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Jeremiah Markland, 1693–17761

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2013

C. Collard
C. Collard
Affiliation:
University College of Swansea
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Extract

‘It is probable that Englishmen are right in counting Porson the second of English scholars, but many judges on the Continent would give that rank to Markland. He is the only one except Bentley who has been highly and equally eminent in Greek and Latin; and I believe that Bentley did him the honour, extravagant I admit, to be jealous of him.’

No judgment of Markland's scholarship will be better founded than this, written by A.E.Housman in 1920. The surmise of Bentley's jealousy gives it special colour, but there is little record of what passed between the two men. In 1718 Markland, then a newly elected Fellow of Peterhouse, represented the Regent Masters when the Caput of the University voted to deprive Bentley of his degrees. It is not known whether Markland himself thought Bentley's conduct contumelious, and within a few years, when Markland published his first book, he was writing with proper deference to the age's greatest scholar.

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Research Article
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Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society (Second Series) , Volume 22 , 1976, pp. 1 - 13
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Copyright © The Author(s). Published online by Cambridge University Press 1976

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References

NOTES

2. CR xxxiv (1920), 111Google Scholar (= Classical papers 1005), a review of I. Bywater's posthumously published inaugural lecture at Oxford, Four centuries of Greek learning in England (1919). One Continental judge at least, of equal authority with Housman, did not share his opinion of Markland: Wilamowitz, , Geschichte der Philologie (1927 3), p. 37Google Scholar; cf. n. 38 below.

3. See Monk, J.H., Life of Richard Bentley (1833 2), II.59fGoogle Scholar.

4. Bentley's copy of Markland's Epistola is in the British (Museum) Library; his annotations are tersely firm, in praise or censure. In the Praefatio to his Statius (1728), Markland records that Bentley and others passed their comments on his Epistola to him in a friendly way (‘… comiter monuerunt’).

5. Nichols IV.275.

6. Monk, , Life of Bentley II.400Google Scholar.

7. Walker, T.A., Peterhouse (1935), p. 15Google Scholar.

8. Prof. Kenney tells me that when Christ's Hospital moved from London to Horsham at the beginning of the present century, the school was reorganized on conventional public school lines into Houses instead of the old numbered Wards; and search was made for suitably distinguished Old Blues to serve as eponyms. One of the choices was Joshua Barnes, Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge in the generation before Markland, whose fame rests on his self-important and dishonest edition of Euripides and whom Bentley despised. ‘Remarkable and deplorable’ (says Prof. Kenney) that Barnes should be preferred to Markland–but typical of both men's fortune, in life and death.

9. For Markland's Statius (the Praefatio contains his most confident statement on criticism) see above p. 6 and esp. n. 38.

10. Letter to d'Orville of September 1732; Markland was thus prevented from meeting the elder Burman and Drakenborch.

11. In a preface to his Notes, Markland tried to show that Maximus had himself made two editions of his book, which had been conflated in the ms. tradition. The argument won him some brief glory, but has long been discounted (Hobein, H., Maximus Tyrius, Bibl. Teubn., 1910, lxiiiGoogle Scholar).

12. ‘Squire showed not a little acumen in dealing with the text and incorporating comments by the illustrious J.Markland': Griffiths, J.Gwyn, Plutarch: de Iside et Osiride (1970), p. 3Google Scholar. For Markland's ‘second thoughts’ on the treatise, written in his copy of Squire, see Helmbold, W.C., CPh lii (1957), 104–6Google Scholar.

13. Markland's challenge to the genuineness of Cicero's four speeches Post Reditum was supported by F.A.Wolf in his edition of them (1801). The controversy was stilled only in the 20th Century; for its history see Nisbet, R.G., Cicero: de domo sua (1939), xxix ff.Google Scholar; Lenaghan, J.O., Commentary … de haruspicum responso (1969), pp. 38ffGoogle Scholar.

14. Letter to Rev. W.Clarke, September 1751, quoted by Nichols IV.284.

15. Quoted by Nichols IV.284.

16. Markland wrote this in his copy, now in the British (Museum) Library. Musgrave reprinted Markland, 's notes, together with his own, in his complete Euripides of 1778, I.489–504Google Scholar.

17. The Dedicatio of Supplices exemplifies well Markland's selfless belief in the merit of Classical studies. He dedicated the book to two contemporary Dutch scholars, Hemsterhuys and Wesseling, ‘in observantiae … non fictae, verique affectus testimonium, ab extero homine, et vobis ignoto, profectum’; the theme of his praise of these and other Dutch scholars, and of the whole Dedicatio, is ‘enimvero res absurda est eruditio sine bonis moribus’ (p. iv).

18. Throughout his life–typically of his times (see Kenney, E.J., The classical text (1974) 99fGoogle Scholar)–Markland was concerned with the purity of the Greek text of the New Testament. His notes on Lysias and Maximus Tyrius are specially full of observations on, or parallels from, it.

19. IV.309, and Frontispiece (F.A.Wolf commented on Markland's facial likeness to his contemporary J.M.Gesner, the famous German scholar). Nichols prints also an orotund Latin epitaph by the Rev. Clarke, Edward, from Evening Post of July 24, 1776Google Scholar; both pieces recur in Gentleman's Magazine xxxxvii (1777), 433Google Scholar.

20. See his letters, Nichols IV.278, 283; cf. Clarke, , Greek studies 29Google Scholar.

21. Anecdotes of Dr Johnson, ed. Roberts, S.C., (1925), p. 161Google Scholar = ed. A.Sherbo (1974), p. 143. When Markland was dead, and Nichols published the first edition of his Literary Anecdotes, Johnson, asked him ‘I wish you would obtain fuller information of Jortin, Markland and Thirlby: they were three contemporaries of great learning’ (Letters of Samuel Johnson, ed. Chapman, R.W., 1952, II.514Google Scholar, no. 812, of October 1782; cf. Nichols IV.313).

22. In his copy of Mangey, T.'s Philo Judaeus (1742)Google Scholar, which proclaims its constant debt to Markland's advice and judgment as ‘Academiae Cantabrigiensis decus egregium, et in re critica facile princeps’, he wrote ‘ne unam quidem paginam huius operis vidi antequam totum publicaretur’.

23. The book is now in the Perne Library at Peterhouse. Markland seems to have contemplated two very different revisions of his Supplices: the second edition printed in 1775 relies on his corrections to the Peterhouse copy, but in another copy now in the British (Museum) Library Markland pared his Commentary to a skeleton, deleting ‘pleraque quae ad contextus integritatem minus spectare videri poterant, ut brevitati consulerem’.

24. Juvenal 10.199; letter to Bowyer, December 1773 (Nichols IV.304).

25. Letter to Warburton, reprinted by Nichols IV.289f and in the 1822 re-issue of Supplices, p. 313f. Hurd, further: ‘after all, I believe the author is a good man, and a learned; but a miserable instance of a man of slender parts and sense, besotted by a fondness for his own peculiar study, and stupified by an intense application to the minutiae of it.’ Elmsley, , Quarterly Review 441Google Scholar condemned these remarks as a caricature.

For the friendship between Warburton and Hurd see Pattison, M., Collected essays (1908), II.87ffGoogle Scholar and for the deficiencies in Warburton's scholarship that led him to ‘a very poor opinion of both Markland's and Taylor's critical abilities’ ibid. 109.

26. Written by Markland in his copy of Toup, 's Suidas, at the start of its second part (1764)Google Scholar; the text has many similar annotations.

27. Bibliotheca Critica I.3 (1778), p.39Google Scholar; reprinted in his Life of Ruhnken (Opuscula I.729fGoogle Scholar), where Wyttenbach gives Ruhnken middle place between Toup and Markland.

28. Wolf, , Lit. Analekten II.389Google Scholar (= KL Schriften p. 1109); Ruhnken, D., Praefatio ad Hesychii Albertini tomum alterum (1766), p. 35Google Scholar.

29. Preface to his Tentamen de Metris ab Aeschylo in Choricis Cantibus adhibitis (1809). Burney acquired many of Markland's books, which later passed to the British (Museum) Library.

30. Quarterly Review 441. Markland is ranked well below Toup and Dawes, alongside the others in Burney's Pleiad (Bentley and Porson excepted!), by Page, D.L., Richard Porson (1959), p. 5Google Scholar; cf. Bywater, , Four centuries 17Google Scholar.

31. Quoted in part by Sandys, II.414.

32. Recollections of the table-talk of Samuel Rogers, ed. A.Dyce, and Porsoniana, ed. Maltby, W. (1856), p. 322Google Scholar. The visit to Dorking is nowadays not so inspiring: the house has been converted into offices.

33. Life of Bentley, II.59Google Scholar.

34. Of his books in the British (Museum) Library, these only are heavily annotated and likely to be of interest: Middleton, C., The Epistles of M.Tullius Cicero to M.Brutus etc. (1743)Google Scholar (notes preparatory to Markland, 's Remarks on the Epistles of Cicero to Brutus etc. of 1745Google Scholar); M.Tullii Ciceronis ad Q.Fratrem dialogi tres de Oratore, ed. Pearce, Z. (1732 2)Google Scholar (collated by Markland with the ed. Stephani of 1553; in a letter of 1749 Markland wrote of ‘having made another attack upon Cicero de Oratore, in which I fancy I have found out strange things’ –but no publication came of them); Maximi Tyrii Dissertationes, ed. Davies, J. (1703 1)Google Scholar (the working copy for Markland's contribution of notes to Davies's second and posthumous edition of 1740); , ed. Stephanus, H. (1575)Google Scholar (exceptionally heavily annotated in Lysias, and probably the working copy for Markland, 's contribution to Taylor's Lysias of 1739Google Scholar: many of the marginalia tally with the printed notes, but in general Markland has expanded them); Statii … Sylvarum Libri quinque (ed. Basiliensis, , 1531)Google Scholar (the working copy for Markland, 's Statius of 1728Google Scholar); the copious notes in M.A.Lucani Pharsalia, ed. Maittaire, M. (1719)Google Scholar and Joannis Saresberiensis Policraticus (1595) seem to have found no publication.

Some of Markland's marginalia, in these and other books, have been transcribed and published; e.g. for Euripides see Burges, G., Classical Journal xxv (1822), 339–43Google Scholar, for Plutarch see n. 12 above, for Juvenal see Mayor, J.E.B., Advertisement to Thirteen Satires of Juvenal (2 vols., 1886–1888 4)Google Scholar, for Martial see Housman, A.E., JPh xxx (1907), 265Google Scholar (= Classical papers 738-9), for Statius' Silvae see the ‘Editio auctior indicibus instructa’, ed. Sillig, J. (1827)Google Scholar.

35. Markland's observation that dactylic trisyllables like munera, carmina, nomina are specially prone to interchange was picked out by A.E.Housman in his Commentary on Manilius, 1.416; cf. Ker, A., ‘Notes on Statius’, CQ n.s. iii (1935), 2Google Scholar; Willis, J., Latin textual criticism (1972), p. 76Google Scholar.

36. For other fine conjectures in Euripides, (I count, in the OCT apparatus, 37Google Scholar in Supp., 38 in I.T. and 57-in I.A.) cf. e.g. Supp. 559, 604, 608, 705, 793, 974b, 1055, I.T. 45, 1018, 1019, I.A. 130, 339, 401, 912, 1256, 1459.

37. Cf. Bailey, D.R.Shackleton, Propertiana (1956), p. 210Google Scholar–and his approval of other emendations by Markland at 2.33.21, 3.11.58.

38. I choose only these two from the fifteen or so of Markland's conjectures in the Silvae which Håkanson, L., Statius' Silvae (1969)Google Scholar persuasively argues deserve more attention, if not acceptance, by editors (cf. his p. 13: I owe this reference to Prof.Kenney, , who reviews the book in CR n.s. xxi (1971), 210fGoogle Scholar). Housman, A.E., CR xx (1906), 41Google Scholar (= Classical papers 644f), protested against neglect of Markland in Statius; for an even stronger protest, with illustration from Silvae 1.3, see Willis, J., ‘The Silvae of Statius and their editors’, Phoenix xx (1966), 305–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 305-16.

Phillimore, J.S., Silvae (1918 2), p. xxiiiGoogle Scholar–generally thought to be the poems' most sensitive editor–defended the inclusion of more conjectures by Markland in his Second Edition (upwards of 140) than in his First, writing ‘quo peritior quis Latinitatis et Statiani potissimum stili fiat, eo plura e Marklandianis ei placitura esse’. In his Phoenix article (above) Willis remarks that English editors of Statius understandably have always held Markland in higher regard than have Continental: cf. e.g. F. Vollmer (1898), p. 36 and note the comparative paucity (against Phillimore) of Marklandiana in Frère, H.–Izaac, H.J., Stace: Silves (1961)Google Scholar. Wilamowitz's severe condemnation of Markland's ‘gewaltsame Konjekturalkritik’ (n.2 above) was directed at the Statius, but the same fault imputed to his handling of Euripides.

39. Markland's conjectures at 1.67, 3.105, 157, 4.137 and 6.660 were confirmed by mss. readings. Cf. Housman, A.E., D.Iunii Iuvenalis Saturae (1931 2), p. xxviiiGoogle Scholar: ‘Probably no recension or commentary has done as much for the amendment and interpretation of the text as Markland's desultory notes and the two disputations of the youthful Madvig.’

40. For Virgil see Kenney, E.J., JRS lx (1970), 260Google Scholar and Willis, J., Latin textual criticism (1972), pp. 178fGoogle Scholar.

41. Phoenix xx (1966), 320Google Scholar; cf. n.38 above.