Augustine's CONFESSIONS, Textual Errors in the last two Chadwick reprints thereof

So time is a distension, we know this, and when Augustine writes of reciting a psalm that he knows, he directs his expectation towards the whole and proceeds to make one word, one verse at a time, the object of his memory through the act of recitation, while continuing to hold the rest in expectation. The act extends in two ways, so that Augustine holds in memory the verses he has already recited, and entertains an expectation of the verses he will shortly recite, until the psalm is past and the act is done.

All this is in XI xxviii 38.

Now. If Augustine were to miss a word or a verse during his recitation (he does not posit this as a possibility in XI xxviii 38), it would screw him up: time is distended in two directions, both equally capable of being confounded in the memory. Likewise in any experience of recitation or reading. When a word or a line is skipped, an interruption appears between the reader's past experience of a sentence's beginning and future expectations of the conclusion of the sentence's syntax and thought content, creating in the present a moment for the reader of, "Wait, what the hell?"

On now to the errors in the Chadwick reprints. As far as I can tell, if you have the title of the work backlit in red instead of blue, these are in your book. Depending on your paper topic, it matters.

ERROR #1 -- VIII vii 16

Bottom of page 144, in any edition. Try reading, "If I and you once again placed me in front of myself" and have it make sense. Go on. Or, rather than engage in profitless gymnastics of grammar, consult an older blue copy of THE CONFESSIONS and note that a line has dropped out from the bottom of p144.

Between "If I" on 144 and "and you once again" on 145, pencil in the following: "tried to avert my gaze from myself, his story continued relentlessly," and you'll be fine.

ERROR #2 -- XI xxiv 33

Bottom of page 263, "and I pray that, of" (turn the page) "with utter confidence that in your" -- what? Consulting the blue copy again, there's a line missing at the top of 264. Write in, "your mercy, I may render to you my vows (Ps. 115: 17-18). I say" and keep reading.

Seriously? I thought scribal error was an eighth century thing. But it's alive and well. Now you know.