ments the incompetence of the notaries The imperfect state of many manuand the carelessness of the copyists, who scripts when discovered increased this write not what they find, but what they unfortunate tendency. After the lapse understand; and while they seek to cor- of centuries the ancient codices were in rect the errors of others succeed only many cases worm-eaten or defective, in making greater of their own. "It parts having been torn out or defaced, surpasses all understanding," says Ebert, and rendered illegible by dust and neg"how arbitrary a license was exercised lect. These gaps or lacunæ in the text in the Middle Ages in changing, aug- were often filled up by scholars eager to meuting, and at times completely trans- show their familiarity with the subject forming the ancient writers, especially of which the author wrote, or their skill the historians." Criticism, as now un- in catching his spirit and imitating his derstood, was unknown, and the most style. puerile judgments passed for profound scholarship. The plain meaning of authors was often not so much as suspected, and, in order to make their language conform to the interpretations of bungling commentators, it was changed to forms which the original writers would scarcely have comprehended. Coluccio Salutato speaks of the extent to which, at the end of the fourteenth century, codices were corrupted and spoiled through ignorance and carelessness, through the presumption of those who were eager to better that which they themselves did not understand, through the unscrupulousness of others who purposely altered the text to introduce into it their own opinions, and through the caprice of certain teachers who would have the ancient authors speak in any way that best suited their whims. In many cases changes started merely as suggested readings. These were sometimes written in the margin, but frequently, in the case of both poetry and prose, as interlinear notes. In subsequent transcriptions by less competent or less principled copyists, such annotations were often incorporated in the text, or were accepted as the correct readings, lines or sentences of the original being stricken out, and these being substituted instead. Sometimes the scribe even carried his ignoble task so far as to cast these glosses into metre, in order to make them fit the text of poems. In this way Lionardo Bruni undertook to restore the second Decade of Livy in a compilation entitled De Primo Bello Punico. Similarly, Gasparino da Barzizza attempted to supply the deficiencies of Cicero's De Oratore, which up to that time had existed only in a mutilated condition; but although the work is said to have been well done, it was rendered superfluous by the discovery of the entire treatise at Lodi about 1425. A similar attempt, in the case of Quintilian's Institutions, came to naught from the finding of a complete manuscript of that author at St. Gall. At the present day such efforts would be regarded only as the dilettante trifling of a man of elegant leisure, but then they were eagerly caught up by copyists and booksellers, who, unwilling to issue defective editions, were not scrupulous about the means employed to fill out the text. A still more culpable course was pursued by unprincipled rhetoricians, who are said to have introduced whole passages into the works of the ancient orators, in order to secure stronger declamatory effects. It is probably true, as Heeren and Ebert have stated, that the corruption of ancient literature took place chiefly in the latter half of the century preceding the discovery of printing. We have seen, however, that the process began among the ancients themselves, and did not cease during the entire period of the Middle Ages. These facts must be borne in mind to prevent their statement from being understood in too sweeping a sense. The establishment of the printing-press about the middle of the fifteenth century at length gave to literature a fixed and permanent form, and with this great event the work of corruption ceased. William S. Liscomb. AMIABILITY: A PHILOSOPHICAL TRAGEDY. SCENE: The morning-room at MISS MAYBERRY'S. That young lady is seated in an armchair R. manipulating a large fan. Opposite to her, with his eyes fixed indolently upon the vista of the garden seen through the open windows, is sitting MR. NORMAN RUTGERS. A pause in the conversation has somehow occurred. MISS M. (looking up smilingly). Well? MR. R. (starting and returning the smile). I beg your pardon! You see that is the worst of feeling one's self so confirmedly at ease with an old friend, Emily. When a man is wooed by a meditative moment he succumbs to it without a struggle. MISS M. No, not the worst of - shall I call it our predicament? A good many men, not invariably sensitive, have thought that the privilege of listening to wholesome truths about themselves from the old friend's lips was a severe handicap on the relationship. But don't look about for your hat, NorI don't see you often enough nowadays not to forget your faults when I do. (I wonder if it is n't a pity that I ever saw them so distinctly.) Come, tell me what Roman thought was wrinkling your forehead so speculatively just now. Your brow looked like a bar of music, the minor chord of a weighty cogitation sprawled all over it. man. MR. R. Thanks: your simile flatters. As it happens, however, I was only recollecting that Jack Flagler promised to ride with me after luncheon, but sent me word that his wife was in her room with such a preciously severe specimen of those periodical headaches of hers that he thought that he must stay at home for once. And then I went on to remember, for the five hundredth time, what an unsymmetrical pair those two are, Emily, how contrasted. I never see Jack but that I fume. MISS M. (dryly). It's very good of you to take the trouble. Why, please? MR. R. Why? Think of Jack handsome, clever, attractive fellow, a man liked by every woman or other man directly he is met mated for life to a girl like Janet Rainsworth. (He rises and stands on the rug, leaning upon the chimney-piece.) Miss M. (regarding him, not without admiration, as the attitude is one which becomes him capitally). You are very fond of your friends, Norman, are you not? In fact, it's an idiosyncrasy which ought to be numbered among the best But let me tell you that Janet, whom I have always known better and more fairly judged than you, may possibly be denied her share of compassion, on account of this marriage. In fact, I am sure she is. Oh, no; don't look at me in that bewildered fashion. You are prejudiced; but reasonable in most arguments. MR. R. Heavens, Emily! Janet Flagler denied her share of compassion! And wherefore due her? She is one of the luckiest women who ever breathed! Think of it! Once a beauty, but faded by the time she reached four and twenty; wearied of society because she had ever lacked the charm to win her success in it; increasingly an invalid, so much so that her great wealth brought no enjoyment with it, she loved and (dare we suggest anything else, since he has married her?) was loved by the most popular and charming fellow of our set. Himself vigorous and full of life; possessed of that perfect tact which enabled him to adapt himself admirably to any social surroundings; above all, endowed with the sunniest and most unfailing amiability—why, Emily, the fact that Jack Flagler is to-day what he was before he married that serious schoolmate of yours is enough to make his character "stick fiery off" forever. There! I'm out of breath! (Subsides into his seat, rather ashamed of his own warmth.) MISS M. "The sunniest and most unfailing amiability." Ah, my good Norman, finish that sentence. Finish it with "and therefore, one of the most completely and delightfully selfish of men with whom it is a wife's lot to be brought into daily contact." Poor Janet! Small wonder that she has grown languid, and jaded, and faded! MR. R. (indignantly). Upon my word, Emily, one would fancy that amiability were tantamount to selfishness; that, arguing from Jack, the more a mortal is distinguished for the first quality, the more inevitably the second marks him for its own. MISS M. Precisely. My dear Norman, selfishness is not necessarily aggressive. The worst phase of it, to my mind, is the passive, the nearly passive. Just this phase is it that stamps your "unfailingly amiable" men indelibly. It is quite as masterful in its way as that manifestation of it which prompts one child to snatch a toy from another, or to refuse to surrender it. Amiability refuses to surrender itself. to any unpleasant emotion. Your Jack Flaglers never stint their wives' pockets, nor scant their wardrobes, that my lord may have more money for cigars or cordials. Not at all. They content themselves with slipping beyond the little range of all which daily wearies, perplexes, ruffles, the Janet Rainsworths. They smil ingly decline to be troubled with these things. A good deal of the time they are unconscious of their effort to maintain such a course. Their amiability is become overwrapping, habitual, an armament cap-a-pié, which, finally, little can pierce! (Miss M., who has been speaking very fast, and as if from some internal grievance, here stops, with a meaning look into Mr. Rutger's slightly annoyed countenance, bites her lips, and taps her wrist with her fan.) MR. R. Really, Emily, you are still as casuistic as ever, -as you used to be on one or two other questions (looking intelligently at her) which I have had the honor to discuss with you. You know that I have always said that you missed your vocation. You should have been the great American female lawyer. You should have written A System of Social Philosophy, by Miss Emily Arnold Mayberry, instead of — over, a portrait with every lineament of which my eyes have so long been familiar. How handsome he always looks when he is really interested over anything!) MR. R. (laughing). - Instead of simply existing as altogether too wise, too charming a woman for your old friends' peace of heart. MISS M. (with slightly satirical accent). For the pieces of heart of one of my old friends, you mean? Ah! But no diverging. We enter upon a whole avenue of difference, I see. I feel an unmistakable belligerence. (He always provokes it in me, nowadays. It all rises from this tedious, this childish protest of heart against judgment, old battle. Pshaw!) I repeat it, Norman. Your Jack Flaglers are apt to reach a kind of dead-centre of good the nature, from which delightful equipoise it is hard to throw them off. The man or woman, standing beside them, who is pricked by the thousand pins and needles of life's every four and twenty hours, is forced at last to admit with a sigh that to turn in their direction for sympathy is a waste. Their nearness aggravates this fact. If the process of perfecting the amiability be not complete, if there be merely more or less admirable capital in hand for it to increase from, why, then there is a gentle act of repulsion on the amiable person's part toward the comer. If the process be complete, there is next to none. Ah, Norman, a curious life, a sad life, must the woman lead who is supposed to be happy in the possession of not a comparatively, but a perfectly amiable man for her liege lord! MR. R. (uneasily). Ha, ha, Emily! Really, you amuse me. According to According to you, there ought to be no effort to acquire smoothness and sweetness and suavity of temper in this irritable and fussy world. It is a moral descent, a peril to be shunned. Surely, you will not urge that amiability is always assoIciated in individuals with the most dis agreeable characteristic of all. I really don't know what you will be laying down next, though! MISS M. Ah, my friend Norman, it is the exception which proves the rule. Exceptions there are, indeed, praise be thanked! but we seem to find them white-haired, our mothers and fathers, our grandmothers and grandfathers. Is not that deep-rooted peace, that tranquil spirit, of old age usually united with a great indifference to exactly those trifles which so stimulate, so exhaust, our younger mental energies? Age is rarely stirred by preferences. It has a single great thought upon which to reflect. Life has become a diminuendo. MR. R. (I shall probably receive a charge upon my right wing, direct; but here goes!) Look here, Emily. I I Let us know a man, let us suppose. also suppose him young, with zest for life, with few responsibilities of it to hamper him and plenty of advantages for enjoying it. He makes friends with ease, especially friends of his own sex. (Here Miss Mayberry's face exhibits a faint smile, as if perceiving the speaker's aim.) Furthermore, he likes a somewhat plentiful assortment of the latter about him as he journeys through this vale of perplexities. But mark me! while he chooses this man's companionship for, in a minor degree, this virtue, and that man's for that, one thing he exacts from each of them, primarily and positively, as the passport to his regard and his intimacy. The possession of wit, social rank, wealth, reputation, generosity, truth, matters not, unless this one thing be of their very essence. This one thing is an amiable, companionable disposition. MISS M. Excuse me, Norman, but I really think you'd better talk about yourself, without bothering over a disguise. Continue. MR. R. (reddening perceptibly, but going on hurriedly). All right; only wait till I have finished. Where was I? Oh, well, I this fellow, that is we get this sort of set around us. The dozen or so included within it see one another daily. Wherever I look I see the reflection of one general and attractive type of mankind varied only by minor expressions of individuality. Now surely you see that being thus alongside each other so constantly, making test of our personalities by the hundred petty accidents of intimacy, it is simply impossible that we should be what your view of our distinguishing characteristic declares us, the most completely selfish coterie of human beings imaginable. Our clique could not hold together a day. To oblige, to help in any emergency, small or great Miss M. Stop! I anticipate your argument. You are about to say that you know each other too thoroughly not to have continually encountered mutual selfishness, did it so pervade your clique. The answer is easy. You all instinctively not by any deliberate or rapid process of reasoning, but instinctively avoid, in your daily intercourse, friction upon just those sensitive points of your respective characters which would at once reveal to you each other's actual personality - selfishness. Without realizing it, you intuitively slip past, you recoil, you glide, often by a narrow escape, from what would suddenly develop the exercise of your pleasant friends' latent disagreeablenesses. I describe the act as intuitive, yet in some part it is the result of that insight and education which your friendship has given you. Nevertheless, you do not realize that you avoid; and thus is perpetuated the amiability of this precious galaxy of good tempers, in sæcula seculorum. Amen. MR. R. (laughing). Very nicely managed, Emily, very, upon my word! for a woman. MISS M. (with a little burst of indignation which hints that her interest in the topic has now ceased to be purely pro argumento). For a woman! Norman ! I'm ashamed of you! (The fan begins to oscillate actively again. Pause.) MR. R. (How she always drives me up into a corner, does n't she! To't again.) Well, I won't deny that I could n't have done half so well myself. But look here, for another view of the question from a fresh stand-point. Do you remember nonsense, of course you do! - those pleasant five years which preceded the marriage of Chauncey your brother? Very well. Dur ing each of those five years, Emily, Chauncey Mayberry and I were together, day and night. I sometimes think that we two were as ideally intimate a pair of men as have ever drawn breath. We walked, we traveled, we ate, we drank, we lived and slept, to gether three fourths of our time. If Chauncey was called out of town, I shut my own rooms and went somewhere myself. You and he always came down to the Bay in June, and I spent the other half of the summer with your people. (Miss M. sighs rather profoundly.) It is impossible that any mortal except one who had entered into existence in the same hour with Chauncey, or shared his home with him, could know him more au fond, see him in more varied lights, than I do or did. Now, Emily, I chose and strove to keep Chauncey for my friend, and liked him primarily because of the true answer which his nature rang to this watchword of mine, - amiability. I never saw Chauncey irritated at trifles. I never found it possible to wrangle with him. We never had a difference. If the subject for one cropped up, Chauncey was, I am sure, more prompt than I to give way, to compromise. Emily, do you mean to tell me that throughout all those years of association I never discovered Chauncey's real nature? Measured by his most ample endowment of disposition, that nature must have been a consummate selfishness toward others, at times when I was not at his side. Be careful, Emily; and (laughing) remember that Chauncey is married and lives in Brooklyn. De mortuis nil! (Another short silence ensues.) Miss M. (who, while Mr. R. has been speaking, has been lost in retrospect). I will be cautious, Norman, and honest as well. I can only reply to you by again asserting what I have called the theory of "intuitive avoidance," betwixt amiable friends; by reminding you that there can be between man and man, as well as between man and woman, a regard so great that, as if by a miraculous blindness, the most glaring fault is not perceived; and last, by calling your attention to your leaving a much larger loophole than you may think, when you admit in this proposition that you did |