Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 11.djvu/169

 9 S. XI. FEB. 28, 19C3.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

161

LONDON, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 190S.

CONTENTS. -No. 270.

NOTES:- Accuracy in Quotation, 161 Shakespeariana, 12

The ' Paston Letters' and the ' N.B.D.,' 163 Antiquity

of Businesses " Burglar " Wallace, 165 "Nothing" " Slang," 166 'Abbeys around London,' 167.

QUBEIBS -.-Lord-borough D'Bwes's Portrait of Cotton- Austin Family "That immortal lie," 167 Castle Rushen, Isle of Wight Mrs. Drelincourt General Haynau "Green and yellow" in Browning Creevey, M.P. De Lespina Reynolds of the Mint, 168 -Grahams of Netherby

"O could my mind." &c. Hanover or Saxe-Coburg? Races of Mankind Coast Waiters' Office Henslowe's ' Diary 'Robin Hood, 169- Quotations Wanted, 170.

REPLIES : Coleridge's ' Christabel,' 170 Linguistic Curio- sities " Such spotless honour," &c. The Cope, 172 Heriot Dodsley Hellequin and his Household, 173 Isabella Colour Centrifugal Railway " Loon-slatt," 174

"Outstrip" "Typulator" Witnessing by Signs Mitre Annie of Tharau, 175 'Hymns Ancient and Modern ' Kieff, Kiev, Kiew "Peace, Retrenchment, and Reform," 176 " Rollick " City of the Violet Crown Latin Conversa' ion Ireton Family' Nobiliaire de Nor- mandie,' 177" Honest" Epitaphs, 178.

NOTES ON BOOKS : Staley's 'Hierurgia Anglicana,' Part I. Baker's ' Collegiate Church of Stratford-on-Avon ' Hiatt's 'Notre Dame de Paris 'Masses 'Church and Abbey of Mont St. Michel' Fea's 'Picturesque Old Houses ' ' Edinburgh Review.'

Notices to Correspondents.

goto.

ACCURACY IN QUOTATION.

/AN accuracy be carried too far in the itter of quotation 1 ? I opine not. At all events, there seems no immediate danger to be feared, and there is abundant evidence that at present it is not carried far enough. Even should the time ever arrive when quoters are accurate to a fault, I very much doubt whether such a state of things would not be a matter for congratulation rather than otherwise. At present faults i.e., in- accuracies abound, and finding them is an easy matter. While not denying that "it is easier to be critical than to be correct (Disraeli's speech, 24 Jan., 1860), yet it seems beyond question that with the expenditure of % a little time and trouble many of the mistakes now so prevalent might easily be avoided. A few isolated examples would not, of course, prove my case : they might be the exceptions that prove the rule ; but any one who has anything to do with quotations, and especially " quotations of quotations," wil] admit that the following are only samples of hundreds of others that might be cited their name is legion.

First let me put my own house in order Having met with several differing versions of the line from Bos well's ' Life of Johnson

see letter in the Saturday Review of 20 Sept. ast), I took the trouble to refer to H. Brooke's play 'The Earl of Essex/ and found the following, near the end of the first act : for righteous monarchs,

Justly to judge, with their own eyes should see ;

To rule o'er freemen, should themselves be free.

So that Boswell's version (vol. iv. p. 304, 1824 edition),

Who rules o'er freemen, should himself be free, and that given in the * Diet. Nat. Biog.' vol. vi. p. 425),

Who rule o'er freemen should themselves be free, are incorrect. So much for the words them- selves. Several dictionaries of quotations state that the line (incorrectly quoted) is from H. Brooke's play of * Gustavus Vasa,' which seems to be an error. At all events, the above words occur in ' The Earl of Essex.' ' Gustavus Vasa ' was published in 1739, and Johnson appears far from ridi- culing it to have written a complete vin- dication of it. 'The Earl of Essex' was not published until ten years later.

A mischievous form of misquotation is a so-called correction. In 8 th S. xi. 406 a cor- respondent mentions how he was once incor- rectly corrected when quoting Dr. Routh's advice to Dean Burgon, being told that the word was "quotations," instead of "refer- ences." The advice is as follows : " Always to verify your references, sir ! " (Dean Burgon's ' Lives of Twelve Good Men,' p. 38, 1891 edi- tion.) The 'Diet. Nat. Biog.' has (vol. xlix. p. 325) : "Always verify your references." If the word "always" is retained, it should read " Always to," &c., but otherwise, to be cor- rect, shorten it to "verify your references."

Sometimes the references themselves leave something to be desired. I saw in a recently published work a quotation referred to Con- greve's ' The Mournful Bride.' Mournful, indeed !

There are persons unprincipled enough to perpetrate a sin which, for want of a better term, we might call the reverse of plagiarism. It consists in putting forward as a quotation their own words, thinking, perhaps, that this plan gives them more weight, but never thinking of the useless trouble that may be given to those industrious searchers after trutn who try to trace quota- tions to their origin. Such a crime worse than a blunder is almost impossible of detection ; for who can say that any particular phrase has not been written before? The chances are that it has.

Here is another flagrant case flagrant in spite of verbal accuracy up to a certain point.