at the cost of infinite pains is not worth more than that of a doc.u.ment whose original has been preserved; on the contrary, it is worth less. If the autograph ma.n.u.script of the aeneid had not been destroyed, centuries of collation and conjecture would have been saved, and the text of the aeneid would have been better than it is. This is intended for those who excel at the "emendation game,"[75] who are in consequence fond of it, and would really be sorry to have no occasion to play it.

III. There will, however, be abundant scope for textual criticism as long as we do not possess the exact text of every historical doc.u.ment.

In the present state of science few labours are more useful than those which bring new texts to light or improve texts already known. It is a real service to the study of history to publish unedited or badly edited texts in a manner conformable to the rules of criticism. In every country learned societies without number are devoting the greater part of their resources and activity to this important work. But the immense number of the texts to be criticised,[76] and the minute care required by the operations of verbal criticism,[77] prevent the work of publication and restoration from advancing at any but a slow pace.

Before all the texts which are of interest for mediaeval and modern history shall have been edited or re-edited _secundum artem_, a long period must elapse, even supposing that the relatively rapid pace of the last few years should be still further accelerated.[78]

CHAPTER III

CRITICAL INVESTIGATION OF AUTHORSHIP

It would be absurd to look for information about a fact in the papers of some one who knew nothing, and could know nothing, about it. The first questions, then, which we ask when we are confronted with a doc.u.ment is: Where does it come from? who is the author of it? what is its date? A doc.u.ment in respect of which we necessarily are in total ignorance of the author, the place, and the date is good for nothing.

This truth, which seems elementary, has only been adequately recognised in our own day. Such is the natural [Greek: hakrishia] of man, that those who were the first to make a habit of inquiring into the authorship of doc.u.ments prided themselves, and justly, on the advance they had made.

Most modern doc.u.ments contain a precise indication of their authorship: in our days, books, newspaper articles, official papers, and even private writings, are, in general, dated and signed. Many ancient doc.u.ments, on the other hand, are anonymous, without date, and have no sufficient indication of their place of origin.

The spontaneous tendency of the human mind is to place confidence in the indications of authorship, when there are any. On the cover and in the preface of the _Chatiments_, Victor Hugo is named as the author; therefore Victor Hugo is the author of the _Chatiments_. In such and such a picture gallery we see an unsigned picture whose frame has been furnished by the management with a tablet bearing the name of Leonardo da Vinci; therefore Leonardo da Vinci painted this picture. A poem with the t.i.tle _Philomena_ is found under the name of Saint Bonaventura in M.

Clement's _Extraits des poetes chretiens_, in most editions of Saint Bonaventura's "works," and in a great number of mediaeval ma.n.u.scripts; therefore _Philomena_ was written by Saint Bonaventura, and "we may gather thence much precious knowledge of the very soul" of this holy man.[79] Vrain-Lucas offered to M. Chasles autographs of Vercingetorix, Cleopatra, and Saint Mary Magdalene, duly signed, and with the flourishes complete:[80] here, thought M. Chasles, are autographs of Vercingetorix, Cleopatra, and Saint Mary Magdalene. This is one of the most universal, and at the same time indestructible, forms of public credulity.

Experience and reflection have shown the necessity of methodically checking these instinctive impulses of confiding trust. The autographs of Vercingetorix, Cleopatra, and Mary Magdalene had been manufactured by Vrain-Lucas. The _Philomena_, attributed by mediaeval scribes now to Saint Bonaventura, now to Louis of Granada, now to John Hoveden, now to John Peckham, is perhaps by none of these authors, and certainly not by the first-named. Paintings in which there is not the least gleam of talent have, in the most celebrated galleries of Italy, been tricked out, without the least shadow of proof, with the glorious name of Leonardo. On the other hand, it is perfectly true that Victor Hugo is the author of the _Chatiments_. The conclusion is, that the most precise indications of authorship are never sufficient _by themselves_. They only afford a presumption, strong or weak--very strong, in general, where modern doc.u.ments are concerned, often very weak in the case of ancient doc.u.ments. False indications of authorship exist, some foisted upon insignificant works in order to enhance their value, some appended to works of merit in order to serve the reputation of a particular person, or to mystify posterity; and there are a hundred other motives which may easily be imagined, and of which a list has been drawn up:[81]

the "pseudepigraphic" literature of antiquity and the middle ages is enormous. There are, in addition, doc.u.ments which are forged from beginning to end; the forgers have naturally furnished them with very precise indications of their alleged authorship. Verification is therefore necessary. But how is it to be had? When the apparent authorship of a doc.u.ment is suspected, we use for its verification the same method which serves to fix, as far as possible, the origin of doc.u.ments which are furnished with no indications at all on this head.

As the procedure is the same in both cases, it is not necessary to distinguish further between them.

I. The chief instrument used in the investigation of authorship is the _internal a.n.a.lysis_ of the doc.u.ment under consideration, performed with a view to bring out any indications it may contain of a nature to supply information about the author, and the time and place in which he lived.

First of all we examine the handwriting of the doc.u.ment. Saint Bonaventura was born in 1221; if poems attributed to him are contained in ma.n.u.scripts executed in the eleventh century, we have in this circ.u.mstance an excellent proof that the attribution is ill-founded: no doc.u.ment of which there exists a copy in eleventh-century handwriting can be posterior in date to the eleventh century. Then we examine the language. It is known that certain forms have only been used in certain places and at certain dates. Most forgers have betrayed themselves by ignorance of facts of this kind; they let slip modern words or phrases.

It has been possible to establish the fact that certain Phoenician inscriptions, found in South America, were earlier than a certain German dissertation on a point of Phoenician syntax. In the case of official instruments we examine the formulae. If a doc.u.ment which purports to be a Merovingian charter does not exhibit the ordinary formulae of genuine Merovingian charters it must be spurious. Lastly, we note all the positive data which occur in the doc.u.ment--the facts which are mentioned or alluded to. When these facts are otherwise known, from sources which a forger could not have had at his disposal, the _bona fides_ of the doc.u.ment is established, and the date fixed approximately between the most recent event of which the author shows knowledge, and the next following event which he does not mention but would have done if he had known of it. Arguments may also be founded on the circ.u.mstance that particular facts are mentioned with approval, or particular opinions expressed, and help us to make a conjectural estimate of the status, the environment, and the character of the author.

When the internal a.n.a.lysis of a doc.u.ment is carefully performed, it generally gives us a tolerably accurate notion of its authorship. By means of a methodical comparison, inst.i.tuted between the various elements of the doc.u.ments a.n.a.lysed and the corresponding elements of similar doc.u.ments whose authorship was known with certainty, the detection of many a forgery[82] has been rendered possible, and additional information acquired about the circ.u.mstances under which most genuine doc.u.ments have been produced.

The results obtained by internal a.n.a.lysis are supplemented and verified by collecting all the external evidence relative to the doc.u.ment under criticism which can be found scattered over the doc.u.ments of the same or later epochs--quotations, biographical details about the author, and so on. Sometimes there is a significant absence of any such information: the fact that an alleged Merovingian charter has not been quoted by anybody before the seventeenth century, and has only been seen by a seventeenth-century scholar who has been convicted of fraud, suggests the thought that it is modern.

II. Hitherto we have considered only the simplest case, in which the doc.u.ment under examination is the work of a single author. But many doc.u.ments have, at different times, received additions which it is important to distinguish from the original text, in order that we may not attribute to X, the author of the text, what really belongs to Y or Z, his unforeseen collaborators.[83] There are two kinds of additions--interpolations and continuations. To interpolate is to insert into the text words or sentences which were not in the author's ma.n.u.script.[84] Usually interpolations are accidental, due to the negligence of the copyist, and explicable as the introduction into the text of interlinear glosses or marginal notes; but there are cases where some one has deliberately added to (or subst.i.tuted for) the author's text words or sentences out of his own head, for the sake of completeness, ornament, or emphasis. If we had before us the ma.n.u.script in which the deliberate interpolation was made, the appearance of the added matter and the traces of erasure would make the case clear at once. But the first interpolated copy has nearly always been lost, and in the copies derived from it every trace of addition or subst.i.tution has disappeared. There is no need to define "continuations." It is well known that many chronicles of the middle ages have been "continued" by various writers, none of whom took the trouble to indicate where his own work began or ended.

Sometimes interpolations and continuations can be very readily distinguished in the course of the operations for restoring a text of which there are several copies, when it so happens that some of these copies reproduce the primitive text as it was before any addition was made to it. But if all the copies are founded on previous copies which already contained the interpolations or continuations, recourse must be had to internal a.n.a.lysis. Is the style uniform throughout the doc.u.ment?

Does the book breathe one and the same spirit from cover to cover? Are there no contradictions, no gaps in the sequence of ideas? In practice, when the continuators or interpolators have been men of well-marked personality and decided views, a.n.a.lysis will separate the original from the additions as cleanly as a pair of scissors. When the whole is written in a level, colourless style, the lines of division are not so easy to see; it is then better to confess the fact than to multiply hypotheses.

III. The critical investigation of authorship is not finished as soon as a doc.u.ment has been accurately or approximately localised in s.p.a.ce and time, and as much information as possible obtained about the author or authors.[85] Here is a book: we wish to ascertain the origin of the information contained in it, that is, to be in a position to appreciate its value; is it enough to know that it was written in 1890, at Paris, by So-and-so? Perhaps So-and-so copied slavishly, without mentioning the fact, an earlier work, written in 1850. The responsible guarantor of the borrowed parts is not So-and-so, but the author of 1850. Plagiarism, it is true, is now rare, forbidden by the law, and considered dishonourable; formerly it was common, tolerated, and unpunished. Many historical doc.u.ments, with every appearance of originality, are nothing but unavowed repet.i.tions of earlier doc.u.ments, and historians occasionally experience, in this connection, remarkable disillusions.

Certain pa.s.sages in Eginhard, a ninth-century chronicler, are borrowed from Suetonius: they have nothing to do with the history of the ninth century; how if the fact had not been discovered? An event is attested three times, by three chroniclers; but these three attestations, which agree so admirably, are really only one if it is ascertained that two of the three chroniclers copied the third, or that the three parallel accounts have been drawn from one and the same source. Pontifical letters and Imperial charters of the middle ages contain eloquent pa.s.sages which must not be taken seriously; they are part of the official style, and were copied word for word from chancery formularies.

It belongs to the investigation of authorship to discover, as far as possible, the _sources_ utilised by the authors of doc.u.ments.

The problem thus presented to us has some resemblance to that of the restoration of texts of which we have already spoken. In both cases we proceed on the a.s.sumption that identical readings have a common source: a number of different scribes, in transcribing a text, will not make exactly the same mistakes in exactly the same places; a number of different writers, relating the same facts, will not have viewed them from exactly the same standpoint, nor will they say the same things in exactly the same language. The great complexity of historical events makes it extremely improbable that two independent observers should narrate them in the same manner. We endeavour to group the doc.u.ments into families in the same way as we make families of ma.n.u.scripts.

Similarly, we are enabled in the result to draw up genealogical tables.

The examiners who correct the compositions of candidates for the bachelor's degree sometimes notice that the papers of two candidates who sat next each other bear a family likeness. If they have a mind to find out which is derived from the other, they have no difficulty in doing so, in spite of the petty artifices (slight modifications, expansions, abstracts, additions, suppressions, transpositions) which the plagiarist multiplies in order to throw suspicion off the scent The two guilty ones are sufficiently betrayed by their common errors; the more culpable of the two is detected by the slips he will have made, and especially by the errors in his own papers which are due to peculiarities in those of his accommodating friend. Similarly when two ancient doc.u.ments are in question: when the author of one has copied directly from the other, the filiation is generally easy to establish; the plagiarist, whether he abridges or expands, nearly always betrays himself sooner or later.[86]

When there are three doc.u.ments in a family their mutual relationships are sometimes harder to specify. Let A, B, and C be the doc.u.ments.

Suppose A is the common source: perhaps B and C copied it independently; perhaps C only knew A through the medium of B, or B knew it only through C. If B and C have abridged the common source in different ways, they are evidently independent. When B depends on C, or _vice versa_, we have the simplest case, treated in the preceding paragraph. But suppose the author of C combined A and B, while B had already used A: the genealogy begins to get complicated. It is more complicated still when there are four, five, or more doc.u.ments in a family, for the number of possible combinations increases with great rapidity. However, if too many intermediate links have not been lost, criticism succeeds in disentangling the relationships by persistent and ingenious applications of the method of repeated comparisons. Modern scholars (Krusch, for example, who has made a speciality of Merovingian hagiography) have recently constructed, by the use of this method, precise genealogies of the utmost solidity.[87] The results of the critical investigation of authorship, as applied to the filiation of doc.u.ments, are of two kinds.

Firstly, lost doc.u.ments are reconstructed. Suppose two chroniclers, B and C, have used, each in his own way, a common source X, which has now disappeared. We may form an idea of X by piecing together the fragments of it which occur imbedded in B and C, just as we form an idea of a lost ma.n.u.script by comparing the partial copies of it which have been preserved. On the other hand, criticism destroys the authority of a host of "authentic" doc.u.ments--that is, doc.u.ments which no one suspects of having been falsified--by showing that they are derivative, that they are worth whatever their sources may be worth, and that, when they embellish their sources with imaginary details and rhetorical flourishes, they are worth just nothing at all. In Germany and England editors of doc.u.ments have introduced the excellent system of printing borrowed pa.s.sages in small characters, and original pa.s.sages whose source is unknown in larger characters. Thanks to this system it is possible to see at a glance that celebrated chronicles, which are often (very wrongly) quoted, are mere compilations, of no value in themselves: thus the _Flores historiarum_ of the self-styled Matthew of Westminster, perhaps the most popular of the English mediaeval chronicles, are almost entirely taken from original works by Wendover and Matthew of Paris.[88]

IV. The critical investigation of authorship saves historians from huge blunders. Its results are striking. By eliminating spurious doc.u.ments, by detecting false ascriptions, by determining the conditions of production of doc.u.ments which had been defaced by time, and by connecting them with their sources,[89] it has rendered services of such magnitude that to-day it is regarded as having a special right to the name of "criticism." It is usual to say of an historian that he "fails in criticism" when he neglects to distinguish between doc.u.ments, when he never mistrusts traditional ascriptions, and when he accepts, as if afraid to lose a single one, all the pieces of information, ancient or modern, good or bad, which come to him, from whatever quarter.[90]

This view is perfectly just. We must not, however, be satisfied with this form of criticism, and we must not abuse it.

We must not abuse it. The extreme of distrust, in these matters, is almost as mischievous as the extreme of credulity. Pere Hardouin, who attributed the works of Vergil and Horace to mediaeval monks, was every whit as ridiculous as the victim of Vrain-Lucas. It is an abuse of the methods of this species of criticism to apply them, as has been done, indiscriminately, for the mere pleasure of it. The bunglers who have used this species of criticism to brand as spurious perfectly genuine doc.u.ments, such as the writings of Hroswitha, the _Ligurinus_, and the bull _Unam Sanctam_,[91] or to establish imaginary filiations between certain annals, on the strength of superficial indications, would have discredited criticism before now if that had been possible. It is praiseworthy, certainly, to react against those who never raise a doubt about the authorship of a doc.u.ment; but it is carrying the reaction too far to take an exclusive interest in periods of history which depend on doc.u.ments of uncertain authorship. The only reason why the doc.u.ments of modern and contemporary history are found less interesting than those of antiquity and the early middle ages, is that the ident.i.ty which nearly always obtains between their apparent and their real authorship leaves no room for those knotty problems of attribution in which the _virtuosi_ of criticism are accustomed to display their skill.[92]

Nor must we be content with it. The critical investigation of authorship, like textual criticism, is preparatory, and its results negative. Its final aim and crowning achievement is to get rid of doc.u.ments which are not doc.u.ments, and which would have misled us; that is all. "It teaches us not to use bad doc.u.ments; it does not teach us how to turn good ones to account."[93] It is not the whole of "historical criticism;" it is only one stone in the edifice.[94]