MISQUOTATIONS.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1722, 12 April 1913, Page 8

MISQUOTATIONS.

« ——. Nothing vexes anyone who takes authorship seriously more than a-misquota-tion, and what writer lias not suffered tortures in this way? Pulpiteers and lecturers and popular journalists, and young men in a hurry arc liere sad offenders. To sit in church, as a member of u large congregation, and hear famous passages from famous poets or prophets like Carlylo and and lluskin paraphrased and parodied becomes a very real and involuntary penance.to a literary listener. Shakespeare must almost have turned in his grave; so to speak, when a glib popular extempore preacher came out with this appalling travesty of his words: "There is a Providence that sliapes our steps, j Rough hew them how we will." .'when he really wrote, of course, something far better:— "There's a Divinity that shapes our ends." ( "Hamlet," above all plays, wheu wo consider how 'often it has ueen represented in public, and remember Irving's impersonation and tho amount" that has been written about it in England and Germany; not to mention othef countries, should bo at any rate well and widely known. But the slovenly parson, jvlio will probably make a slovenly parish, does not always seem acquainted with Hie play, liven a doctor of divinity trip,P"d.gaily and confidently over these fatal "steps" not very long ago. And there is another celebrated verse in "Hamlet" which frequently also undergoes a slight eel ipse:— ■ ' "There's a Divinity doth hedge a King." Shakespeare, as u matter of fact, wrote:—. "There's such Divinity duth heil'je a ' , King That treason can but poop to what it would." ( We have heard "fence," a far uiore otiose metaphor, employed as a substitute for yhedge"—a "fence" that was an "ollence" in every way. The worst transgressors, and a very common class, appear to lie the men and women with a conspicuously accurate manner, but with most inaccurate .minds and memories.—F. \V. Orde Ward, in "Westminster Roview."

.Tho Wickstcad Estate, of 579 acres situated half a milo fro niFordell, will be sold by auction ou Tuesday, May « at 12 o'clock, by Messrs. Dnlgstj and Co., Wnngamii. Full particulars on application to tho agents. l . Messrs. Dalgety and Co., acting under •instructions from the Registrar of the Supremo Court, Nelson, will sell a number of blocks of land in tho Nelson district. 'Die sale will bo held at the Clramber of Commerce rooms, Hardy Street Nelson, on Monday, .May 12, at li' o'clock! I lie tulUist details will be found in the advertisement elsewhere in this issue.