Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 10.djvu/437

 .x. NOV. a, lore.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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if they were Lamb's, and we do not expect the same accuracy in the "leader " of a daily paper as we do in a purely literary journal. Some writers, again, may be misquoted with less offence than others. Byron and Mrs. Browning, for instance, might conceivably gain somewhat by this means, but to mis- quote Keats or Shelley is unpardonable. I am not sure how the matter stands with Tennyson or Wordsworth. Their master- pieces could not, indeed, well be improved, but some of them have been so often altered by the poets themselves that we can scarcely regard them as possessing the inevitableness which makes misquotation a sort of sacrilege. In any case misquotation must imply either ignorance or carelessness. Nobody, one would think, with a really fine ear could mis- quote "Full fathom five" or "Hear, ye ladies." The more amazing is it to find in 'Horse Solitarise,' a little book of rather dainty essays, such misquotations as these:

The tears of Imogen Are things to brood on with more ardency Than the death-days of empires.

Greek in a hut, with water and a crust, Learning, forgive us ! cinders, ashes, dust.

C. C. B. [Surely the latter is a conscious variant.]

COLERIDGE'S ' CHRISTABEL.'

(9 th S. x. 326, 388.)

FEW people, except those engaged in the same trade, can form any conception of the trials of a bibliographer. The perils he is called upon to face are greater than those encountered by St. Paul perils of obscure magazine articles, perils of private and limited issues, perils of varying titles, perils of the printing press, and, worst of all, perils by his own countrymen, especially by those in his own line of business, who are ever on the lookout to detect some trivial error. As he lays down his pen with a sigh of mingled relief and weariness, he hears, by anticipation, the whoop with which a misplaced comma is discovered, and sees his scalp flaunted before a circle of admiring braves. MR. THOMAS HUTCHINSON, in the course of an article which throws a flood of light upon a very obscure point of Coleridge bibliography, finds time to observe that in giving a certain title-page I have done so " with verbal accuracy," but with "certain errors of punctuation, &c." Well, on p. 310 of the current volume of edition of Mr. Shepherd's ' Bibliography of
 * N. & Q.' I regretfully admitted that in my

Coleridge ' there had been some carelessness in revising proofs ; but that the whole work should be condemned on this account has not been the opinion of critics who are as well qualified to judge as MR. HUTCHINSON. As regards the title-page in question, I see that a semicolon has been substituted for a colon after the word "Christabel,"and that a super- fluous comma has been inserted after " Co." These are the only errors in punctuation that I have been able to discover ; and I am at a loss to understand what MR. HUTCHINSON means by the "&c." There may be much virtue in an '!if," but there may be a corresponding amount of the opposite quality in an "&c.," which may be either a symbol of great significance or a simple expletive. 'In the present case I attach the latter meaning to it, and consider that the missile, though thrown with much goodwill, has missed its mark. And as regards errors in punctuation, I note that MR. HUTCHINSON says that H. T. " correctly transcf ibed " the title-page of the first edition of ' Christabel.' This is not the case, as a colon was omitted After " London." MR. HUTCHINSON, therefore, is open to the charge which he has brought against myself, though the matter seems so childish that I have no wish to press it. Misprints will occur in the best-edited works. Few books have had greater care bestowed upon them than Mr. Dykes Campbell's edition of Coleridge's ' Poetical Works,' and yet on p. 625 John Payne Collier's 'Diary' is transformed into John Payne Collier's 'Dears.' This is almost as comical as a misprint which I noticed in a literary journal some time since, by which a well known work of Stevenson's appeared under the suggestive title of 'Travels with a Darkie.' No doubt on questions of fact Mr. Dykes Campbell may be relied on, though his account of the Brunton sisters at p. 569 is all wrong.

MR. HUTCHINSON nas very clearly shown how MR. SHEPHERD'S error arose in connexion with the lines :

Sir Leoline, the Baron rich, Hath a toothless mastiff bitch ;

but the history of these lines does not end with the edition of 1828, in which Coleridge very unnecessarily altered them. Mr. Dykes Campbell has adopted the 1828 reading, but does not explain how it was that intermediate editions reverted to the original text. I can- not refer to the edition of 1834 at this moment, but in that of 1844, which I believe was also edited by Henry Nelson Coleridge, the earlier and better reading has been followed, and it is needless to say that Dr. Garnett,