OF TIBULLUS

Janus Broukhusius, a man of elegant talent and much learning, is undoubtedly the one to whom Tibullus owes the most, if not by interpretation, then by the apparatus of critical subsidies. For he seems to have had little explored what the office of a good interpreter might demand: for according to the custom of his century, he sees nothing that needs to be illustrated, unless he has stumbled upon a more exquisite form of speech or encountered a variety of reading; then, indeed, he involves both the reader and the poet in a cloud of examples, with the light that was expected sometimes more withdrawn than brought; he neither illustrates nor perceives the obscure thoughts himself. He keeps his talent and mind—as learned men were accustomed to do—within the boundaries of individual words or enunciations. He preferred to follow the recension of Scaliger religiously—as if carried away by study and admiration of the great man—than to use judgment and the authority of books. Yet even so, he deserted Scaliger in some places. Nor, indeed, was any other equipped with greater supplies of books. For he also diligently examined the editions of previous times, and those which had been noted from books by learned men, especially by Statius and Scaliger; and he brought with him from home supplies not to be despised; he possessed three manuscript books, paper and recent; excerpts of Lipsius from Roman codices, transcribed by Dousa in the margin of the Plantin edition; two Wittian parchment books, of which he calls one a book of good note; variant readings from the Colbertine codex; other variants from a manuscript codex noted by a learned hand in the margin of the Brescia edition; variant readings from the codex of William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury; variant readings excerpted from written books by M. Ant. Poccho; and the Recognitions of Ant. Perreius inscribed in the margin of the 1515 Aldine. He also had received things once prepared for Tibullus by Heinsius: a paper book, variant readings noted in the margin of the Gryphian edition—which was in the Vatican—and the collations of Ang. Colotius Bassius, *) more diligent than those which had fallen to Statius; two Vatican codices; one of Fulvius Ursinus also from the Vatican library; a recent book of Scaliger, with his excerpts and the Cujacian one; and variant readings in the margin of the [edition...]

*) Regarding his work on correcting codices, see Mehus in the Life of Ambrosius, p. 290.

catchword: editio-