[74] Quite recently our scholars used to neglect this elementary precaution, in order, as they said, to avoid an "air of pedantry." M. B. Hauréau has published, in his _Notices et extraits de quelques manuscrits latins de la Bibliothèque nationale_ (vi. p. 310), a piece of rhythmic verse, "De presbytero et logico." "It is not unedited," says he; "Thomas Wright has already published it.... But this edition is very defective; the text is occasionally quite unintelligible. We have, therefore, considerably amended it, making use, for this purpose, of two copies, which, it most be conceded, are neither of them faultless...." The edition follows, with no variants. Verification is impossible. [75] "Textual emendation too often misses the mark through want of knowledge of what may be called _the rules of the game_" (W. M. Lindsay, p.v. in the work referred to above). [76] It has often been asked whether _all_ texts are worth the trouble of "establishing" and publishing them. "Among our ancient texts," says M. J. Bédier, referring to French mediæval literature, "which ought we to publish? Every one. But, it will be asked, are we not already staggering under the weight of documents?... The following is the reason why publication should be exhaustive. As long as we are confronted by this mass of sealed and mysterious manuscripts, they will appeal to us as if they contained the answer to every riddle; every candid mind will be hampered by them in its flights of induction. It is desirable to publish them, if only to get rid of them and to be able, for the future, to work as if they did not exist...." (_Revue des Deux Mondes_, February 15, 1894, p. 910). All documents ought to be catalogued, as we have already pointed out (p. 31), in order that researchers may be relieved of the fear that there may be documents, useful for their purposes, of which they know nothing. But in every case where a summary analysis of a document can give a sufficient idea of its contents, and its form is of no special interest, there is nothing gained by publishing it _in extenso_. We need not overburden ourselves. Every document will be analysed some day, but many documents will never be published. [77] Editors of texts often render their task still longer and more difficult than it need be by undertaking the additional duty of commentators, under the pretext of explaining the text. It would be to their advantage to spare themselves this labour, and to dispense with all annotation which does not belong to the "apparatus criticus" proper. See, on this point, T. Lindner, _Ueber die Herausgabe von geschichtlichen Quellen_, in the _Mittheilungen des Instituts für österreichische Geschichtsforschung_, xvi., 1895, pp. 501 _sqq._