Editing Hutcheson's Inquiry

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Notes

^*A draft of this article gave rise to helpful comments from Stephen Buckle, Daniel Carey, Elijah Millgram and Ulla Wessels. Research was conducted at the Philosophy Program, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra, and supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. I received valuable assistance from various university libraries, first and foremost from Sara Hilder and her colleagues, Rare Books and Special Collections at the University of Sydney Library. I am grateful to all these persons and institutions. – Unless otherwise stated, references to Hutcheson's Inquiry are to the text of the second edition (with some italics omitted) and use the page numbers of the Liberty-Fund edition.

¹The ‘Directions to the Bookbinder’ have their specifications of the ranges of cancellations end with odd page numbers. I follow this convention here. Barring the option of pasting one leaf on top of another, the cancelling itself would have either to stop short of the odd-numbered page or to extend to the even-numbered page that follows (and is the verso of the same leaf).

² Does the convention of saying ‘D’ function as a clue? No, because the explanations on pp. xxiv f. state unequivocally that ‘D’ stands for D2, not for what D2 and D3 have in common. Does the fact that D2 and D3 are versions of the same edition function as a clue? No, because there is no way for the reader to suspect that differences between versions of the same edition are documented in another notation than differences between editions. One reason why she cannot suspect this is that, for all she knows (see p. xxiv), D2 and D3 might differ from each other substantially. Secondly, see p. xxv: the general explanations about the textual notes, although they begin by talking of ‘editions’, are then stated to apply to A, B, C, D and D3. – The problem is less dramatic for the notes reporting changes in the ‘Additions and Corrections’ of D2, because the vigilant reader will remember having been told, on p. xxiv, that the ‘Additions and Corrections’ are the same in D3 as in D2.

³This review is based on the following copies: Kessinger facsimile reprint of C, Gregg International facsimile reprint of D2, University of Sydney Library copies of D1 and D3. For each of these four items I proceeded as follows: when I noticed that the copy failed to say what according to the Liberty-Fund edition it should say, a random subset of the discrepancies was checked (by colleagues, librarians or myself) in various other copies. In no case was the new edition vindicated.