When I was at school (when dinosaurs roamed the earth), one was required to learn some things by heart. Multiplication tables, for example (one was also taught to write sentences with verbs in, but some rules, like for example not ending clauses with a preposition, may perhaps after many years be judiciously ignored). One learnt some classics of English poetry: as, Wordsworth's "I wandered lonely as a cloud.."; Shelley's "I met a traveller from an antique land.. "; Tennyson, Ulysses "It little profits that an idle king ..". The verse was of varying quality, but it gave one a feeling for the music of words, and in particular for scansion.
Nowadays, of course,
Verse requires no fixed scheme.
All that is necessary
Is to chop up prose into lines of varying length.
To ask more
Would stifle creativity.
Nevertheless, respect for the achievements of the past demands that we print what they wrote as they wrote it. It is sad that leading publications so frequently fail to do this. The high purpose of this blog is to record such failures and thereby reduce them (or if this is too ambitious, at least to relieve our feelings). Contributions are welcome: however, contributors (other than the writer) are requested to give chapter and verse, and to re-check the correct version before posting.
There are many well-known misquotations prevalent, for example:
Milton "Tomorrow to fresh fields and pastures new" (woods)
Pope "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing" (learning - note alliteration).
Readers may wish to add to these.
Both the two examples given are partly excusable, because at least they scan. But too often this is not so. Take for example a misquotation from The Times, some years ago, of the last line of a Fitzgerald quatrain: "Oh, wilderness were paradise now". There is perhaps some excuse for this, as 'enow' is archaic and unusual (it may even have been a spellcheck emendation).
There are two examples from the (otherwise excellent) Oxford Book of Scientific Quotations:
Lehrer, The Elements Song (p375):
"There's antimony, arsenic, aluminium, selenium" (aluminum)
The English spelling 'aluminium' is substituted (no doubt in accordance with OUP house style) for the American 'aluminum'. The extra syllable, which (to make matters worse) shifts the stress, completely destroys the splendid gallop of the verse. (See also the review of this book in The Spectator, which missed this vital point).
Also, one of Belloc's verses "The Microbe" is printed (at p53) with a word missing: "that"
".. His eyebrows of a tender green;
All these have never yet been seen -
But Scientists, who ought to know,
Assure us [that] they must be so..."
This error leaps from the page to anyone with a feeling for metre. Belloc's verse is highly regular; almost every line scans (and if it doesn't, there's a reason).
The latest example is from The Economist, issue of January 17, 2009, Finance section, Buttonwood. A persuasive article is marred by the allegation that Marie Lloyd sang: "A little bit of what you fancy does you good!" Oh, no, she didn't!
More examples, please!
