gy the antipodes of theirs. German hymns and French memoirs of the pietistic or mystical cast, which she loves so much, all come alike to her; she misquotes them all. Miss Dora Greenwell is a thoughtful writer; but she grievously offends whenever she quotes. With her An infant crying in the night, An infant crying for the light, And with no language but a cry, becomes, As infants crying in the dark, As infants crying for the light, etc. It is lucky that her last volume is not likely to be opened by a certain class of read ers, for both "infants" and "in the dark" have, with them, a meaning all their own. Another exquisite verse in her hands becomes, Of the moth that shrivels in a useless fire, The anguish that subserves another's gain. It is simple torture to remember the beauty of the original, with this travesty printed before us: That not a worm is cloven in vain ;- Even Shakespeare's hackneyed schoolboy lines escape not, but take on a new colour from her pen: There is a tide in the affairs of men How difficult it is to keep Heights which the soul is competent to gain, becomes with her,— The heights which man is competent to win, Incompetent to keep. And Mr. Andrew Wilson, the versatile author of the justly praised "Abode of Snow," almost keeps pace with these ladies in his powers of prosifying poetry. By the insertion of turfs for tufts in this fine verse from Wordsworth, can there be two opinions that he improves it for the worse? Through primrose turfs, in that sweet bower, This may be, and probably is, an error of the press, but Coleridge does not fare much better at Mr. Andrew Wilson's hands. One of the finest touches in the Eternal Lawgiver! yet thou dost wear The Godhead's most benignant grace; Nor know we anything more fair Than is the smile upon thy face; Flowers laugh before thee in their beds, And fragrance in their footing treads; Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong, And the immortal heavens, through thee, are fresh and strong. "Immortal" here, instead of "most ancient," does entirely change the sense. A most curious case, and one of the most original-if any originality can be claimed in misquotation was that of Mr. John Forster, who gave, in his second volume of Landor's "Life," a facsimile of a letter written in acknowledgment of a visit paid by Dickens and himself to the veteran on his seventy-fifth birthday, in which there occurs the following verse: I I warmed both hands before the fire of Life; Nature I loved, and, next to Nature, Art; It sinks; and I am ready to depart. With the facsimile before his eyes, the word before, which has a sweet hint of alliteration became, in Mr. Forster's letter-press copy, "against," — which is prosaic, incorrect indeed, and such as Landor could hardly have written. Then the pointing is all wrong and common-place. A very characteristic clause of the letter besides is left out in Mr. Forster's copy. As we write, Macmillan's Magazine storm at which the for November is laid on our table. We | To fifty, till the terrible trumpet blared lift it up and glance over its' contents. At the barrier - Yet a moment and once more Having been concerned with the niceties The trumpet - and again of poetic expression, we not unnaturally turn at once to see what "A Lincolnshire Of galloping hoofs bare on the ridge of spears Rector" has to say of Virgil and Tenny- In the middle, with the crash of shivering And riders front to front, until they closed son, poets of so widely-separated eras. But here misquotations, and mispointings points, such as destroy accent and sense together, are truly "presences not to be put by," and sadly disturb our enjoyment, all the more, that we feel the worth of many of "A Lincolnshire Rector's" remarks. A fine stanza of "Locksley Hall" is thus printed, rhyme and music being wholly ruined: And thunder, etc., etc. Now this punctuation gives the page a look quite unlike Mr. Tennyson's usual contour of blank verse, for dashes, on the whole, he uses sparingly. But this is how we find this passage in all the editions we have access to: The lists were ready. Empanoplied and We enter'd in, and waited, fifty-three An "s" seems a small matter, but it may dislocate a foot, and "A Lincolnshire Rector" immediately gives a positive illustration by adding "s to" wave," in this fine couplet from Maud: " 66 Of echoes, and a moment, and once more And thunder. In the exquisite illustrative quotation Down-glancing, lamed his charger. If it should be objected that these are very trifling departures from the text to Listening now to the tide in its broad-flung | justify such harsh criticism, let us remind ship-wrecking roar, Now to the scream of a maddened beach dragged down by the wave. But far worse than either of these is this our readers of what Wordsworth inferred from one of Sir Walter Scott's superficially insignificant misquotations from him. "W. Scott quoted as from me," says unpardonable botch of quotation from Wordsworth, "The Last Tournament: Red-pulsing up through Alioth and Alior The long, low dune and lazy-plunging sea, They fired the tower Red-pulsing up thro' Alioth and Alcor Come round by the East, and out beyond them The long low dune, and lazy plunging sea. Once more, from "The Princess : "The swan on sweet St. Mary's lake Floats double, swan and shadow, instead of still, thus obscuring my idea, and betraying his own uncritical principles of composition. Walter Scott is not a careful composer. He allows himself many liberties, which betray a want of respect for his reader. For instance, he is too fond of inversions, i.e., he often places the verb before the substantive, and the accusative before the verb," etc.* That versatile writer, the author of "Guy Livingstone," who is always quoting in every language under heaven, at one place gives us the following lines: She stood up in bitter case, Like a statue thunderstrook, That, though shivered, seemed to look "Prose Writings." Edited by Rev. A. B. Grosart. Vol. III., p. 462. But turning to the original, the latest edi- | that of them with whom in this cause we tion, we find it reads thus: She stood up in bitter case, with a pale yet Right against the thunder-place. Now, the importance of correct quotation is seen in the impossibility of a statue which has been " "shivered" looking, or seeming to look, against anything, and the tense absolutely precludes the idea of "shivering." So Mrs. Browning's delicate and beautiful fancy is wholly lost, and the verse prosified. These errors He prayeth best who loveth best strive, there are whose betters would hardly be found, if they did not live amongst men, but in some wilderness by themselves." And the dean actually introduced this quotation by the words, "To the Puritans against whom he wrote he acknowledged that it was impossible to find better men than those who were amongst them." The truth is, that Hooker was so full of calm, unmoved sarcasm, that we sometimes cannot help feeling a little of sympathy with his wife; and the above is an instance of his cool and irritating attitude, so hiding itself under assumed politeness as to cheat even a master like Dean Stanley. In this case certainly the dean has been a little too facile in forcing men of the old type to illustrate the breadth and ready sympathy which he so admirably illustrates and than the dean's was that of Colonel Wentpleads for. Perhaps a still worse case worth Higginson, author of "Atlantic Essays," who, when speaking of the superiority of American magazines in respect of style, in that they were, as he held, more finished, careful, harmonious, and less slangy, chanced to pounce upon Dean Alford, asking, "What secondrate American writer would see any wit in describing himself, like Dean Alford in his recent book on language, as ‘an old party in a shovel '?"* Now it happens that Dean Alford never did so describe He made and loves them all. himself, but chose rather in his "Queen's To account for such grave misrepresen- English" to expose the vulgarity of those tations of standard poets, whose writings who lent themselves to such modes of lie ready to the hand of any person of or- speech, as any one may see by reference dinary culture, is not difficult, and two to p. 228 of that very interesting, if somewords suffice, haste and carelessness. times opinionated book. But Colonel It is worth inquiring, however, how it is Wentworth in this illustrates the tendenthat, whilst English authors suffer so se- cy to that overhastiness in his countryverely, foreign quotations are usually much men which Griswold seriously had to demore correctly given. The reason is ob-plore, as doing injury to literature in even vious. The writer is then on his guard; more important ways than failing to read he considers, refers, deems his reputation your author, a fault in which we, on this to be at stake. But a jealousy over our side, are but too closely following them. own classics should be paramount, and writers constantly offending by misquo• Atlantic Essays, p. 30. tations such as these should be systematically and periodically exposed and pilloried. From The Examiner. MR. STORY'S NERO.* MR. STORY, in one of the poems contained in his "Graffiti d'Italia" (a collection of dramatic studies and lyrics constructed somewhat after the model of The enormities of careless citations of prose are as patent, if not more so, and would need a separate celebration. One of the most extraordinary instances on record of clear misreading of an author is perhaps that of Dean Stanley, who, in a sketch of Hooker, quoted the following as characteristic of Hooker's all-including tolerance and geniality:-"I am persuaded Blackwood and Sons. * Nero. By W. W. Story. London: William art. Mr. Browning), gives us the views of a | est in studying this conception of an outduke of Urbino descanting as a "contem- ward and visible beauty made manifest to porary critic," on a letter received from the senses in connection with the psychoRaffaelle, in which are urged the for and logical effect supposed to be produced by against of confining one's self to a single it on Marcus Antonius, as described in This note is again touched lightly in the dramatic poem. We have selected another poem in the same volume, where these two instances as being classical the diverse jottings contained in the sketch- subjects, though not perhaps classically book of Leonardo da Vinci-that full treated, and we now have before us yet chord of many tones-are commented on another inspiration caught from Italy and rather disparagingly by the prior of Sta. the past. Maria della Grazie. In the play of "Ne- In the play of "Nero" we see few ro" we find yet another allusion to one traces of Mr. Story's former work, if we "who tries so many forms of art." These except the colloquial facility, and an utter expressions in dispraise or support of ver- absence of inflation or fine writing. Resatility are especially interesting when membering all the information and detail viewed in connection with Mr. Story's contained in "Roba di Roma," we are im"varied tasking" of his own mind; for mediately struck by a total absence of though the passages we have mentioned any archaisms or apparent erudition in blend most naturally with their respective this new drama; and, as if we had here contexts, we cannot help half wondering some mental reaction against statuesque whether they may not be an unconscious passivity and the quiet dignity of repose, vindication (if, indeed, any such were we are hurried along by a full narrative needed) of a perception of the beautiful, which hardly pauses, and by brisk diawhich could not satisfy itself with less logues which are rarely if ever interrupted than sculpture, prose, poetry, and the dra- by soliloquies or disquisitions. All that is ma as its outward expression. This ver- said or done by the different characters satility is not the graceful dilettanteism actively helps forward the action of the whose light ephemeral wings carry it easily piece, and if there are very few scenes or from flower to flower with honied but un-"points" that stand out from the rest for substantial result; rather is it the outcome of a rich fancy and clear realistic perception that cannot with one medium express satisfactorily to itself all that it apprehends and feels. quotation, one is uniformly absorbed and interested. This kind of treatment is eminently realistic, and instinct with life and movement; but though it produces a livelier general effect, it does not afford the same opportunities for dignified beauty and sonorous passages as a more didactic style. We would almost question whether Mr. Story has not selected too large a subject for one dramatic composition; his canvas seems to us so big that the figures appear a little isolated, and we consequently miss that concentrated intensity and completeness which are essential to a great dramatic composition. "Nero" might, we think, be more properly called an historical romance than a play, its personages being far more noticeable for what they do or endure than for what they are. On laying down the book we seem to be in an atmosphere if not of battle at any rate of murder and of sudden death; and even here Nero's death hardly seems the culminating point after Agrippina's and Seneca's and Poppæa's far more piteous fate. Whole diapasons - not a single note. One is naturally led to look for reflected light in Mr. Story's different works. In "the perfect statue in its pale repose" we seek for some of that fixed and stationed melody "which lingers dreaming round each subtle line;" in the dramas and verses for some of the perfection of form and sobriety of intensity and passion which he has achieved in his sculpture; or again in the latter for traces of that almost The play extends over some twelve or colloquial charm which makes half the thirteen years, beginning when Nerovalue of that very captivating book "Roba no longer a lad but a man gifted with physdi Roma." Even were his "Cleopatra" ical strength and beauty, with intellect less pre-eminently beautiful as a statue, and grace of mind - begins to realize that with its "almost divine imperiousness," power of place and personality which ultithere would yet be a deep æsthetic inter-mately wrecked his life, and choked all From The Saturday Review. nobler feelings with a deadly growth of lust, vanity, and cruelty. The opening scenes, in which the young emperor first feels the weight of his mother's tutelage and guidance, and ultimately fiercely resents her authority, consenting to her death, are finely rendered. It would take too long to recapitulate the events of that short, eventful life, even as recorded by Mr. Story, who has worked out with good dramatic purpose the gradual degradation of a character that originally had great potentialities of good the legitimate consciousness of a general aptitude turning into an overweening and grotesque vanity, the fatal admixture of impatience and re-ferent as a goat and a jackdaw, or a rabbit lentlessness, the young ardent nature sinking into mere sensualism, seeking for new, strange ways to satisfy its lust. There is a fine touch towards the end of the play in the love of Sporus for his master, one of those instances of subjection to a personal charm to which chronicles and portraits give us no clue. The character of Poppea is also drawn with much skill. She is in no way attractive when we see her first; faithless to her husband, Otho, plausible and calculating in her passion for Nero, a passion that has none of the real reticence of virtue or the abandon of the time. Then follows the slow retribution - la grande fatalité, as Michelet somewhere calls it-of belonging body and soul to a man whom it is her doom and her moral degradation to love. We soon get to pity rather than to blame her for having usurped by her wiles and beauty the place of the virtuous Octavia; and when she is brutally struck by her husband, just when the hopes of coming motherhood had aroused within her heart something natural and pure in the midst of so much bedizened corruption and vice, we almost wish we could forget that the murder of Agrippina still cries aloud for MAN has been distinguished from brutes as a cooking animal. But he has another characteristic almost equally distinctive. He keeps pets. It is true that sometimes this characteristic is shared by individuals of other races. A horse has been known to become attached to the stable-cat, and to pine in the absence of pussy. So, too, dogs have often allowed a corner of their kennel to some stray animal domesticated about the house, and odd friendships have been cemented between creatures as dif The god is great against her, she will die. When critically analyzed" Nero " is not perhaps a thoroughly great work, but it is very good and pleasant reading, and we quote, certainly not against himself, but genuinely re-echoing the feeling of his lines, with a present sense of pleasure received in many ways— Blest the poet's song, A smile immortal; time and age defy; stay To be a permanent perpetual joy. and a foxhound. Such brotherhood be- |