Note 40 — POEMS

But if we apply to 1633 the a posteriori tests described by Dr. Moore in his work on the textual criticism of Dante's Divina Commedia, if we select a number of test passages, passages where the editions vary, but where one reading can be clearly shown to be intrinsically the more probable, by certain definite tests,40 we shall find that 1633 is, taken all over, far and away superior to any other single edition, and, I may add at once, to any single manuscript.