182G.] Familiarities — Quotations. ' 463 



at least with something like the pomp due to a foreign ambassador. 

 Addison, where he quotes, is very felicitous. The bank should slope 

 gently down into the water, and the water break with a regular music 

 on the bank. Nor is every indiscriminate passage, however beautiful in 

 the main, successful in quotation. A vein of exquisite meaning may run 

 through an entire page, of which, if broken into sentences, no six words 

 will be found with more than common terseness or melody. In other in- 

 stances, an expression, highly fanciful and perspicuous in its proper place, 

 is meagre or ridiculous in another application. We eye it, if quoted, as 

 through a cloud of translation ; its music — nay, its very meaning, is lost 

 in the element of prose. This is not without its analogy :*that which is 

 honey to us, in our own language, is, by a ludicrous contrariety, known 

 in one of the Oriental tongues by the designation of mud. 



If, however, some skill and care should be observed in the selection 

 and setting of the gem, as much more is required in guarding it from a 

 flaw. It offends me to the soul to see a noble figure " cabin'd, cribb'd, 

 confined" — despoiled by a dash of the pen of its native proportion and 

 symmetry : in other words, to sec a splendid passage quoted incorrectly. 

 This not unfrequently occurs in works of established merit : it is an 

 offence against the illustrious living, or dead, not to be lightly dealt with. 

 An author may have so ransacked the vocabulary of his mind for a certain 

 term, that no other can well embody his idea : no man, therefore, should 

 presume to substitute a single word in any doubtful passage, or alter it 

 to suit his argument ; it is an abuse of the invaluable right of appropri- 

 ating to our own use the matured conceptions of another. Even the 

 author's name is, in some cases, given erroneously : an intelligent au- 

 tlioress of rank has alluded, in a celebrated work, to " what Shakspeare 

 calls, ' a fine, gay, bold-faced villain.' " It should be remembered, 

 moreover, that he who can say (as all ought to say) witli the gentle- 

 minded old poet :-;- 



" On bookes for to read I me delight. 

 And to hem give I faith and full credence, 

 And in my heart have hem in reverence," — 

 such a reader will not pervert any noble and incautious ebullition of 

 feeling he may have discovered in them, into an authority for the support 

 of harsh and uncharitable doctrines — he will never lead their profound, 

 and yet verj^ simple m5^steries through a channel of false interpretation. 

 Neither is it quite well to rush at once into the enchanted circle of 

 poetry, as though Apollo had said with a loud voice, " let us quote." 

 The illustration should grow out of the occasion, or it becomes pedantic 

 and affected, and savours too much of having been " at a feast of 

 learning, and stolen the scraps." A v/ell-woven sentence will " turn 

 forth its silver lining" as gracefully as the cloud in " Comus." — There 

 is a species of quotation, too, v/hich has been and continues much in 

 fashion among men of great and little genius, but on which I forbear in 

 this place to dwell. It consists in omitting the inverted commas. Speci- 

 mens of this sin of omission (to take no mean illustration) may be 

 remembered, by the readers of Middleton, in the witch-scenes of " Mac- 

 beth ;" or, by those of the " Sospetto dHerode" in the inspired pages of 

 " Paradise Lost." To adduce minor instances would be to reprint 

 one-half the books that have ever been written. 



To public speakers quotations are of incalculable importance ; they 

 are as pillows of down to the overspvu-red and fainting faculties ; they add 

 a fluency to the most polished expression ; they rush upon the ear like 



