Poets, I presume, use verse in preference to prose because it suits their thoughts; and yet they often sacrifice the substance to the form. In _Ye mariners of England_ Campbell wants a rhyme for ‘seas,’ and therefore says their flag has braved ‘the battle and the breeze.’ It ought to be ‘the battle and the blast’--the breeze needs no more braving than sham-fights. In _Dies iræ_ Tommaso da Celano (or whoever it was) had to find a rhyme for ‘favilla’ and ‘sibylla,’ and thus came down to ‘dies illa,’ which is much too mild a term for Doomsday. Translators have avoided this by putting in some stronger term--Macaulay makes it “On that great, that awful day.” And in translations this is possible, though not in the original, as there is no fit word that rhymes. According to Macaulay’s _Ivry_, the knights had only one spur each, “a thousand spurs are striking deep, a thousand spears in rest, a thousand knights,” etc. Tennyson says Six Hundred in _The Charge of the Light Brigade_, but that was not actually the strength. If I were editing him, I should put in a note in proper form--“six hundred: compare ‘sexcenta’ in Latin and ‘hexacosia’ in late Greek, a round number based on the Babylonian sexagesimal system and used indefinitely, like myriad.” Annotations and translations may explain things, but are never so neat as emendations that make an author say just what you think he should have said. Why should Saint Paul want ladies to cover their heads, ‘dia tous aggelous,’ because of the angels? Listen to Jeremy Taylor, his _Liberty of Prophesying_, section 3, “If it were read ‘dia tous agelous,’ that the sense be, women in public assemblies must wear a vail, by reason of the companies of young men there present, it would be no ill exchange for the loss of a letter, to make so probable, so clear a sense of the place.” And very often emendations may be made without touching the letters at all, Shakespeare says in his _Sonnets_, 107, “The prophetic soul of the wide world, dreaming on things to come.” Homer might likewise say that the future is in the dreams of the gods, ‘theôn en g’ounasi,’ instead of saying that it is on their knees, ‘en gounasi.’ An apostrophe is all you want. Change the vowel-points, and you may connect Magdalene with ‘megaddela,’ and so get Mary the Masseuse.