MISQUOTATION.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR.") SIR,—Your remarks in the Spectator of November 1st on poetical misquotations might receive illustration from a contemporary (Saturday Review) of the same date, in which Pope's " modest Foster," in the lines,— " Let modest Foster, if he will, excel Ten metropolitans in preaching well," appears as " pious Foster," while the Metropolitans are reduced from ten to six.
Bishop Heber's line,— "Smokes on Samaria's mount her scanty sacrifice," (where the epithet " scanty " is by no means otiose), is given in Dean Stanley's " Lectures on the Jewish Church" (mine is the seventh edition) in this form,— "Smokes on Gerizim's mount, Samaria's sacrifice."
The last line of " Lycidas " has suffered from the misquota- tion of many generations, the error of " fields " for " woods" being ingrained in the general mind almost beyond hope of correction.
The lines which Dr. Johnson added to Goldsmith's "Traveller,"— "How small, of all that human hearts endure,
That part which laws or kings can cause or cure,"
have also been peculiarly liable to this kind of transformation: but the climax was reached in the version recently given by a• Nonconformist minister,— " Of all the ills that human hearts endure,
How small the part which laws or kings can make or cure !"
A " needless Alexandrine " indeed !
If your space permits, I would ask if any of your readers can say in what poetical satire of the last century, or beginning of the present, are to be found these lines on the threatened Dis- establishment of the Church, which I remember, but cannot trace to their source ?- can tell, with calculation keen,
How many pecks it takes to burn a Dean.
With eyes averted from th' unhallowed pyre (Irrev'rent posture!), Harrowby shall stand, And hold his coat-flaps up with either hand."
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