Zeffirino Carestia, a sculptor, told me we had a great sculptor in
England named Simpson. I demurred, and asked about his work. It seemed
he had made a monument to Nelson in Westminster Abbey. Of course I saw
he meant Stevens, who had made a monument to Wellington in St. Paul’s. I
cross-questioned him and found I was right.
Suppose that in some ancient writer I had come upon a similar error about
which I felt no less certain than I did here, ought I to be debarred from
my conclusion merely by the accident that I have not the wretched muddler
at my elbow and cannot ask him personally? People are always getting
things wrong. It is the critic’s business to know how and when to
believe on insufficient evidence and to know how far to go in the matter
of setting people right without going too far; the question of what is
too far and what is sufficient evidence can only be settled by the
higgling and haggling of the literary market.
So I justify my emendation of the “grotta del toro” at Trapani. [_The
Authoress of the Odyssey_, Chap. VIII.] “Il toro macigna un tesoro di
oro.” [The bull is grinding a treasure of gold] in the grotto in which
(for other reasons) I am convinced Ulysses hid the gifts the Phœacians
had given him. And so the grotto is called “La grotta del toro” [The
grotto of the bull]. I make no doubt it was originally called “La grotta
del tesoro” [The grotto of the treasure], but children got it wrong, and
corrupted “tesoro” into “toro”; then, it being known that the “tesoro”
was in it somehow, the “toro” was made to grind the “tesoro.”
XIII
Unprofessional Sermons