Astronomicon

there it still stands in M. A corrector of the archetype with some knowledge of astronomy perceived that it had nothing to do with 612 sqq. and the colure of the equinoxes, that it could only refer to the arctic circle, and that its right place therefore was before 568, where alter the other is the second parallel circle, the tropic of Cancer. He accordingly marked it for deletion here and added it in the margin at that place, prefixing a bad verse of his own, 566, to complete the sentence; and in the margin at 612, to complete the sentence 612-7, he wrote three verses, 564 565 565A, descriptive of the colure of the equinoxes and equivalent in their contents to the genuine verses 609-611, which by reason of their transposition escaped his notice.The numeration of verses in this neighbourhood, which we inherit from Jacob, may mislead, nay it has misled, the unwary; so let me say that 564 and 565 do not stand before 566 in the mss manuscripts but were put there by Jacob: in the mss they stand before 612, though separated from it in M by two verses, 565A (to which I gave that number because it follows Jacob's 565 and belongs to it) and 567, which in M occurs here as well as before 568. These corrections were received into α and β, but not all of them into both. In α the verse 567 was abolished where it stood, and 566 and 567 were inserted before 568, but only 564 and 565 were inserted before 612. In β the verses 566 and 567 were similarly inserted before 568, but 567 was not deleted in its original place; all the three verses 564 565 565A were inserted, but above 567 and not below it, and so not immediately before 612.Not even when I had thus explained on p. 53 of my first volume the origin of 564 565 565A and their cohesion with 612 did Mr Thielscher comprehend it. Hypnotised, I suppose, by Jacob's numeration, he imagined that 564, genuine in his opinion, cohered with 563 and referred (which it cannot) to the arctic circle, that 565 was interpolated to fill a gap at that point and also referred to the arctic circle (which again it cannot), and that 565A was added (with what conceivable motive or meaning?) after the transcription of α (or as he says L) and so found its way only into β (or as he says M). I may remark here that one of the leaves of Mr Thielscher's archetype contains 45 verses instead of 44, so that precise calculation ceases; the same leaf of Mr Garrod's has room for 46. But Mr Garrod's whole disputation on the form of the archetype, pp. xix-xxv, is futile; not only nor chiefly because of its mistakes in fact and arithmetic, but because his pagination habitually ignores the space occupied by the titles which the archetype is known to have contained, and only takes account of them when it happens to suit his purpose.

To the same corrector I attribute certain phenomena presented by the titlesIf the titles before 539 and 561 existed in the ms whose leaves were transposed, which we have seen to be unlikely, that will not disturb the reckoning; it will only reduce the number of missing verses from 9 to 7 or perhaps 6. in this part of the poem. The title de magnitudine et latitudine on the magnitude and latitude (GL, latitudine et magnitudine on the latitude and magnitude M) mundi et signorum of the world and the signs before 539 is one of the ordinary series and correctly states the