Ambiguity or Inverted Commas ?
Snt,—As a lifelong and unrepentant doryphore, I feel bound to protest against Mr. Harold Nicolson's attempt in your last issue to alter In Memoriam. Tennyson wrote: "Leave thou thy sister when she prays " not "Left our sister when she prayed." I submit that the use of inverted commas is only justified if the actual words are quoted with- out any change: when the text has been adapted inverted commas have
.}no place.—Yours faithfully, GEOFFREY LE M. MANDER. Wightwick Manor, Wolverhampton.
[Sir Geoffrey raises a grave problem. The sentence " we left our sister when she prayed" without quotation marks conveys a suggestion of cause and effect which was not in Tennyson's mind. Mr. Nicolson therefore readily agreed to the insertion of inverted commas, as a reminder that the words (with a necessary change of mood and tense) were a quotation.—Editor, Spectator.]
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