“Thick as Autumnal leaves that strew the brooks in Vallambrosa.”
The trees of Vallambrosa, being pines, do not fall thick in autumn, and
the brooks, consequently, are not strewed with them.
_Dante as a Naturalist_
Dante says in the “Inferno” (Canto xvii),—“As at times the wherries lie
on shore, that are part in water and part on land, the beaver adjusts
himself to make his war,” etc.
“Lo bevero s’assetta a far sua guerra.”
_Bevero_ should be _lontra_, the otter. The latter answers to the
description, seeking his prey half on land and half in water, and living
on the fish he cunningly catches, whereas the subsistence of the beaver
is drawn exclusively from the vegetable kingdom. The otter is
carnivorous; the beaver derives his nutriment from the bark of deciduous
trees, preferably, as shown by their cuttings, birch, poplar, willow,
maple, and ash, together with the roots of the pond lily, and also the
coarse grasses that grow on the margins of their ponds.
_Cassio or Iago?_
John Hill Burton, in the _Book-Hunter_, speaking of purloining from
books leaves of whose intrinsic value the owner is ignorant, says,—
“The notions of the collector about such spoil are the converse of those
which Cassio professed to hold about his good name, for the scrap
furtively removed is supposed in no way to impoverish the loser, while
it makes the recipient rich indeed.”
It is not Cassio, but Iago who says that good name in man and woman is
the immediate jewel of their souls, the loss of which enriches not
others, but makes them poor indeed. The error is worth correcting; for
there is no more exquisite touch of art, no finer exhibition of subtle
and profound knowledge of man than the teaching by the lips of this
supreme scoundrel the wide difference between the intellectual
perception of a moral sentiment and its actual possession.
_In Time of Peace Prepare for War_
When the honorary degree of LL.D. was conferred by the University of
Pennsylvania upon President Roosevelt, he made an address in
acknowledgment of the distinction, and in honor of the date, which was
Washington’s birthday anniversary, in the course of which he gave out
the subjoined maxim as one of those in which Washington in his Farewell
Address bequeathed to his fellow countrymen for their instruction and
guidance:
“To be prepared for war is the most effective means to promote peace.”
This maxim appears neither in Washington’s Farewell Address nor in any
other speech or writing of the Father of his Country. The passage which
President Roosevelt probably had in mind, and which he quoted from
memory without verifying either its source or its exact language, occurs
in Washington’s first annual address or message to Congress, delivered
on January 8, 1790, nearly seven years before the Farewell Address was
written. What Washington said about preparation for war was this:
“To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving
peace.”
The difference between the foregoing and the incorrect version presented
at Philadelphia by Mr. Roosevelt is not merely verbal. Washington
declared that adequate provision for the common defence was “one of the
most” effective means of preserving peace. Washington as quoted by Mr.
Roosevelt is made to declare unqualifiedly that such provision is the
“most” effective means of promoting peace. The significance of the
misquoted superlative is obvious.
_Collins_ vs. _Prior_
When Mr. Lowell was our Minister at the Court of St. James, he made an
address on Coleridge, in Westminster Abbey, in the course of which he
quoted the following couplet, attributing it to Collins,—
“Abra was with him ere he spoke her name,
And if he called another, Abra came.”
The lines thus incorrectly quoted are by Prior, and will be found in his
“Solomon.” The monarch is speaking of a female slave who had a real
affection for him,—
“_And, when I called another, Abra came._”
_Gladstone’s Heber_
Mr. Gladstone, in his well-known article, entitled “Kin Beyond Sea,”
misquoted the couplet from Heber’s “Palestine.” Instead of the lines,—
“No workman steel, no ponderous hammers rung,
Like some tall palm the stately fabric sprung”—
as incorrectly given by Mr. Gladstone, they should read,—
“No hammer fell, no ponderous axes rung,
Like some tall palm the mystic fabric sprung.”
_Balboa_
Why is it that well-informed people so persistently forget the name of
the man who first discovered the Pacific Ocean? Keats, “on looking into
a volume of Chapman’s Homer” thought of the oceans and the stars, and
sang,—
“Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken,
Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes
He gazed at the Pacific; all his men
Gazed at each other with a wild surmise,
Silent upon a peak in Darien.”
Next came the German Emperor, crediting Sir Francis Drake with, having
first seen the “great water.” For the benefit of such as fall into this
error, it may be stated that the first European to see the Pacific Ocean
from the American continent was Vasco Nuñez de Balboa, who beheld it
from the eminence now known as Culebra, about half way across the
Isthmus of Panama. Neither Cortez nor Sir Francis Drake, had any share
in its achievement.
_Cenotaph_
A Boston journal quoted from a letter of the Rev. W. C. McCoy on a newly
dedicated monument as follows: “The moss-grown cenotaphs of Ancient
Roman valor held no dust more sacred than do the unmarked graves where
sleep your honored dead to-day.” This would be very fine were it not for
the erroneous and misleading use of one word. A cenotaph happens to be a
monument erected at some place other than the spot where sleep the bones
of him whose valor it illustrates.
_Bishop Ken’s Doxology_
A sermon of the late Rev. Dr. T. De Witt Talmage has this glowing
passage:
“When Cromwell’s army went into battle, he stood at the head of them one
day, and gave out the long-metre Doxology to the tune of the “Old
Hundred,” and that great host, company by company, regiment by regiment,
battalion by battalion, joined in the Doxology:
“‘Praise God, from whom all blessings flow,
Praise Him, all creatures here below;
Praise Him above, ye heavenly host,
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.’
“And while they sang they marched, and while they marched they fought,
and while they fought they got the victory.”
It seems a pity to destroy a good story, but chronology is very
despotic. Oliver Cromwell died in 1658. Bishop Ken, who has always been
credited with this grand doxology, was born in 1637, and was then,
therefore, only about twenty-one years old. Hymnologists give 1697 as
the year in which Bishop Ken wrote the Doxology as the last verse of his
morning and evening hymns. This would place the composition about half a
century after Cromwell’s last battle in the civil war, and some forty
years after his death.
_St. Paul to the Ephesians_
In the first edition of Dombey and Son (ch. xii.), Dr. Blimber, the
master of a select school at Brighton, is made to say to one of his
offending pupils, “Johnson will repeat to me to-morrow morning, before
breakfast, without book, and from the Greek Testament, the first chapter
of the First Epistle of Saint Paul to the Ephesians.” In imposing this
penalty, the pompous pedagogue overlooked the fact that there is but one
Epistle to the Ephesians in the New Testament. Mr. Dickens’s attention
must have been awakened to his error, as it was corrected in subsequent
editions.
_Byron’s Greek_
In Prof. Albert H. Smyth’s “Life of Bayard Taylor” occurs this sentence:
“At the Piræus Taylor saw Mrs. Black, ‘The Maid of Athens,’ to whom
Byron sang in impossible and ungrammatical Greek.”
The allusion is evidently to the concluding line of the stanzas,
Ζωή μου σᾶς ἀγαπῶ,
which means simply, “My life, I love thee.”
Ought not Professor Smyth to have stayed his pen from this unnecessary
impeachment of Byron’s knowledge of Greek, when he remembered that the
poet had lived on familiar terms with Greeks long before he went to
fight and die for the independence of their famous land? The line given
above is colloquial modern Greek, exactly suited to the character of the
poem, and was not intended for ancient classic Greek.
_Triple Error_
In the “Heart of Midlothian” (ch. 1.) is the following passage
respecting Effie Deans:
“She amused herself with visiting the dairy, in which she had so long
been assistant, and was near discovering herself to May Hettly, by
betraying her acquaintance with the celebrated receipt for Dunlop
cheese, that she compared herself to Bedreddin Hassan, whom the vizier,
his father-in-law, discovered by his superlative skill in composing
cream-tarts with pepper in them.”
Brewer, in his “Reader’s Hand Book,” points out several errors in these
few lines: (1) “cream-tarts” should be _cheese-cakes_; (2) the charge
was that he made cheese-cakes _without_ putting pepper in them, and not
that he made “cream-tarts _with_ pepper;” (3) it was not the vizier, his
father-in-law, but his mother, the widow of Noureddin, who made the
discovery, and why? For the best of all reasons—because she herself had
taught her son the receipt of Damascus. See “Arabian Nights” Noureddin
Ali.
Brewer also shows that Thackeray, in “Vanity Fair” (ch. 3) repeated at
second-hand Scott’s allusion to Bedreddin, instead of quoting directly
from the original. He makes Rebecca Sharp say, “I ought to have
remembered the pepper which the Princess of Persia puts in the
cream-tarts in the ‘Arabian Nights.’” Aside from this repetition of
Scott’s blunders, it was not a princess, but Bedreddin Hassan who was
the confectioner. Nor could it have been a princess of Persia, for
Bedreddin’s mother was the widow of the vizier of Balsora, at that time
quite independent of Persia.
_Mistakes of Our Best Writers_
Besides the rhetorical blunders and inaccuracies of our best writers,
their pages are sprinkled with violations of the plainest grammatical
rules. Take, by way of illustration, a few specimens from some of the
masters of the English language:
Blair, the rhetorician, says, “The boldness, freedom, and variety of our
blank verse _is_ infinitely more favorable than rhyme to all kinds of
sublime poetry.”
Latham, the philologist, says, “The following facts _may_ or have been
_adduced_ as reasons on the other side.”
Addison says, “I do not mean that I think _any one_ to blame for taking
due care of _their_ health.”
Junius says, “_Both_ minister and magistrate _is_ compelled to choose
between _his_ duty and _his_ reputation.”
Dryden says, “The reason is perspicuous why no French plays when
translated _have_ or ever can _succeed_ on the English stage.”
Gibbon says, “The _use_ of fraud and perfidy, of cruelty and injustice
_were_ often subservient to the propagation of the faith.” And again,
“The _richness_ of her arms and apparel _were_ conspicuous in the
foremost ranks.”
Macaulay says, “The poetry and eloquence of the Augustan age _was_
assiduously studied in Mercian and Northumbrian monasteries.”