REVIEWS AND DISCUSSIONS 171 Scriptures, and (by contrast to Jerome and Rufinus) did not bring in their train a whole network of far-flung 'party' allegiances to keep the flames of controversy well alight. Dr. Kelly's justification of his detailed analysis of the Augustine correspondence in terms of the assessment of personal characteristics (' both men spring startlingly to life ') brings us once more to the core of his book. It is throughout an eminent study of Jerome as an individual; Dr. Kelly's long exposure to his subject has qualified him to know as no other the kind of man that Jerome was-the good points and, in no less quantity, the bad. The result is an honest, well-judged, and scholarly biography, and without doubt a contribution of major importance to patristic and late Roman studies. Yet the fact that it still seems necessary here to speak of these as two distinct spheres perhaps crystallizes the weakness of the book-we still await the work which will really succeed in combining the two, and produce a study of Jerome not only as a father of the church but as a man of his times. Department of Classics and Ancient History, University College of Swansea FROM POLITIAN TO PASQUALI By A. T. GRAFTON E. J. KENNEY, THE CLASSICAL TEXT. ASPECTS OF EDITING IN THE AGE OF THE PRINTED BOOK (Sather Classical Lectures XLIV). Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1 974. Pp. xii + 174. 44 * 50. In his Storia della tradizione e critica del testo G. Pasquali showed that Lachmann and his followers had taken too narrow a view of the history of texts. In particular, they had been wrong to ignore humanistic MSS and collations as being 'late' and 'derivative'. To be sure, as scholars the humanists were by no means trustworthy; they threw old MSS away once they had copied them in a more legible script, and their collations were imprecise and incomplete. But their MSS and collations nonetheless preserved genuine readings not found in the earlier extant witnesses, and they must therefore be consulted, not ignored, by modern critics. In I959-60 a disciple of Pasquali, S. Timpanaro, revised Pasquali's analysis. He showed that the very humanists Pasquali criticized had in fact invented some of the key elements of ' Lachmann's method'. For example, the genealogical study of MSS went back to Politian and Vettori, and Politian had even employed the elimination principle. Professor Kenney, whose Sather Lectures on The Classical Text. Aspects of Editing in the Age of the Printed Book are dedicated to Timpanaro, has now attempted to revise Timpanaro's analysis, in emphasis if not in substance. Where Timpanaro was concerned with the similarities between Lachmann and his predecessors, Kenney is concerned with the differences. He seeks to show that the early editors failed to do what Lachmann did, to explain why they failed, and to analyze the modern editorial methods that have replaced the philology of the humanists. In this clear and lively set of lectures, Professor Kenney has tried ' to sketch between one pair of covers, and that not at great length, the history of the editing and criticism of classical texts from I465 to the present day. . .' (p. ix). He clearly says that he is offering not a piece of original research but a synthesis of the existing secondary literature: ' The activities of a number of the key figures in this field have now been documented in learned monographs ... The time seemed to be ripe for an attempt at a synthesis of this detailed material in which the contributions of the protagonists of this branch of learning might be placed in some sort of historical perspective' (ibid.). And he rightly acknowledges that it is not easy to execute such a piece of compression successfully: ' I am well aware that to some I shall seem to have bitten off more than I can chew ' (ibid.). The book's method, as its length requires, is one of ' selective illustration '; and, as Professor Kenney says, ' it will succeed or fail in its object principally on the merits of the selection' (p. x). It is my belief that Professor Kenney's project for a synthesis is premature, and that in any case he has not been successful in synthesizing even the inadequate monographic material that is now available. But the reader will do well to keep Professor Kenney's statements about his intentions in mind while assessing the present criticism of his book. Professor Kenney's thesis emerges clearly from the title of his first chapter: ' The false problem'. He argues that for the first three centuries and more of printing, editors of classical texts went about their task in the wrong way. The first editors of most works did not attempt to reproduce the text transmitted by the oldest MSS. Rather, they printed haphazard and slovenly reproductions of whatever MS-usually an inferior one-happened to be available to them. The text of the editio princeps, or of some other early printing, was reproduced by editor after editor and became the vulgate. Editors tinkered with the details of this vulgate. To remedy obvious corruptions they introduced better readings both from MSS and by conjecture. But they did not try to abandon the vulgate and re-establish the text historically by founding it on the best extant MSS. Consequently, they could not possibly reconstruct the original form of the text.