UNINTENTIONAL LYRICS

Evening Star, Issue 19840, 13 April 1928, Page 10

UNINTENTIONAL LYRICS

IN BUSINESS AND JOURNALISM A Liverpool business man, alter dictating a .strictly formal lot tor of rebuke to a firm from whom ho had been expecting deliveries of material, was amazed to find, when lie came to sign the let ter. Unit ho had inadvertently drooped into melodious torse. The glee its discovery would have, entailed would have certainly, bo realised, destroyed the censure ho had intended to convey. The incident has recalled many similar incidents which have occurred in literature and in newspaper stories, il such an invidious distinction may ho permitted. One of the host is attributed to an eminent English philosopher, William Whewell. in a treatise published long before Tennyson wrote ‘ In Memoriam ’ Whewell was guilty of the following sonorous sentence: —“No power on earth, however great, can stretch a cord, _ however line, into a horizontal lino that shall bo absolutely straight.” It is also suggested that Whewell may have unintentionally given Einstein a hint for his famous relativity theory. Whewell, doubtless, had little intention either of writing poetry or of initiating the philosophic controversy which relativity has induced.

A correspondent who writes to Hie ‘Manchester Guardian’ on the subject of unintended lyrics, appears to have long been treasuring an item which appeared in the columns of that wellknown journal. Ho says that in its marine nows the ‘ Guardian ’ once started an article thus; ‘‘There is still no news of Hie parly ol Jews who left Portobcllo on Sunday,” and adds this comment: “It struck me at the time that the rhythm of this fragment was too fantastic, too flippant, Luo siiggosive of ‘cymbal and timbrol_ and the gentle-sounding Unto.’ What was wanted was something heavy-looted and melancholy-—something, in short, on the lines of the ‘ Large Black Pig.’ ’’

Tlie ‘Guardian’ on its own account then says: ‘‘Nobody, however, has yet thought of reviving this paper's most famous and sustained lligbt into inadvertent verse. It was contained in the headlines over one ol Hie earliest journalistic accounts ol a trip in an airplane. The headline m question ran : A FLIGHT' WITH MR CODY. IMPRESSIONS IN THE AIR. Rv our Special Correspondent, Mr G . 11. Mair. ‘‘That, of course, quickly found its way into ‘ Punch,’ where the elegance and aptness of Hie stanza received generous recognition.’