In 1921 the great philologist and textual critic Alfred E. Housman gave a lecture on ‘The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism’. Housman started from the observation that many of those who engaged in textual criticism, even on a professional level, did not actually know what it was. If proposing valid conjectures is a gift of nature, Housman says, then applying thought to textual criticism is a faculty common to all men. And yet, he denounces, many of those who exercise textual criticism (or think they do) reveal an absolute lack of common sense and thought. Moreover, this shortcoming, inadmissible in any other science or profession, is generally tolerated. The first example offered by Housman, in the context of the recensio, is the belief that there must in any case be a ‘better’ codex and that one must follow it, irrespective of a careful evaluation of the variant readings case by case. In the context of the emendatio, Housman blames a reliance on palaeography, i.e. the ‘palaeographic method’, to correct corruptions, irrespective of a rigorous examination of the overall sense of the text. Finally, he stigmatises the tendency to accept linguistic usages that conflict with grammatical rules just because they recur frequently in manuscripts.

Housman's lecture has now been translated into Italian for the first time by B., who has also written the excellent introduction and the notes accompanying the text of the lecture, indicating Housman's often unspoken sources. B. skilfully sets the lecture in its historical and cultural context and analyses its main points. He notes that Housman does not explain how conjecture arises, but rightly believes that this can be deduced from another of Housman's lectures, ‘The Name and Nature of Poetry’ (1933): here the English philologist and poet explained that poetic verses manifested themselves to him through insights in moments of mental relaxation. This idea, transferred to conjectural criticism, is also shared by other philologists, such as R.G.M. Nisbet and G.B. Conte (pp. 36–7). Housman's text is followed by unpublished excerpts from Notebook X, which contains notes on textual criticism used by the scholar in the lecture or in other works.

The book is enriched by a splendid essay by G.B. Conte in which Housman's thought on textual criticism is compared with the theories of cognitive science. Conte examines some brilliant conjectures of distinguished philologists, such as Housman, Nicolaas Heinsius and others, effectively showing the point of contact between Housman's method and that of modern cognitive science: just as Housman says that the critic must exercise thought and thus follow the logical thread of the text, so, according to modern cognitive science, it is the semantic context that guides the philologist to find the missing word. Of course, this does not diminish the value of intuition as illumination, but the critic arrives at intuition by vigilantly exercising thought over the text, that is, in cognitive science terms, by carefully following the development of the author's thought. In the lecture Housman seems to waver between the idea of common sense as a general quality of mankind and an elitist tendency, whereby only a few are granted the gift of conjectural intuition: Conte acutely observes that this is only an apparent wavering, because the common sense Housman speaks of is not something ‘vile or mediocre’, but comprises the ability to engage in rigorous reasoning.

This slim, doctrinally rich, thought-provoking and enjoyable little book is highly recommended to all those seriously interested in philology and textual criticism.