_Misquotation--"He who runs may read_."--No such passage exists in the
Scriptures, though it is constantly quoted as from them. It is usually
the accompaniment of expressions relative to the clearness of meaning or
direction, the supposititious allusion being to an inscription written
in very large characters. The text in the prophet Habakkuk is the
following: "Write the vision and make it plain upon tables, that he may
run that readeth it." (Ch. ii. 2.) Here, plainly, the meaning is, that
every one reading the vision should be alarmed by it, and should fly
from the impending calamity: and although this involves the notion of
legibility and clearness, that notion is the secondary, and not the
primary one, as those persons make it who misquote in the manner stated
above.