Allow me to suggest the publication of a small work, which might be
entitled "The Book of Hackneyed Quotations." Manifold would be its
usefulness. Here information would be imparted to enquirers anxious to
discover the source of such passages and the labours of other oracles,
as well as of the editor of "NOTES AND QUERIES," would be thus in this
department diminished. Reporters would by this means be enabled to
correct mistakes; for, owing either to blunders in the delivery, or
errors in the short-hand notes, rarely are quotations faithfully
printed. The gentleman "totally unaccustomed to public speaking," and
the orator of "unadorned eloquence," might from hence cull some flowers
wherewith to embellish their speeches while to the practised author and
the accomplished speaker such a collection might serve as an index
expurgatorius, teaching them what to avoid as common-place, and so the
recurrence of old friends, "familiar in our mouths as household words,"
would be more "like angels' visits, few and far between."
An index referring to the rhyming or important words should be appended,
and it would be advisable to subjoin translation of the few Latin and
French citations.
Surely it is "devoutly to be wished" that the proposed little work may
find "a local habitation and a name," and that the idea may not vanish
into thin air "like the baseless fabric of a vision." No doubt several
of your correspondents who do not think that "ignorance is bliss," and
that it is "folly to be wise," would gladly lend their aid, and the
constant "cry" would be "they come." As to the title, "a rose by any
other name would smell as sweet:" but "somewhat too much of this."