Gleanings from the Harvest-Fields of Literature: A Melange of Excerpta

by Unknown

IMPORTANCE OF PUNCTUATION.

The following passage occurs in Marlowe’s Edward II.:—

Mortimer Jun.—This letter written by a friend of ours,

Contains his death, yet bids them save his life.

Edwardum occidere nolite timere, bonum est.

Fear not to kill the king, ’tis good he die.

But read it thus, and that’s another sense:

Edwardum occidere nolite, timere bonum est.

Kill not the king, ’tis good to fear the worst.

Unpointed as it is, thus shall it go, &c.

Mr. Collier appends the following note:—

Sir J. Harington has an Epigram [L. i., E. 33] “Of writing with double pointing,” which is thus introduced:—“It is said that King Edward, of Carnarvon, lying at Berkely Castle, prisoner, a cardinal wrote to his keeper, Edwardum occidere noli, timere bonum est, which being read with the point at timere, it cost the king his life.”

The French have a proverb, Faute d’un point Martin perdit son ane, (through want of a point [or stop] Martin lost his ass,) equivalent to the English saying, A miss is as good as a mile. This proverb originated from the following circumstance:—A priest named Martin, being appointed abbot of a religious house called Asello, directed this inscription to be placed over his gate:—

Porta patens esto, nulli claudatur honesto.

(Gate, be thou open,—to no honest man be shut.)

But the ignorant painter, by placing the stop after the word nulli, entirely altered the sense of the verse, which then stood thus:—

Gate, be open to none;—be shut against every honest man.

The Pope being informed of this uncharitable inscription, took up the matter in a very serious light, and deposed the abbot. His successor was careful to correct the punctuation of the verse, to which the following line was added:—

Pro solo puncto caruit Martinus Asello.

(For a single stop Martin lost Asello.)

The word Asello having an equivocal sense, signifying an ass as well as the name of the abbey, its former signification has been adopted in the proverb.

A nice point has recently occupied the attention of the French courts of law. Mons. de M. died on the 27th of February, leaving a will, entirely in his own handwriting, which he concludes thus:—

“And to testify my affection for my nephews Charles and Henri de M., I bequeath to each d’eux [i.e. of them] [or deux, i.e. two] hundred thousand francs.”

The paper was folded before the ink was dry, and the writing is blotted in many places. The legatees assert that the apostrophe is one of those blots; but the son and heir-at-law maintains, on the contrary, that the apostrophe is intentional. This apostrophe is worth to him two hundred thousand francs; and the difficulty is increased by the fact that there is nothing in the context that affords any clew to the real intention of the testator.

Properly punctuated, the following nonsense becomes sensible rhyme, and is doubtless as true as it is curious, though as it now stands it is very curious if true:—

I saw a pigeon making bread;

I saw a girl composed of thread;

I saw a towel one mile square;

I saw a meadow in the air;

I saw a rocket walk a mile;

I saw a pony make a file;

I saw a blacksmith in a box;

I saw an orange kill an ox;

I saw a butcher made of steel;

I saw a penknife dance a reel;

I saw a sailor twelve feet high;

I saw a ladder in a pie;

I saw an apple fly away;

I saw a sparrow making hay;

I saw a farmer like a dog;

I saw a puppy mixing grog;

I saw three men who saw these too,

And will confirm what I tell you.

The following is a good example of the unintelligible, produced by the want of pauses in their right places:—

Every lady in this land

Hath twenty nails upon each hand;

Five and twenty on hands and feet,

And this is true without deceit.

Punctuated thus, the true meaning will at once appear:—

Every lady in this land

Hath twenty nails: upon each hand

Five; and twenty on hands and feet;

And this is true without deceit.

The wife of a mariner about to sail on a distant voyage sent a note to the clergyman of the parish, expressing the following meaning:—

A husband going to sea, his wife desires the prayers of the congregation.

Unfortunately, the good matron was not skilled in punctuation, nor had the minister quick vision. He read the note as it was written:—

A husband going to see his wife, desires the prayers of the congregation.

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Horace Smith, speaking of the ancient Oracles, says, “If the presiding deities had not been shrewd punsters, or able to inspire the Pythoness with ready equivoques, the whole establishment must speedily have been declared bankrupt. Sometimes they only dabbled in accentuation, and accomplished their prophecies by the transposition of a stop, as in the well-known answer to a soldier inquiring his fate in the war for which he was about to embark. Ibis, redibis. Nunquam in bello peribis. (You will go, you will return. Never in war will you perish.) The warrior set off in high spirits upon the faith of this prediction, and fell in the first engagement, when his widow had the satisfaction of being informed that he should have put the full stop after the word nunquam, which would probably have put a full stop to his enterprise and saved his life.”