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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 October 2009
1 M. Émile Thomas in a courteous review of my edition of the Tristia (Révue Critique, January 20 1890, p. 45) maintains in opposition to Peter, Sedlmayer and myself that where the inferior MSS. preserve a right reading we must recognize merely a happy accident or felicitous conjecture. I do not believe in the capabilities of copyists for making such felicitous conjectures, or, as I should prefer to call them, restorations: the happy accident view seems to me more reasonable; happy such readings frequently are, though whether they can be said to be due to accident, or, as I rather believe, to a genuine tradition of an inferior group of MSS., is a question of the greatest critical nicety. It is certainly easiest to dispose of them as accidents: but is the easiest course in matters critical always the wisest?