Mincing Lane.
I cannot agree with your correspondent E. S. T. T., that a corruption of
meaning has taken place in this word; and that whereas it originally meant
a selection of the good and a discarding of the bad parts of anything, its
present meaning, is exactly the reverse of this. Its original signification
is correctly stated: the garbling of spices, drugs, &c., meant the
selection of the good and the rejection of the bad. But the garbling of a
passage cited as a testimony is a precisely analogous process. The person
who garbles the passage omits those parts which can be used against his
view, and adduces only those parts which support his conclusion. He selects
the parts which are good, and rejects those which are bad, _for his
purpose_. When a passage is said to be garbled, it is always implied that
the person who quotes it has suppressed a portion which tells against
himself; but that portion is, so far as he is concerned, the _bad_, not the
_good_ portion. The secondary and metaphorical is therefore precisely
analogous to the primary and literal sense of the word, and not the reverse
of it.