The Birmingham age-herald., 1906-12-09

or text criticism that a copylSt IS much more likely to lengthen than to abbrevi- ate his text; and especially is this true when he seems to see how the text may be improved, in sense or in sound, by some slight additions Now, we have before us a case in point. No ear, not utterly desti- tute of every trace of metre music and melody, can fail to perceive that
 Little Jack Horner Sat in a corner,'
 ' is bald and harsh as compared with
 Little Johnnie Horner
 Sitting in corner,'
 and, though, on momentous question like this, would not dare to dogmatize, still, after a principle has been firmly es- tablished under the labors of such schol- ars as Bentley and Mill and Lachman and Griesbach and Tregelles and Scrivener and Tischendorf and Westcott and Hort, I am constrained to decide in favor of the shorter recenson.
 "In the third line of our text, And pulled out plum
 as it reads in the received version, there are some doubts as to the word pulled as there are some few, though not very ancient, manuscripts, which read picked for pulled Pulled however, has the decided preponderance of external evi- dence in its favor, and, therefore, it is not necessary for us to go into the ques- tion of the diplomatic evidence, however interesting that might be.
 "Once more: In the last line,
 And said, What good boy am I,"' Common version. following "Textus Re- ceptus) the authorities are by no means agreed on the word good Not a few Goddess, and some of no mean antiquity have 'brave;' others have nice and one has smart Upon the whole, the better opinion seems to be that the Textus Re- ceptus Is right; and hence we have re- taned good
 Having now settled the purity of the text, I will proceed to the presentation and discussion of the great facts which it sets before us.
 ''The text is brief epic poem-that is to say, a poem which depicts and celebrates the actions, thoughts, feelings, aspira- tons-in a word, the character of hero. Our first and main business, then, is with the hero himself. And
 T. He is called little.
 "We cannot doubt that the poet really meant to apply the adjective, 1ittle,' to the hero of the poem. Widely as the man. uscripts differ on other matters (which we have already noticed). there is per fectly unanimous consensus of all extant codices on this point. No codex, ancient or fnOueTn, IS WlI1OuI I0e WOr0 'llttlo. And yet the question of the actual and historical diminutiveness of the late Mis- ter Cor Master) Horner Is by no means settled. For, fin the first place, we are to remember that we are dealing with poetry, and it would be utterly unreasonable to interpret poetry by the canons of prosaic history
 Again: The latest investigation has pretty clearly established the conclusion that the poem was written by mother; and the weight of the evidence points to an Oriental writer-that is to say, a writer who lived at. or in the vicinity of that great eastern city. Boston. Now, to in- terpret Oriental poetry (written, too, by mother). as if it were simple history, is to violate the very first principles of sound hermeneutics. We know how prone moth- CTS are to belttle what they love. This principle seems to be inherent in human nature; and, indeed. 1t is, in one form or another. the historical basis of those words which we call 'diminutives' 'Bir- die, 'doggie, 'pigge and even johnnie are examples under this great law On this point I am not speculating, but am simply stating principle well known to all scholars The modern. mighty, mar velous, magnificent Science of Language,' born in the brain of Grimm, nursed and nurtured by the herculean labors of Bopp and Pott, adorned by the genius of Max Muller and beautifed and popuarized by our own Whitney. has clearly established this great law of human speech. Under such circumstances as these I would be the last to dogmatize as to the question of the real personal dimensions of our hero.
 'IT He sat in a corner. "On this point. too. all our authorities, ancient and modern, are at one. Upon the whole. am inclined to regard the state- ment as fact: and as the question is an interesting one. will proceed to give my reasons:
 'I hold that the corner was the nSost atural place for the boy to sit. when he was eating pie. and particularly a Christmas pie, because