PREFACE. THE HE text adopted for this edition is that of Bekker, as reprinted at the Oxford University Press. Here and there I have ventured on changes, the reasons for which I have given in each case. They do not profess to rest on the authority of manuscripts, but on my own view of their advisability, or on the authority of others, whether editors or commentators. In editing any Greek or Latin writer, the question of the authority of various manuscripts is one which many editors must leave unapproached. The sound judgment requisite in such matters must be the result of large experience and study of that particular branch of editorial work. It seems to me a complete specialty; and one who has not been led, either by inclination or pursuits, to give it special attention, could not hope that any weight should attach to his decisions, and had better therefore acquiesce in the conclusions of those who are recognised as authority on the point. Unfortunately, in the particular case of Aristotle, the silence preserved by the editors of the great Berlin edition, the basis, it seems acknowledged, of any subsequent editions, as to the value of the manuscripts whose various readings they insert, and as to the grounds of their preference of the readings they adopt, leaves us in ignorance, so far as their judgment is concerned, of what amount of assistance might be derived from manuscripts. But it would seem, from the concurrent testimony of those who have turned their attention to the Politics of Aristotle, that the amount is not large. Not to dwell on the dictum of Niebuhr on this point, the German critic who, more than any other of those I have met with, urges the expediency of a careful collation of MSS., does so with the avowal that, when all is done, the text of Bekker must remain the basis; and Spengel, whose labours seem to me in quality the most valuable, not |