A Stupid Critic
Commentators are sometimes stupid, and their criticisms so absurd as to be amusing. A German critic, in explaining the text of Shakespeare’s comedy “As You Like It,” came to the following passage—
“Tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.”
He made this comment upon it: “The lines as they now stand are manifestly wrong. No one ever found books in the running brooks, or sermons in stones. But a slight transposition of words reduces the passage to sense. Shakespeare’s meaning is clear, and what he meant he must have written. The passage should read thus”—
“Stones in the running brooks,
Sermons in books, and good in every thing.”