EVEN HOMER SOMETIMES NODS
Quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus.—Horace.
Jugurtha
The effect of Mr. Longfellow’s fine poem, “Jugurtha,” is impaired by a curious mistake. The first of the two stanzas composing it are as follows:
“‘How cold are thy baths, Apollo!’
Cried the African monarch, the splendid,
As down to his death in the hollow,
Dark dungeons of death he descended,
Uncrowned, unthroned, unattended,
‘How cold are thy baths, Apollo!’”
As a matter of fact, Jugurtha’s exclamation when thrust into the cold, dark prison was “Heracles, how cold your [plural, humon] bath is!” (see Plutarch, Marius, c. 12). “Heracles” (the Greek form of Hercules) is the ordinary Greek interjection, not an address to a god. The most natural explanation of this odd mistake seems to be the following: Mr. Longfellow substituted the name of one god for another by a slip of the memory. When Apollo thus replaced Heracles, it was natural to make the further supposition that he was directly addressed, and that the ambiguous “your” was singular.
Completing a Sentence
Senator Hoar of Massachusetts, knew his Bible very well, from cover to cover, and drew upon it for philosophy and illustration with great facility. Only once in a great while was he caught tripping in this field. One such occasion was while the Senate was discussing the Chinese treaty of 1881. He quoted against the exclusion policy St. Paul’s declaration, “For God hath made of one blood all the nations of the earth.”
Senator Miller, of California, exclaimed,—“Go on—quote the remainder of the sentence.”
“There is no more of it,” said Mr. Hoar.
“Oh yes there is,” rejoined Miller, “for the Apostle added to the words which the Senator had just quoted, ‘and hath determined the bounds of their habitation.’”
Racine vs. Voltaire
When Louis Napoleon was in temporary exile in New York, he complied with the request of a young lady for his autograph in her album as follows:
“Le premier qui fut roi, fut un soldat heureux;
Qui sert bien son pays n’a pas besoin d’aïeux.
“Louis Napoléon Bonaparte.
“(Racine.)
“New York, 10 June, 1837.”
The Prince and future Emperor thus attributed to Racine a couplet which should have been credited to Voltaire.
A Chinese Cycle
A Chinese scholar has pointed out that when Tennyson wrote “Locksley Hall” he could not have been aware of the exact nature of a Chinese cycle. “Better,” he exclaimed, “fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.” It being granted that Cathay is poetical English for China, it was stated, with the complete concurrence of an eminent mandarin who was present, that a Chinese cycle consists, and has for some centuries consisted, of sixty years. By these cycles the lapse of time has been computed in China during the whole of the present dynasty. The poet, therefore, was less complimentary to Europe than he probably intended to be when he said that fifty years of Europe was only equal to sixty years of China.
Watts vs. Cowper
Few hymns are better known than Cowper’s “Light Shining Out of Darkness,” commencing
“God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform;
He plants his footsteps in the sea,
And rides upon the storm.”
In the “Student’s English Literature,” published by Murray in 1901, this is part of what is said of Isaac Watts:
“His hymns are well known to all Englishmen—few hymns can surpass ‘God moves in a mysterious way’ for a certain majesty of simple sound.”
This ascription to Watts of Cowper’s stately and sonorous hymn is very strange, to say the least.
Bret Harte’s Astronomy
There is a little discrepancy in the poem by Mr. Bret Harte, entitled “Her Letter,” beginning with the lines:
“I’m sitting alone by the fire,
Dressed just as I came from the dance.”
A girl in New York writes to her lover, who is supposed to be a miner in the far West. Yet, in the concluding stanza, she bids him good night, as follows:
“Good-night, here’s the end of my paper,
Good-night, if the longitude please:
For, perhaps, while I’m wasting my taper,
Your sun’s climbing over the trees.”
It is a little difficult to imagine how it could be sunrise in California at the conclusion of an evening party in New York, even though the dancers had prolonged their amusement until compelled to “chase the glowing hours with flying feet.” And, furthermore, this is improbable because the writer is represented as writing by artificial light. Evidently “Old Folinsbee’s Daughter” had had more training in sentiment than in astronomy.
Wolseley’s Mistake
Lord Wolseley ends his “Decline and Fall of Napoleon” with the following words:
“So wrote the finger on the wall about the proud King of Babylon. It might with equal truth have been written of him whose overthrow at Waterloo is thus described in verse:
“‘Since he miscalled the morning star,
Nor man nor fiend hath fallen so far.’”
Wolseley’s assumption that Byron referred to the defeat at Waterloo is incorrect. The “Ode to Napoleon” was written in 1814, and the date of Waterloo is June, 1815. The reference is to Napoleon’s abdication in April, 1814, and the “sullen isle” in stanza xiv, is Elba, not St. Helena.
Johnson’s Error
The great lexicographer in dealing with the word Confection has the following:
“Of best things then what world shall yield confection,
To liken her?”—Shakespeare.
If we may trust the concordances, there is nothing of the sort in the works of Shakespeare. In Latham’s edition of the Dictionary it is omitted. Johnson can hardly be charged with inventing quotations; but he often trusted his memory in a very haphazard fashion.
Milton’s Italian
Mark Pattison, in his Milton (“English Men of Letters”) series, says,—
“To the poems of the Horton period belong also the two pieces ‘L’Allegro’ and ‘Il Penseroso,’ and ‘Lycidas.’ He was probably in the early stage of acquiring the language when he superscribed the two first poems with their Italian titles. For there is no such word as ‘penseroso,’ the adjective formed from ‘pensiero’ being ‘pensieroso.’ Even had the word been written correctly, its signification is not that which Milton intended,—viz., thoughtful or contemplative, but anxious, full of cares, carking.”
Milton as a Botanist
Milton was in error when he wrote,—
“Thick as Autumnal leaves that strew the brooks in Vallambrosa.”
The trees of Vallambrosa, being pines, do not fall thick in autumn, and the brooks, consequently, are not strewed with them.
Dante as a Naturalist
Dante says in the “Inferno” (Canto xvii),—“As at times the wherries lie on shore, that are part in water and part on land, the beaver adjusts himself to make his war,” etc.
“Lo bevero s’assetta a far sua guerra.”
Bevero should be lontra, the otter. The latter answers to the description, seeking his prey half on land and half in water, and living on the fish he cunningly catches, whereas the subsistence of the beaver is drawn exclusively from the vegetable kingdom. The otter is carnivorous; the beaver derives his nutriment from the bark of deciduous trees, preferably, as shown by their cuttings, birch, poplar, willow, maple, and ash, together with the roots of the pond lily, and also the coarse grasses that grow on the margins of their ponds.
Cassio or Iago?
John Hill Burton, in the Book-Hunter, speaking of purloining from books leaves of whose intrinsic value the owner is ignorant, says,—
“The notions of the collector about such spoil are the converse of those which Cassio professed to hold about his good name, for the scrap furtively removed is supposed in no way to impoverish the loser, while it makes the recipient rich indeed.”
It is not Cassio, but Iago who says that good name in man and woman is the immediate jewel of their souls, the loss of which enriches not others, but makes them poor indeed. The error is worth correcting; for there is no more exquisite touch of art, no finer exhibition of subtle and profound knowledge of man than the teaching by the lips of this supreme scoundrel the wide difference between the intellectual perception of a moral sentiment and its actual possession.
In Time of Peace Prepare for War
When the honorary degree of LL.D. was conferred by the University of Pennsylvania upon President Roosevelt, he made an address in acknowledgment of the distinction, and in honor of the date, which was Washington’s birthday anniversary, in the course of which he gave out the subjoined maxim as one of those in which Washington in his Farewell Address bequeathed to his fellow countrymen for their instruction and guidance:
“To be prepared for war is the most effective means to promote peace.”
This maxim appears neither in Washington’s Farewell Address nor in any other speech or writing of the Father of his Country. The passage which President Roosevelt probably had in mind, and which he quoted from memory without verifying either its source or its exact language, occurs in Washington’s first annual address or message to Congress, delivered on January 8, 1790, nearly seven years before the Farewell Address was written. What Washington said about preparation for war was this:
“To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace.”
The difference between the foregoing and the incorrect version presented at Philadelphia by Mr. Roosevelt is not merely verbal. Washington declared that adequate provision for the common defence was “one of the most” effective means of preserving peace. Washington as quoted by Mr. Roosevelt is made to declare unqualifiedly that such provision is the “most” effective means of promoting peace. The significance of the misquoted superlative is obvious.
Collins vs. Prior
When Mr. Lowell was our Minister at the Court of St. James, he made an address on Coleridge, in Westminster Abbey, in the course of which he quoted the following couplet, attributing it to Collins,—
“Abra was with him ere he spoke her name,
And if he called another, Abra came.”
The lines thus incorrectly quoted are by Prior, and will be found in his “Solomon.” The monarch is speaking of a female slave who had a real affection for him,—
“And, when I called another, Abra came.”
Gladstone’s Heber
Mr. Gladstone, in his well-known article, entitled “Kin Beyond Sea,” misquoted the couplet from Heber’s “Palestine.” Instead of the lines,—
“No workman steel, no ponderous hammers rung,
Like some tall palm the stately fabric sprung”—
as incorrectly given by Mr. Gladstone, they should read,—
“No hammer fell, no ponderous axes rung,
Like some tall palm the mystic fabric sprung.”
Balboa
Why is it that well-informed people so persistently forget the name of the man who first discovered the Pacific Ocean? Keats, “on looking into a volume of Chapman’s Homer” thought of the oceans and the stars, and sang,—
“Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken,
Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes
He gazed at the Pacific; all his men
Gazed at each other with a wild surmise,
Silent upon a peak in Darien.”
Next came the German Emperor, crediting Sir Francis Drake with, having first seen the “great water.” For the benefit of such as fall into this error, it may be stated that the first European to see the Pacific Ocean from the American continent was Vasco Nuñez de Balboa, who beheld it from the eminence now known as Culebra, about half way across the Isthmus of Panama. Neither Cortez nor Sir Francis Drake, had any share in its achievement.
Cenotaph
A Boston journal quoted from a letter of the Rev. W. C. McCoy on a newly dedicated monument as follows: “The moss-grown cenotaphs of Ancient Roman valor held no dust more sacred than do the unmarked graves where sleep your honored dead to-day.” This would be very fine were it not for the erroneous and misleading use of one word. A cenotaph happens to be a monument erected at some place other than the spot where sleep the bones of him whose valor it illustrates.
Bishop Ken’s Doxology
A sermon of the late Rev. Dr. T. De Witt Talmage has this glowing passage:
“When Cromwell’s army went into battle, he stood at the head of them one day, and gave out the long-metre Doxology to the tune of the “Old Hundred,” and that great host, company by company, regiment by regiment, battalion by battalion, joined in the Doxology:
“‘Praise God, from whom all blessings flow,
Praise Him, all creatures here below;
Praise Him above, ye heavenly host,
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.’
“And while they sang they marched, and while they marched they fought, and while they fought they got the victory.”
It seems a pity to destroy a good story, but chronology is very despotic. Oliver Cromwell died in 1658. Bishop Ken, who has always been credited with this grand doxology, was born in 1637, and was then, therefore, only about twenty-one years old. Hymnologists give 1697 as the year in which Bishop Ken wrote the Doxology as the last verse of his morning and evening hymns. This would place the composition about half a century after Cromwell’s last battle in the civil war, and some forty years after his death.
St. Paul to the Ephesians
In the first edition of Dombey and Son (ch. xii.), Dr. Blimber, the master of a select school at Brighton, is made to say to one of his offending pupils, “Johnson will repeat to me to-morrow morning, before breakfast, without book, and from the Greek Testament, the first chapter of the First Epistle of Saint Paul to the Ephesians.” In imposing this penalty, the pompous pedagogue overlooked the fact that there is but one Epistle to the Ephesians in the New Testament. Mr. Dickens’s attention must have been awakened to his error, as it was corrected in subsequent editions.
Byron’s Greek
In Prof. Albert H. Smyth’s “Life of Bayard Taylor” occurs this sentence: “At the Piræus Taylor saw Mrs. Black, ‘The Maid of Athens,’ to whom Byron sang in impossible and ungrammatical Greek.”
The allusion is evidently to the concluding line of the stanzas,
Ζωή μου σᾶς ἀγαπῶ,
which means simply, “My life, I love thee.”
Ought not Professor Smyth to have stayed his pen from this unnecessary impeachment of Byron’s knowledge of Greek, when he remembered that the poet had lived on familiar terms with Greeks long before he went to fight and die for the independence of their famous land? The line given above is colloquial modern Greek, exactly suited to the character of the poem, and was not intended for ancient classic Greek.
Triple Error
In the “Heart of Midlothian” (ch. 1.) is the following passage respecting Effie Deans:
“She amused herself with visiting the dairy, in which she had so long been assistant, and was near discovering herself to May Hettly, by betraying her acquaintance with the celebrated receipt for Dunlop cheese, that she compared herself to Bedreddin Hassan, whom the vizier, his father-in-law, discovered by his superlative skill in composing cream-tarts with pepper in them.”
Brewer, in his “Reader’s Hand Book,” points out several errors in these few lines: (1) “cream-tarts” should be cheese-cakes; (2) the charge was that he made cheese-cakes without putting pepper in them, and not that he made “cream-tarts with pepper;” (3) it was not the vizier, his father-in-law, but his mother, the widow of Noureddin, who made the discovery, and why? For the best of all reasons—because she herself had taught her son the receipt of Damascus. See “Arabian Nights” Noureddin Ali.
Brewer also shows that Thackeray, in “Vanity Fair” (ch. 3) repeated at second-hand Scott’s allusion to Bedreddin, instead of quoting directly from the original. He makes Rebecca Sharp say, “I ought to have remembered the pepper which the Princess of Persia puts in the cream-tarts in the ‘Arabian Nights.’” Aside from this repetition of Scott’s blunders, it was not a princess, but Bedreddin Hassan who was the confectioner. Nor could it have been a princess of Persia, for Bedreddin’s mother was the widow of the vizier of Balsora, at that time quite independent of Persia.
Mistakes of Our Best Writers
Besides the rhetorical blunders and inaccuracies of our best writers, their pages are sprinkled with violations of the plainest grammatical rules. Take, by way of illustration, a few specimens from some of the masters of the English language:
Blair, the rhetorician, says, “The boldness, freedom, and variety of our blank verse is infinitely more favorable than rhyme to all kinds of sublime poetry.”
Latham, the philologist, says, “The following facts may or have been adduced as reasons on the other side.”
Addison says, “I do not mean that I think any one to blame for taking due care of their health.”
Junius says, “Both minister and magistrate is compelled to choose between his duty and his reputation.”
Dryden says, “The reason is perspicuous why no French plays when translated have or ever can succeed on the English stage.”
Gibbon says, “The use of fraud and perfidy, of cruelty and injustice were often subservient to the propagation of the faith.” And again, “The richness of her arms and apparel were conspicuous in the foremost ranks.”
Macaulay says, “The poetry and eloquence of the Augustan age was assiduously studied in Mercian and Northumbrian monasteries.”