This volume has grown in my handsduring the last eighteen months. If I had contented myself with a shortcommentary, it might have appeared sooner and in a slighter form. But inaddition to the full and careful illustration required for the matter ofQuintilian’s Tenth Book, the criticism of the text has become soimportant as to call for separate treatment. It has engaged, withinrecent years, a large share of the attention of some of the foremostscholars on the Continent. Even while this volume was passing throughthe press, fresh evidence of their continued activity was received inthe shape of two valuable papers—an article by Moriz Kiderlin inone of the current numbers of the Rheinisches Museum, andBecher’s ‘Zum zehnten Buch des Quintilianus’ in the Programm desKöniglichen Gymnasiums zu Aurich for Easter, 1891. The latter I havefound especially interesting, as confirming many of the conclusions atwhich, with the help of one of the manuscripts in the British Museum(Harl. 4995), I had arrived in regard to textual difficulties.
The importance ascribed to another English codex (Harl. 2664) will,I venture to think, be held to be justified by the account of it given inthe Introduction. After I had examined it for myself, a collation of it waskindly put at my disposal by Mr. L. C. Purser, of Trinity College, Dublin,to whom I take this opportunity of rendering my best thanks. I am indebtedalso to M. Ch. Fierville, Censeur des études au Lycée Charlemagne,for sending me his collation of four important Paris manuscripts (Pratensis,Puteanus, 7231 and 7696), and also of the Spanish Salmantinus. As to the othercodices which I have been at the trouble of collating personally, it will notbe imagined that any mistaken estimate has been formed of their value. If someof them throw little fresh light on existing difficulties, they have each abearing on the history of the constitution of the text; and it seemed desirableto complete, by some account of them, the elaborate description of theManuscripts of Quintilian given by M. Fierville in his latest volume.
A reference to the list of authorities consulted will show the extentof the obligations incurred to other editors and critics. Kruger’s thirdedition has been especially useful. And though Professor Mayor’scommentary extends only to the fifty-sixth section of the first chapter,I trust I have profited by the example of scholarly thoroughnesswhich he set me in the part of the work which he was able to overtake.His Analysis has also been largely followed.
For convenience of reference, a table of places has been added inwhich the text of this edition differs from that of Halm and of Meister.Special attention has been paid to the matter of punctuation, in regardto which German methods have not been adopted.
One or two of my own conjectural emendations I have presumed toinsert in the text, and others are suggested in the Critical Notes.Perhaps the most important is sic dicere for the MS.inicere at 7 §29.
If my volume should strike any student as having been prepared on tooelaborate a scale, I trust it will be remembered that