The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1896-10-18

fants, and the other, In the midst of life
we are in death" is a portion of the burial
inal- According to the history of the prayer
book. this expression formed part of a
hymn by a monk of st. Gall. who, while
watching some workmen erecting q bridge,
composed the hymn in which these words
are found. Earth to earth, ashes to ashes,
dust to dust an expression exceedingly
biblical in tone, is also from the burial
service.
FROM SHAKESPEARE.
So far as heard from, Mr.. Bryan has not
attempted to quote from Shakespeare, a
fortunate circumstance, for il he made SO
wretched a failure in his efforts to quote
biblical phrases and sentences that any
Sunday-school scholar could repeat cor
rectly, it is easy to believe that his eta
lions from the immortal dramatist would
set the teeth on edge. Blunderers of his
kind, however, keep up the reputation of
his class for inaccuracy by butchering in
The repetition some of the finest thoughts
in the ~grandest of English dramatists.
There is one advantage, frequently re-
peated in these lays of Kaleidoscope
quoted. Politics makes strange bedfel-
cry acquaints a man with strange bedfel-
lows" the change in the idea to adapt the
sentence to present being allowable, pro-
vided the effort to quote be -nonapparent.
The course of true love never runs
smooth has become a common proverb,
but this fact does not prevent its being
originally a misQuotation from the Mid
summer Nights Dream, where it reads:
The course of true love never did run
OF the end, is found in the same play as
the true beginning or our end" Shak-
spear never said It's a wise father that
knows his own son." but 1T is a wise
father that knows his own child He
must needs go that the devil drives" IS
often mangled into He must needs ride
NEh4n tho devil driHraC - n h ~ orc nf GnnGz
as well as of sound. Few quotations have
Jared more hardly at the hands of the mis-
quoter than the charming lines,
She never told her love;
But let concealmerft, like a worm l. the bud,
Feed on her damask check"
They have been wrenched and tortured
ana distorted in so many ways that even
qaickwitted Shakespeare himself might be
puzzled to recognize his own literary Off
spring in some of the versions occasionally
heard.
FROM HAMLET.
TIL man who objected to Hamlet because
1t was so full of quotations might, had he
chosen to pursue the subject further, have
found additional ground of objection in
that so many were given wrong, or, rather,
not as he had been accustomed to hear
them. "A little more than kin and less than
Kind is commonly mangled to a greater
or less extent. In the dead vast and mid
die of the night fares somewhat worse,
and While one with moderate haste might
tell a hundred is hardly ever quoted cor
reetly,. the word count being substituted
for tell. And to the manner born" is often
written and spoken manor, as though one
would say he was born in the manor
mouse, when the use of the proper word
indicates only that he is familiar with the
custom. The glow worm shows the matin
TO be near, and gins to pale his intellectual
fre Is another passage that suffers,
among other changes, Intellectual being
often substituted for the proper word.
pit uat ans ne n II mao "a ~ us true; tbs true tbs
which to the Shakspearean quoter has as
many terrors as the triumphant exclama-
ton Of Samson has for the biblical sehol-
Israel said, With the jaWbone of an ass,
heaps upon heaps, with the jaw of an ass
any one ever quotes the u~tterance as Sam
son said 1t, the jawbone and the jaw being
carelessly transposed, and the heaps .upon
heaps doubled up as frequently and hope
lessly as the It's of Shakespeare. There's
method in his madness is not from Ham
let" but the line there occurs, Though
this be madness, vet there's method int
The undiscovered country, from whose
bourne no traveller returns" is almost as
much of a stumbling block as That he is
mad being mangied and butchered to
such extent as to deprive it of both reason
ana meter. Even so plain and simple a
passage as There's a divinity that shapes
our ends, rough hew them how we will
though the sound assists the sense, does
not escape the talent of the misquoter, Tor
every one has heard half a dozen variations
of these simple lines.
OTHER COMMON BLUNDERs.
Many expressions and sentences from
w~ell-knoWn authors, like Shakespeare, have,
in their perverted form, become so COM
pletely a part of the current speech of the
day that most persons are not aware
either of the origin of these sayings or of
their original language. Look before you
leap" has become a common proverb, but
is a perversion of Buffers Look before
you ere you leap" and It's an i'll wind
that blows no good" is much better ex-
pressed by Tusser in 1T is an i'll wind
turns none to good" Not all persons who,
toner with the words ASK no questions
and III tell you no lies are aware that
they are quoting; or rather misquoting'
quer," wrote, ASK me no questions and
III tell you no fbs," the difference between
a fiber and a liar being one of degree
rather than kind. Choose the least of two
evils is a misquotation from Prior, who
wrote. OF two evils / have chose the
Greek meets Greek then comes the tug of
war; but Nat Lee, wis wrote "Alexander
Greeks then was the tug of var" quite a
mind" is a contraction of what Lord
out nloo Of 'si ghqt5s' The cup tn that Cheers but a
not inebrIates' is the best misquoters can
do with CowDer's lines, 1.-The cups that
1kAI& tdk NV i&0 aIk ~" O&A&
Jefferson, though so close to our own time
that he is but, so to speak. of yesterday,
did not escape from the hands, or rath-
er the mouths, of the misquoters, fer his
saying, The post of honor is the private
station" has been altered, and not Tor the
better. so often that ne himself would not
recognize it in some of Is manifold forms.
WRITER'S WHO MISQUOTE.
There may be some palliation for the
Interpretations of those who blunder in ordi-
nary conversation or in speech making as
profuse as that done by Bryan, but there
is much less for men who deliberately sit
down and misquote with pen in hand. In
such cases the offense is inexcusable, for
every author who writes for publication has
or can have at hand such books of refer
ence as will enable him TO avoid blunders
either of statement or language. Yet it has
sometimes happened, through carelessness,
iaziness or that curious lapse of memory
which occasionally comes TO even the most
careful, that writer's of considerable repu-
tation have made blunders of IL uguag or
statement of which they were afterwards
very greatly ashamed. Sir Walter Scott
was not faultieSS III this regard, and more
than one error, due solely to carelessness.
is TO be found in his writings. One of the
worst is where he speaks of those peace
makers, to whom 1t is pronounced as a
benedictiOn that they shall inherit the
EARTH Had Sir Waiter opened the little
Bible. which. after the fashion of Scotland
his mother bestowed upon him as soon as
he could read, he would haye learned that
dren of God and that the meek were to in
herit the earth. Oliver Wendell Holmes has
somewhere Il quaint idea that on every
mans skull there is what he calls the