[Footnote 72: _C.P._ XIV (1919), pp. 29 ff.]
[Footnote 73: _Op. cit._, p. xxxvii: nam ea quae aliter in Aldina editione atque in illis (i.e., Avantius, Beroaldus, and Catanaeus) exhibentur ita comparata sunt omnia, ut coniectura potius inventa quam e codice profecta esse existimanda sint et plura quidem in pravis et temerariis interpolationibus versantur.]
[Footnote 74: But see above, p. 62, n. 2.]
[Sidenote: _Aldus's methods in the newly discovered parts of Books VIII, IX, and X_]
The result of this exposure, Professor Merrill declares, should convince "any unprejudiced student" of the question that "Aldus stands clearly convicted of being an extremely unsafe textual critic of Pliny's _Letters_."[76] "This conclusion does not depend, as that of Keil necessarily did, on any native or acquired acuteness of critical perception. The wayfaring man, though a fool, need not err therein."[77] I speak as a wayfarer, but nevertheless I must own that Professor Merrill's path of argument causes me to stumble. I readily admit that Aldus, in editing a portion of text that no man had put into print before him, fell back on conjecture when his authority seemed not to make sense. But Merrill's lists need revision. He has included with Aldus's "willful deviations" from the true text of _P_ certain readings that almost surely were misprints (218, 12; 220, 3), some that may well be (as 217, 28; 221, 12), one case in which Aldus has retained an error of _P_ while _I_ emends (221, 11), and several cases in which Aldus and _I_ or _i_ emend in different ways an error of _P_ (222, 14; 226, 5; 272, 4--not 5). In one case he misquotes Aldus, when the latter really has the reading that both Merrill and Keil indicate as correct (276, 21); in another he fails to remark that Aldus's erroneous reading is supported by _M_ (219,17). However, even after discounting these and possibly other instances, a significant array of conjectures remains. Still, it is not fair to call the Parisinus Aldus's _only_ manuscript. We know that he had other material in the six volumes of manuscripts and collated editions sent him by Giocondo, as well as the latter's copy of _P_. There could hardly have been in this number a source superior to the Parisinus, but Giocondo may have added here and there his own or others' conjectures, which Aldus adopted unwisely, but at least not solely on his own authority; the most apparent case of interpolation (224, 8) Keil thought might have been a conjecture of Giocondo's. Further, if the general character of _P_ is represented in _{ Pi}_, Book X, as well as the beginning of Book III, may have had variants by the second hand, sometimes taken by Aldus and neglected, wisely, by Budaeus's transcriber.