Note 41 — POEMS

It is here that the manuscripts come to our aid. To take, indeed, any single manuscript, as Dr. Grosart did, and select this or that reading from it as seems to you good, is not a justifiable procedure. This is simply to add to the editions one more possible source of error. There is no single manuscript which could with any security be substituted for 1633. Our analysis of that edition has made it appear probable that a manuscript resembling D, H49, Lec was the source of a large part of its text. But it would be very rash to prefer D, H49, Lec as a whole to 1633.41 It corrects some errors in that edition; it has others of its own. Even W, which has a completer version of some poems than 1633, in these poems makes some mistakes which 1633 avoids.