MISQUOTATIONS.
Mr. Editor,—The offence of misquoting the poets is become so general, that I would suggest to publishers the advantage of printing more copious indexes than those which are now offered to the public. For the want of these, the newspapers sometimes make strange blunders. The Times, for instance, has lately, more than once, given the following version of a well-known couplet:—
"Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,
As to be hated needs but to be seen."
The reader's memory will no doubt instantly substitute such hideous for "so frightful," and that for "as."
The same paper, a short time since, made sad work with Moore, thus:—
"You may break, you may ruin the vase if you will,
But the scent of the roses will hang by it still."
Moore says nothing about the scents hanging by the vase. "Hanging" is an odious term, and destroys the sentiment altogether. What Moore really does say is this:—
"You may break, you may ruin the vase if you will,
But the scent of the roses will cling round it still."
Now the couplet appears in its original beauty.
It is impossible to speak of the poets without thinking of Shakspeare, who towers above them all. We have yet to discover an editor capable of doing him full justice. Some of Johnson's notes are very amusing, and those of recent editors occasionally provoke a smile. If once a blunder has been made it is persisted in. Take, for instance, a glaring one in the 2nd part of Henry IV., where, in the apostrophe to sleep, "clouds" is substituted for "shrouds."
"Wilt thou, upon the high and giddy mast,
Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his brains
In cradle of the rude imperious surge,
And in the visitation of the winds,
Who take the ruffian billows by the top,
Curling their monstrous heads, and hanging them
With deafening clamours in the slippery clouds,
That with the hurly death itself awakes?"
That shrouds is the correct word is so obvious, that it is surprising any man of common understanding should dispute it. Yet we find the following note in Knight's pictorial edition:—
"Clouds.—Some editors have proposed to read shrouds. A line in Julius Cæsar makes Shakspere's meaning clear:—
"'I have seen
Th' ambitious ocean swell, and rage, and foam,
To be exalted with the threatening clouds.'"
Clouds in this instance is perfectly consistent; but here the scene is altogether different. We have no ship-boy sleeping on the giddy mast, in the midst of the shrouds, or ropes, rendered slippery by the perpetual dashing of the waves against them during the storm.
If in Shakspeare's time the printer's rule of "following copy" had been as rigidly observed as in our day, errors would have been avoided, for Shakspeare's MS. was sufficiently clear. In the preface to the folio edition of 1623, it is stated that "his mind and hand went together; and what he thought he uttered with that easinesse that wee have scarse received from him a blot in his papers."
D***N**R.
8th Nov. 1849.