has come to us from remote
time, can be rightly guided only by such principles and facts as have the
stamp of creditable antiquity. Hence there are, undoubtedly, in books, some
errors and defects which have outlived the _time in which_, and the
_authority b which_, they might have been corrected. As we have no right to
make a man say that which he himself never said or intended to say, so we
have in fact none to fix a positive meaning upon his language, without
knowing for a certainty what he meant by it. Reason, or good sense, which,
as I have suggested, is the foundation of grammar and of all good writing,
is indeed a perpetual as well as a universal principle; but, since the
exercises of our reason must, from the very nature of the faculty, be
limited to what we know and understand, we are not competent to the
positive correction, or to the sure translation, of what is obscure and
disputable in the standard books of antiquity.

OBS. 5.--Let me cite an example: "For all this I considered in my heart,
even to declare all this, that the righteous, and the wise, and their
works, are in the hand of God: no man knoweth either love or hatred _by_
all _that is_ before them. All _things come_ alike to all."--
_Ecclesiastes_, ix, 1. Here is, doubtless, _one_ error which any English
scholar may point out or correct. The pronoun "_them_" should be _him_,
because its intended antecedent appears to be "_man_," and not "_the
righteous and the wise_," going before. But are there not _other_ faults in
the version? The common French Bible, in this place, has the following
import: "Surely I have applied my heart to all that, and to unfold all
this; _to wit_, that the righteous and the wise, and their actions, _are_
in the hand of God and love and hatred; _and that_ men know nothing of all
_that which is_ before them. All _happens_ equally to all." The Latin
Vulgate gives this sense: "All these things have I considered in my heart,
that I might understand them accurately: the righteous and the wise, and
their works, are in the hand of God; and yet man doth not know, whether by
love or by hatred lie may be worthy: but all things in the future are kept
uncertain, so that all may happen alike to the righteous man and to the
wicked." In the Greek of the Septuagint, the introductory members of this
passage are left at the end of the preceding chapter, and are literally
thus: "that all this I received into my heart, and my heart understood all