The Sign of Four

Continuing with the Sherlock Holmes stories, I finished The Sign of Four yesterday. I have not noticed any superabundance of Sherlock Holmes reprints in the book stores; but I must confess that I at least have returned to Holmes and Watson after watching the new BBC series.

Sherlock Holmes & Textual Criticism

From A Study in Scarlet:

(Holmes to Dr. Watson) "In the everyday affairs of life it is more useful to reason forward, and so the other comes to be neglected. There are fifty who can reason synthetically for one who can reason analytically...Most people, if you describe a train of events to them, will tell you what the result would be. They can put those events together in their minds, and argue from them that something will come to pass. There are few people, however, who, if you told them a result, would be able to evolve from their own inner consciousness what the steps were which led them up to that result. This power is what I mean when I talk of reasoning backward, or analytically." (p.100)

As I am completing a chapter of the dissertation that reconstructs the textual history of certain Greek scholia, I found this a very good explanation of the type of work that I am trying (successfully or not) to do.

Doyle's Miles Gloriosus

From The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard:

He was a good boy, this Duroc, with his head full of the nonsense that they teach at St. Cyr, knowing more about Alexander and Pompey than how to mix a horse's fodder or care for a horse's feet.

...it would have interested me to see something of the customs of the English, which differ very much from those of other nations. Much as I should have wished, however, to have seen them eat their raw meat and sell their wives,...