| This volume of modest size but very substantial import consists of commentaries on three diverse texts, with a Vorspiel on portions of a fourth. What are termed commentaries are, of course, efforts of many sorts, some being concerned partly if not almost wholly with questions of orthography, punctuation, families of manuscripts or editions and printings, and similar matters. (Whether these should be called commentaries in any primary and proper sense is something else to be considered.) A second kind is dedicated to supplying historical events thought relevant to the composition of the text, or anticipations of the text in previous authors or in the same author, or biographical backgrounds, the latter often verging upon detailed psychological analysis of the writer as a way of explaining his writings. Strictly speaking, these two types, valuable as they are, should be called adventitious, and they form a contrast with the third, which elucidates the meanings of terms, weighs the possible truth or falsity of statements, and judges the validity of the arguments, all through back-and-forth references to the composition as a whole, the nature of what is written about, its large structure, and its intent, declared or implied. If we take the first threeterms, statements, and argumentsas the materials of the text and the rest as contributing to its form, then striking a balance between the form and matter would seem to be the obligation laid upon commentators pursuing their task in this most comprehensive yet essential way. |
| An important text, being an individual thing, houses an infinite number of characteristics; there is no limit to the aspects, whether vital or incidental, that can be listed or at least queried about. The greater the originality of the text discussed, the greater the chance of its being sui generis and the larger the variety of true propositions assertible of its nature, its expressed thoughts; for its message falls into no readily identifiable species of human discourse with their conventions and parameters, however much its outward dress may |
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