"Tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing."
He made this comment upon it: "The lines as they now stand are manifestly wrong. No one ever found books in the running brooks, or sermons in stones. But a slight transposition of words reduces the passage to sense. Shakespeare's meaning is clear, and what he meant he must have written. The passage should read thus"—
"Stones in the running brooks,
Sermons in books, and good in every thing."
Crooked Coincidences.
A pamphlet published in the year 1703, has the following strange title—
"The Deformity of Sin Cured, a sermon preached at St. Michael's, Crooked Lane, before the Prince of Orange, by the Rev. James Crookshanks. Sold by Matthew Dowton, at the Crooked Billet, near Cripplegate, and by all other Booksellers." The words of the text are, "Every crooked path shall be made straight," and the Prince before whom it was preached was crooked, i. e., deformed.
The Bride of Abydos.
In this poem of Byron's there is no bride, for the heroine dies heart-broken and unwedded.
Grandiloquent Outbursts.
There is a volume printed at Amsterdam, 1657, entitled: "Jesus, Maria, Joseph; or the Devout Pilgrim of the Everlasting Blessed Virgin Mary, in his Holy Exercises, Affections and Elevations, upon the sacred Mysteries of Jesus, Maria and Joseph." We append a few extracts from this curious book, as a specimen of the language employed at that time in addressing the Virgin—