The Scranton tribune. [volume] (Scranton, Pa.) 1891-1910, 1897-11-19
MISCONCEPTIONS.
he Providence Journal.

From the Providence Journal.
Memory is pIoverbially treachcrous
and notl iEg is more common, even il the
writing or speaking Of wcll-read persons,
than msQuotatiOns. The only safe RUE,
of course, is never to quote from no a.
ory. 1t is tedious to look up IL line that
one Is certain one knows; but in this very
certainty lies the chance of error, Even
the process of loOkir cup, however, does
not insure accuracy. Some ingenious
correspondents of the Boston AdFerus"r
have been finding errors in MIR. Bart
ictt's famous book of Tefcrencc-a work
that has passed through many editions,
has been SCTupulOUsly revised and is as
near perfection in this respect as any
book could well be. If Mr.. Bartlett can
nod thus what may not ordinary care
less persons do? II is curious fast mat
the quotations really familiar" are most
often misquOtcd; Mr. Bartlett himself
bears witness to that fact. A noted ey-
ample - the line by Bi,aop Berkeley,
Westward the course of empire takes
its way" perverted by Bancroft into
Westward the star of empire takes its
way" and cited thus in the '"Diction-
ary." one reason is, perhaps, that such
quotations are used detached from their
context and that few of those who use
them ever see them in their original Set
ting. For one person VINO reads Bishop
Berkeley there are a thousand who use
his phrase without lhOuSht OF Its origin.
o.
But there are other common mlsquota-
tions less pardonable. In these days the
printed page has practically destroyed
the practice of committing to memory
whole poems. 1t is sometimes denied,
even, that the old ballads which survived
almost into our own times by oral tradi-
tion merely, could ever have been accur-
atc.y transcribed by such a process. lhe
committing to memory of forty, sixty or
eighty stan2aS would be a task to the
educated in our day; how could 1t have
been done by the ignorant then? But any
one who looks into the matter will quick
ly discover that those who read least
often rem smbel best There are child
hood tales which have been told by one
generation of nurses after another with
very little variation, So, too, persons
with a love for literature by few books
learn "by heart what they wish to re-
member and carry in their heads a IL
brary without books. Such persons have
singularly accurate and vivid memories; /;
and it is no woEder that, at a time when
there were practically no books-at least
in circulation among the pCople-the
songs of the wandering balladists should
have been remembered and handed down
almost intact through several centuries
1t might be well, i'm some respects, if
the perpetual reading Of these days were
sometimes interrupted in behalf of a
little memOrlzing.
o
Misuuotations in conversation are more
pardonable than those i'm print. We
doubt, indeed, If there are many of the
former; IL is less "the thing" than it
once was to air ones knowledge in this
way; nor, indeed, is conversation, i'm any
high sense of the word, the thing
either. Except between intimate friends
talk seldom takes turn to Justify even
~ 4 lga
Is a small loss, since no quotation at all
Is usually preferable TO a Eackneyed one;
the aptness vanishes after ii mas been
used some thing Nike ten thousand times.
But in writing the neat allusion to what
some one else hes said the happy adap-