If I have quoted the words "_Galeotto fu
il libro e chi lo scrisse_" once, I have quoted them a hundred times,
always with an excellent effect and often giving the impression that
I am an Italian scholar, which I am not. But surely it is not usual
to abstain from a quotation because to use it would give a false
impression? I am perfectly certain, for instance, that there are
plenty of Italians who quote _Hamlet_, but know no more of English
than the words they quote, so I dare say that brings us right in the
end.
Then there is the quotation about "a very parfitt gentil knight," or
words to that effect. At the moment of writing it down I felt that my
version was so correct that I would go to the scaffold for it; but
at this very instant a doubt insinuates itself. Is "parfitt" with two
"t's" the right spelling?
It is related somewhere that TENNYSON and EDWARD FITZGERALD once
conspired together to see which of them could write the most
Wordsworthian line, and that the result was:--
"A Mr. Wilkinson, a clergyman."
But there was no need for TENNYSON to go beyond his own works in
search of such an effect. He had already done the thing; and this was
his effort, which occurs in _The May Queen_:--
"And that good man, the clergyman, has told me words of peace."
This sounds as if it could not be defeated or matched, but matched it
certainly was in _Enoch Arden_.
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