of erasure would make the case clear at
once. But the first interpolated copy has nearly always been lost, and
in the copies derived from it every trace of addition or substitution
has disappeared. There is no need to define "continuations." It is well
known that many chronicles of the middle ages have been "continued" by
various writers, none of whom took the trouble to indicate where his own
work began or ended.

Sometimes interpolations and continuations can be very readily
distinguished in the course of the operations for restoring a text of
which there are several copies, when it so happens that some of these
copies reproduce the primitive text as it was before any addition was
made to it. But if all the copies are founded on previous copies which
already contained the interpolations or continuations, recourse must be
had to internal analysis. Is the style uniform throughout the document?
Does the book breathe one and the same spirit from cover to cover? Are
there no contradictions, no gaps in the sequence of ideas? In practice,
when the continuators or interpolators have been men of well-marked
personality and decided views, analysis will separate the original from
the additions as cleanly as a pair of scissors. When the whole is
written in a level, colourless style, the lines of division are not so
easy to see; it is then better to confess the fact than to multiply
hypotheses.

III. The critical investigation of authorship is not finished as soon as
a document has been accurately or approximately localised in space and
time, and as much information as possible obtained about the author or
authors.[85] Here is a book: we wish to ascertain the origin of the
information contained in it, that is, to be in a position to appreciate
its value; is it enough to know that it was written in 1890, at Paris,
by So-and-so? Perhaps So-and-so copied slavishly, without mentioning the
fact, an earlier work, written in 1850. The responsible guarantor of the
borrowed parts is not So-and-so, but the author of 1850. Plagiarism, it
is true, is now rare, forbidden by the law, and considered
dishonourable; formerly it was common, tolerated, and unpunished. Many
historical documents, with every appearance of originality, are nothing
but unavowed repetitions of earlier documents, and historians
occasionally experience, in this connection, remarkable disillusions.
Certain passages in Eginhard, a ninth-century chronicler, are borrowed
fr