CODICIBUS AND EDITIONS.

the arrangement, the verses were so loosened that [some] from the ends [were moved] into the middle, and from this into both places [they were moved], and indeed in such a way that, which unless it had been done by design and art, could scarcely have happened, [creating] some sort of sense. If we must believe this, it is no longer permitted to dispute with the disciples of Epicurus about the course of atoms. This design is not only lacking in reason but is also dangerous and full of risk. For first, in such a diversity of talents and judgments, everyone institutes arrangements in one way or another, yet with equal right, since once it has been accepted [as a principle] by one's own whim: *) then if you once begin to follow that, [the question of] where one must stop and how far it is permitted to progress can scarcely be defined in writers; and there is no [writer], especially [in Tibullus], who closes his thought with nearly every distich, in which I would dare to say that I wish to make a sufficiently convenient sense by tearing [them] apart and arranging them according to a certain rationale. However, Broukhusius and others approved of this undertaking. **)

*) That life is read in the Jens edition, p. 222; but Scaliger mentions it, as I have been able to see. Let the example be what we have seen done before our eyes by the ingenuity of Sam. Hen- [who] from a specimen of an edition, transposed the Scaligerian [verses] and arranged them in another way, also quite probably- [and] progressing further, even [when] the elegies are otherwise dis- [he] confessed (see Göttingen 1792, p. 1651 sq.). However, the whole design of this learned man [is] scarcely [to be approved].

I have considered that [the manuscripts] contain only shreds and fragments: either because that exemplar from which our codices were derived was lacerated and mutilated, or because that exemplar contained only excerpts made by the labor of some learned man from a fuller codex. Hence those gaps; hence those gaping thoughts enclosed in distichs. Jos. Scaliger had turned over a similar collection of eclogues. It could also have occupied both places, so that that codex contained only excerpts and had contracted a defect in many places, because so many pentameters had fallen out; these gaps provided an opportunity for the desire of interpolating [text].

[I believe] myself to be on a firmer and safer path in this, [in] many parts of the poet.

**) But now Ayrmannus criticizes this, besides Vulpius, in §. 69 and §. 71.