[422] Justa Vindicta, A, in margin.
[423] Mr Mackie, in an excellent article on the Fragment (J.E.G.Ph. XVI, 251) objects that my criticism of Hickes' accuracy "is not altogether judicial." Mackie urges that, since the MS is no longer extant, we cannot tell how far the errors are due to Hickes, and how far they already existed in the MS from which Hickes copied.
But we must not forget that there are other transcripts by Hickes, of MSS which are still extant, and from these we can estimate his accuracy. It is no disrespect to the memory of Hickes, a scholar to whom we are all indebted, to recognize frankly that his transcripts are not sufficiently accurate to make them at all a satisfactory substitute for the original MS. Hickes' transcript of the Cottonian Gnomic Verses (Thesaurus, I, 207) shows an average of one error in every four lines: about half these errors are mere matters of spelling, the others are serious. Hickes' transcript of the Calendar (Thesaurus, I, 203) shows an average of one error in every six lines. When, therefore, we find in the Finnsburg Fragment inaccuracies of exactly the type which Hickes often commits, it would be "hardly judicial" to attribute these to the MS which he copied, and to attribute to Hickes in this particular instance an accuracy to which he has really no claim.
Mr Mackie doubts the legitimacy of emending Garulf to Garulf[e]: but we must remember that Hickes (or his printer) was systematically careless as to the final e: cf. Calendar, 15, 23, 41, 141, 144, 171, 210; Gnomic Verses, 45. Other forms in the Finnsburg Fragment which can be easily paralleled by Hickes' miswritings in the Calendar and Gnomic Verses are
Confusion of u and a (Finn. 3, 27, perhaps 44) cf. Gn. 66.
" " c " e (Finn. 12) cf. Cal. 136, Gn. 44.
" " e " æ (Finn. 41) cf. Cal. 44, 73, Gn. 44.
" " e " a (Finn. 22) cf. Cal. 74.
" " eo " ea (Finn. 28) cf. Cal. 121.
" " letters involving long down stroke, e.g., f, s, r, þ, w, p