Note 69 — Chapter II

This rule is not absolute. The editor is generally accorded the right of unifying the spelling of an autograph document—provided that he informs the public of the fact—wherever, as in most modern documents, the orthographical vagaries of the author possess no philological interest. See the Instructions pour la publication des textes historiques, in the Bulletin de la Commission royale d'histoire de Belgique, 5th series, vi. (1896); and the Grundsätze für die Herausgabe von Actenstücken zur neueren Geschichte, laboriously discussed by the second and third Congresses of German historians, in 1894 and 1895, in the Deutsche Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft, xi. p. 200, xii. p. 364. The last Congresses of Italian historians, held at Genoa (1893) and at Rome (1895), have also debated this question, but without result. What are the liberties which it is legitimate to take in reproducing autograph texts? The question is more difficult than is imagined by those who are not professionally concerned with it.