"You may break, you may ruin the vase if you will,
But the scent of the roses will _hang by_ it still."
Moore says nothing about the scents _hanging by_ the vase. "Hanging"
is an odious term, and destroys the sentiment altogether. What Moore
really does say is this:--
"You may break, you may ruin the vase if you will,
But the scent of the roses will _cling round_ it still."
Now the couplet appears in its original beauty.
It is impossible to speak of the poets without thinking of Shakspeare,
who towers above them all. We have yet to discover an editor capable
of doing him full justice. Some of Johnson's notes are very amusing,
and those of recent editors occasionally provoke a smile. If once
a blunder has been made it is persisted in. Take, for instance, a
glaring one in the 2nd part of Henry IV., where, in the apostrophe
to sleep, "clouds" is substituted for "shrouds."
"Wilt thou, upon the high and giddy mast,
Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his brains
In cradle of the rude imperious surge,
And in the visitation of the winds,
Who take the ruffian billows by the top,
Curling their monstrous heads, and hanging them
With deafening clamours in the slippery _clouds_,
That with the hurly death itself awakes?"
That _shrouds_ is the correct word is so obvious, that it is
surprising any man of common understanding should dispute it. Yet
we find the following note in Knight's pictorial edition:--
"_Clouds_.--Some editors have proposed to read _shrouds_. A line
in Julius Cæsar makes Shakspere's meaning clear:--
"'I have seen
Th' ambitious ocean swell, and rage, and foam,
To be exalted with the threatening _clouds_.'"
_Clouds_ in this instance is perfectly consistent; but here the scene
is altogether different. We have no ship-boy sleeping on the giddy
mast, in the midst of the shrouds, or ropes, rendered slippery by the
perpetual dashing of the waves against them during the storm.
If in Shakspeare's time the printer's rule of "following copy" had
been as rigidly observed as in our day, errors would have been
avoided, for Shakspeare's MS. was sufficiently clear. In the preface
to the folio edition of 1623, it is stated that "his mind and hand
went together; and what he thought he uttered with that easinesse that
wee have scarse received from him a blot in his papers."