THE ART OF MISQUOTATION.
[TO THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—The other day I picked up " Lord Broughton'a Recol- lections of a Long Life, edited by Lady Dorchester," and found the whole of the first page exclusively occupied by the
following— "Es ist eine alto Geschichte Doch bleibt es immer trou.
Hcinc
which is neither Heine, nor sense, nor good German. Heine of course wrote : "Doch bleibt sie immer neu." Annoyed by the extraordinary prominence given to this travesty, I turned to a friend and said in my haste : " Could the art of misquotation go further ? " and be replied by reminding me of an old story which remains ever new, although whether it was ever true or not I am not quite sure. A German sergeant who was instructing recruits suddenly asked one of them: " What is the horizon?" The recruit happening to be a Mathe- matical Professor or the like answered learnedly after his kind, but was promptly crushed by his instructor• with the following equally learned retort : "Blau ist alle Theorie.— Goethe." Perhaps this is worse. But is it P—I am, Sir,
J. D. R.
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