The Ars Critica

Jean Le Clerc's Ars Critica (Reference Le Clerc1697) does not fit easily into the contrast between bad pedants and enlightened promulgators of the Classics. Indeed, Le Clerc was, as we shall see, a considerable devotee of polemic, although aspiring to combine it with the kind of appeal to a high-minded literary culture that would resonate with Toland's projected readership. In his production of compendia and learned journals, he is emblematic for the newly confident vision of scholarly identity in the Enlightenment, as of a new and broader readership who were subscribing to his journals. His groundbreaking methodological treatise aims at forming the editing of ancient texts into a transparent and systematic activity.Footnote ³² The main purpose of the Ars is to lay down guidelines for the best practice in textual criticism. Le Clerc's apprenticeship had been served in a series of commentaries on biblical texts, and in orientation his work looks as much in the direction of theological and philosophical controversy as towards pagan literature. Questions about dogma, truth and interpretation were more pressing, and far better defined, in the realm of sacred texts; and to its contemporary readers Le Clerc's apparent disregard of the difference between sacred and pagan was challenging. The work does not, however, provide much by way of what we would recognise as hermeneutics, either literary or biblical, even if by itself the idea of tampering with sacred texts would disturb many of his readers.Footnote ³³ Nor is it concerned directly with historical research, in the sense of establishing the facts about the classical or Christian past. However, it is striking for the detail of its systematisation of textual criticism, as for its integration of textual-critical skills into a wider educational context. On this basis it aims to account for the processes that allow right judgements to be made when faced with a conflicting manuscript tradition, or a potentially corrupted text.

In its opening sections, the Ars Critica provides a total curriculum in the training of the competent critic. Its first part is devoted to outlining a course of reading that will enable the student to acquire the appropriate knowledge not just of language, but also of particular authors, the subjects that they deal with and worlds in which they lived. Before even beginning to read Latin writers (and thereafter, Greek and Hebrew), Le Clerc prescribes the study of Geography, Chronology and Cognitio Consuetudinum et Opinionum. From there he moves on to discuss a variety of linguistic and stylistic matters, all designed to enable the student to develop an accurate understanding of what actually takes place in an ancient text. The treatise then describes possible sources of textual corruption, and gives a range of examples for the different options for detecting and dealing with it. It also contains sections on distinguishing genuine texts from forgeries on stylistic grounds. Le Clerc's discussion is dominated by the idea that criticism is a skill that requires the pursuit of a system, and that Le Clerc himself is able to demonstrate both the efficacy of the system (through the inclusion of a large number of examples in Latin, Greek and Hebrew) and the fact that a training in criticism is possible. Some of the distrust concerning habits of scholarship that Toland expresses is visible in the work.Footnote ³⁴ It is also important that Le Clerc has the ambition at least to ground his discussion in a theory of language and of comprehension.Footnote ³⁵ Although there is a long way to go between Le Clerc's use of the term critice and the Kantian Kritik which emerges over half a century later, Le Clerc does show some interest in universal definitions of understanding. But for him understanding, or at least the possibility of misunderstanding, is expressed in linguistic rather than cultural or historical terms. So lack of equivalence between vocabulary in ancient and modern languages receives a certain amount of attention, and there is one chapter devoted to explaining how a high rhetorical style can make comprehension more problematic.Footnote ³⁶ In fact, when dealing with problems of interpretation concerning a particular passage, his terms of reference are more eclectic, but his theoretical insights rather fall short of his practice. In the long essay on Curtius Rufus which concludes the treatise, it is clear that the theoretical apparatus only captures to a degree the full extent of what Le Clerc understands as the activity of criticism. That essay demonstrates, however, that Le Clerc is judging Curtius by universal standards, and has no framework for a more historicist approach.Footnote ³⁷

Most of the immediate controversy that the work produced concerned the application of philological and historical tools to sacred writing, an important caution against the idea of classical textual criticism as a separate discipline. The main reaction to the work was from theologians rather than classicists. In 1700, he felt sufficient need to rebut his critics to publish a book of letters, designated as the third volume of the Ars, and in this he rejects criticisms of his handling of theological texts.Footnote ³⁸ None of the sixty or so topics of these letters relate to pagan texts (although some of them do touch on the question of the relationship between Platonic and biblical tradition), and the book ends with a dissertation dealing directly with the question of whether the slanders of theologians always require a response. Le Clerc's life had been shaped profoundly by controversies over dogma, and he early on chose exile from his native Geneva to avoid the restrictions which his differences from mainstream Calvinism were imposing upon his intellectual ambitions.

In spite of its failure to have much impact in the modern scholarly histories, the Ars struck a chord. By the time Eusebius Amort, a not insignificant Bavarian theologian, published his own much briefer and more philosophical Ars Critica, in Reference Amort1723, Le Clerc's work had achieved the status of a landmark, and Amort gives a neat summary of its views.Footnote ³⁹ And the Parerga Critica of Christof August Heumann (Reference Heumann1712) takes a respectful attitude towards Le Clerc's work, clearly perceiving it as the established authority in this area, even if Heumann is in part motivated by what he sees as defects both in Le Clerc's proposals for critical method, and in some of the emendations he proposes.Footnote ⁴⁰ Heumann's work also contains, at the close of its preface, a lengthy appeal for the toleration of error, and a quite detailed discussion of the misconceptions and arrogance which motivate some critics: ‘imperitum autem maleuolentiaeue suffusum censorum vulgus facile contemno’, he exclaims.Footnote ⁴¹ Heumann makes a direct plea for a more civilised relationship between scholars. He may well be responding to the recent controversy sparked by Le Clerc's Menander edition, to which I shall soon turn. Heumann also argues for a reasonable degree of disciplinary openness, as well as, more specifically, for a form of textual criticism that looks at larger units of sense than just individual words and phrases.

So there is nothing in the publications that respond to the Ars Critica to suggest that the attempt at a system of criticism was itself regarded as misguided. Nothing, in other words, to prepare us for the later theme in the historiography of scholarship that inspiration, rather than system, is the key to effective criticism, or that the realm of the critic is taste and style rather than method.Footnote ⁴² What does emerge, however, in other publications from the period, is a debate about the nature of one particular aspect of textual criticism: emendation, and in particular the question of how far, even if the transmitted text is linguistically correct, the critic is justified, on the basis of his own individual judgement, in improving it by alteration. This theme is central to the debates about the nature of criticism over the ensuing decades, and the manner in which it is discussed intersects closely with the matter of ethics. In particular the attitude towards the manuscript tradition becomes a testing ground for the character of the critic. To anticipate slightly: accusations against bad critics take the form either of personal invective, often involving the charge of linguistic incompetence; or they take the form of castigating that very invective, accusing the adversary of inappropriate personal attack, and of holding up a better kind of scholarly behaviour. The respect for the manuscript tradition, although at first sight unrelated to this dialectic, in fact tends to map onto it. Immoderate polemic is only one aspect of a more pervasive character trait: that of an exaggerated belief in the infallibility of one's own judgement, and a correspondingly excessive intolerance of others' mistakes. In some cases, an exaggerated faith in the critic's expertise is matched with a freedom to depart from the established manuscript tradition.

The battle of Menander

I now turn to two specific controversies, both of them involving one of the period's most influential critics, Richard Bentley. The first centres on Jean Le Clerc, with Bentley as a minor character; in the second, as editor of Horace's Odes, Bentley takes centre stage. The first was something of a cause célèbre, looked on as shocking even by contemporaries for the intolerance of its polemic, and still talked about decades later.Footnote ⁴³ A partial outline of events was given in a biographical dictionary essay on Le Clerc written many years after his death:

As I say, this is only a partial account, and there were further forays into polemic that accompanied these events.Footnote ⁴⁵ Typically, the British writer overplays Bentley's role. This was in fact just one episode in a long series of conflicts between Le Clerc and Burman, and although it may be true that Bentley's criticism were so unpleasant as to cause Le Clerc pain, he had been the victim of Burman for much longer.Footnote ⁴⁶ Indeed, Burman's polemic tendency was so well known that no sooner had his edition of Petronius been published than a pamphlet appeared describing his ‘calumnies’.Footnote ⁴⁷ The publications were numerous, with mutual salvoes from Le Clerc and Burman, and allies lining up on both sides. The chronology (and I doubt I have tracked down every episode) is as follows:

1. 1703: Burman publishes a satirical dialogue, Dialogus inter Spidaeum et Gorallum, in which he parodies Le Clerc's critical procedures, making him appear a poorly educated pedant with an enormously over-inflated opinion of himself, as well as cynical and mercenary. Most of the work consists of making the Le Clerc character, Gorallus, describe with great self-satisfaction an absurd process of textual edition and commentary, in which Gorallus makes clear that he has not even the most rudimentary grasp of Latin, and makes excessive and inappropriate use of reference works in order to flesh out his otherwise empty commentaries.Footnote ⁴⁸

2. 1709: Le Clerc publishes his emendations on Menander.Footnote ⁴⁹

3. 1709: Burman's edition of Petronius appears, including in its preface a lengthy diatribe against Le Clerc.Footnote ⁵⁰

4. 1710: Le Clerc writes a long and scathing review of Burman's Petronius, directed against the obscenity of Petronius, and the consequent lack of moral probity of his editor. However, the majority of the review is taken up with rebutting the accusations made against him by Burman in both the preface and the satire of 1703.Footnote ⁵¹

5. 1710: Bentley publishes his attack on Le Clerc's Menander, with a preface by Burman.Footnote ⁵² The volume consists of taking passages of the text, pointing out Le Clerc's editorial misjudgements, and suggesting Bentley's own alternatives. In his long and abusive preface, Burman says that he is unaware of Bentley's identity, but compares him to Hercules about to demolish Cacus, praising him as one of the handful of souls in the entire Republic of Letters who rightly understand the process of textual emendation.

6. 1710: an anonymous booklet appears criticising Bentley's emendations of Menander. The copy in the British Library contains a pencil annotation indicating that the author was Jacob Gronovius, although on the basis of what evidence, I am unsure.Footnote ⁵³

7. 1710: Burman publishes a book of over 200 pages in French attacking Le Clerc, and his periodical, the Bibliothèque Choisie.Footnote ⁵⁴

8. 1710: Le Clerc replies, in an article in the Bibliothèque, explaining why it is beneath him to respond to Burman's attack, and also referring to the satire of 1703.Footnote ⁵⁵

9. 1711: a pseudonymous pamphlet attributed to Cornelius de Pauw defends Le Clerc's Menander against Bentley. There is a lengthy preface by Le Clerc.Footnote ⁵⁶

10. 1734: an anonymous booklet ridicules Burman's Petronius, in terms that recall those of Burman's own satire on Le Clerc. It includes as an appendix a catalogue of examples of Burman's poor use of Latin.Footnote ⁵⁷

One contemporary commentator took up a perspective that seems an appropriate guide to how we can evaluate the controversy.

These words resemble the reflections of Toland on the state of scholarship, but are clearer in articulating the idea that the squabbles between scholars do not, in fact, detract from the value of their work.Footnote ⁵⁹ Like Toland, the author projects a different kind of audience for scholarship: perhaps their relationship with ancient literature is less professional, but they are nevertheless the readers of these polemic productions. De la Roche takes a wry and rather detached view of this polemic, one that gives little idea of its vividness and tenacity. Again, however, in de la Roche's note, we can detect a vision of a more civilised form of criticism, against which the excesses of the Burman–Le Clerc polemic are seen as defective.Footnote ⁶⁰

The viciousness of Burman's attempt to destroy Le Clerc's reputation is remarkable. It is not really clear what it is about Le Clerc that drives Burman to such lengths; nor does it become clearer from reading Le Clerc's various defences. It is impossible, however, to reduce it to a simple clash between charlatans and true scholars. Certainly, Burman's subsequent reputation as a textual critic, and the longevity of his work on the text of Petronius, as well as Le Clerc's blinkered moralistic perspective in rejecting Petronius out of hand, make it easier for us to read Le Clerc as a naïve, and over-confident, logorrhoeic, one whose contributions to scholarship are vitiated by a lack of proper linguistic and historical expertise. One of the tropes of Burman's early satire is that financial gain is one of Le Clerc's main motivations, and that he is egged on by equally avaricious publishers into churning out as many commentaries in as little time as possible. Burman is still thought of as a scholar today, whereas Le Clerc has no reputation to speak of, at least among classicists. On the other hand, Le Clerc was clearly a formidable figure in the theological and philosophical debates of his day, an early encyclopaedist, and friend of, and commentator upon, John Locke. In many respects, he was an intellectual giant of his times, while Burman's field of operation was significantly narrower. But it is hard to rehabilitate Le Clerc on the basis of his high-minded refusal to engage in polemic. As Burman points out in his Gazettier Menteur, Le Clerc's Petronius review is not just damning: it is written with almost the same degree of bile as we find in Burman's writings; indeed, one of Burman's jibes at Le Clerc is that even his polemic comes out of ready-made selections, a jibe that recalls his representation of Le Clerc as heavily dependent, in his commentaries on classical texts, on the work of previous compilers and lexicographers. On the other hand, Burman shows no trace of a consciousness of the shame of engaging in such polemic, something that Le Clerc's more apologetic stance does include, and which seems to have struck contemporary commentators as a clear difference between the two men.

The lining up of scholars on both sides of this conflict would seem to preclude any simple division on the basis of intellectual capability. Burman's assumption that Le Clerc was simply incompetent as a linguist (he accuses him of only being capable of ‘un Latin de cuisine’) is hardly borne out by the peculiarities of his own understanding of Latin, and the defence of the emendations of Menander. What does emerge on the side of Le Clerc, and, indeed, in the tradition of a more methodical approach to texts, is a greater awareness of the possibility of error. Le Clerc's responses to Burman recognise that he has made mistakes. Heumann's discussions of Le Clerc (referred to above) are clearer evidence for the availability of this trope in the rhetoric of scholarly polemic. Heumann represents himself as a figure who will not claim to be free from error, but who, nevertheless, feels the need to engage with the emendations made by his predecessor in such a manner as to expose them, on occasion, as the product of a hasty or short-sighted critic. Le Clerc's final essay on Burman, entitled ‘Raisons pourquoi on ne répond pas au libelle de Mr Pierre Burmann’ aims at a similar kind of detached refusal to become embroiled in polemic, as well as containing sections discussing the admission of error. It would be tempting to bring Le Clerc's methodological ambitions to bear on this picture. Perhaps it was they that infuriated Burman, whose first attack occurred not long after the appearance of the Ars Critica, at a point where his own reputation as a critic relied mostly on inserting himself into the scholarly canon by editing the letters of other scholars. Certainly it is possible to take the repeated accusation that Le Clerc relied on a range of cheater's short-cuts for his work as editor as implying that the Ars was itself one of these short-cuts, but the point is not made explicitly. However, much of the satire does rely upon the idea that the status of genuine scholar could only be achieved by a more mysterious process of long study and immersion in the texts, a kind of scholarly connoisseurship that could not be learnt from a book. But Burman and Bentley's main complaint about Le Clerc's Menander is so closely bound in with mistaken decisions over individual lines that there is no clear statement (at least that I've discovered) to the effect that it was the aspiration to a rigorous method that was itself misguided.

Bentley's Horace and Its Reception

My final controversy is better known: it concerns Bentley's 1711 edition of Horace and its contemporary reception. The controversy is worth revisiting in the light of the conflicts between Burman and Le Clerc, since we can gain a better understanding both of Bentley's views on textual emendation, and of the reaction of his critics, by seeing them within the context of the earlier polemic.Footnote ⁶¹ The contrast between a humane aversion to excessive polemic, combined with a desire to treat the ancient text more responsibly, becomes sharper. In the debate sparked by Bentley's Horace, we can detect a clear congruence between Bentley's fondness for polemic, and the attitude with which he approaches the ancient text. The components of the controversy over Le Clerc are clearer to see. It is something of a paradox, of course, that the only figure who acquires in this process the reputation of an innovator is Richard Bentley. Part of my curiosity at these texts is the extent to which modern historians of scholarship skirt over the vociferous objections to Bentley's handling of Horace in the apparent belief that they are motivated not by a consistent attitude to the text grounded in a methodology (which is what their writings suggest), but by a degree of intellectual narrowness that borders on incompetence.

Bentley's Horace, and Richard Bentley generally, have received a great deal more attention than any of the material I have so far discussed.Footnote ⁶² Bentley himself already had a strong record of polemic publication, having come to prominence in the final years of the previous century with his ground-breaking Dissertation on the Epistles of Phalaris (1697), a work that had polarised the British intellectual community regarding the value of scholarly expertise in the face of polite learning.Footnote ⁶³ In publishing his text of Horace, however, Bentley was more the target of polemic attack than its originator, and although it is possible to see the vigour of his critical decisions as an expression of his abrasive personality, the critical reception, both then and now, centres on the relationship between the critic and the text, and on the evolving idea of method. Most of the modern scholarship on Bentley's Horace limits its scope by taking Bentley's methodology as representative of developing trends in textual practice, and as a sign of progress.Footnote ⁶⁴ It is not my intention here to re-evaluate Bentley's critical practice per se, but rather, by looking at the texts published in response to Bentley's edition, and considering them alongside the controversies already discussed, to reveal more about the ethical dimensions of the debate, and the associated hermeneutic questions. The central feature of Bentley's Horace is the freedom with which he departs from the current texts, more firmly based on manuscript traditions. The negative reaction was swift, but Bentley's reputation has been so enduring that the views of his critics have rarely had adequate representation.

The edition of Horace's Odes was published in two parts, in 1709 and 1711. It was recognised at once as a remarkable production: in 1712, an anonymous tract appeared, listing the places where Bentley had departed from the vulgar tradition, with only a brief preface making clear how important it was for the ordinary reader to realise what enormous liberties Bentley had taken with the text.Footnote ⁶⁵ The title, Horatius Reformatus leaves little room for doubt that the author's aim is to reverse the deformation of Horace, and the short preface is a hilarious blend of mock admiration for Bentley's critical skills and ironic disdain for the authoritarian nature of his editorial decisions. In few words, the author projects once again a vision of a more responsible form of scholarship, one which the reader will appreciate, and which gives a proper respect to the traditions of the text. The irony of the Greek epithet empsychos applied to Bentley in the dedicatory sentence is particularly revealing: it strikes at the root of Bentley's aspiration to genius, an aspiration which has been validated by three centuries of subsequent Horatian scholarship. For the author of this pamphlet, however, this inspiration was clearly regarded as an inappropriate pose, and the liberty that Bentley has taken with Horace is dismissed as the work of an inspired, but probably deluded librarian. There is nothing to suggest, even in this pamphlet, that its writer did not have a full awareness of what Bentley was attempting; nor that it was a risky undertaking, likely to lead to a worse, rather than better, understanding of Horace.

This pamphlet is far from isolated. In the same year, 1712, a booklet appeared that takes an altogether less light-hearted approach to the destruction of Horace. Aristarchus Ampullans in curis Horatianis was published under a pseudonym, Philargyrius Cantabrigensis.Footnote ⁶⁶ ‘Ampullans’ means, more or less, bombastic, and the subtitle suggests that the author is concerned to preserve Horace from excessive editorial zeal. The work takes the form of a letter to the censor, asking, in a manner that is evidently ironic, that he should take action against the excesses of Bentley's edition: the language is colourful from the outset, and depicts Bentley as a mutilator. The censor must take all measures necessary to heal Horace from his attack. Bentley is just one of a tribe, however, and Philargyrius points to how widespread the voices of complaint are, even quoting Stephanus for a scepticism concerning emendation that parallels his own.Footnote ⁶⁷ Aristarchus, of course, is the original paradigm for such attacks, and is also used by Toland as a byword for excessive critical intervention. Philargyrius homes in on two key words: divinatio and conjectura: and criticises Bentley's repudiation of manuscript tradition in his faith in these tools. He moves on to examine examples, displaying his own erudition and the arbitrary quality, as he sees it, of Bentley's alterations. But his final plea to the censor is unexpected. Bentley's work needs to be re-edited, with a clear demarcation of three types of activity, and these should be marked in the textual apparatus. First, all emendations which are not Bentley's own, with the names either of the editor or of the manuscripts; second, those made on the basis of Bentley's vaunted divine skill at guessing; and third, those where Bentley's skill has let him down, and where the editor feels that the text should not be let stand. Rather wonderfully, the letter ends with its author exhorting the censor with Anchises' words to Aeneas from Aeneid 6:

On the expectation, presumably, that Bentley will put up a fight, or retract his text, the censor is either to spare him or to punish.

Richard Johnson, Master of the Free School in Nottingham, provides further useful evidence of the reaction to Bentley. His Aristarchus Anti-Bentleianus appeared in 1717, and the length and detail of his work suggest that it was the fruit of some years' work. Johnson's preface begins rather unpromisingly as a clunking discussion of the value of criticism. Criticism, he says, has a poor reputation, as being a dry and simple-minded activity, which takes the mind away from a knowledge of affairs into an empty contest of words:

However, Johnson defends the practice of criticism as a means of understanding ancient literature, with a view to its enhancement of the lives of its readers: the formation of their morals, their rhetorical skill and their understanding of religion from a knowledge of nature. This kind of argument can be found in a similar form in any number of tracts from this period. Toland makes similar but much more detailed claims for the usefulness of Cicero to the education of anyone intent upon a career in public life, as well as for his enlightened attitude towards the superstitious elements of traditional religion. And in any number of inaugural and occasional lectures, academics across Europe held forth in this period, as in earlier ones, on the usefulness of a training in classical languages as vital to the production of a civilised society.Footnote ⁶⁸

Johnson's argument, however, is rather more specific: he does not himself seek, with the publication of a few annotations (annotatiunculae), to be thought of as a critic: that honour is granted to those eminent individuals, too well-known to need naming, who have the kind of learning and judgement that the job demands. Bentley, on the other hand, has spread himself too thinly, along the lines of the proverb of Seneca's, nusquam est, qui ubique est. Johnson can even forgive the pointless heaping up of loci, something which he regards as unnecessary, since such parallels can easily be found by using indices and other means. Let us not forget that this is 1717! No; Johnson's complaint about Bentley is that, in a difficult field where one has to accept that people will make mistakes, he belongs to that class of critics who embellish their disagreements with each other with personal slander. Beyond that, he states clearly that he regards Bentley as insufficiently experienced in Latin grammar, as lacking the necessary intelligence, judgement and learning. He then explains his case in more detail: Bentley's emendations are marred by basic misunderstandings of the meaning and structure of words, as of the differences of mood and tense. The next hundred and fifty pages go through Bentley's text and dissect his editorial decisions.

Usefully, Johnson finishes his prefatory material with a collection of Bentley's comments, first on his own work, ‘Bentlei de se dicta’, and then on that of his predecessors, ‘Bentlei de aliis dicta’. These are extracted on a line-by-line basis from the commentary, and act as a vivid catalogue of features of Bentley's character, in particular in his relation to the work of his predecessors. In the second category we find ample evidence for the kind of abuse that Toland had described: descriptions of earlier critics having dozed off, ignored the obvious, made ridiculous suggestions. Unfortunately there is no direct corroboration of the more violently abusive epithets listed by Toland. Nevertheless, the pages are a useful proof of the idea that calling scholars names was thought of almost as a separate activity from the work of the scholar itself. With scholarship more broadly in view, Johnson's aim is to demonstrate Bentley's lack of restraint and perspective, and to hold this up in contrast to a more elevated, and respectful vision of the critic's task. At its root is a particular notion of scholarly perspective, one that is shared by several of the texts discussed above. That perspective is based on clarity, respect for the original author, the work of other scholars and a proper sense of the aim of the scholarly undertaking. Interventions of a too individualistic nature are a clear sign of a loss of this perspective.

What was the fate of these serious and lengthy engagements with Bentley's Horace, and the issues that they raise regarding Bentley's love of emendation? I don't think that Brink's History of Classical Scholarship in England can be regarded as a straw target. Its account of Bentley's Horace expresses only admiration, and pays minimal attention to the controversies surrounding the text's publication. ‘In sum, then, Bentley's Horace is the foundation document of the new “philology”. It may be fairly be said that no edition of any ancient author had ever seen such a complete dispersal of traditional half-sense or non-sense by the power of reason’ (with some qualification regarding rashness, inconsistency etc.). ‘I am making the point that Bentley's procedure amounts to a fundamentally new and true approach to any text that has come down to us from a remote original by a more or less complex manuscript tradition.’Footnote ⁶⁹

There is much that could be said to expound the nature of the particular ‘truth’ that Brink ascribes to Bentley's technique. The controversy over Horace was repeated when Bentley re-wrote Paradise Lost using the same conjectural principles twenty years later.Footnote ⁷⁰ Walsh characterises his approach to Milton as one that privileges the perspective of the individual critic against a sense of historical consciousness. And in a 1993 article re-evaluating some of the Horace conjectures, Konstan and Mueke admire the fact that Bentley treats Horace as a colleague.Footnote ⁷¹ We can doubt whether Bentley's contemporaries would have approved either of Bentley's modernity, or of his presumption in taking so familiar an approach to Horace. The boldness that impressed Brink was, to Bentley's contemporaries, the sign of a monstrously misdirected ego, and we have no difficulty in dismissing his Milton along those same lines today. His manipulation of the text was an expression of the same immoderate arrogance as the manner in which he described the work of his colleagues. Both were in clear contradiction to the picture of the humane, community-minded scholar that Goldgar has so copiously analysed. But were a modern philologist to play devil's advocate, the argument would run thus: it is simply because their linguistic capacities were inferior to Bentley's that ‘Philargyrius’ and Johnson could not perceive the enormous advance represented by Bentley's work. As Nisbet forbiddingly put it in his review of Shackleton Bailey's Bentley-influenced Teubner text, ‘Bentley, who is disparaged by the inexpert, now comes into his own’.Footnote ⁷² In that historiography of philology, Bentley is a giant among pygmies, and the fury his work received, an expression of the blindness frequently elicited by the work of a visionary genius out of step with his times.

Such a narrative, however, pays no regard to the highly developed sense of criticism that obtained at the time. The theme of conjecture was one that had been subjected to theoretical analysis, and it held its place in the prevailing system (it is given detailed treatment in all the treatises discussed earlier), alongside more conservative forms of emendation. Generally speaking, conjecture was more closely linked to the manuscripts than the manner in which Bentley employed it.Footnote ⁷³ A treatise on criticism from later in the century is a useful reminder that the choices available to eighteenth-century readers were rather more sophisticated than history of scholarship has generally allowed:

Synthesis

The material discussed here demonstrates the struggle between scholars for authority over the work of the critic, and the difficulty of defining that work. For Le Clerc, and those influenced by him, criticism is beginning to look like a method, capable of definition. For others, such as Richard Johnson, the critic is characterised by the degree of erudition, rather than method, and an appropriate attitude to the text. The nature of the critical intervention is complex: in Bentley's hands, we can clearly observe a blurring of the boundaries between text, critic and scholarly tradition. But such a blurring is also discernible in the tradition of historia literaria, as well as in the critical standpoint elaborated by Le Clerc. In Bentley's work it looks extreme, but that is largely just the expression of his eccentric character. And whilst Bentley's actual writings foil any attempt to systematise the principles underlying his critical practice, his over-reliance on conjecture nevertheless operates within a repertoire of tools that were widely accepted.Footnote ⁷⁴ It is unlikely that Bentley's critics had a more refined sense of historicism. It was just that they were less insistent on relying on one particular technique.

The production of a new version of Horace or Milton makes the critic the focus for renewal, and after his treatment those authors will speak in the critic's voice; as Harris puts it, critics had become like artists, reworking their authors. The modern reception of Bentley makes clear what the stakes are in either accepting or repudiating that approach, while Bentley's first readers were more anxious and vocal concerning the pitfalls. The dispute between Burman and Le Clerc, like the controversy over Horace, demonstrates the degree of excitement that could be produced by the suspicion of the critic aspiring to an inappropriate form of power, or exhibiting a lack of respect to his peers. At the root of both of these controversies, there lies a heritage of scepticism, which the Enlightenment project was itself helping to supplant. The brazen confidence of Bentley was an assault upon the conceptual model of the reader as an active participant in the process of interpretation: his texts supplanted, rather than improved upon, the vulgar tradition. As Timpanaro puts it, Bentley corrected not the manuscript tradition, but Horace himself.Footnote ⁷⁵ It was the sceptical model which generated the variorum editions of texts, or ones like Le Clerc's Menander, which were more selective in using the opportunity of an edition not just to promote the new interpretations of the critic, but also to bring to bear the insights of predecessors whose annotations may not before have reached publication. In this model, the judgement of the reader is respected, just as, for example, in his Dictionnaire Critique Pierre Bayle would often include several accounts of the same subject by different authors. Bentley's attackers were weighing in to safeguard the rights of readers, and their response was to ensure that the traditional text be preserved alongside Bentley's changes. Bentley was disempowering them, ignoring his own fallibility, and misjudging the expertise of those who were reading his edition.

It is clear that Bentley and Burman, with their unrestrained polemics, were working in the face of a coherent sense of the virtuous attitude to the ancient text and to their colleagues, as can be seen from a range of comments that suggest that their reactions were extreme, and that they were obstructing the polite reader's access to advances in scholarship. De Le Roche's evaluation, that the battle for Menander had at least yielded results for the responsible reader, is instructive. It suggests that polemic and scholarship were accepted as aspects of the same project; and it is worth at this point recalling the vigour with which the lives and writings of scholars were recorded: celebrity and personality were an intrinsic part of the critical world-view. The polemical tracts on textual problems that proliferate in this period show that it was Bentley's unrestrained enthusiasm for conjecture that was the problem, rather than his desire for a better, more readable text: that was a universal aim. The texture of those polemic-laden tracts in which scholars weighed up in minute detail the arguments of centuries of scholarship and manuscript variants, makes them almost unreadable today. But they clearly had some importance for a wider readership who would not aim to match the textual expertise, but who would still feel that they could benefit from the result of the pedants' labours. These same readers can be envisaged as potential users of Le Clerc's Ars Critica. The promise of method is, in part, to demystify criticism, and to make it accessible to anyone prepared to undergo the necessary educational regime. But method did not itself legislate for the forms of scholarly expression, nor define the boundaries of the community. Irrespective of his methods, the virtuous critic would not allow his own personal preoccupations to obscure the reading of the text, nor would he engage in excessive polemic. He would be aware of the possibility of his own error and exercise a tolerant respect of the shortcomings of other readings.

Both methodological transparency, and a respect for the community of scholars, were working to contain the work of the critic, guarding readers from unpleasant surprises of several types: an unwarranted departure from the manuscript tradition, an eruption of scholarly ill-temper, or, in the case of Petronius and others, a form of obscenity from which they had been protected by the discretion of earlier editors.Footnote ⁷⁶ It is possible to see in this range of attitudes towards the function of scholarship, and the forms of scholarly expression, a more lurid version of the forms of communication current in the disciplines today. The arguments of Bentley's first readers, and the elision of their complaints in the current canon, demonstrate vividly the shifts in fashion in textual criticism. The (perhaps equivocal) reputation of textual criticism today rests, I think, upon a misconception that it has a greater methodological fixity than those areas of literary or historical interpretation where the imagination is more clearly at work. That misconception is in part a response to the fact that, whilst still central to the disciplines, relatively few individuals now regard themselves as traditional philologists. These early debates about textual criticism suggest, however, that method is not in itself the central issue. Bentley's critics were not reacting to Bentley's choice of method as such, but to the excessive liberty with which he granted to his own imaginative inventions.Footnote ⁷⁷ In a paradoxical manner, debates over method were aiming both to put philology onto a sound footing by outlining principles, but at the same time, seeking to eliminate excessive individuality, and to tie the text to a process of evolution by slow alteration of tradition, rather than by great leaps.

In this tension between gestures of great individuality, and the maintenance of a polite consensus, a pattern is set for our own disciplinary situation. Of greater significance, however, is the fact that, in comparison with a modern scholarly discourse in which the critic's individuality has been largely occluded, the conversations of this earlier period rest on a link between the values of the individual as a member of the community, and the labour of interpreting ancient texts. Readers then were more interested in the personality of the critic. The self-presentation of Bentley, Burman and Le Clerc, and their willingness to delineate their own characters as responses to attacks from their colleagues, as well as in relation to their critical forerunners, all suggest that the character of the critic was an aspect of the persuasive appeal of their expertise. In that respect, perhaps, recent trends in personalising the critical voice are effecting something of a loosening of the restraint that has occurred in the centuries that separate us from these forebears. That restraint in turn can be read as a response to the blossoming of an idealised, almost erotic version of the encounter with antiquity, which the work of Winckelmann, Herder and others gave rise to at the end of the eighteenth century.Footnote ⁷⁸ Ultimately, the Romantic engagement with antiquity led to a bifurcation between mavericks working in the idealistic tradition (Nietzsche, Bachofen, Toynbee) and those who channelled monomania effectively into an academic discourse (Mommsen, Wilamowitz). Before classical philology became so effectively disciplinised, the proper representation of the text was the focus of strong passions, and character and individuality were shaped by it, even if only by standing back in horror at the excesses of the professionals. In its appeal to the wider public of benign readers, the discourse surrounding the early eighteenth-century critics tends towards a consensus. At the root of that is still, in spite of potential mishandling, a desire to get classical texts to work more effectively. It is an intriguing paradox in this tradition that today the expertise of Richard Bentley is the best-known survivor from these controversies, but one that says something about our own troubled relationship with the formation of our disciplines.