Delphi Complete Works of Longus
Page 61
The text of the present edition is the result of my investigations into the recorded readings of the manuscripts. When the variation among the manuscripts lies merely in the order of the words, I have often followed A without recording the variant readings. Otherwise, the critical notes contain all the variants of any importance for the history of the text. But it should be remembered that the ascription of variants to the individual MSS. of Ursinus, is conditional upon the acceptance of my stemma and the identifications it involves. Emendations of previous editors I hope I have acknowledged in every case. Emendations which I believe to be my own, I have marked E. Sometimes an emendation appears from his translation to have been anticipated by Amyot. In these cases I have added his name in brackets. I have done the same where his translation indicates that the reading in question was the reading of one of his MSS. In the notes on the passage included in the Great Lacuna, I have given both Furia’s and Courier’s readings of A. It should be borne in mind that Furia saw the text only after the spilling of the ink.
III. — THE TRANSLATION
There is nothing on Thornley’s title-page to tell us that his book is a translation, and if his “most sweet and pleasant pastoral romance” ever came into the hands of the “young ladies” for whom he wrote it, they may well have supposed it to be his original work. For although his rendering is generally close enough to the Greek to satisfy the most fastidious modern scholar, it has all the graces of idiom, rhythm, and vocabulary characteristic of the best English prose of the day. Of most of his excellences I must leave the reader to judge, but I cannot forbear to remark upon one outstanding feature of his style. He always shows you that he has a complete grasp of the situation he is describing. He not only sees and hears, but he thinks and feels. He knows what it was like to be there.
In making his translation Thornley had before him the parallel Latin and Greek edition of Jungermann, published in 1605. His English is often suggested by Jungermann’s Latin; in one or two places he has made mistakes through paying more attention to the Latin than to the Greek; and he sometimes prefers a reading only to be found in Jungermann’s notes. That he was familiar with Amyot’s French version of 1559 I have not been able to establish.
In my revision of Thornley’s work, I set myself to alter only what was actually wrong; but right and wrong being so often a matter of opinion, I cannot hope to have pleased all my readers as well as myself and the editors of this series. I can only say that I have corrected as little as seemed in the circumstances possible, and tried to make the corrections consonant with my conception of Thornley’s style. In the long passage where Thornley’s translation was not available, I have imitated him as nearly as I could.
I have not discovered that any other work was ever published by the maker of this delightful book; indeed, the following are the only facts I have been able to glean about him. George Thornley was born in 1614. He was the son of a certain Thomas Thornley described as “of Cheshire,” and was at Repton School under Thomas Whitehead, the first master appointed on the re-founding of the school in 1621. Whitehead’s usher at the time, John Lightfoot, was afterwards master of St. Catherine’s, and was elected Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge in 1655. Whitehead sent many of his scholars to his old college, Christ’s, and it was here that Thornley was admitted sizar — sizarships were given to poor students — under Mr. King in 1631. This King is the Edward King who is the subject of Milton’s Lycidas, and Milton resided at Christ’s from 1625 to 1632. In 1635 Thornley proceeded Bachelor in Arts, and we hear no more of him save that in his forty-fourth year he is described upon the title-page of his Daphnis and Chloe as “Gentleman.”
J. M. E.
CAMBRIDGE, 1913.
Lesbos — likely where Longus spent his final days