The Highland weekly news. [volume] (Hillsborough [Hillsboro], Highland County, Ohio) 1853-1886, 1885-07-15
VERIFY YouR QUOTATIONS.
Serious Blundor. iIade BY Prominent me,
crnry Mon,


Serious Biundora Mnda by prominont re. /
crary Mon,
The late Dean Stanley, when he visited |
tbis country, few years before his
death. delivered several pertinent and
very sensible addresses. In one OF
these, pronounced in New York before
the students of a theological school in
that oity he advised the young men,
among other things, 70 verify their quo
tations The counsel was certainly very
good, and the necessity of such verifCa-
ton is laid upon all public speakers and
writer's For there is hardly anything
so common as are the mistakes in quo
ting another's language which we find
in literature mistakes that arise from
the practice Of quoting from memory
indulged in by writer's not few. There
is, indeed a question of morality be.
hind this matter, and it has been Sc.
riOusly discussed whether o writer is
bound to do more than to give the sub
stance of the sentence which he quotes,
instead of the eNac. words MAY not
man be too finiCal and precise2 Why
should he spend an hour or two in
hunting up the quotation that is in his
mind even if he mconsciously change
the authors language, without doing
violence to the authors thought The
chief danger Is the contraction Of loose
habits of composition. For there is no
wish or design to misreprcsent or state
falsely the opinions which another has
expressed. We say nothing here, eN-
/ cept i'm censure, of the practice of the
, compiers of hymn books, who, with
malice prepense alter, prune, and often
/ times sadly mutilate the religious poetry
{ that comes beneath their imp GUS hands.
| The immortality of that kind of work is
beyond question.
The remark which Steele made i'm
4 reference, as is generally supposed, TO
Lady Elizabeth Hastings has often been
/ quoted and almost as often quoted in
correctly. Steele wrote: Though her
/ mien carries much more invitation than
command, to behold her is an immedi-
| ate check to loose behavior; to love her
was a liberal education There are
/ two curious Interpretations on this bright
and famous sentence, which Thackeray
declared to be "the finest compliment
to a woman that perhaps was ever
offered One is i'm the essay on Pope
contained in James Russell Lowell S
"My Study Windows "Was it not in
this age, says Mr.. Lowell, "that loose
Dick Steele paid his wife the finest com.
plment ever paid to woman, when he
said that to know her was a liberia
education?' Here are two distinct
errors committed by so careful a writer
as Mr.. Lowell. Yet he is not alone in
this. Arthur Helps in his romance o.
"Realmah, has this sentence: steel,
also did not i'll describe, though briefly
the charm of being with a woman whom
he greatly admired, when he said tina
to be much with her was in itself a LID
eral education. ," We are also told tha
Leigh Hunt once, in quoting the re
mark, incorrectly ascribed it to Con
greve. Here, then, are three distinc
writer's of high rank who have show
how, in a moment of careless cOmpo
sitiOn, they were lead astrav by an in
accurate remembrance. They had NJ
desire to misquote their author, an,
they gave the substance, But the
grievously failed in the words them
selves, and one of them, at least in thei
application.
There are slips of the tongue an
slips of the pen to which the bes
speakers and writer's are liable, and W
are not, therefore, disposed to be Ger
serious. How often have Milton
fresh woods and pastures new bee
changed to fresh ieldsp Word,
worth's primrose by a rivers brim
has been rendered ''cowslips on tn
rivers brink" and sometimes "On tn
fountains brim. ." Cowper's "cup
that cheer but not inebriate'' have bee
almost always made to appear in tn
singular number really destroying tn
sense of the passage to a great extent
We heard a cauoni in YOrkminister ono
begin a sermon in this way: Zone G
our poets, COwper, l think, has sal
that there are books in the runnin
brooks, sermons in stones, and good i
everything, - and nobody in th
) large congregation appeared to b
astOnished We also heard a learne
professor at a college commencement
/, dinner speak of "the still veX'd Bel
moothes' and ascrbe the phrase c
j Milton. "The cynOsure of neighbOrin
eyes is often presented as the ''cynC
sure Of every eye, and "that last in
trinity of noble mind is generally ren
dered "the last infrmity of nobl
minds which possibly Milton mean
to say A preacher of our acquaintance
( who is usually very careful in his refer
enoes, once, to his own subsequen
, modification, attributed the injunction
, of the apostle James, "Be ye doers O
+ the word and not hearers only" to ST
? Paul.
Bul those who quote incorrectly ma
comfort themselves by thinking tina
they are in good company. There are
{ as every careful reader knows. numel
GUS quotations in the New Testamen
from the writer's of the Hebrew Scrip
lures in the old They are made almos
altogether from the septuagint versions
and not from the original Hebrew, AM
in a great many cases the quotation
, are not accurately given. In som
+ cases the New Testament writer's seer
p to have had the Greek translation bC
fore them; liz others, possibly q versio
in the Aramaiac tongue; but they otter
doubtless, quoted from memory, an
, could not always recall the precis
J words. The same thing appears in tn
j quotations which the early Christia
I fathers made from the Gospels an
o. other sacred writings. Absolute elcac
1 itude is not always to be found
Perhaps it may be thought th,