408 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 157. 



of view which I had the prood fortune to possess, 

 commanded, on either side, many hundred yards 

 of the principal part of the Boulevards. The eye 

 quailed under the impression produced by the 

 column after column of soldiers. They came on, 

 on, on, like never-ending torrents of men and 

 horses and artillery. At last you heard a faint 

 and distant cry ; then a stir of excitement ; then 

 the cry became greater, louder, longer — but want- 

 inw English lungs. At last, in the distance, sur- 

 rounded by waving plumes and brilliant uniforms, 

 you saw one man, apart from the rest, coming on 

 in front, saluting both sides of the well-thronged 

 streets with somewhat too upright, but still with 

 "raceful courtesy. Just below my window stood 

 one of the most graceful of all the trophies erected 

 by the eighth division of the National Guard. To 

 see him debouch through that, followed by his 

 escort, would have almost made the blood of 

 Victor Hugo warm enough to admire the figure 

 and wonder at the fortune of a man performing so 

 grand a rble — and who really, to do him justice, 

 looked very Caasar-like, 



" That unassailable held on his rank 

 Unshaked of motion." 



The flatteries he received — the adulation, even to 

 a mockery, was enough to have turned the head of 

 any common man. 



Now read the following : 



■" Then, as I said, the duke, great Bolingbroke, 

 Mounted upon a hot and fiery steed, 

 Which his aspiring rider seem'd to know, 

 With slow, but stately pace, kept on his course. 

 While all tongues cried, ' God save thee, Boling- 

 broke ! ' 

 You would have thought the very windows 



spake. 

 So many greedy looks of young and old 

 Through casements darted their desiring eyes 

 Upon his visage, and that all the walls, 

 ' With painted imagery, had said at once — 

 ' Jesu preserve thee ! Welcome, Bolingbroke ! ' 

 Whilst he from one side to the other turning. 

 Bare-headed, 



Bespake them thus: ' I thank you, countrymen;' 

 And thus still doing, thus he pass'd along." 



Will some one of your readers tell us whether 

 there is any foundation for this description in the 

 chronicles of the time ? I should think not. 



R. F. 



ON QUOTATIONS. 



Independent of the necessity for it in particular 

 cases, the practice of illustrating and strengthening 

 a writer's own ideas and expressions by quoting 

 the words of others, is certainly very tempting, 

 as well as frequently very convenient. It is, how- 

 ever, unquestionable, that the system of making 



quotations is very loosely exercised ; as any one 

 may speedily discover who will take the trouble 

 to trace such borrowed articles to their original 

 sources. There may be, and are, instances where 

 such misrepresentation is intentional ; but in 

 others, where no suspicion of dishonesty can exist, 

 it arises either from trusting solely to memory, or 

 from receiving the quotation from some one else, 

 without referring to the fountain-head. Of the 

 first error, examples ai'e very common among my 

 clerical brethren, whose citations of texts of scrip- 

 ture continually vary — slightly and in unimport- 

 ant matters, it is true — but still vary from the 

 printed authority ; and this not only in manuscript, 

 but also in published sermons. The second de- 

 scription of fault is more especially alluded to 

 here, and prevails somewhat extensively in the 

 lighter literature of the day, afibrding fair ground 

 for the conclusion, that, one writer having com- 

 mitted a blunder, it was copied and transmitted 

 from one to another so long as the quotation re- 

 mained in fashion. A case precisely to the point 

 occurs in two lines, which were so iterated and 

 reiterated some years ago, that they appeared to 

 be general favourites, though they have not been 

 noticed in any very recent publication. Most, or 

 all readers of these remarks, may remember to 

 have met with the rhyme as a professed passage 

 from Butler's Hudibras : 



" A man convuiced against his will 

 Is of the same opinion still." 



This was bandied about, as if no one paused to 

 reflect that the sentence is sheer nonsense, or tried 

 to ascertain the authenticity of it. How can a 

 man be " convinced against his will ?" And though 

 his work contains many sufficiently strange and 

 ridiculous conceits, Samuel Butler was not likely 

 to be guilty of such an absurdity as the above. 

 This, no doubt, was a corruption, in consequence 

 of being originally cited from an indistinct and 

 unassisted recollection alone, of the couplet: 



" He that complies against his will, 

 Is of his own opinion still." 

 Hudibras, Part III. Canto 3. 11. 547-8. 



There is also a French phrase in very general 

 use, but in a similarly distorted form, " coiite qu'il 

 coute" being almost universally, so far as my 

 observation has extended, printed " coute qui 

 coute ;" that is, " cost who costs," instead of cost 

 what it may ; and this gross oversight is allowed to 

 pass by writers in whom certainly it could not be 

 excused on the plea of ignorance ! 



The instances now given will perhaps be acknow- 

 ledged to bear out the object of these strictures, 

 which is, to offer a caution against adopting the 

 language, if only a single sentence, of another, 

 without satisfying ourselves of the grammatical 

 correctness of the expressions, for which we become 

 in a manner, responsible. Arthub Hussey. 



