MISQUOTATIONS used to make me smile. One of my favourites was “A rose by any other name would smell as well”, proving that it is but a slip from the sublime to the ridiculous.

Then I set about transcribing the letters of William Etty.

Etty is celebrated for painting girls and little else. It is not generally known that he was also an avid reader of the classics, a compulsive correspondent and the doyen of misquoters – “A classic is something that everyone wants to have read and nobody wants to read”. Well, I wish Etty hadn’t.

Still, he was writing privately for loving friends and not for transcribers, and also without the benefit of Google. Today’s public misquoters have less excuse. The Press has given prominence to quite a few ding-dongers this year, and May’s not out. I include reports as well as contributions. In extenuation, some misquotations are so firmly embedded in the collective consciousness that to quote correctly would be to court a charge of eccentricity.

As with punctuation and falling in love, we are all liable to make mistakes. The only misquotations I find unforgivable are those that subvert the intention of the author. “The survival of the fittest” and “The law is an ass” are examples, but most objectionable of all “The mother of parliaments” used to describe the Westminster Playhouse.

Fibbers might be more appropriate. You may quote me on that.

William Dixon Smith, Welland Rise, Acomb, York.