These separate but related essays owe their existence to a combined concern for the workings of text criticism and historical linguistics and for the history of scholarship in these fields. On earlier occasions I have suggested certain views on the development of the so-called comparative method. Few things are more rewarding than to bring implicit preconceptions of the past and present out into the open, as I aimed to do then and as I aim to do now. This time existing tradition is treated as a body - without, I hope, being seriously distorting - and one small portion of its working...

These separate but related essays owe their existence to a combined concern for the workings of text criticism and historical linguistics and for the history of scholarship in these fields. On earlier occasions I have suggested certain views on the development of the so-called comparative method. Few things are more rewarding than to bring implicit preconceptions of the past and present out into the open, as I aimed to do then and as I aim to do now. This time existing tradition is treated as a body - without, I hope, being seriously distorting - and one small portion of its working...