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 The Book-Lover's Library 
 
 Edited by 
 
 Henry B. Wheatley, F.S.A.
 
 LITERARY l^.LUNDERS 
 
 A CHAPTER IN THE 
 "HISTORY OF HUMAN ERROR" 
 
 EY 
 
 HENRY B. WHEATLEY, F.S.A. 
 
 '^ 
 
 LONDON 
 ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW 
 
 1893
 
 C2 
 
 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 oo 
 
 CO 
 
 CO 
 
 'J 
 
 CD 
 
 ■r. 
 
 VER Y reader of The Caxtons 
 will remember the descrip- 
 tion, in that charming novel, 
 of the gradual growth of Augustine 
 Caxtojt's great work " The History 
 of Human Error^' and hoiu, in fact, 
 the existence of that work forms the 
 pivot round which the incidents turn. 
 It was modestly expected to extend to 
 five quarto volumes, but only the first 
 seven sheets were printed by Uncle 
 Jack's Anti-PublisJiers' Society, " zvith 
 sundry unfinished plates depictifig the 
 various developments of the human 
 skull {that temple of Human Error)',' 
 
 b 
 
 308183
 
 vi Pi-ejace. 
 
 and the i'e?nainder has not been heard 
 of since. 
 
 In introducing to the reader a small 
 branch of this inexhaustible subject, I 
 have ventured to make use of Augus- 
 tine Caxton's title ; but I trust that 
 no one tuill allow himself to imagine 
 that I intend, in the future, to produce 
 the thousand or so volumes which will 
 be required to complete the work. 
 
 A satirical friend who has seen the 
 proofs of this little volume says it 
 should be entitled "fokes Old and New" ; 
 but I find that he seldom acknowledges 
 that a joke is new, and I hope, there- 
 fore, my readers will transpose tJie 
 adjectives, and accept the old jokes for 
 the sake oj the new ones. I may claim, 
 at least, that the series of answers to 
 examinatioft questions, wJiicJi Prof. 
 Oliver Lodge lias so kindly supplied 
 mc with, comes within the latter class.
 
 Preface. vii 
 
 / tnist that if some parts of the 
 book are thought to be frivolous^ the 
 chapters on lists of errata and mis- 
 prints may be found to contain some 
 usefnl literary information. 
 
 I have availed myself of the pub- 
 lished commnnications of my friends 
 Professors Hales and Skeat and Dr. 
 Murray on Literary Blunders, and 
 my best thanks are also due to several 
 friends who have Iielped me zvith some 
 curious instances, and I woidd speci- 
 ally mention Sir George Birdwood, 
 K.C.I.E., C.S.I., Mr. Edward Clodd, 
 Mr. R. B. Prosscr, and Sir Henry 
 Trueman Wood.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 Blunders in General. 
 
 I'AGt 
 
 Distinction between a blunder and a mis 
 take— Long life of a literary blunder 
 —Professor Skeat's "ghost words" — 
 Dr. Murray's "ghost words"— Mar- 
 riage Service — Absurd etymology — 
 Imaginary persons — Family pride- 
 Fortunate blunders — IMisquotations — 
 Bulls from Ireland and elsewhere . . I 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Blunders of Authors. 
 
 Goldsmith — French memoir writers — 
 Historians — Napier's bones— Mr. Glad- 
 stone — Lord Macaulay — Newspaper 
 writers — Critics 3'
 
 X Contents. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 Blunders of Translators. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 " Translators are traitors " — Amusing trans- 
 lations — Translations of names — Cinder- 
 ella — "Oh that mine adversary had 
 written a book " — Perversions of the 
 true meaning 47 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Bibliographical Blunders. 
 
 Watt's Bibliotheca Britannica — Imaginary 
 
 authors — Faulty classification . . 63 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Lists of Errata. 
 
 Early use of errata — Intentional blunders — 
 Authors correct their books — Ineffectual 
 attempts to be immaculate — Misprints 
 never corrected ..... 7^ 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Misprints. 
 
 Misprints not always amusing — A Dic- 
 tionary of Misprints — Blades's Shak- 
 spere and Typography — Upper and 
 lower cases — Stops — Byron — Wicked 
 Bible — Malherbe — Coqitilles — Hood's 
 lines — Chaucer — Misplacement of type 100
 
 Contents. xi 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Schoolboys' Blunders. 
 
 Cleverness of these blunders — Etymo- 
 logical guesses — English as she is 
 Taught — Scriptural confusions — 
 Musical blunders — History and geo- 
 graphy — How to question — Professor 
 Oliver Lodge's specimens of answers to 
 examination papers . . . • '57 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Foreigners' English. 
 
 Exhibition English — French Work on the 
 Societies of the World— Hotel keepers' 
 English— Barcelona Exhibition— Paris 
 Exhibition of 1889— How to learn Eng- 
 lish — Foreign Guidesin so-called English 
 — Addition to God save the King — Shen- 
 stone i88- 
 
 Index 215
 
 LITERARY BLUNDERS. 
 
 =^^^=3^ 
 
 CHAPTER L 
 
 Blunders in General. 
 
 HE words " blunder " and " mis- 
 
 often treated as 
 thus we usually 
 blunders mistakes, and 
 
 take " are 
 
 synonyms ; 
 call our own 
 our friends style our mistakes blunders. 
 In truth the class of blunders is a sub- 
 division of the gtnus mistakes. Many 
 mistakes are very serious in their conse- 
 quences, but there is almost always some 
 sense of fun connected with a blunder, 
 which is a mistake usually caused by some 
 mental confusion. Lexicographers state 
 that it is an error due to stupidity and 
 carelessness, but blunders are often caused
 
 2 Literary Blunders. 
 
 by a too great sharpness and quickness. 
 Sometimes a blunder is no mistake at all, 
 as when a man blunders on the right ex- 
 planation ; thus he arrives at the right goal, 
 but by an unorthodox road. Sir Roger 
 L'Estrange says that " it is one thing to 
 forget a matter of fact, and another to 
 blu7ider upon the reason of it." 
 
 Some years ago there was an article in 
 the Saturday Review on " the knowledge 
 necessary to make a blunder," and this 
 title gives the clue to what a blunder really 
 is. It is caused by a confusion of two 
 or more things, and unless something is 
 known of these things a blunder cannot 
 be made. A perfectly ignorant man has 
 not sufficient knowledge to make a blunder. 
 
 An ordinary blunder may die, and do 
 no great harm, but a literary blunder often 
 has an extraordinary life. Of literary 
 blunders probably the philological are the 
 most persistent and the most difficult to 
 kill. In this class may be mentioned (i) 
 Ghost words, as they are called by Professor 
 Skeat — words, that is, which have been 
 registered, but which never really existed ; 
 (2) Real words that exist through a mis-
 
 Blunders in General. 3 
 
 take ; and (3) Absurd etymologies, a large 
 division crammed with delicious blunders. 
 I. Professor Skeat, in his presidential 
 address to the members of the Philological 
 Society in 1886, gave a most interesting 
 account of some hundred ghost words, or 
 words which have no real existence. Those 
 who wish to follow out this subject must 
 refer to the Philological Transactions, but 
 four specially curious instances may be 
 mentioned here. These four words are 
 " abacot," "knise," "morse," and " polien." 
 Abacot is defined by Webster as "the cap 
 of state formerly used by English kings, 
 wrought into the figure of two crowns " ; 
 but Dr. Murray, when he was preparing 
 the Netv English Dictio?iary, discovered 
 that this was an interloper, and unworthy 
 of a place in the language. It was found 
 to be a mistake for by-cockcf, which is the 
 correct word. In spite of this exposure 
 of the impostor, the word was allowed 
 to stand, with a woodcut of an abacot, 
 in an important dictionary published 
 subsequently, although Dr. Murray's re- 
 marks were quoted. This shows how 
 difficult it is to kill a word which has
 
 4 Literary Blunders. 
 
 once found shelter in our dictionaries. 
 Knise is a charming word which first 
 appeared in a number of the Edinburgh 
 Review in 1808. Fortunately for the fun 
 of the thing, the word occurred in an 
 article on Indian Missions, by Sydney 
 Smith. We read, "The Hindoos have 
 some very strange customs, which it would 
 be desirable to abolish. Some swing on 
 hooks, some run knises through their 
 hands, and widows burn themselves to 
 death." The reviewer was attacked for 
 his statement by Mr. John Styles, and he 
 replied in an article on Methodism printed 
 in the Editiburgh in the following year, 
 Sydney Smith wrote : " Mr. Styles is pecu- 
 liarly severe upon us for not being more 
 shocked at their piercing their limbs with 
 knises ... it is for us to explain the plan 
 and nature of this terrible and unknown 
 piece of mechanism. A hiise^ then, is 
 neither more nor less than a false print in 
 the Edinburgh Review for a knife; and 
 from this blunder of the printer has Mr. 
 Styles manufactured this Dsedalean instru- 
 ment of torture called a knise." A similar 
 instance occurs in a misprint of a passage
 
 Blunaers in General. 5 
 
 of one of Scott's novels, but here there is 
 the further amusing circumstance that the 
 etymology of the false word was settled to 
 the satisfaction of some of the readers. In 
 the majority of editions of The Monastery, 
 chapter x., we read : " Hardened wretch 
 (said Father Eustace), art thou but this 
 instant delivered from death, and dost thou 
 so soon morse thoughts of slaughter ? " 
 This word is nothing but a misprint of 
 7iiirse ; but in Notes cxjid Queries two inde- 
 pendent correspondents accounted for the 
 word tnorse etymologically. One explained 
 it as " to prime," as when one primes a 
 musket, from O. Fr. amorce, powder for the 
 touchhole (Cotgrave), and the other by " to 
 bite " (Lat. mordere), hence " to indulge 
 in biting, stinging or gnawing thoughts of 
 slaughter." The latter writes : " That the 
 word as a misprint should have been 
 printed and read by millions for fifty 
 years without being challenged and altered 
 exceeds the bounds of probability." Yet 
 when the original JSIS. of Sir Walter Scott 
 was consulted, it was found that the word 
 was there plainly written 7iurse. 
 
 The Saxon letter for th (J») has long
 
 6 Literary Blunders. 
 
 been a sore puzzle to the uninitiated, and 
 it came to be represented by the letter y. 
 Most of those who think they are writing 
 in a specially archaic manner when they 
 spell " ye " for " the " are ignorant of this, 
 and pronounce the article as if it were the 
 pronoun. Dr. Skeat quotes a curious in- 
 stance of the misreading of the thorn (j?) 
 as /, by which a strange ghost word is 
 evolved. Whitaker, in his edition of Piers 
 Plowman, reads that Christ "polede for 
 man," which should be iholede, from 
 tholien, to suffer, as there is no such 
 verb as polieti. 
 
 Dr. J. A. H. Murray, the learned editor 
 of the Philological Society's New English 
 Dictionary^ quotes two amusing instances 
 of ghost words in a communication to 
 Notes and Queries (7th S., vii. 305). He 
 says : " Possessors of Jamieson's Scottish 
 Dictionary will do well to strike out the 
 fictitious entry cietezour, cited from Bellen- 
 den's Chronicle in the plural cietezouris, 
 which is merely a misreading of cietezanis 
 {i.e. with Scottish z = 5 = y), cieteyanis or 
 citeyanis, Bellenden's regular word for 
 citizens. One regrets to see this absurd
 
 Blimders in General. 7 
 
 mistake copied from Jamieson (unfortu- 
 nately without acknowledgment) by the 
 compilers of Cassell's Encyclopcedic Dic- 
 tionary.''^ 
 
 " Some editions of Drayton's Barons 
 Wars, Bk. VI., st. xxxvii., read — 
 
 " ' And cifify Cynthus with a thousand birds,' 
 
 which nonsense is solemnly reproduced in 
 Campbell's Specimefis of the British Poets, 
 iii. 1 6. It may save some readers a need- 
 less reference to the dictionary to remem- 
 ber that it is a misprint for cliffy, a favourite 
 word of Drayton's." 
 
 2. In contrast to supposed words that 
 never did exist, are real words that exist 
 through a mistake, such as apron and adder, 
 where the n, which really belongs to the 
 word itself, has been supposed, mistakenly, 
 to belong to the article ; thus apron should 
 be napron (Fr. naperon), and adder should 
 be nadder (A.-S. nceddre). An amusing 
 confusion has arisen in respect to the 
 Ridings of Yorkshire, of which there are 
 three. The word should be triding, but 
 the t has got lost in the adjective, as West 
 Triding became West Riding. The origin of
 
 8 Literary Bhmders. 
 
 the word has thus been quite lost sight of, 
 and at the first organisation of the Province 
 of Upper Canada, in 1798, the county of 
 Lincoln was divided into fo2ir ridings and 
 the county of York into Uuo. York was 
 afterwards supplied with four. 
 
 Sir Henry Bennet, in the reign of 
 Charles II., took his title of Earl of Arling- 
 ton owing to a blunder. The proper 
 name of the village in Middlesex is 
 Harlington. 
 
 A curious misunderstanding in the 
 Marriage Service has given us two words 
 instead of one. We now vow to remain 
 united till death us do part, but the 
 original declaration, as given in the first 
 Prayer Book of Edward VI., was : " I, N., 
 take thee N., to my wedded wife, to have 
 and to hold from this day forward, for 
 better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in 
 sickness and in health, to love and to 
 cherish, till death us depart [or separate]." 
 
 It is not worth while here to register the 
 many words which have taken their present 
 spelling through a mistaken view of their 
 etymology. They are too numerous, and 
 the consideration of them would open up a
 
 Blunders in General. 9 
 
 question quite distinct from the one now 
 under consideration. 
 
 3. Absurd etymology was once the rule, 
 because guessing without any knowledge 
 of the historical forms of words was 
 general ; and still, in spite of the modern 
 school of philolog}-, which has shown us 
 the right way, much wild guessing con- 
 tinues to be prevalent. It is not, however, 
 often that we can point to such a brilliant 
 instance of blundering etymolog}- as that 
 to be found in Barlow's English Diction- 
 ary (1772). The word porcelai7i is there 
 said to be " derived from pour cent annes, 
 French for a hundred years, it having been 
 imagined that the materials were matured 
 underground for that term of years." 
 
 Richardson, the novelist, suggests an 
 etymology almost equal to this. He 
 writes, "What does correspondence mean? 
 It is a word of Latin origin : a compound 
 word ; and the two elements here brought 
 together are respondeo, I answer, and cor, 
 the heart : i.e., I answer feelingly, I reply 
 not so much to the head as to the heart." 
 
 Ur. Ash's English Dictionary, published 
 in 1775, is an exceedingly useful work, as
 
 lo Literary Blunders. 
 
 containing many words and forms of words 
 nowhere else registered, but it contains 
 some curious mistakes. The chief and 
 best-known one is the explanation of the 
 word curmudgeon — " from the French 
 coeur^ unknown, and mechanic a corre- 
 spondent." The only explanation of this 
 absurdly confused etymology is that an 
 ignorant man was employed to copy from 
 Johnson's Dictionary, where the authority 
 was given as " an unknown correspondent," 
 and he, supposing these words to be a 
 translation of the French, set them down 
 as such. The two words esoteric and 
 exoteric were not so frequently used in the 
 last century as they are now ; so perhaps 
 there may be some excuse for the follow- 
 ing entry : " Esoteric (adj. an incorrect 
 spelling) exoteric." Dr. Ash could not 
 have been well read in Arthurian literature, 
 or he would not have turned the noble 
 knight Sir Gawaine into a woman, " the 
 sister of King Arthur." There is a story 
 of a blunder in Littleton's Latin Dictionary, 
 which further research has proved to be 
 no mistake at all. It is said that when 
 the Doctor was compiling his work, and
 
 Blunders in General. 1 1 
 
 announced the word concurro to his 
 amanuensis, the scribe, imagining from the 
 sound that the six first letters would give 
 the translation of the verb, said " Concur, 
 sir, I suppose ? " to which the Doctor 
 peevishly replied, " Concur — condog ! " 
 and in the edition of 1678 "condog" is 
 printed as one interpretation of concurro. 
 Now, an answer to this story is that, how- 
 ever odd a word " condog " may appear, 
 it will be found in Henry Cockeram's 
 English Dictionaries first published in 
 1623. The entry is as follows : " to agree, 
 concurre, cohere, condog, condiscend." 
 
 Mistakes are frequently made in respect 
 of foreign words which retain their original 
 form, especially those which retain their 
 Latin plurals, the feminine singular being 
 often confused with the neuter plural. For 
 instance, there is the word animalctde 
 (plural animalcules), also written a?iiinal- 
 culuin (plural animalcula). Now, the 
 plural animalcula is often supposed to be 
 the feminine singular, and a new plural is 
 at once made — animalcultc. This blunder 
 is one constantly being made, while it is 
 only occasionally we see a supposed plural
 
 1 2 Literary Blunders. 
 
 strata in geology from a supposed singular 
 strata, and the supposed svagxilsir fonmi/u77t 
 from a supposed plural formula will pro- 
 bably turn up some day. 
 
 In connection with popular etymology, 
 it seems proper to make a passing mention 
 of the sailors' perversion of the Bellero- 
 phon into the Billy Ruffian, the Hiron- 
 delle into the Iron Devil, and La Bonne 
 Corvette into the Bonny Cravat. Some 
 of the supposed changes in public-house 
 signs, such as Bull and Mouth from 
 " Boulogne mouth," and Goat and Com- 
 passes from " God encompasseth us," are 
 more than doubtful ; but the Bacchanals 
 has certainly changed into the Bag o' nails, 
 and the George Canning into the George 
 and Cannon. The words in the language 
 that have been formed from a false analogy 
 are so numerous and have so often been 
 noted that we must not allow them to 
 detain us here longer. 
 
 Imaginary persons have been brought 
 into being owing to blundering misread- 
 ing. For instance, there are many saints 
 in the Roman calendar whose individu- 
 ality it would not be easy to prove. All
 
 Blwidei's in General. i 3 
 
 know how St. Veronica came into being, 
 and equally well known is the origin of 
 St. Ursula and her eleven thousand virgins. 
 In this case, through the misreading of 
 her name, the unfortunate virgin martyr 
 Undecimilla has dropped out of the 
 calendar. 
 
 Less known is the origin of Saint Xynoris, 
 the martyr of Antioch, who is noticed in 
 the Martyrologie Romaitie of Baronius. 
 Her name was obtained by a misreading 
 of Chrysostom, who, referring to two 
 martyrs, uses the word ^vwpts (couple or 
 pair). 
 
 In the City of London there is a church 
 dedicated to St. Vedast, which is situated 
 in Foster Lane, and is often described as 
 St. Vedast, alias Foster. This has puzzled 
 many, and James Paterson, in his Pietas 
 Londinensis {i"]!^), hazarded the opinion 
 that the church was dedicated to " two 
 conjunct saints." He writes : " At the 
 first it was called St. Foster's in memory 
 of some founder or ancient benefactor, 
 but afterwards it was dedicated to St. 
 Vedast, Bishop of Arras." Newcourt 
 makes a similar mistake in his Reper-
 
 14 Literary Blunders. 
 
 torinm, but Thomas Fuller knew the 
 truth, and in his C/mrch History refers to 
 " St. Vedastus, anglice St. Fosters." This 
 is the fact, and the name St. Fauster or 
 Foster is nothing more than a corruption 
 of St. Vedast, all the steps of which we 
 now know. My friend Mr. Danby P. Fry 
 worked this out some years ago, but his 
 difificulty rested with the second syllable 
 of the name Foster ; but the links in the 
 chain of evidence have been completed 
 by reference to Mr. H. C Maxwell Lyte's 
 valuable Report on the Manuscripts of the 
 Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's. The 
 first stage in the corruption took place in 
 France, and the name must have been 
 introduced into this country as Vast. 
 This loss of the middle consonant is in 
 accordance with the constant practice in 
 early French of dropping out the con- 
 sonant preceding an accented vowel, as 
 reine from regina. The change of 
 Augustine to Austin is an analogous 
 instance. Vast would here be pronounced 
 Vaust, in the same way as the word vase 
 is still sometimes pronounced vause. The 
 interchange of ?:'and/ as in the cases of
 
 Blunders in General. i 5 
 
 Va7ie and Fane and fox and vixen, is too 
 common to need more than a passing 
 notice. We have now arrived at the form 
 St. Faust, and the evidence of the old 
 deeds of St. Paul's explains the rest, show- 
 ing us that the second syllable has grown 
 out of the possessive case. In one of 
 8 Edward III. we read of the " King's 
 highway, called Seint Fastes lane." Of 
 course this was pronounced St. Fausfcs, 
 and we at once have the two syllables. 
 The next form is in a deed of May 1360, 
 where it stands as " Seyn Fastreslane." 
 We have here, not a final r as in the latest 
 form, but merely an intrusive trill. This 
 follows the rule by which thesaurus became 
 treasure, Hebudas, Hebrides, and culpatus, 
 culprit. After the great Fire of London, 
 the church was re-named St. Vedast {alias 
 Foster) — a form of the name which it 
 had never borne before, except in Latin 
 deeds as Vedastus.^ More might be said 
 
 ' See an article by the Author in The Athentvutn, 
 January 3rd, 1885, p. 15 ; and a paper by the 
 Rev, W. Sparrow Simpson in the Jourital of 
 the British Arduzological Association (vol. xliii., 
 p. 56).
 
 1 6 Literary Blunders. 
 
 of the corruptions of names in the cases 
 of other saints, but these corruptions are 
 more the cause of blunders in others than 
 blunders in themselves. It is not often 
 that a new saint is evolved with such an 
 English name as Foster. 
 
 The existence of the famous St. Vitus 
 has been doubted, and his dance {Chorea 
 Sancti Vitcc) is supposed to have been 
 originally chorea invita. But the strangest 
 of saints was S. Viar, who is thus accounted 
 for by D'Israeli in his Curiosities of 
 Literature : — 
 
 " Mabillon has preserved a curious 
 literary blunder of some pious Spaniards 
 who applied to the Pope for consecrating a 
 day in honour of Saint Viar. His Holiness 
 in the voluminous catalogue of his saints 
 was ignorant of this one. The only proof 
 brought forward for his existence was this 
 inscription : — 
 
 S. VIAR. 
 
 An antiquary, however, hindered one more 
 festival in the Catholic calendar by con- 
 vincing them that these letters were only 
 the remains of an inscription erected for
 
 Blunders in General. 17 
 
 an ancient surveyor of the roads ; and he 
 read their saintship thus : — 
 
 [PREFECTVjS VIAR[VM]." 
 
 Foreign travellers in England have 
 usually made sad havoc of the names of 
 places. Hentzner spelt Gray's Inn and 
 Lincoln's Inn phonetically as Grezin and 
 Linconsin, and so puzzled his editor that he 
 supposed these to be the names of two 
 giants. A similar mistake to this was that 
 of the man who boasted that " not all the 
 British House of Commons, not the whole 
 bench of Bishops, not even Leviticus him- 
 self, should prevent him from marrying his 
 deceased wife's sister." One of the jokes 
 in Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn 
 (ch. xxiii.) turns on the use of this same 
 expression " Leviticus himself." 
 
 The picturesque writer who draws a 
 well-fiUed-in picture from insufficient data 
 is peculiarly liable to fall into blunders, 
 and when he does fall it is not surprising 
 that less imaginative writers should 
 chuckle over his fall. A few years ago 
 an American editor is said to have re- 
 ceived the telegram " Oxford Music Hall
 
 1 8 Literary Blunders, 
 
 burned to the ground." There was not 
 much information here, and he was igno- 
 rant of the fact that this building was in 
 London and in Oxford Street, but he was 
 equal to the occasion. He elaborated a 
 remarkable account of the destruction 
 by fire of the principal music hall of 
 academic Oxford. He told how it was 
 situated in the midst of historic colleges 
 which had miraculously escaped destruc- 
 tion by the flames. These flames, fanned 
 into a fury by a favourable wind, lit up 
 the academic spires and groves as they 
 ran along the rich cornices, lapped the 
 gorgeous pillars, shrivelled up the roof 
 and grasped the mighty walls of the 
 ancient building in their destructive 
 embraces. 
 
 In 1882 an announcen-vent was made 
 in a weekly paper that some prehistoric 
 remains had been found near the Church 
 of San Francisco, Florence. The note 
 was reproduced in an evening paper and 
 in an antiquarian monthly with words in 
 both cases implying that the locality of 
 the find was San Francisco, California. 
 
 It is a common mistake of those who
 
 Blunders in General. 19 
 
 have heard of Grolier bindings to suppose 
 that the eminent book collector was a 
 binder ; but this is nothing to that of the 
 workman who told the writer of this that 
 he had found out the secret of making 
 the famous Henri II. or Oiron ware. " In 
 fact," he added, " I could make it as well 
 as Henry Deux himself." The idea of the 
 king of France working in the potteries 
 is exceedingly fine. 
 
 Family pride is sometimes the cause 
 of exceedingly foolish blunders. The 
 following amusing passage in Anderson's 
 Genealogical History of the House of Yvery 
 (1742) illustrates a form of pride ridiculed 
 by Lord Chesterfield when he set up on 
 his walls the portraits of Adam de Stanhope 
 and Eve de Stanhope. The having a 
 stutterer in the family will appear to most 
 readers to be a strange cause of pride. 
 The author writes : " It was usual in ancient 
 times with the greatest families, and is by 
 all genealogists allowed to be a mighty evi- 
 dence of dignity, to use certain nicknames, 
 which the French call sobriquets . . . 
 such as ' the Lame ' or ' the Black.' . . . 
 The house of Yvery, not deficient in any
 
 20 Literary Blunders. 
 
 mark or proof of greatness and antiquity, 
 abounds at different periods in instances 
 of this nature. Roger, a younger son of 
 William Youel de Perceval, was surnamed 
 Balbus or the Stutterer." 
 
 Sometimes a blunder has turned out 
 fortunate in its consequences ; and a 
 striking instance of this is recorded in the 
 history of Prussia. Frederic I. charged 
 his ambassador Bartholdi with the mission 
 of procuring from the Emperor of Ger- 
 many an acknowledgment of the regal 
 dignity which he had just assumed. It 
 is said that instructions written in cypher 
 were sent to him, with particular directions 
 that he should not apply on this subject 
 to Father Wolff, the Emperor's confessor. 
 The person who copied these instructions, 
 however, happened to omit the word not 
 in the copy in cypher. Bartholdi was 
 surprised at the order, but obeyed it and 
 made the matter known to AVolff; who, 
 in the greatest astonishment, declared that 
 although he had always been hostile to 
 the measure, he could not resist this 
 proof of the Elector's confidence, which 
 had made a deep impression upon him.
 
 Blunders in General. 2 1 
 
 It was thought that the mediation of the 
 confessor had much to do with the ac- 
 comphshment of the Elector's wishes. 
 
 Misquotations form a branch of Uterary 
 blunders which may be mentioned here. 
 
 The text "He may run that readeth 
 it " (Hab. ii. 2) is almost invariably 
 quoted as " He who runs may read " ; 
 and the Divine condemnation " In the 
 sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread " 
 (Gen. iii. 19) is usually quoted as "sweat 
 of thy brow." 
 
 The manner in which Dr. Johnson 
 selected the quotations for his Dictionary 
 is well known, and as a general rule 
 these are tolerably accurate; but under 
 the thirteenth heading of the verb to 
 sit will be found a curious perversion 
 of a text of Scripture. There we read, 
 " Asses are ye that sit in judgement — 
 Judges" but of course there is no such 
 passage in the Bible. The correct reading 
 of the tenth verse of the fifth chapter is : 
 " Speak, ye that ride on white asses, ye 
 that sit in judgment, and walk by the 
 way." 
 
 From misquotations it is an easy step
 
 2 2 Literary B hinders. 
 
 to pass to mispronunciations. These are 
 mostly too common to be amusing, but 
 sometimes the blunderers manage to hit 
 upon something which is rather comic. 
 Thus an ignorant reader coming upon a 
 reference to an angle of forty-five degrees 
 was puzzled, and astonished his hearers 
 by giving it out as angel of forty-five 
 degrees. This blunderer, however, was 
 outdone by the speaker who described a 
 distinguished personage " as a very inde- 
 fategable young man," adding, " but even 
 he must succumb " (suck 'um) at last. 
 
 As has already been said, blunders are 
 often made by those who are what we 
 usually call " too clever by half." Surely 
 it was a blunder to change the time- 
 honoured name of King's Bench to 
 Queen's Bench. A queen is a female 
 king, and she reigns as a king ; the 
 absurdity of the change of sex in the 
 description is more clearly seen when 
 we find in a Prayer-book published soon 
 after the Queen's accession Her Majesty 
 described as "our Queen and Governess." 
 
 Editors of classical authors are often 
 laughed at for their emendations, but
 
 Blunders in General. 23 
 
 sometimes unjustly. When we consider 
 the crop of blunders that have gathered 
 about the texts of celebrated books, we 
 shall be grateful for the labours of brilliant 
 scholars who have cleared these away 
 and made obscure passages intelligible. 
 
 One of the most remarkable emenda- 
 tions ever made by an editor is that of 
 Theobald in Mrs. Quickly's description of 
 Falstaff's deathbed {Kiiig Henry r.,act ii., 
 sc. 4). The original is unintelligible : 
 "his nose was as sharp as a pen and a 
 table of greene fields." A friend suggested 
 that it should read '"a talked," and Theo- 
 bald then suggested '"a babbled," areading 
 which has found its way into all texts, 
 and is never likely to be ousted from its 
 place. Collier's MS. corrector turned the 
 sentence into " as a pen on a table of 
 green frieze." Very few who quote this 
 passage from Shakespeare have any notion 
 of how much they owe to Theobald. 
 
 Sometimes blunders are intentionally 
 made — malapropisms which are under- 
 stood by the speaker's intimates, but often 
 astonish strangers — such as the expressions 
 *' the sinecure of every eye," " as white
 
 24 Literary Blunders. 
 
 as the drivelling snow." ^ Of intentional 
 mistakes, the best known are those which 
 have been called cross readings, in which 
 the reader is supposed to read across the 
 page instead of down the column of a 
 newspaper, with such results as the fol- 
 lowing : — 
 
 "A new Bank was lately opened at 
 Northampton — ^ no money returned." 
 
 "The Speaker's public dinners will 
 commence next week — admittance, 3/- to 
 see the animals fed." 
 
 As blunders are a class of mistakes, so 
 " bulls " are a sub-class of blunders. No 
 satisfactory explanation of the word has 
 been given, although it appears to be 
 intimately connected with the word 
 blunder. Equally the thing itself has not 
 been very accurately defined. 
 
 The author of A Neiv Booke of Mis- 
 takes, 1637, which treats of "Quips, 
 Taunts, Retorts, Flowts, Frumps, Mockes, 
 Gibes, Jestes, etc.," says in his address to 
 the Reader, "There are moreover other 
 simple mistakes in speech which pass 
 
 ' See Spectator, December 24th, 1887, for 
 specimens of family lingo.
 
 Blunders in General. 25 
 
 under the name of Bulls, but if any man 
 shall demand of mee why they be so 
 called, I must put them off with this 
 woman's reason, they are so because they 
 bee so." All the author can affirm is 
 that they have no connection with the 
 inns and playhouses of his time styled 
 the Black Bulls and the Red Bulls. 
 Coleridge's definition is the best: "A 
 bull consists in a mental juxtaposition of 
 incongruous ideas with the sensation but 
 without the sense of connection." ^ 
 
 Bulls are usually associated with the 
 Irish, but most other nations are quite 
 capable of making them, and Swift is said 
 to have intended to write an essay on 
 English bulls and blunders. Sir Thomas 
 Trevor, a Baron of the Exchequer 1625-49, 
 when presiding at the Bury Assizes, had a 
 cause about wintering of cattle before him. 
 He thought the charge immoderate, and 
 said, " Why, friend, this is most unreason- 
 able ; I wonder thou art not ashamed, for 
 I myself have known a beast wintered one 
 whole summer for a noble." The man at 
 
 ' Southey's Omiiiatia, vol. i., p. 220.
 
 2 6 Literary Blunders, 
 
 once, with ready wit, cried, " That was a 
 hill^ my lord." Whereat the company 
 was highly amused.^ 
 
 One of the best-known bulls is that in- 
 scribed on the obelisk near Fort William 
 in the Highlands of Scotland. In this 
 inscription a very clumsy attempt is made 
 to distinguish between natural tracks and 
 made roads : — 
 
 " Had you seen these roads before they 
 were made, 
 You would Uft up your hands and bless 
 General Wade." 
 
 The bulletins of Pope Clement XIV.'s 
 last illness, which were announced at the 
 Vatican, culminated in a very fair bull. 
 The notices commenced with " His Holi- 
 ness is very ill," and ended with " His 
 Infallibility is delirious." 
 
 Negro bulls have frequently been re- 
 ported, but the health once proposed by 
 a worthy black is perhaps as good an 
 instance as could be cited. He pledged 
 " De Gobernor ob our State ! He come 
 
 ' Thorns, Anecdotes and Traditions, 1839, p 
 79-
 
 BliLiidcrs in General. 2 J 
 
 in wid much opposition ; he go out wid 
 none at all." 
 
 Still, in spite of the fact that all nations 
 fall into these blunders, and that, as it 
 has been said of some, Hibernicis ipsis 
 Hibernior, it is to Ireland that we look 
 for the finest examples of bulls, and we 
 do not usually look in vain. 
 
 It is in a Belfast paper that may be 
 read the account of a murder, the result 
 of which is described thus : " They fired 
 two shots at him ; the first shot killed 
 him, but the second was not fatal." Con- 
 noisseurs in bulls will probably say that 
 this is only a blunder. Perhaps the fol- 
 lowing will please them better : " A man 
 was run down by a passenger train and 
 killed ; he was injured in a similar way a 
 year ago." 
 
 Here are three good bulls, which fulfil 
 all the conditions we expect in this branch 
 of wit. We know what the writer means, 
 although he does not exactly say it. This 
 passage is from the report of an Irish 
 Benevolent Society : " Notwithstanding 
 the large amount paid for medicine and 
 medical attendance, very few deaths-
 
 2 8 Literary Bhmders. 
 
 occurred during the year." A country 
 editor's correspondent wrote : " Will you 
 please to insert this obituary notice? I 
 make bold to ask it, because I know the 
 deceased had a great many friends who 
 would be glad to hear of his death." The 
 third is quoted in the Greville Memoirs : 
 " He abjured the errors of the Romish 
 Church, and embraced those of the 
 Protestant." 
 
 It is said that the Irish Statute Book 
 opens characteristically with, " An Act 
 that the King's officers may travel by sea 
 from one place to another within the la?id 
 of Ireland "; but one of the main objects 
 of the Essay on Irish Bnlis, by Maria 
 Edgeworth and her father, Richard Lovell 
 Edgeworth, was to show that the title of 
 their work was incorrect. They find the 
 original of Paddy Blake's echo in Bacon's 
 works : " I remember well that when I 
 went to the echo at Port Charenton, there 
 was an old Parisian that took it to be the 
 work of spirits, and of good spirits ; ' for,' 
 said he, ' call Satan, and the echo will not 
 deliver back the devil's name, but will 
 say, " Va-t'en." ' " Mr. Hill Burton found
 
 Blunders in General. 29 
 
 the original of Sir Boyle Roche's bull of 
 the bird which was in two places at once 
 in a letter of a Scotsman — Robertson of 
 Rowan. Steele said that all was the effect 
 of climate, and that, if an Englishman were 
 born in Ireland, he would make as many 
 bulls. Mistakes of an equally absurd 
 character may be found in English Acts 
 of Parliament, such as this : " The new 
 ^aol to be built from the materials of 
 the old one, and the prisoners to remain 
 in the latter till the former is ready " ; or 
 the disposition of the prisoner's punish- 
 ment of transportation for seven years — 
 "half to go to the king, and the other half 
 to the informer." Peter Harrison, an an- 
 notator on the Pentateuch, observed of 
 Moses' two tables of stone that they were 
 made of shittim wood. This is not unlike 
 the title said to have been used for a useful 
 little work — " Every man his own Washer- 
 woman." Horace ^^'^alpole said that the 
 best of all bulls was that of the man who, 
 complaining of his nurse, said, " I hate 
 that woman, for she changed me at 
 nurse." But surely this one quoted by 
 Mr. Hill Burton is far superior to Horace
 
 30 Literary B hinders. 
 
 Walpole's ; in fact, one of the best ever 
 conceived. Result of a duel — " The one 
 •party received a slight wound in the 
 breast ; the other fired in the air — and 
 so the matter terminated." 
 
 After this the description of the wrongs 
 of Ireland has a somewhat artificial look : 
 " Her cup of misery has been overflowingj 
 .and is not yet full."
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Blunders of Authors. 
 
 ACAULAY, in his life of 
 Goldsmith in the Encyclopccdia 
 Britanfiica, relates that that 
 author, in the History of England, tells 
 us that Naseby is in Yorkshire, and that 
 the mistake was not corrected when the 
 book was reprinted. He further afifirms 
 that Goldsmith was nearly hoaxed into 
 putting into the History of Greece an 
 account of a battle between Alexander the 
 Great and Montezuma. This, however, 
 is scarcely a fair charge, for the backs of 
 most of us need to be broad enough to 
 bear the actual blunders we have made 
 throughout life without having to bear 
 those which we almost made. 
 
 Goldsmith was a very remarkable in- 
 stance of a man who undertook to write 
 books on subjects of which he knew
 
 32 Literary Blunders. 
 
 nothing. Thus, Johnson said that if he 
 could tell a horse from a cow that was 
 the extent of his knowledge of zoology; 
 and yet the History of Ajtiifiated Nature 
 can still be read with pleasure from the 
 charm of the author's style. 
 
 Some authors are so careless in the con- 
 struction of their works as to contradict in 
 one part what they have already stated in 
 another. In the year 1828 an amusing 
 work was published on the clubs of 
 London, which contained a chapter on 
 Fighting Fitzgerald, of whom the author 
 writes : " That Mr. Fitzgerald (unlike his 
 countrymen generally) was totally devoid 
 of generosity, no one who ever knew him 
 will doubt." In another chapter on the 
 same person the author flatly contradicts 
 his own judgment : " In summing up the 
 catalogue of his vices, however, we ought 
 not to shut our eyes upon his virtues ; of 
 the latter, he certainly possessed that one 
 for which his countrymen have always 
 been so famous, generosity." The scissors- 
 and-paste compilers are peculiarly liable 
 to such errors as these ; and a writer in 
 the Quarterly Revieiv proved the Mhnoires
 
 Blunders of Aii/hors. 33 
 
 de Louis XVIII. (published in 1832) to 
 be a mendacious compilation from the 
 Mhnoires de Bachaumont by giving exam- 
 ples of the compiler's blundering. One 
 of these muddles is well worth quoting, 
 and it occurs in the following passage : 
 "Seven bishops — of Puy, Gallard de 
 Terraube ; of Laftgres, La Luzerne ; of 
 Rhodez, Seignelay-Colbert ; of Gasf, Le 
 Tria ; of Blots, Laussiere Themines ; of 
 Nancy, Fontanges ; of Alais, Beausset ; 
 of Nevers, Seguiran." Had the compiler 
 taken the trouble to count his own list, 
 he would have seen that he had given 
 eight names instead of seven, and so have 
 suspected that something was wrong ; but 
 he was not paid to think. The fact is 
 that there is no such place as Gast, and 
 there was no such person as Le Tria. The 
 Bishop of Rhodez was Seignelay-Colbert 
 de Castle Hill, a descendant of the Scotch 
 family of Cuthbert of Castle Hill, in 
 Inverness-shire ; and Bachaumont misled 
 his successor by writing Gast Le Hill for 
 Castle Hill. The introduction of a stop 
 and a little more misspelling resulted in 
 the blunder as we now find it. 
 
 3
 
 34 Literary Bhinders. 
 
 Authors and editors are very apt to take 
 things for granted, and they thus fall into 
 errors which might have been escaped if 
 they had made inquiries. Pope, in a note 
 on Measure for Measure, informs us that the 
 story was taken from Cinthio's novel Dec. 8 
 Nov. 5, thus contracting the words decade 
 and novel. Warburton, in his edition of 
 Shakespeare, was misled by these con- 
 tractions, and fills them up as December 8 
 and November 5. Many blunders are 
 merely clerical errors of the authors, who 
 are led into them by a curious associa- 
 tion of ideas ; thus, in the Lives of the 
 Londonderrys, Sir Archibald Alison, when 
 describing the funeral of the Duke of 
 Wellington in St. Paul's, speaks of one of 
 the pall-bearers as Sir Peregrine Pickle, 
 instead of Sir Peregrine Maitland. Dickens, 
 in Bleak House, calls Harold Skimpole 
 Leonard throughout an entire number, 
 but returns to the old name in a sub- 
 sequent one. 
 
 Few authors require to be more on their 
 guard against mistakes than historians, 
 especially as they are peculiarly liable to 
 fall into them. What shall we think of
 
 Blunders of Authors. 35 
 
 the authority of a school book when we 
 find the statement that Louis Napoleon 
 was Consul in 1853 before he became 
 Emperor of the French ? 
 
 We must now pass from a book of small 
 value to an important work on the history 
 of England ; but it will be necessary first to 
 make a few explanatory remarks. Our 
 readers know that English kings for several 
 centuries claimed the power of curing 
 scrofula, or king's evil; but they may not be 
 so well acquainted with the fact that the 
 French sovereigns were believed to enjoy 
 the same miraculous power. Such, how- 
 ever, was the case ; and tradition reported 
 that a phial filled with holy oil was sent 
 down from heaven to be used for the 
 anointing of the kings at their coronation. 
 We can illustrate this by an anecdote of 
 Napoleon. Lafayette and the first Consul 
 had a conversation one day on the govern- 
 ment of the United States. Bonaparte 
 did not agree with Lafayette's views, and 
 the latter told him that " he was desirous 
 of having the ittle phial broke over his 
 head." This sainte ampulle, or holy 
 vessel, was an important object in the
 
 36 Litei'ary Blunders. 
 
 ceremony, and the virtue of the oil was to 
 confer the power of cure upon the anointed 
 king. This the historian could not have 
 known, or he would not have written : 
 " The French were confident in them- 
 selves, in their fortunes ; in the special 
 gifts by which they held the stars." If 
 this were all the information that was 
 given us, we should be left in a perfect 
 state of bewilderment while trying to 
 understand how the French could hold 
 the stars, or, if they were able to hold 
 them, what good it would do them ; but 
 the historian adds a note which, although 
 it contains some new blunders, gives the 
 clue to an explanation of an otherwise 
 inexplicable passage. It is as follows : 
 " The Cardinal of Lorraine showed Sir 
 William Pickering the precious ointment 
 of St. Ampull, wherewith the King of 
 France was sacred, which he said was sent 
 from heaven above a thousand years ago, 
 and since by miracle preserved, through 
 whose virtue also the king held les 
 esiroilles." From this we might imagine 
 that the holy Ampulla was a person ; but 
 the clue to the whole confusion is to be
 
 Blunders of AiUJiors. 37 
 
 found in the last word of the sentence. 
 As the French language does not contain 
 any such word as estroiiles, there can be 
 no doubt that it stands for old French 
 escroilles, or the king's evil. The change 
 of a few letters has here made the mighty 
 difference between the power of curing 
 scrofula and the gift of holding the stars. 
 
 In some copies of John Britton's De- 
 scriptive Sketches of Tunbridge Wells 
 (1832) the following extraordinary passage 
 will be found : " Judge Jefferies, a man 
 who has rendered his name infamous in 
 the annals of history by the cruelty and 
 injustice he manifested in presiding at the 
 trial of King Charles I." The book was 
 no sooner issued than the author became 
 aware of his astonishing chronological 
 blunder, and he did all in his power to set 
 the matter right; but a mistake in print 
 can never be entirely obliterated. How- 
 ever much trouble may be taken to sup- 
 press a book, some copies will be sure to 
 escape, and, becoming valuable by the 
 attempted suppression, attract all the more 
 attention. 
 
 Scott makes David Ramsay, in the 
 
 308162
 
 38 Literary Blunders. 
 
 Fortunes of Nigel {c\\2iY>^ex ii.), swear "by 
 the bones of the immortal Napier." It 
 would perhaps be rank heresy to suppose 
 that Sir Walter did not know that 
 "Napier's bones" were an apparatus for 
 purposes of calculation, but he certainly 
 puts the expression in such an ambiguous 
 form that many of his readers are likely 
 to suppose that the actual bones of 
 Napier's body were intended. 
 
 Some of the most curious of blunders 
 are those made by learned men who with- 
 out thought set down something which at 
 another time they would recognise as a 
 mistake. The following passage from 
 Mr. Gladstone's Gleanings of Past Years 
 (vol. i., p. 26), in whichithe author confuses 
 Daniel with Shadrach, Meshech, and 
 Abednego, has been pointed out : " The 
 fierce light that beats upon a throne is 
 sometimes like the heat of that furnace in 
 which only Daniel could walk unscathed, 
 too fierce for those whose place it is to 
 stand in its vicinity." Who would expect 
 to find Macaulay blundering on a subject 
 he knew so well as the story of the 
 Faerie Queene\ and yet this is what he
 
 Bhmders of Authors. 39 
 
 wrote in a review of Southey's edition 
 of the Pilgrivis Progress : " Nay, even 
 Spenser himself, though assuredly one of 
 the greatest poets that ever lived, could 
 not succeed in the attempt to make alle- 
 gory interesting. . . . One unpardonable 
 fault, the fault of tediousness, pervades 
 the whole of the Pairj' Queen. We be- 
 come sick of Cardinal Virtues and Deadly 
 Sins, and long for the society of plain men 
 and women. Of the persons who read 
 the first Canto, not one in ten reaches the 
 end of the first book, and not one in a 
 hundred perseveres to the end of the 
 poem. Very few and very weary are 
 those who are in at the death of the 
 Blatant Beast." ^ Macaulay knew well 
 enough that the Blatant Beast did not 
 die in the poem as Spenser left it. 
 
 The newspaper writers are great sinners, 
 and what with the frequent ignorance and 
 haste of the authors and the carelessness 
 of the printers a complete farrago of non- 
 sense is sometimes concocted between 
 them. A proper name is seldom given 
 correctly in a daily paper, and it is a 
 
 ' Edinbtirgh Revie-.v, vol. liv. (1831), p. 452.
 
 40 Literary Blunders. 
 
 frequently heard remark that no notice of 
 an event is pubhshed in which an error in 
 the names or quahfications of the actors 
 in it " is not detected by those acquainted 
 with the circumstances." The contributor 
 of the following bit of information to the 
 Week's News (Nov. i8th, 187 1) must 
 have had a very vague notion of what a 
 monosyllable is, or he would not have 
 written, > " The author of Dorothy, De 
 Cressy, etc., has another novel nearly 
 ready for the press, which, with the writer's 
 partiality for monosyllabic titles, is named 
 T/iomasina." He is perhaps the same 
 person who remarked on the late Mr. 
 Robertson's fondness for monosyllables 
 as titlesfor his plays, and after instancing 
 Caste, Ours, and School, ended his list with 
 Society. We can, however, fly at higher 
 game than this, for some twenty years ago 
 a writer in the Times fell into the mistake 
 of describing the entrance of one of the 
 German states into the Zollverein in terms 
 that proved him to be labouring under 
 the misconception that the great Customs- 
 Union was a new organisation. Another 
 source of error in the papers is the hurry
 
 Blunders of A ui/iors. 4 1 
 
 with which bits of news are printed be- 
 fore they have been authenticated. Each 
 editor wishes to get the start of his neigh- 
 bour, and the consequence is that they 
 are frequently deceived. In a number of 
 the Literary Gazette for 1837 there is a 
 paragraph headed " Sir Michael Faraday," 
 in which the great philosopher is con- 
 gratulated upon the title which had been 
 conferred upon him. Another source of 
 blundering is the attempt to answer an 
 opponent before his argument is tho- 
 roughly understood. A few years ago a 
 gentleman made a note in the Notes and 
 Queries to the effect that a certain custom 
 was at least 1400 years old, and was pro- 
 bably introduced into England in the fifth 
 century. Soon afterwards another gentle- 
 man wrote to the same journal, "Assuredly 
 this custom was general before a.d. 1400 " ; 
 but how he obtained that date out of the 
 previous communication no one can tell. 
 
 The Times made a strange blunder in 
 describing a gallery of pictures : " Mr. 
 Robertson's group of ' Susannah and the 
 Elders,' with the name of Pordenone, 
 contains some passages of glowing colour
 
 42 Literary Blunders. 
 
 which must be set off against a good deal 
 of clumsy drawing in the central figure of 
 the chaste maiden.^^ As bad as this was 
 the confusion in the mind of the critic of 
 the New Gallery, who spoke of Mr. Halle's 
 Paolo and Francesca as that masterly 
 study and production of the old Adam 
 phase of human nature which Milton 
 hit off so sublimely in the Inferno. 
 
 A writer in the Notes and Queries con- 
 fused Beersheba with Bathsheba, and 
 conferred on the woman the name of the 
 place. 
 
 It has often been remarked that a 
 thorough knowledge of the English Bible 
 is an education of itself, and a corre- 
 spondence in the Times in August 1888 
 shows the value of a knowledge of the 
 Liturgy of the Church of England. In a 
 leading article occurred the passage, " We 
 have no doubt whatever that Scotch 
 judges and juries will administer indiffer- 
 ent justice." A correspondent in Glasgow, 
 who supposed indifferent to mean in- 
 ferior, wrote to complain at the insinua- 
 tion that a Scotch jury would not do its 
 duty. The editor of the Tijnes had little
 
 Blunders of An tJiors. 4 3 
 
 difficulty in answering this by referring to 
 the prayer for the Church militant, where 
 are the words, " Grant unto her [the 
 Queen's] w-hole Council and to all that 
 are put in authority under her, that they 
 may truly and indifferently minister justice, 
 to the punishment of wickedness and vice, 
 and to the maintenance of Thy true 
 religion, and virtue." 
 
 The compiler of an Anthology made 
 the following remarks in his preface : " In 
 making a selection of this kind one sails 
 between Scylla and Charybdis — the hack- 
 neyed and the strange. I have done my 
 best to steer clear of both these rocks." 
 A leader-writer in a morning paper a 
 few months ago made the same blunder 
 when he wrote : " As a matter of fact, Mr. 
 Gladstone was bound to bump against 
 either Scylla or Charybdis." It has gene- 
 rally been supposed that Scylla only was 
 a rock. 
 
 A most extraordinary blunder was made 
 in Scientific American eight or ten years 
 ago. An engraving of a handsome Chel- 
 sea china vase was presented with the 
 following description : " In England no
 
 44 Literary Blunders. 
 
 regular hard porcelain is made, but a 
 soft porcelain of great beauty is pro- 
 duced from kaolin, phosphate of lime, 
 and calcined silica. The principal works 
 are situated at Chelsea. The export of 
 these English porcelains is considerable, 
 and it is a curious fact that they are 
 largely imported into China, where they 
 are highly esteemed. Our engraving 
 shows a richly ornamented vase in soft 
 porcelain from the works at Chelsea." 
 It could scarcely have been premised 
 that any one would be so ignorant as 
 to suppose that Chelsea china was still 
 manufactured, and this paragraph is a 
 good illustration of the evils of journalists 
 writing on subjects about which they know 
 nothing. 
 
 Critics who are supposed to be immacu- 
 late often blunder when sitting in judgment 
 on the sins of authors. They are fre- 
 quently puzzled by reprints, and led into 
 error by the disinclination of publishers 
 to give particulars in the preface as 
 to a book which was written many 
 years before its republication. A few 
 years ago was issued a reprint of the
 
 B hinders of Authors. 45 
 
 translation of the Arabimi Nights, by 
 Jonathan Scott, LL.D., which was first 
 pubHshed in 181 1. A reviewer having 
 the book before him overlooked this 
 important fact, and straightway proceeded 
 to "slate" Dr. Scott for his supposed 
 work of supererogation in making a new 
 translation when Lane's held the field, the 
 fact really being that Scott's translation 
 preceded Lane's by nearly thirty years. 
 
 Another critic, having to review a re- 
 print of Gait's Lives of Players, complained 
 that Mr. Gait had not brought his book 
 down to the date of publication, being 
 ignorant of the fact that John Gait died 
 as long ago as 1839. The reviewer of 
 Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare zorvarnXX^A 
 the worst blunder of all when he wrote 
 that those persons who did not know 
 their Shakespeare might read Mr. 
 Lamb's paraphrase if they liked, but for 
 his part he did not see the use of such 
 works. The man who had never heard 
 of Charles Lamb and his Tales must have 
 very much mistaken his vocation when he 
 set up as a literary critic. 
 
 These are all genuine cases, but the
 
 46 Literary Blunders. 
 
 story of Lord Campbell and his criticism 
 of Romeo a?id Juliet is almost too good to 
 be true. It is said that when the future 
 Lord Chancellor first came to London 
 he went to the editor of the Morning 
 Chronicle for some work. The editor 
 sent him to the theatre. " Plain John " 
 Campbell had no idea he was witnessing 
 a play of Shakespeare, and he therefore 
 set to work to sketch the plot of Romeo 
 and Juliet, and to give the author a little 
 wholesome advice. He recommended a 
 curtailment in parts so as to render it 
 more suitable to the taste of a cultivated 
 audience. We can quite understand that 
 if a story like this was once set into cir- 
 culation it was not likely to be allowed to 
 die by the many who were glad to have a 
 laugh at the rising barrister.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Blunders of Translators. 
 
 HE blunders of translators are so 
 common that they have been 
 made to point a moral in popular 
 proverbs. According to an Italian saying 
 translators are traitors (" I traduttori sono 
 traditori ") ; and books are said to be done 
 into Yjn'^x^, traduced in French, and overset 
 in Dutch. Colton, the author of Laco?t, 
 mentions a half-starved German at Cam- 
 bridge named Render, who had been long 
 enough in England to forget German, but 
 not long enough to learn English. This 
 worthy, in spite of his deficiencies, was a 
 voluminous translator of his native litera- 
 ture, and it became a proverbial saying 
 among his intimates respecting a bad 
 translation that it was Rendered into 
 English. 
 The Comte de Tressan translated the
 
 48 Litei'ary Blunders. 
 
 words " capo basso " (low headland) in a 
 passage from Ariosto by "Cap de Capo 
 Basso," on account of which translation 
 the wits insisted upon calling him " Comte 
 de Capo Basso." 
 
 Robert Hall mentions a comical stumble 
 made by one of the translators of Plato, 
 who construed through the Latin and not 
 direct from the Greek. In the Latin 
 version hirundo stood as hirudo, and the 
 translator, overlooking the mark of con- 
 traction, declared to the astonished world 
 on the authority of Plato that the horse- 
 leech instead of the swallow was the har- 
 binger of spring. Hoole, the translator of 
 Tasso and Ariosto, was as confused in his 
 natural history when he rendered "I 
 colubri Viscontei " or Viscontian snakes, 
 the crest of the Visconti family, as " the 
 Calabrian Viscounts." 
 
 As strange as this is the Frenchman's 
 notion of the presence of guns in the 
 canons' seats : " L'Archeveque de Can- 
 torbery avait fait placer des canons dans 
 les stalles de la cathedrale." He quite 
 overlooked the word chanoines, which he 
 should have used. This use of a word
 
 Blunders of Traiislators. 49 
 
 similarly spelt is a constant source of 
 trouble to the translator : for instance, 
 a French translator of Scott's Bride of 
 Lammermuir left the first word of the 
 title untranslated, with the result that he 
 made it the Bridle of Lammermuir, " La 
 Bride de Lammermuir." 
 
 Thevenot in his travels refers to the 
 fables of Davin'e et Calilve, meaning the 
 Hitopodesa, or Pilpay's Fables. His trans- 
 lator calls them the fables of the damned 
 Calilve. This is on a par with De 
 Quincey's specimen of a French Abbe's 
 Greek. Having to paraphrase the Greek 
 words '"HpoSoTo-; Kat la^wv " (Herodotus 
 even while lonicizing), the Frenchman 
 rendered them " Herodote et aussi Jazon," 
 thus creating a new author, one Jazon. 
 In the Present State of Fern, a compilation 
 from the Mercuric Peruana, P. Geronymo 
 Roman de la Higuera is transformed into 
 " Father Geronymo, a Romance of La 
 Higuera." 
 
 In Robertson's History of Scotland the 
 following passage is quoted from Melville's 
 Account offohn Knox : " He was so active 
 and vigorous a preacher that he was like 
 
 4
 
 50 Literary Blunders. 
 
 to ding the pulpit into blads and fly out 
 of it." M. Campenon, the translator of 
 Robertson into French, turns this into the 
 startling statement that he broke his pulpit 
 and leaped into the midst of his auditors. 
 A good companion to this curious " fact " 
 may be found in the extraordinary trope 
 used by a translator of Busbequius, who 
 says " his misfortunes had reduced him to 
 the top of all miseries." 
 
 We all know how Victor Hugo trans- 
 formed the Frith of Forth into the First of 
 the Fourth, and then insisted that he was 
 right ; but this great novelist was in the 
 habit of soaring far above the realm of 
 fact, and in a work he brought out as an 
 offering to the memory of Shakespeare he 
 showed that his imagination carried him 
 far away from historical facts. The author 
 complains in this book that the muse of 
 history cares more for the rulers than for 
 the ruled, and, telling only what is pleasant, 
 ignores the truth when it is unpalatable 
 to kings. After an outburst of bombast 
 he says that no history of England tells us 
 that Charles II. murdered his brother the 
 Duke of Gloucester. We should be sur-
 
 Blunders of Translatoys. 5 i 
 
 prised if any did do so, as that young man 
 died of small-pox. Hugo, being totally 
 ignorant of English history, seems to have 
 confused the son of Charles I. with an 
 earlier Duke of Gloucester (Richard III.), 
 and turned the assassin into the victim. 
 After these blunders Dr. Baly's mention 
 of the cannibals of Nova Scotia instead 
 of New Caledonia in his translation of 
 Miiller's Elements of Physiology seems 
 tame. 
 
 One snare that translators are constantly 
 falling into is the use of English words 
 which are like the foreign ones, l)ut never- 
 theless are not equivalent terms, and 
 translations that have taken their place 
 in literature often suffer from this cause ; 
 thus Cicero's Offices should have been 
 translated Duties, and Marmontel never 
 intended to write what we understand by 
 Moral Tales, but rather tales of manners 
 or of fashionable life. The translators of 
 Calmet's Dictionary of the Bible render the 
 French ancien, ancient, and write of "Mr. 
 Huet, the ancient Bishop of Avranch." 
 Theodore Parker, in translating a work by 
 De Wette, makes the blunder of con-
 
 52 Literary Bhinders. 
 
 verting the German word Wdhch, a 
 foreigner (in the book an equivalent for 
 Italian), into Welsh. 
 
 Some men translate works in order to 
 learn a language during the process, and 
 they necessarily make blunders. It must 
 have been one of these ignoramuses who 
 translated tellurische magnetismus (terres- 
 trial magnetism) as the magnetical qualities 
 of Tellurium, and by his blunder caused 
 an eminent chemist to test tellurium in 
 order to find these magnetical qualities. 
 There was more excuse for the French 
 translator of one of Sir Walter Scott's 
 novels who rendered a welsh rabbit (or 
 rarebit, as it is sometimes spelt) into tin 
 lapin du pays de Galks. Walpole states 
 that the Duchess of Bolton used to divert 
 George I. by affecting to make blunders, 
 and once when she had been to see Gibber's 
 play of Lovers Last Shift she called it La 
 derniere chejnise de V amour. A like trans- 
 lation of Congreve's ATourning Bride is 
 given in good faith in the first edition of 
 Peignot's Manuel du Bibliophile, 1800, 
 where it is described as EEpouse de 
 Matin ; and the translation which Walpole
 
 Blunders of Translators. 53 
 
 attributes to the Duchess of Bolton the 
 French say was made by a Frenchman 
 named La Place. 
 
 The title of the old farce Hit or Miss 
 was turned into Frappe 011 Mademoiselle^ 
 and the Independent Whig into La 
 Perruque Indipendante. 
 
 In a late number of the Literary 
 World the editor, after alluding to the 
 French translator of Sir Walter Scott 
 who turned " a sticket minister "' into 
 "le ministre assassin^," gives from the 
 Biblioihhjue Umverselle the extraordinary 
 translation of the title of ^Nlr. Barrie's 
 comedy, Walker^ London, as Londres qui 
 se promene. 
 
 Old translators have played such tricks 
 with proper names as to make them often 
 unintelligible ; thus we find La Rochefou- 
 cauld figuring as Ruchfucove ; and in an 
 old treatise on the mystery of Freemasonry 
 by John Leiand, Pythagoras is described 
 as Peter Gower the Grecian. This of 
 course is an Anglicisation of the French 
 Pythagore (pronounced like Peter Gore). 
 Our versions of Eastern names are so 
 different from the originals that when the
 
 54 Literary Blunders. 
 
 two are placed together there appears 
 to be no likeness between them, and the 
 different positions which they take up in 
 the alphabet cause the bibliographer an 
 infinity of trouble. Thus the original of 
 Xerxes is Khshayarsha (the revered king), 
 and Averrhoes is Ibn Roshd (son of 
 Roshd). The latter's full name is iVbul 
 Walid Mohammed ben Ahmed ben Mo- 
 hammed. Artaxerxes is in old Persian 
 Artakhshatra, or the Fire Protector, and 
 Darius means the Possessor. Although 
 all these names — Xerxes, Artaxerxes, and 
 Darius — have a royal significance, they 
 were personal names, and not titles like 
 Pharaoh. 
 
 It is often difficult to believe that trans- 
 lators can have taken the trouble to read 
 their own work, or they surely would not 
 let pass some of the blunders we meet 
 with. In a translation of Lamartine's 
 Girondim some courtly people are de- 
 scribed as figuring " under the vaults " of 
 the Tuileries instead of beneath the arched 
 galleries {sous ses voutes). This, how- 
 ever, is nothing to a blunder to be found 
 in the Secret Memoirs of the Court of
 
 Blunders of Translators. 5 5 
 
 Louis XIV. and of the Regency (1824). 
 The following passage from the original 
 work, " Deux en sont morts et on dit pub- 
 liquement qu'ils ont ete empoisonnes," is 
 rendered in the English translation to the 
 confusion of common sense as " Two of 
 them died with her, and said publicly that 
 they had been poisoned." 
 
 This is not unlike the bull of the young 
 soldier who, writing home in praise of the 
 Indian climate, said, " But a lot of young 
 fellows come out here, and they drink 
 and they eat, and they eat and they drink, 
 and they die ; and then they write home 
 to their friends saying it was the climate 
 that did it." 
 
 Some authors have found that there is 
 peril in too free a translation, thus Dotet 
 was condemned on Feb. 14th, 1543, for 
 translating a passage in Plato's Dialogues 
 as " After death you will be nothing at 
 all." Surely he who translated Dieu defend 
 Fadultere as God defends adultery more 
 justly deserved punishment ! Guthrie, 
 the geographical writer, who translated 
 a French book of travels, unfortunately 
 mistook neiiviane (ninth) for nouvelle or
 
 56 Literary Blimders. 
 
 neiive, and therefore made an allusion to 
 the twenty-sixth day of the new moon. 
 
 Moore quotes in his Diary (Dec. 
 30th, 1 8 18) a most amusing blunder of 
 a translator who knew nothing of the 
 technical name for a breakwater. He 
 translated the line in Goldsmith's Deserted 
 Village, 
 
 " As ocean sweeps the labour'd mole away," 
 
 into 
 
 "Comma la mer detruit les travaux de la 
 taupe." 
 
 D'Israeli records two comical transla- 
 tions from English into French. " Ainsi 
 douleur, va-t'en " for woe begone is almost 
 too good ; and the man who mistook the 
 expression "the officer was broke" as 
 meaning broke on a wheel and translated 
 it by roue made a very serious matter of 
 what was possibly but a small fault. 
 
 In the translation of The Conscript by 
 Erckmann-Chatrian, the old botcher is 
 turned into the old butcher. 
 
 Sometimes in attempting to correct a 
 supposed blunder of another we fall into
 
 Blunders of Translators. 57 
 
 a very real one of our own. Thus a few 
 years ago, before we knew so much about 
 folk-lore as we do now, we should very 
 probably have pointed out that Cinderella's 
 glass slipper owed its existence to a mis- 
 print. Fur was formerly so rare and so 
 highly prized that its use was restricted 
 by sumptuary laws to kings, princes, and 
 persons holding honourable offices. In 
 these laws sable is called vair, and it has 
 been asserted that Perrault marked the 
 dignity conferred upon Cinderella by the 
 fairy's gift of a slipper of vair, a privilege 
 confined to the highest rank of princesses. 
 It is further stated that by an error of the 
 printer z/azV was changed into verre. Now, 
 however, we find in the various versions 
 which have been collected of this favourite 
 tale that, however much the incidents may 
 differ, the slipper is almost invariably made 
 of some rigid material, and in the earliest 
 forms the unkind sisters cut their feet to 
 make them fit the slipper. This unpleasant 
 incident was omitted by Perrault, but he 
 kept the rigid material and made the glass 
 slipper famous. 
 
 The Revisers of the Old Testament
 
 58 Literary Blunders. 
 
 translation have shown us that the famous 
 verse in Job, " Oh that mine adversary 
 had written a book," is wrong; but it 
 will never drop out of our language 
 and literature. The Revised Version is 
 certainly much more in accordance with 
 our ideas of the time when the book was 
 written, a period when authors could not 
 have been very common : — 
 
 " Oh tliat I had one to hear me ! 
 
 (Lo, here is my signature, let the Almighty 
 
 answer me ;) 
 And that I had the indictment which mine 
 
 adversary hath written ! 
 Surely I would carry it upon my shoulder ; 
 I would bind it unto me as a crown." 
 
 Silk Buckingham drew attention to the 
 fact that some translations of the Bible 
 had been undertaken by persons ignorant 
 of the idioms of the language into which 
 they were translating, and he gave an 
 instance from an Arabic translation where 
 the text "Judge not, that ye be not 
 judged" was rendered "Be not just to 
 others, lest others should be just to 
 you." 
 
 The French have tried ingeniously to
 
 Blunder's of Translators. 59 
 
 explain the difificulty contained in St. 
 Mattheiv xix. 24, " It is easier for a camel 
 to go through the eye of a needle than 
 for a rich man to enter into the kingdom 
 of God," by affirming that the translators 
 mistook the supposed word Ka/xtXo?, a rope, 
 for KOLjxrjXo';, a camel. 
 
 The humours of translation are nume- 
 rous, but perhaps the most eccentric 
 example is to be found in Stanyhurst's 
 rendering of Virgil, published in 1583. 
 It is full of cant .words, and reads like 
 the work of a madman. This is a fair 
 specimen of the work : — 
 
 " Theese thre were iipbotcliing, not shapte, but 
 partlye wel onward, 
 A clapping fierbolt (such as oft, with rownce 
 
 robel-hobble, 
 Jove to the ground clattreth) but yeet not 
 finished holye." 
 
 M. Guyot, translating some Latin epi- 
 grams under the title of Fleurs, Morales, et 
 Epigraminatiques, uses the singular forms 
 Monsieur Zoile and Mademoiselle Lycoris. 
 The same author, when translating the 
 letters of Cicero (1666), turns Pomponius 
 into M. de Pomponne.
 
 6o Literary Blunders. 
 
 Pitt's friend, Pepper Arden, Master of 
 the Rolls, Lord Chief Justice of the 
 Common Pleas and Lord Alvanley, was 
 rather hot-tempered, and his name was 
 considered somewhat appropriate, but to 
 make it still more so his friends translated 
 it into " Mons. Poivre Ardent." 
 
 This reminds one of the Frenchman who 
 toasted Dr. Johnson, not as Mr. Rambler, 
 but as Mr. Vagabond. 
 
 Tom Moore notices some amusing mis- 
 translations in his Diary. Major Cart- 
 wright, who was called the Father of 
 Reform (although a wit suggested that 
 Mother of Reform would have been a 
 more appropriate title), supposed that 
 the Brevia Parliamentaria of Prynne 
 stood for "short parliaments." Lord 
 Lansdowne told Moore that he was with 
 Lord Holland when the letter containing 
 this precious bit of erudition arrived. 
 Another story of Lord Lansdowne's is 
 equally good. His French servant an- 
 nounced Dr. Mansell, the Master of 
 Trinity, when he called, as " Maitre des 
 Ceremonies de la Trinite." 
 
 Moore also relates that an account
 
 Blunders of Translators. 6 i 
 
 having appeared in the London papers 
 of a row at the Stock Exchange, where 
 some strangers were hustled, it appeared 
 in the Paris papers in this form: "Mons. 
 Stock Exchange etait echauffe," etc. 
 
 There is something to be said in favour 
 of the humorous translation of Magna est 
 Veritas et prevalabit — " Great is truth, and 
 it will prevail a bit," for it is probably 
 truer than the original. He who con- 
 strued Caesar's mode of passing into Gaul 
 su7nma diligentia, " on the top of the dili- 
 gence," must have been of an imaginative 
 turn of mind. Probably the time will 
 soon come when this will need explana- 
 tion, for a public will arise which knows 
 -not the dilatory "diligence." 
 
 The translator of Inter Calicem 
 supremaqiie labra as PiCtwixt Dover and 
 Calais gave as his reason that Dover was 
 Anglice sttprenia labra. 
 
 Although not a blunder nor apparently 
 a joke, we may conclude this chapter with 
 a reference to Shakespeare's remarkable 
 translation of Finis Coronat opus. Helena 
 remarks in AWs well that Ends well (act 
 iv.j sc. 4) : —
 
 62 Literary Blunders. 
 
 " All's well that ends well : still t/ie fines the 
 cro'cvn." 
 
 In the Second Fart of King Henry VI. 
 (act v., sc. 2) old Lord Clifford, just before 
 he dies, is made to use the French trans- 
 lation of the proverb : — 
 
 " La fin couronne les ceuvres." 
 In the first Folio we read : — 
 
 " La fin corrone les eumenes."
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Bibliographical Blunders. 
 
 HERE is no class that requires 
 to be dealt with more leniently 
 than do bibliographers, for pit- 
 falls are before and behind them. It is 
 impossible for any one man to see all the 
 books he describes in a general biblio- 
 graphy ; and, in consequence of the neces- 
 sity of trusting to second-hand information, 
 he is often led imperceptibly into gross 
 error. ^Vatt's Bibliotheca Britannica is a 
 most useful and valuable work, but, as 
 may be expected from so comprehensive 
 a compilation, many mistakes have crept 
 into it : for instance, under the head of 
 Philip Beroaldus, we find the following 
 title of a work : " A short view of the 
 Persian Monarchy, published at the end 
 of Daniel's Works." The mystery of the 
 last part of the title is cleared up when we
 
 64 Literary Blunders. 
 
 find that it should properly be read, " and 
 of Darnel's JVeekes" it being a work on 
 prophecy. The librarian of the old Mary- 
 lebone Institution, knowing as little of 
 Latin as the monk did of Hebrew when 
 he described a book as having the begin- 
 ning where the end should be, catalogued 
 an edition of ^sop's Fables as " ^sopia- 
 rum's Phoedri Fabulorum." 
 
 Two blunders that a bibliographer is 
 very apt to fall into are the rolling of 
 different authors of the same name into 
 one, and the creation of an author who 
 never existed. The first kind we may 
 illustrate by mentioning the dismay of the 
 worthy Bishop Jebb, when he found him- 
 self identified in Watt's Bibliotheca with 
 his uncle, the Unitarian writer. Of the 
 second kind we might point out the 
 names of men whose lives have been 
 written and yet who never existed. In 
 the Zoological Biography of Agassiz, pub- 
 lished by the Ray Society, there is an 
 imaginary author, by name J. K. Broch, 
 whose work, Entomologische Briefe, was 
 published in 1823. This pamphlet is 
 really anonymous, and was written by
 
 Bibliograpliical Blunders. 65 
 
 one who signed himself J. K. Broch. is 
 merely an explanation in the catalogue 
 from which the entry was taken that it 
 was a brochure. Moreri created an author, 
 whom he styled Dorus Basilicus, out of 
 the title of James I.'s ^ii^pov (Sao-iXtKov, 
 and Bishop Walton supposed the title of 
 the great Arabic Dictionary, the Kamoos 
 or Ocean, to be the name of an author 
 whom he quotes as " Camus." In the 
 article on Stenography in Rees's Cyclo- 
 pa2dia there are two most amusing blunders. 
 John Nicolai published a Treatise on the 
 Signs of the Ancients at the beginning of 
 the last century, and the writer of the 
 article, having seen it stated that a certain 
 fact was to be found in Nicolai, jumped 
 to the conclusion that it was the name of 
 a place, and wrote, " It was at Nicolai 
 that this method of writing was first in- 
 troduced to the Greeks by Xenophon 
 himself" In another part of the same 
 article the oldest method of shorthand 
 extant, entitled " Ars Scribendi Charac- 
 teris," is said to have been printed about 
 the year 141 2 — that is, long before printing 
 was invented. In the Biographie Univer- 
 
 5
 
 66 Literary Blunders. 
 
 selle there is a life of one Nicholas Donis, 
 by Baron Walckenaer, which is a blunder- 
 ing alteration of the real name of a Bene- 
 dictine monk called Dominus Nicholas. 
 This, however, is not the only time that 
 a title has been taken for a name. An 
 eminent bookseller is said to have re- 
 ceived a letter signed George Winton, 
 proposing a life of Pitt ; but, as he did not 
 know the name, he paid no attention to 
 the letter, and was much astonished when 
 he was afterwards told that his corre- 
 spondent was no less a person than 
 George Pretyman Tomline, Bishop of 
 Winchester. This is akin to the mistake 
 of the Scotch doctor attending on the 
 Princess Charlotte during her illness, who 
 said that " ane Jean Saroom " had been 
 continually calling, but, not knowing the 
 fellow, he had taken no notice of him. 
 Thus the Bishop of Salisbury was sent 
 away by one totally ignorant of his dig- 
 nity. A similar blunder was made by a 
 bibliographer, for in Hotten's Handbook 
 to the Topography and Family History of 
 England and Wales will be found an entry 
 of an " Assize Sermon by Bishop Wigorn,
 
 Bibliographical Blunders. 6y 
 
 in the Cathedral at Worcester, 1690." 
 This was really Bishop Stillingfleet. There 
 is a reverse case of a catalogue made by 
 a worthy bookseller of the name of AVilliam 
 London, which was long supposed to be 
 the work of Dr. William Juxon, the Bishop 
 of London at the time of publication. 
 The entry in the Biographic Moderne of 
 " Brigham le jeune ou Brigham Young " 
 furnishes a fine instance of a writer suc- 
 cumbing to the ever-present temptation 
 to be too clever by half. A somewhat 
 similar blunder is that of the late Mr. 
 Dircks. The first reprint of the Marquis 
 of \\'orcester's Century of Inventions was 
 issued by Thomas Payne, the highly re- 
 spected bookseller of the Mews Gate, in 
 1746; but in Worcester iana (1866) Mr. 
 Dircks positively asserts that the notorious 
 Tom Paine was the publisher of it, thus 
 ignoring the different spelling of the two 
 names. 
 
 In a French book on the invention of 
 printing, the sentence " Le berceau de 
 I'imprimerie " was misread by a German, 
 who turned Le Berceau into a man 
 D'Israeli tells us that Mantissa^ the title
 
 68 Literary Blunders. 
 
 of the Appendix to Johnstone's History 
 of Plants, was taken for the name of an 
 author by D'Aquin, the French king's 
 physician. The author of the Curiosities 
 of Literature also relates that an Italian 
 misread the description Enrichi de deux 
 listes on the title-page of a French book 
 of travels, and, taking it for the author's 
 name, alluded to the opinions of 
 Mons. Enrichi De Deux Listes ; but 
 really this seems almost too good to be 
 true. 
 
 If we searched bibliographical literature 
 we should find a fair crop of authors who 
 never existed ; for when once a blunder 
 of this kind is set going, it seems to bear 
 a charmed life. ]\Ir. Daydon Jackson 
 mentions some amusing instances of 
 imaginary authors made out of title-pages 
 in his Guide to the Literature of Bota^iy. 
 An anonymous work of A. Massalongo, 
 entitled Graduate Fassagio delle Crittogame 
 alle Fa7ierogaine (1876), has been entered 
 in a German bibliography as written by 
 G. Passagio. In an English list Kelaart's 
 Flora Calpejisis: Reminiscences of Gibraltar 
 (1846) appears as the work of a lady —
 
 Bibliographical Blimdcrs. 6g 
 
 Christian name. Flora ; surnatne, Calpensis. 
 In 1837 a Botanical Lexicoji was published 
 by an author who described himself as 
 "The Rev. Patrick Keith, Clerk, F.L.S." 
 This somewhat pedantic form deceived a 
 foreign cataloguer, who took Clerk for the 
 surname, and contracted " Patrick Keith " 
 into the initials P.K. More inexcusable 
 was the blunder of an American who, in 
 describing J. E. H. Gordon's work on 
 Electricity^ changed the author's degree 
 into the initials of a collaborator, one 
 Cantab. The joint authors were stated 
 to be J. E. H. Gordon and B. A. Cantab. 
 A very amusing, but a quite excusable 
 error, was made by Allibone in his 
 Dictionary of English Literature, under 
 the heading of Isaac D'Israeli. He 
 notices new editions of that author's 
 works revised by the Right Hon. the 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer, of course 
 Isaac's son Benjamin, afterwards Prime 
 Minister and Earl of Beaconsfield ; but 
 unfortunately there were two Chancellors 
 in 1858, and Allibone chooses the wrong 
 one, printing, as useful information to the 
 reader, that the reviser was Sir George
 
 70 Literary B holders. 
 
 Cornewall Lewis. An instance of the " 
 danger of inconsiderate explanation will 
 be found in a little book by a German 
 lady, Fanny Lewald, entitled England 
 and Schottland. The authoress, when in 
 London, visited the theatre in order to 
 see a play founded on Cooper's novel 
 The Wept of Wish-ton Wish ; and being 
 unable to understand the title, she calls 
 it the " Will of the Whiston Wisp," which 
 she tells us means an ignis fatuus. 
 
 A writer in a German paper was led 
 into an amusing blunder by an English 
 review a few years ago. The reviewer, 
 having occasion to draw a distinction 
 between George and Robert Cruilcshank, 
 spoke of the former as the real Simon 
 Pure. The German, not understanding 
 the allusion, gravely told his readers that 
 George Cruikshank was a pseudonym, 
 the author's real name being .Simon Pure. 
 This seems almost too good to be equalled, 
 but a countryman of our own has blun- 
 dered nearly as grossly. William Taylor, 
 in his Historic Survey of Gerinan Poetry 
 (1830), prints the following absurd state- 
 ment : " Godfred of Berlichingen is one
 
 Bibliographical Blunders. 7 i 
 
 of the earliest imitations of the Shakspeare 
 tragedy which the German school has pro- 
 duced. It was admirably translated into 
 English in 1799 at PMinburg by Williain 
 Scott, advocate, no doubt the same person 
 who, under the poetical but assumed name 
 of Walter^ has since become the most 
 extensively popular of the British writers." 
 The cause of this mistake we cannot ex- 
 plain, but the reason for it is to be found 
 in the fact which has lately been announced 
 that a few copies of the translation, with 
 the misprint of William for Walter in the 
 title, were issued before the error was 
 discovered. 
 
 Jacob Boehm, the theosophist, wrote 
 some Reflections on a theological treatise 
 by one Isaiah StiefeV the title of which 
 puzzled one of his modern French bio- 
 graphers. The word Stiefel in German 
 means a boot, and the Frenchman there- 
 fore gave the title of Boehm's tract as 
 " Reflexions sur les Bottes d'Isaie." 
 
 It is scarcely fair to make capital out 
 
 ' " Bedencken i'lbir Esaiiz Stiefels Buchlein : 
 von dreyerley Zuslandi des Menscheti unnd dessen 
 neiven Geburt." 1639.
 
 72 Literary Blunders. 
 
 of the blunders of booksellers' catalogues, 
 which are often printed in a great hurry, 
 and cannot possibly possess the advantage 
 of correction which a book does. But 
 one or two examples may be given with- 
 out any censure being intended on the 
 booksellers. 
 
 In a French catalogue the works of 
 the famous philosopher Robert Boyle 
 appeared under the following singular 
 French form : Boy (le), Chymista scepticus 
 vel dubia et paradoxa chymico-physica, &c. 
 
 "Mr. Tul. Cicero's Epistles" looks 
 strange, but the mistake is but small. 
 The very natural blunder respecting the 
 title of Shelley's Protnetheus Unbound 
 actually did occur ; and, what is more, it 
 was expected by Theodore Hook. This is 
 an accurate copy of the description in the 
 catalogue of a year or two back : — 
 
 " Shelley's Prometheus Unbound. 
 
 ■ another copy, in whole calf.'" 
 
 and these are Hook's lines : — 
 
 *' Shelley styles his new poem ' Prometheus Un- 
 bound, ' 
 And 'tis like to remain so while time circles 
 round ;
 
 Bibliographical Blunders. 7 3 
 
 For surely an age would be spent in the finding 
 A reader so weak as to pay for the hindingy 
 
 When books are classified in a catalogue 
 the compiler must be peculiarly on his 
 guard if he has the titles only and not 
 the books before him. Sometimes in- 
 stances of incorrect classification show 
 gross ignorance, as in the instance quoted 
 in the Athenceuin lately. Here we have 
 a crop of blunders : " Tii/e, Commentarii 
 De Bello Gallico in usum Scholarum 
 Liber Tirbius. Author, 'Six. C. J. 
 Caesoris. Subject, Religion." Still better 
 is the auctioneer's entry of P. V. Maroni's 
 The Opera. Authors, however, are usually 
 so fond of fanciful ear-catching titles, that 
 every excuse must be made for the cata- 
 loguer, who mistakes their meaning, and 
 takes them in their literal signification. 
 Who can reprove too severely the classi- 
 fier who placed Swinburne's Under the 
 Microscope in his class of Optical Instru- 
 menis, or treated Ruskin's Notes on the 
 Construction of Sheep/olds as a work on 
 agricultural appliances ? A late instance 
 of an amusing rnisclassification is reported 
 from Germany. In the Orientalische
 
 74 Literary Blunders. 
 
 Bibliographic, Mr. Rider Haggard's won- 
 derful story Kifig Solomon's Alifies is 
 entered as a contribution to " Alttesta- 
 mentliche Litteratur." 
 
 The elaborate work by Careme, Le 
 Patissier Pittoresqiie (1842), which con- 
 tains designs for confectioners, deceived 
 the bookseller from its plates of pavilions, 
 temples, etc., into supposing it to be a 
 book on architecture, and he accordingly 
 placed it under that heading in his 
 catalogue. 
 
 Mr. Daydon Jackson gives several in- 
 stances of false classification in his Guide 
 to the Literature of Botany, and remarks 
 that some authors contrive titles seemingly 
 of set purpose to entrap the unwary. He 
 instances a fine example in the case of 
 Bishop Alexander Ewing's Feamainn 
 Earraghaidhiell : Argyllshire Seaweeds 
 (Glasgow, 1872. 8vo). To enhance the 
 delusion, the coloured wrapper is orna- 
 mented with some of the common marine 
 algce, but the inside of the volume con- 
 sists solely of pastoral addresses. Another 
 example will be found in Flowers from 
 the South, from the Hortus Siccus of an
 
 Bibliographical Blunders. 
 
 / :> 
 
 Old Collector. By W. H. Hyett, F.R.S. 
 Instead of a popular work on the Medi- 
 terranean flora by a scientific man, as 
 might reasonably be expected, this is a 
 volume of translations from the Italian 
 and Latin poets. It is scarcely fair to 
 blame the compiler of the Bibliotheca 
 Historico - Naturalis for having ranked 
 both these works among scientific treatises. 
 The English cataloguer who treated as a 
 botanical book Dr. Garnett's selection 
 from Coventry Patmore's poems, entitled 
 Florilegium Aviantis, could claim less 
 excuse for his blunder than the German 
 had. These misleading titles are no new 
 invention, and the great bibliographer 
 Haller was deceived into including the 
 title of James Howell's Deudrologia, or 
 Dodona's Grove (1640), in his Bibliotheca 
 Botanica. Professor Otis H. Robinson 
 contributed a very interesting paper on the 
 " Titles of Books " to the Special Report 
 on Public Libraries in the United States of 
 America (1876), in which he deals very 
 fully with this difficulty of misleading titles, 
 and some of his preliminary remarks are 
 ver}' much to the point. He writes : —
 
 ^6 Literary Blunders. 
 
 " No act of a man's life requires 
 more practical common sense than the 
 naming of his book. If he would make 
 a grocer's sign or an invoice of a cellar 
 of goods or a city directory, he uses no 
 metaphors ; his pen does not hesitate for 
 the plainest word. He must make him- 
 self understood by common men. But 
 if he makes a book the case is different. 
 It must have the charm of a pleasing 
 title. If there is nothing new within, the 
 back at least must be novel and taking. 
 He tortures his imagination for something 
 which will predispose the reader in its 
 favour. Mr. Parker writes a series of 
 biographical sketches, and calls it Alorning 
 Stars of the New World. Somebody pre- 
 pares seven religious essays, binds them 
 up in a book, and calls it Seven Stormy 
 Sundays. Mr. H. T. Tuckerman makes 
 a book of essays on various subjects, and 
 calls it The Optimist; and then devotes 
 several pages of preface to an argument, 
 lexicon in hand, proving that the applica- 
 bility of the term optimist is ' obvious.' 
 An editor, at intervals of leisure, indulges 
 his true poetic taste for the pleasure of his
 
 Bibliographical Blunders. jj 
 
 friends, or the entertainment of an occa 
 sional audience. Then his book appears, 
 entitled not Miscellaneous Foe?ns, but 
 Asleep in the Satictu?n, by A. A. Hopkins. 
 Sometimes, not satisfied with one enigma, 
 another is added. Here we have The 
 Great Iron Wheel ; or, Repiiblicanistn Back- 
 wards and Christianity Reversed, by J. R. 
 Graves. These titles are neither new nor 
 scarce, nor limited to any particular class 
 of books. Every case, almost every shelf, 
 in every library contain such. They are as 
 old as the art of book-making. David's 
 lamentation over Saul and Jonathan was 
 called The Boiv. A single word in the 
 poem probably suggested the name. Three 
 of the orations of /Eschines were styled The 
 Graces, and his letters The Muses." 
 
 The list of bibliographical blunders 
 might be indefinitely extended, but the 
 subject is somewhat technical, and the 
 above few instances will give a sufficient 
 indication of the pitfalls which lie in the 
 way of the bibliographer — a worker who 
 needs universal knowledge if he is to 
 wend his way safely through the snares 
 in his path.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Lists of Errata. 
 
 HE errata of the early printed 
 books are not numerous, and 
 this fact is easily accounted for 
 when we recollect that these books were 
 superintended in their passage through 
 the press by scholars such as the Alduses, 
 Andreas, Bishop of Aleria, Campanus 
 Perottus, the Stephenses, and others. 
 It is said that the first book with a printed 
 errata is the edition oi Juvenal, with notes 
 of Merula, printed by Gabriel Pierre, at 
 Venice, in 1478 ; previously the mistakes 
 had been corrected by the pen. One of 
 the longest lists of errata on record, which 
 occupies fifteen folio pages, is in the 
 edition of the works of Picus of Miran- 
 dula, printed by Knoblauch, at Strasburg, 
 in 1507. A worse case of blundering will 
 be found - in a little book of only one
 
 Lists of Errata. 79 
 
 hundred and seventy-two pages, entitled 
 Mis see ac Missalis Anatomia, 1561, 
 which contains fifteen pages of errata. 
 The author, feeling that such a gross case 
 of blundering required some excuse or 
 explanation, accounted for the misprints 
 by asserting that the devil drenched 
 the manuscript in the kennel, making it 
 almost illegible, and then obliged the 
 printer to misread it. We may be allowed 
 to believe that the fiend who did all the 
 mischief was the printer's " devil." 
 
 Cardinal Bellarmin tried hard to get 
 his works printed correctly, but without 
 success, and in 1608 he was forced to 
 publish at Ingolstadt a volume entitled 
 Recognitio librorum omnium Roberti Bel- 
 larmini, in which he printed eighty-eight 
 pages of errata of his Controversies. 
 
 Edward Leigh, in his thin folio volume 
 entitled On Religion and Learning, 1656, 
 was forced to add two closely printed 
 leaves of errata. 
 
 Sometimes apparent blunders have been 
 intentionally made ; thus, to escape the 
 decree of the Inquisition that the words 
 fatum and fata should not be used in
 
 8o Literary Blunders. 
 
 any work, a certain author printed facta 
 in his book, and added in the errata '■'■for 
 facta read fata." 
 
 In dealing with our own older literature 
 we find a considerable difference in degree 
 of typographical correctness; thus the old 
 plays of the sixteenth and seventeenth 
 centuries are often marvels of inaccuracy, 
 and while books of the same date are 
 usually supplied with tables of errata, 
 plays were issued without any such helps 
 to correction. This to some extent is to 
 be accounted for by the fact that many of 
 these plays were surreptitious publications, 
 or, at all events, printed in a hurry, without 
 care. The late Mr. Halliwell Phillipps, in 
 his curious privately printed volume {A 
 Dictionary of jMisprints, 1887), writes: 
 "Such tests were really a thousandfold 
 more necessary in editions of plays, but 
 they are practically non-existent in the 
 latter, the brief one which is prefixed 
 to Dekker's Satiro-Mastix, 1602, being 
 nearly the only example that is to be 
 found in any that appeared during the 
 literary career of the great dramatist." 
 
 In other branches of literature it is
 
 Lists of Errata. 8 1 
 
 evident that some care was taken to escape 
 misprints, either by the correction of the 
 printer's reader or of the author. Some 
 of the excuses made for misprints in our 
 old books are very amusing. In a little 
 English book of twenty-six leaves printed 
 at Douay in 1582, and entitled A true 
 reporte of the death and inartyrdome of 
 M. Ca?npion fesiiite and Preiste, and M. 
 Sherwin and AI. Bryan Freistes, at Tibornc 
 the first of December 1581, is this notice 
 at the end : — 
 
 "Good reader, pardon all faultes escaped 
 in the printing and beare with the woork- 
 manship of a strainger." 
 
 Many of Nicholas Breton's tracts were 
 issued surreptitiously, and he protested 
 that many pieces which he had never 
 written were falsely ascribed to him. The 
 Bower of Delights was published without 
 the author's sanction, and the printer 
 (or publisher) Richard Jones made the 
 following address " to the Gentlemen 
 Readers " on the blunders which had 
 been made in the book : — 
 
 " Pardon mee (good Gentlemen) of my 
 presumption, & protect me, I pray you, 
 
 6
 
 82 Literary Blunders. 
 
 against those Cavellers and findfaults, that 
 never like of any thing that they see 
 printed, though it be never so well com- 
 piled. And where you happen to find 
 fault, impute it to bee committed by the 
 Printers negligence, then (otherwise) by 
 any ignorance in the author : and es- 
 pecially in A 3, about the middest of 
 the page, for lime or lead I pray you 
 read line or lead. So shall your poore 
 Printer haue just cause hereafter to be 
 more carefuU, and acknowledge himselfe 
 most bounden (at all times) to do your 
 service to the utmost of his power. 
 
 "Yours R. J., Printer." 
 
 A little scientific book, entitled The 
 Making and use of the Geometricall Instru- 
 ment called a Sector . . . by Thomas Hood, 
 1598, has a list of errata headed Faultes 
 escaped, with this note of the author 
 or printer : — 
 
 " Gentle reader, I pray you excuse 
 these faults, because I finde by ex- 
 perience, that it is an harder matter to 
 print these mathematical! books trew, 
 then bookes of other discourse."
 
 Lists of Errata. 83 
 
 Arthur Hopton's Baculum Geodaticuvi 
 sive Viaticum or the Geodeticall Staffs 
 (1610), contains the following quaint lines 
 at the head of the list of errata : — 
 
 " The Printer to the Reader. 
 *' For errours past or faults that scaped be, 
 Let this collection give content to thee : 
 A worke of art, the grounds to us unknowne, 
 May cause us erre, thoughe all our skill be 
 showne. 
 When points and letters, doe containe the sence, 
 The wise may halt, yet doe no great offence. 
 Then pardon here, such faults that do befall, 
 The next edition makes amends for all." 
 
 Thomas Heywood, the voluminous dra- 
 matist, added to his Apology for Actors 
 (16 1 2) an interesting address to the 
 printer of his tract, which, besides drawing 
 attention to the printer's dislike of his 
 errors being called attention to in a table 
 of errata, is singularly valuable for its 
 reference to Shakespeare's annoyance at 
 Jaggard's treatment of him by attributing 
 to his pen Heywood's poems from Great 
 Britain's Troy. 
 
 " To my approved good Friend, 
 " Mr. Nicholas Okes. 
 "The infinite faults escaped in my
 
 84 Literary Blunders. 
 
 booke o{ Britaines Troy by the negligence 
 of the printer, as the misquotations, mis- 
 taking the sillables, misplacing halfe lines, 
 coining of strange and never heard of 
 words, these being without number, when 
 I would have taken a particular account 
 of the errata, the printer answered me, hee 
 would not publish his owne disworkeman- 
 ship, but rather let his owne fault lye 
 upon the necke of the author. And being 
 fearefull that others of his quality had 
 beene of the same nature and condition, 
 and finding you, on the contrary, so 
 carefuU and industrious, so serious and 
 laborious to doe the author all the rights 
 of the presse, I could not choose but 
 gratulate your honest indeavours with 
 this short remembrance. Here, likewise, 
 I must necessarily insert a manifest injury 
 done me in that worke, by taking the 
 two epistles of Paris to Helen, and Helen 
 to Paris, and printing them in a lesse 
 volume under the name of another, which 
 may put the world in opinion I might 
 steale them from him, and hee, to doe 
 himselfe right, hath since published them 
 in his owne name; but as I must ac-
 
 Lists of Errata. 85 
 
 knowledge my lines not worthy his 
 patronage under whom he hath publisht 
 them, so the author, I know, much offended 
 with M. Jaggard (that altogether unknowne 
 to him) presumed to make so bold with 
 his name. These and the like dishonesties 
 I knowe you to bee cleere of ; and I could 
 wish but to bee the happy author of so 
 worthy a worke as I could willingly com- 
 mit to your care and workmanship. 
 
 " Yours ever, Thomas Heywood." 
 
 In the eighteenth century printers and 
 authors had become hardened in their 
 sins, and seldom made excuses for the 
 errors of the press, but in the seventeenth 
 century explanations were frequent. 
 
 Silvanus Morgan, in his Horologio- 
 graphia Optica. Dialling Universall and 
 Particular, Speculative and Practicall, 
 Lotidon 1652, comes before his readers 
 with these remarks on the errata : — 
 
 " Reader I having writ this some years 
 since, while I was a childe in Art, and by 
 this appear to be little more, for want of 
 a review hath these faults, which I desire 
 thee to mend with thy pen, and if there
 
 86 Literary Blunders. 
 
 be any errour in art, as in chap. 17 
 which is only true at the time of the 
 Equinoctiall, take that for an oversight, 
 and where thou findest equiUbra read 
 equiUbrio, and in the dedication (in some 
 copies) read Robert Bateman for Thomas, 
 and side for signe and know that Optima 
 prima cadutit, pessimus ceve manettt." 
 
 The list of errata in Joseph Glanvill's 
 Essays on several important subjects in 
 Philosophy and Religion (1676)15 prefixed 
 by this note : — 
 
 " The Reader is desired to take notice 
 of the following Errours of the Press, some 
 of which are so near in sound, to the 
 words of the author, that they may easily 
 be mistaken for his." 
 
 The next two books to be mentioned 
 were published in the same year — 1679. 
 The noble author referred to in the first is 
 that Roger Palmer who had the dishonour 
 of being the husband of Charles II.'s 
 notorious mistress, the Countess of Castle- 
 maine. Fortunately for the Earl she no 
 longer bore his name, as she was created 
 Duchess of Cleveland in 1670. Professor 
 De Morgan was inclined to doubt Lord
 
 Lists of Errata. 8/ 
 
 Castlemaine's authorship, but the following 
 remarks by Joseph Moxon seem to prove 
 that the peer did produce a rough draft of 
 some kind : — 
 
 " Postscript concerning the Erratas and 
 the Geographical part of this Globe," 
 prefixed to The English Globe ... by 
 the Earl of Castlemaine : — 
 
 " The Erratas of the Press being many, 
 I shall not set them down in a distinct 
 Catalogue as usually, least the sight of them 
 should more displease, than the particulars 
 advantage, especially since they are not so 
 material or intricate, but that any man may 
 (I hope) easily mend them in the reading. 
 I confess I have bin in a manner the occa- 
 sion of them, by taking from the noble 
 author a very foul copy, when he desir'd 
 me to stay till a fair one were written over, 
 so that truly 'tis no wonder, if workmen 
 should in these cases not only sometimes 
 leave out, but adde also, by taking one line 
 for another, or not observing with exact- 
 ness what words have bin wholly obliterated 
 or dasht out." 
 
 John Playford, the music publisher 
 and author, makes some remarks on the
 
 88 Literary Bhmders. 
 
 subject of misprints in the preface to 
 his Vade Mecum, or the Necessary Com- 
 panion (1679), which are worth quotation 
 here : — 
 
 "My profession obliging me to be 
 conversant with mathematical Books (the 
 printing whereof and musick, has been 
 my chiefest employment), I have observ'd 
 two things many times the cause why 
 Books of this nature appear abroad not 
 so correct as they should be ; either i 
 Because they are too much hastened from 
 the Press, and not time enough allowed 
 for the strict and deliberate examination 
 of them ; which in all books ought to be 
 done, especially in these, for as much as 
 one false figure in a Mathematical book, 
 may prove a greater fault than a whole 
 word mistake in books of another kind. 
 Or, 2 Because Persons take Tables upon 
 trust without trying them, and with them 
 transcribe their errors, if not increase 
 them. Both these I have carefully avoided, 
 so that I have reason to believe (and think 
 I may say it without vanity) there never 
 was Tables more exactly printed than in 
 this Book, especially those for money and
 
 Lists of Errata. 89 
 
 annuities, for not trusting to my first cal- 
 culation of them, I new calculated every 
 Table when it was in print, by the first 
 printed sheet, and when I had so done 
 I strictly compared it with my first calcu- 
 lation." 
 
 Ue Morgan registers the nineteenth 
 edition of this book, dated 1756, in his 
 Arithmetical Books, and he did not appar- 
 ently know that it was originally published 
 so early as 1679. 
 
 In Morton's Natural History of North- 
 ampto7ishire ( 1 7 1 2), is a list headed " Some 
 Errata of the press to be corrected " ; and 
 at the end of the list is the following 
 amusing note : " There is no cut of the 
 Hen of the lesser Py'd Brambling in Tab. 
 13 tho' 'tis referred to in p. 423 which 
 omission was owing to an accident and is 
 really not very material, the hen of that 
 bird difi'ering but little from the cock 
 which is represented in that Table under 
 
 fig- 3-" 
 
 There is a very prevalent notion that 
 
 authors did not correct the proofs of their 
 
 books in the sixteenth and seventeenth 
 
 centuries, but there is sufficient evidence
 
 90 Literary Blunders. 
 
 that this is altogether a mistake. Professor 
 De Morgan, with his usual sagacity, alludes 
 to this point in his Arithmetical Books 
 (1847): "A great many circumstances in- 
 duce me to think that the general fashion 
 of correcting the press by the author came 
 in with the seventeenth century or there- 
 abouts." And he instances this note on 
 the title-page of Richard Witt's Arithmeti- 
 cal Questions (1613) : "Examined also 
 and corrected at the Presse by the author 
 himselfe." 
 
 The late Dr. Brinsley Nicholson raised 
 this question in Notes and Queries in 1889, 
 and by his research it is possible to ante- 
 date the practice by nearly forty years. 
 For several of the following quotations I 
 am indebted to that invaluable periodical. 
 In Scot's Hop-Garden (1574) we find the 
 following excuse : — 
 
 "Forasmuch as M. Scot could not 
 be present at the printing of this his 
 booke, whereby I might have used his 
 advice in the correction of the same, and 
 especiallie of the Figures and Portrat- 
 ures conteyned therein, whereof he 
 delivered unto me such notes as I
 
 Lists of Errata. 9 1 
 
 being unskilful! in the matter could 
 not so thoroughly conceyve, nor so 
 perfectly expresse as . . . the authour 
 or you." 
 
 In The Droovime of Doomes Day. By 
 George Gascoigne (1576) is: — 
 
 " An Aduertisement of the Prynter to 
 the Reader. 
 
 "Understand (gentle Reader) that whiles 
 this worke was in the presse it pleased 
 God to visit the translatour thereof with 
 sicknesse. So that being unable himselfe 
 to attend the dayly proofes, he apoynted 
 a seruaunt of his to ouersee the same. 
 Who being not so well acquainted with 
 the matter as his maister was, there haue 
 passed some faultes much contrary unto 
 both our meanings and desires. The which 
 I have therefore collected into this Table. 
 Desiring every Reader that wyll vouchsafe 
 to peruse this booke, that he will firste 
 correct those faultes and then judge ac- 
 cordingly." 
 
 A particularly interesting note on this 
 point precedes the list of errata in Stany- 
 hurst's Translation of Y'vcgA'^^fieid ( 1582),
 
 92 Literary Blunders. 
 
 which was printed at Leyden. Mr. F. C. 
 Birkbeck Terry, who pointed this out in 
 Notes and Queries, quoted from Arber's 
 reprint, p. 157 :— 
 
 "John Pates Printer to thee Corteous 
 Reader, I am too craue thy pacience and 
 paynes (good reader) in bearing wyth such 
 faultes as haue escapte in printing : and 
 in correcting as wel such as are layd downe 
 heere too thy view, as all oother whereat 
 thou shalt hap too stumble in perusing 
 this treatise. Thee nooueltye of imprinting 
 English in theese partes and thee absence 
 of the author from perusing soome proofes 
 could not choose but breede errours." 
 
 Certainly Scot, Gascoigne, and Stany- 
 hurst did not correct the proofs, but it 
 would not have been necessary to make 
 an excuse if the practice was not a pretty 
 general one among authors. 
 
 Bishop Babington's Exposition of the 
 Lord's Prayer (1588) contains an excuse 
 for the author's inability to correct the 
 press : — 
 
 " If thou findest any other faultes either 
 in words or distinctions troubling a perfect 
 sence (Gentle Reader) helpe them by thine
 
 Lists of Errata. 93 
 
 owne judgement and excuse the presse by 
 the Authors absence, who best was ac- 
 quainted to reade his owne hande." 
 
 In the Bodleian Library is preserved 
 the printer's copy of Book V. of Hooker's 
 Ecclesiastical Polity (1597), with ^^'hitgift's 
 signature and corrections in Hooker's 
 handwriting. On one of the pages is the 
 following note by the printer : — 
 
 " Good Mr. Hooker, I pray you be so 
 good as to send us the next leaf that 
 followeth this, for I know not by what 
 mischance this of ours is lost, which 
 standeth uppon the finishing of the 
 book."i 
 
 Another proof of the general practice 
 will be found in N. Breton's The Wit of 
 Wit{i5gg):- 
 
 " What faultes are escaped in the print- 
 ing, finde by discretion, and excuse the 
 Author by other worke that let him from 
 attendance to the Presse ; non hk che non 
 sa. N. B. Gent." 
 
 At the end of Nash's dedication "To 
 his Readers," Lenten Stuffe (1599), is this 
 
 ' Notes and Queries, 7th Series, viii. 73.
 
 94 Literary Blunders. 
 
 interesting statement : " Apply it for me 
 for I am called away to correct the faults 
 of the press, that escaped in my absence 
 from the printing house." 
 
 Richard Brathwaite, when publishing 
 his Strappado for the Divell (1615), made 
 an excuse for not having seen all the 
 proofs. The whole note is well worthy 
 of reproduction : — 
 
 " Upon the Errata. 
 
 " Gentlemen {humamim est err are), to 
 confirme which position, this my booke 
 (as many other are) hath his share of 
 errors j so as I run ad prcelum tanquam 
 ad prcelium, in typos quasi in scippos ; but 
 my comfort is if I be strappadoed by the 
 multiplicite of my errors, it is but answer- 
 able to my title : so as I may seem to 
 diuine by my style, what I was to indure 
 by the presse. Yet know judicious dis- 
 posed gentlemen, that the intricacie of the 
 copie, and the absence of the author from 
 many important proofes were occasion of 
 these errors, which defects (if they bee 
 supplied by your generous convenience 
 and curtuous disposition) I doe vowe to
 
 Lists of Errata. 95 
 
 satisfie your affectionate care with a 
 more serious surueigh in my next im- 
 pression. . . . For other errors as the 
 misplacing of commaes, colons, and 
 periods (which as they are in euerie 
 page obvious, so many times they invert 
 the sence), I referre to your discretion 
 (judicious gentle-men) whose lenity may 
 sooner supply them, then all my industry 
 can portray them." 
 
 In The Mastive, or Young IVhelpe of 
 the Olde Dogge, Epigrams afid Satyres 
 (16 15), an anonymous work of Henry 
 Peacham, we read : — 
 
 " The faultes escaped in the Printing 
 (or any other omission) are to be excused 
 by reason of the authors absence from the 
 Presse, who thereto should have given 
 more due instructions." 
 
 Dr. Brinsley Nicholson brought forward 
 two very interesting passages on the cor- 
 recting of proofs from old plays. The 
 first, which looks very like an allusion to 
 the custom, is from the 1601 edition of 
 Ben Jonson's Every Alan in his Humour 
 (act. ii., sc. 3), where Lorenzo, junior, 
 says, " My father had the proving of your
 
 g6 Literacy Blunders. 
 
 copy, some houre before I saw it." The 
 second is from Fletcher's The Nice Valour 
 (1624 or 1625), act. iv., sc. i. Lapet 
 says to his servant (the clown Goloshio), 
 "So bring me the last proof, this is 
 corrected"; and Goloshio having gone 
 and returned, the following ensues : — 
 
 Lap. What says my Printer now ? 
 Clown. Here's your last Proof, Sir. 
 
 You shall have perfect Books now in a 
 twinkling.' 
 
 The following address, which contains 
 a curious excuse of Dr. Daniel Featley for 
 not having corrected the proofs of his 
 book The Romish Fisher Caught in his own 
 Net (1624), is very much to the point : — 
 
 " I entreat the courteous reader to 
 understand that the greater part of the 
 book was printed in the time of the great 
 frost ; when by reason that the Thames 
 was shut up, I could not conveniently 
 procure the proofs to be brought unto 
 mee, before they were wrought off ; where- 
 upon it fell out that many very grosse 
 escapes passed the press, and (which was 
 
 ' Notes and Queries, 7th Series, viii. 253.
 
 Lists of Errata. 97 
 
 the worst fault of all) the third part is left 
 unpaged." 
 
 As a later example we may cite from 
 Sir Peter Leycester's Historical Atiiiquities 
 (1673), where we find this note : " Reader, 
 By reason of the author's absence, several 
 faults have escaped the press : those which 
 are the most material thou art desir'd to 
 amend, and to pardon them all." 
 
 Printed mistakes are usually considered 
 by the sufferers matters of somewhat 
 serious importance ; and we picture to 
 ourselves an author stalking up and down 
 his room and tearing his hair when 
 he first discovers them ; but Benserade, 
 the French poet, was able to make a joke 
 of the subject. This is the rondeau which 
 he placed at the end of his version of Lcs 
 Metamorphoses (TO vide: — 
 
 " Pom- moi, parmi des fautes innombrables, 
 Je n'en connais que deux considerables, 
 Et dont je fais ma declaration, 
 C'est Tentreprise et Texccution ; 
 A mon avis fautes irreparables 
 Dans ce volume." 
 
 According to the Scaligerana, Cardan's 
 treatise Z)e Subtiliiate, printed by Vascosan 
 
 7
 
 98 Literary Blunders, 
 
 in 1557, does not contain a single mis- 
 print ; but, on the whole, it may be very 
 seriously doubted whether an immaculate 
 edition of any work ever issued from the 
 press. The story is well known of the 
 serious attempt made by the celebrated 
 Glasgow printers Foulis to free their edition 
 oi Horace from any chance of error. They 
 caused the proof-sheets after revision to 
 be hung up at the gate of the University, 
 with the offer of a reward to any one who 
 discovered a misprint. In spite of all this 
 care there are, according to Dibdin, six 
 uncorrected errors in this edition. 
 
 According to Isaac Disraeli, the goal 
 of freedom from blunders was nearly 
 reached by Dom Joze Souza, with the 
 assistance of Didot in 181 7, when he 
 published his magnificent edition of As 
 Lusiadas of Camoens. However, an un- 
 corrected error was discovered in some 
 copies, occasioned by the misplacing of 
 one of the letters in the word Lusitano. 
 A like case occurred a few years ago at an 
 eminent London printer's. A certain book 
 was about to be printed, and instructions 
 were issued that special care vras to be
 
 Lists of Errata. 99 
 
 taken with the printing. It was read over 
 by the chief reader, and all seemed to 
 have gone well, when a mistake was dis- 
 covered upon the title-page. 
 
 It may be mentioned here, with respect 
 to tables of errata, that they are frequently 
 neglected in subsequent books. There are 
 many books in which the same blunders 
 have been repeated in various editions, 
 although they had been pointed out in an 
 early issue.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Misprints. 
 
 F all literary blunders misprints 
 are the most numerous, and no 
 one who is conversant with the 
 inside of a printing-office will be surprised 
 at this ; in fact, he is more likely to be 
 struck with the freedom from error of the 
 innumerable productions issued from the 
 press than to be surprised at the blunders 
 which he may come across. The possi- 
 bilities of error are endless, and a frequent 
 cause is to be found in the final correction, 
 when a line may easily get transposed. 
 On this account many authors will prefer 
 to leave a trivial error, such as a wrong 
 stop, in a final revise rather than risk the 
 possibilities of blundering caused by the 
 unlocking of the type. Of course a large 
 number of misprints are far from amusing, 
 while a sense of fun will sometimes be
 
 Misprints. I o i 
 
 obtained by a trifling transposition of 
 letters. Authors must be on the alert for 
 misprints, although ordinary misspellings 
 should not be left for them by the printer's 
 reader ; but they are usually too intent on 
 the structure of their own sentences to 
 notice these misprints. The curious point 
 is that a misprint which has passed through 
 proof and revise unnoticed by reader and 
 author will often be detected immediately 
 the perfected book is placed in the author's 
 hands. The blunder which has hitherto 
 remained hidden appears to start out from 
 the page, to the author's great disgust. 
 One reason why misprints are overlooked 
 is that every word is a sort of pictorial 
 object to the eye. We do not spell the 
 word, but we guess what it is by the first 
 and last letters and its length, so that a 
 wrong letter in the body of the word is 
 easily overlooked. 
 
 It is an important help to the editor of 
 a corrupt text to know what misprints are 
 the most probable, and for this purpose 
 the late Mr. Halliwell Phillipps printed 
 for private circulation A Dictionary of 
 Mispri7its, fotnid in printed books of the
 
 I02 Literary Blunders. 
 
 sixteenth and seventeenth ce?tturies, cofjipiled 
 for the use of verbal critics and especially 
 for those who are engaged in editing the 
 works of Shakespeare and our other early 
 Dramatists (1887). In the note at the 
 end of this book Mr. Phillipps writes : 
 " The readiest access to those evidences 
 will be found in the old errata, and it will 
 be seen, on an examination of the latter, 
 that misprints are abundant in final and 
 initial letters, in omissions, in numerals, 
 and in verbal transpositions ; but unques- 
 tionably the most frequent in pronouns, 
 articles, conjunctions, and prepositions. 
 When we come to words outside the 
 four latter, there is a large proportion of 
 examples that are either of rare occurrence 
 or unique. Some of the blunders that are 
 recorded are sufficiently grotesque : e.g.^ 
 He starte thence poore for He starve their 
 poore, — he formaketh what for the fire 
 maketh hot. It must, indeed, be confessed 
 that the conjectural emendator, if he dis- 
 penses with the quasi-authority of con- 
 temporary precedents, has an all but 
 unlimited range for the exercise of his 
 ingenuity, the unsettled spellings of our
 
 Misprints. 103 
 
 ancestors rendering almost any emenda- 
 tion, however extravagant, a typographical 
 possibility, A large number of their 
 misprints could only have been perpetrated 
 in the midst of the old orthographies. 
 Under no other conditions could ice have 
 been converted into ye, air into titne, home 
 into honey, attain into at any, sun into 
 sinner, stone into story, deem into deny, 
 dire into dry, the old spellings of the 
 italicised words being respectively, yce, 
 yee, ayre, tyme, home, honie, attaine, att 
 anie, sunne, sinner, stone, storie, deeme, 
 denie, dire, drie. The form of the long s 
 should also be sometimes taken into con- 
 sideration, for it could only have been 
 owing to its use that such a word as some 
 could have been misprinted four, niece for 
 7vife, prefer for preserve, find {ox fifth, the 
 variant old spellings being foure, neese, 
 preferre." 
 
 Among the instances of misprints given 
 in this Dictionary may be noticed the 
 following : actions for axioms, agreement 
 for argument, all-eyes for allies, aloud for 
 allowed, banish'd for ravish'd, cancel for 
 cantel, candle for caudle, cursedness
 
 104 Literary Blunders. 
 
 for ourselves, eye-sores for oysters, felicity 
 for facility, Hector for nectar, intending 
 for indenting, John for Jehu, Judges for 
 Indies, scene/^r seene, sixteen_^r sexton, 
 and for sixty-one, tops for toy, Venus 
 for Venice. 
 
 In connection with this work may be 
 mentioned the late Mr. W. Blades's 
 Shakspere and Typography, being an 
 attempt to shoiv Shakspere' s personal con- 
 7iection with, and technical kfwwledge of 
 the Art of Printing, also Remarks upon 
 soj?te common typographical errors with 
 especial refere7ice to the text of Shakspere 
 (1872), a small work of very great interest 
 and value. Mr. Blades writes : '" Now 
 these typographical blunders will, in the 
 majority of cases, be found to fall into 
 one of three classes, viz. : — 
 " Errors of the ear ; 
 " Errors of the eye ; and 
 " Errors from what, in printers' language, 
 is called ' a foul case.' 
 
 " I, Errors of the Ear. — Every com- 
 positor when at work reads over a few 
 words of his copy, and retains them in 
 his mind until his fingers have picked
 
 Misprints. 105 
 
 up the various types belonging to them. 
 While the memory is thus repeating to 
 itself a phrase, it is by no means un- 
 natural, nor in practice is it uncommon, 
 for some word or words to become un- 
 wittingly supplanted in the mind by others 
 which are similar in sound. It was simply 
 a mental transposition of syllables that 
 made the actor exclaim, — 
 
 ' My Lord, stand back and let the parson cough ' 
 instead of 
 
 ' My Lord, stand back and let the coffin pass.' 
 
 Richard III., i. 2. 
 
 And, by a slight confusion of sound, the 
 word mistake might appear in type as 
 vmst take : — 
 
 ' So you mistake your husbands.' 
 
 Hatnlet, iii. 2. 
 
 Again, idle votarist would easily become 
 idol votarist — 
 
 ' I am no idle votarist.' — Timou, iv. 3 ; 
 
 and lofig delays become transformed to 
 longer days — 
 
 ' This done, see that you take no long delays.' 
 
 Titus, iv. 2.
 
 io6 Literary Blunders. 
 
 From the time of Gutenberg until now 
 this similarity of sound has been a fruit- 
 ful source of error among printers. 
 
 " II. Errors of the Eye. — The eye often 
 misleads the hand of the compositor, 
 especially if he be at work upon a crabbed 
 manuscript or worn-out reprint. Take 
 out a dot, and This time goes manly 
 becomes 
 
 ' This tune goes manly.' — Macbeth, iv. 3. 
 
 So a clogged letter turns What beast wait 
 then ? into What boast was't then ? — 
 
 ' Lady M. What beast was't then, 
 
 That made you break this enterprise to 
 
 me ? ' 
 
 Macbeth, i. 7. 
 
 Examples might be indefinitely multiplied 
 from many an old book, so I will quote 
 but one more instance. The word pre- 
 serve spelt with a long s might without 
 much carelessness be misread preferre 
 (i Henry VI., iii. 2), and thus entirely 
 alter the sense. 
 
 "III. Errors from a '■foul case' — This 
 class of errors is of an entirely different
 
 Misprints. 107 
 
 kind from the two former. They came 
 from within the man, and were from the 
 brain ; this is from without, mechanical in 
 its origin as well as in its commission. As 
 many readers may never have seen the 
 inside of a printing office, the following 
 short explanation may be found useful : 
 A ' case ' is a shallow wooden drawer, 
 divided into numerous square receptacles 
 called 'boxes,' and into each box is put 
 one sort of letter only, say all rt's, or ^'s, 
 or ^s. The compositor works with two of 
 these cases slanting up in front of him, 
 and when, from a shake, a slip, or any 
 other accident, the letters become mis- 
 placed the result is technically known as 
 ' a foul case.' A further result is, that the 
 fingers of the workman, although going to 
 the proper box, will often pick up a wrong 
 letter, he being entirely unconscious the 
 while of the fact. 
 
 " Now, if we can discover any law which 
 governs this abnormal position of the types 
 — if, for instance, we can predicate that the 
 letter 0, when away from its own, will be 
 more frequently found in the box appro- 
 priated to letter a than any other ; that b
 
 io8 Literary Blunders. 
 
 has a general tendency to visit the / box, 
 and / the v box ; and that d, if away 
 from home, will be almost certainly found 
 among the «'s ; if we can show this, we 
 shall then lay a good foundation for the 
 re-examination of many corrupt or dis- 
 puted readings in the text of Shakspere, 
 some of which may receive fresh life from 
 such a treatment. 
 
 "To start with, let us obtain a definite 
 idea of the arrangement of the types in 
 both ' upper ' and ' lower ' case in the 
 time of Shakspere — a time when long i^'s, 
 with the logotypes ct, ff, fi, ffi, ffl, sb^ sh, 
 si, si, ss, ssi, ssi, and others, were in daily 
 use." 
 
 Mr. Blades then refers to Moxon's 
 Mechanical Exercises, 1683, which con- 
 tains a representation of the compositors' 
 cases in the seventeenth century, which 
 may be presumed to be the same in form 
 as those used in Shakespeare's day. 
 Various alterations have been made in 
 the arrangement of the cases, with the 
 object of placing the letters more con- 
 veniently. The present form is shown 
 on pp. no. III,
 
 Misprints. 1 09 
 
 j\Ir. Blades proceeds : " The chief cause 
 of a ' foul ' case was the same in Shak- 
 spere's time as now ; and no one inter- 
 ested in the subject should omit visiting 
 a printing office, where he could personally 
 inspect the operation. Suppose a com- 
 positor at work 'distributing'; the upper 
 and lower cases, one above the other, 
 slant at a considerable angle towards him, 
 and as the types fall quickly from his 
 fingers they form conical heaps in their 
 respective boxes, spreading out in a 
 manner very similar to the sand in the 
 lower half of an hour-glass. Now, if the 
 compositor allows his case to become too 
 full, the topmost letters in each box will 
 certainly slide down into the box below, 
 and occasionally, though rarely, into one 
 of the side boxes. When such letters 
 escape notice, they necessarily cause 
 erroneous spelling, and sometimes entirely 
 change the whole meaning of a sentence. 
 But now comes the important question : 
 Are errors of this kind ever discovered, 
 and especially do they occur in Shakspere ? 
 Doubtless they do, but to what extent a 
 long and careful examination alone can
 
 w 
 
 c/} 
 
 < 
 
 u 
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 CM 
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 ^ 
 
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 w 
 
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 t^n 
 
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 liF= 
 
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 lO 
 
 •^fi* 
 
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 <(U 
 
 >^ 
 
 XU 
 
 c. 
 
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 -rt 
 
 'cii 
 
 <a3 
 
 X 
 
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 CO
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 U3 
 
 (5 5 
 
 "i 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 l-J 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 rQ 
 
 -< 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 
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 j£ 
 
 J3 9 
 
 N 
 
 X
 
 112 Literary Blunders. 
 
 show. As examples merely, and to show 
 the possible change in sense made by a 
 single wrong letter, I will quote one or 
 two instances : — 
 
 ' Were they not forc'd with those that should 
 
 be ours, 
 We might have met them darefull, beard to 
 beard.' 
 
 Macbeth, v. 5.' 
 
 The word forced should be read farced, 
 the letter having evidently dropped 
 down into a box. The enemy's ranks 
 were not forced with Macbeth's followers, 
 but farced or filled up. In Murrell's 
 Cookery, 1632, this identical word is used 
 several times ; we there see that a 
 farced leg of mutton was when the meat 
 was all taken out of the skin, mixed with 
 herbs, etc., and then the skin filled up 
 again. 
 
 ' I come to thee for charitable license . . . 
 To booke our dead.' 
 
 Henry V., iv. 7. 
 
 So all the copies, but ' to book ' is surely 
 a modern commercial phrase, and the 
 
 ' Collier's MS. corrector substituted fared for 
 forc'd.
 
 Misprints. i i 3 
 
 Herald here asked leave simply to ' look," 
 or to examine, the dead for the purpose 
 of giving honourable burial to their men 
 of rank. In the same sense Sir W. Lucie, 
 in the First Part of Hejiry VI., says : — 
 
 ' I come to know what prisoners thou hast tane, 
 And to survey the bodies of the dead.' 
 
 We cannot imagine an officer with pen, 
 inkhorn, and paper, at a period when few- 
 could write, ' booking ' the dead. We 
 may, I think, take it for granted that here 
 the letter .d had fallen over into the / 
 box." 
 
 Another point to bear in mind is the 
 existence of such logotypes as fi, si, etc., 
 so that, as Mr. Blades says, " the change of 
 light into sight must not be considered as 
 a question of a single letter — of s in the 
 / box," because the box containing si is 
 far away from the / box, and their con- 
 tents could not well get mixed. 
 
 To these instances given by Mr. Blades 
 may be added a very interesting correction 
 suggested to the author some years ago 
 by a Shakespearian student. When Isa- 
 bella visits her brother in prison, the 
 
 8
 
 114 Literary Blunders. 
 
 cowardly Claudio breaks forth in com- 
 plaint, and paints a vivid picture of the 
 horrors of the damned : — 
 
 " Ay, but to die, and go we know not where ; 
 To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot ; 
 This sensible warm motion to become 
 A kneaded clod ; and the delighted spirit 
 To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside 
 In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice ; 
 To be imprisoned in the viewless winds, 
 And blown with restless violence round about 
 The pendent world ; or to be worse than worst 
 Of those that lawless and incertain thoughts 
 Imagine howling !— 'tis too horrible ! 
 The weariest and most loathed worldly life 
 That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment 
 Can lay on nature, is a paradise 
 To what we fear of death." 
 
 Measure for Measure, act iii., sc. i. 
 
 We have here, in the expression "de- 
 lighted spirit," a difficulty which none of 
 the commentators have as yet been able 
 to explain. Warburton said that the 
 adjective meant " accustomed to ease 
 and delights," but this was not a very 
 successful guess, although Steevens 
 adopted it. Sir Thomas Hanmer altered 
 delighted to dilated, and Dr. Johnson
 
 Misprints. 1 1 5 
 
 mentions two suggested emendations, 
 one being benighted and the other delin- 
 quent. None of these suggestions can 
 be corroborated by a reference to the 
 plans of the printers' cases, but it will be 
 seen that the one now proposed is much 
 strengthened by the position of the boxes 
 in those plans. The suggested word is 
 deleted^ which accurately describes the 
 spirits as destroyed, or blotted out of 
 existence. The word is common in the 
 printing office, and it was often used in 
 literature. 
 
 If we think only of the recognised 
 spelling of the word delighted we shall 
 find that there are three letters to alter, 
 but if we take the older spelling, delited, 
 the change is very easily made, for it 
 will be noticed that the letters in the 
 / box might easily tumble over into the 
 e box. 
 
 There is a very curious description of 
 hell in Bede's Ecclesiastical History, where 
 the author speaks of " deformed spirits " 
 who leap from excess of heat to cutting 
 cold, and it is not improbable that Shake- 
 speare may have had this passage in his
 
 1 1 6 Literary Blimders. 
 
 mind when he put these words into the 
 mouth of Claudio.^ 
 
 It is taken for granted that the com- 
 positor is not Hkely to put his hand into 
 the wrong box, so that if a wrong letter 
 is used, it must have fallen out of its 
 place. 
 
 An important class of misprints owes 
 its origin to this misplacement ; but, as 
 noticed by Mr. Blades, there are other 
 classes, such as misspellings caused by 
 the compositor's ignorance or misunder- 
 standing. We must remember that the 
 printer has to work fast, and if he does 
 not recognise a word he is very likely to 
 turn it into something he does under- 
 stand. Thus the title of a paper in the 
 Philosophical Transactions was curiously 
 changed in an advertisement, and the 
 Calamites, a species of fossil plants of 
 the coal measures, with but slight change 
 appeared as " The True Fructification of 
 Calamities." This is a blunder pretty sure 
 to be made, and within a few days of 
 writing this, the author has seen a refer- 
 
 ' An article on this point will be found in The 
 Antiquary, vol. viii. (1883), p. 200.
 
 Misprints. I 1 7 
 
 ence to "Notes on some Pennsylvanian 
 Calamities." As an instance of less ex- 
 cusable ignorance, we shall often find the 
 word gauge printed as giuig^- 
 
 One of the slightest of misprints was 
 the cause of an odd query in the second 
 series of Notes and Queries, which, by the 
 way, has never yet been answered. In 
 John Hall's Ilorce Vacivte (1646) there is 
 this passage, alluding to the table game 
 called tick-tack. The author wrote : 
 "Tick tack sets a man's intentions on 
 their guard. Errors in this and war can 
 be but once amended " ; but the printer 
 joined the two words " and war " into one, 
 and this puzzled the correspondent of 
 the Notes a?id Queries (v. 272). He 
 asked : " Who can quote another passage 
 from any author containing this word ? 
 I have hunted after it in many diction- 
 aries without avail. It means, I suppose, 
 antagonism or contest, and resembles in 
 form many Anglo-Saxon words which 
 never found their way into English proper." 
 The blunder was not discovered, and 
 another correspondent wrote : " The word 
 andwar would surely modernise into haJid-
 
 1 1 8 Literary Blunders. 
 
 war. Is not andirons (handirons) a 
 parallel word of the same genus ? " In 
 the General Index we find " Andwar, an 
 old English word." So much for the long 
 life of a very small blunder. 
 
 A very similar blunder to this of " and- 
 war " occurs in Select Remains of the 
 learned John Ray with his Life by the late 
 William Derham, which was published 
 in 1760 with a dedication to the Earl of 
 Macclesfield, President of the Royal 
 Society, signed by George Scott. In 
 Derham's Life of Ray a list of books 
 read by Ray in 1667 is printed from 
 a letter to Dr. Lister, and one of these 
 is printed "The Business about great 
 Rakes." Mr. Scott must have been 
 puzzled with this title ; but he was evi- 
 dently a man not to be daunted by a 
 difficulty, for he added a note to this 
 effect : " They are now come into general 
 use among the farmers, and are called 
 drag rakes" Who would suspect after 
 this that the title is merely a misprint, 
 and that the pamphlet refers to the pro- 
 ceedings of Valentine Greatrakes, the 
 famous stroker, who claimed equal power
 
 Misprints. 1 1 9 
 
 with the kings and queens of England in 
 curing the king's evil ? This blunder will 
 be found uncorrected in Dr. Lankester's 
 Memorials of John Ray, published by the 
 Ray Society in 1846, and does not seem 
 to have been suspected until the Rev. 
 Richard Hooper called attention to it a 
 short time ago in Notes and Queries} 
 
 An amusing instance of the invention 
 of a new word was afforded when the 
 printer produced the words " a noticeable 
 fact in thisms " instead of " this MS." 
 
 The misplacement of a stop, or the 
 transposition of a letter, or the dropping 
 out of one, will make sad havoc of the 
 sense of a passage, as when we read of 
 the immoral works of Milton. It was, 
 however, a very complimentary misprint 
 by which it was made to appear that a 
 certain town had a remarkably high rate 
 of morality. In the address to Dr. Watts 
 by J. Standen prefixed to that author's 
 Horce Lyriae (Leeds, 1788) this same 
 misprint occurs, to the serious confusion 
 of Mr. Standen's meaning, — 
 
 ' Seventh Series, iv. 225.
 
 120 Literary Blimders. 
 
 " With thought sublime 
 And high sonorous words, thou sweetly sing'st 
 To thy inunoral lyre." 
 
 On another page of this same book 
 Watts' " daring flight " is transposed to 
 darling flight. 
 
 In Miss Yonge's Dynevor Terrace a 
 portion of one word was joined on to 
 another with the awkward result that a 
 young lady is described " without stretched 
 arms." 
 
 The odd results of the misplacement of 
 stops must be familiar to most readers; 
 but it is not often that they are so serious 
 as in the following instances. William 
 Sharp, the celebrated line engraver, be- 
 lieved in the Divine mission of the madman 
 Richard Brothers, and engraved a portrait of 
 that worthy with the following inscription 
 beneath it : " Fully believing this to be the 
 man appointed by God, I engrave his like- 
 ness. — W. Sharp." The writing engraver 
 by mistake put the comma after the word 
 appointed^ and omitted it at the latter part 
 of the sentence, thus giving a ludicrous 
 effect to the whole inscription. Many 
 impressions were struck off before the
 
 Misprints. 1 2 i 
 
 mistake was discovered and rectified. The 
 question of an apostrophe was the ground 
 of a civil action a few years ago in Switzer- 
 land ; and although the anecdote refers to 
 a manuscript, and not to a printed docu- 
 ment, it is inserted here because it illus- 
 trates the subject. A gentleman left a will 
 which ended thus : " Et pour temoigner 
 
 a mes neveux Charles et Henri de M 
 
 toute mon affection je legue a chacun 
 d'eiix cent mille francs." The paper upon 
 which the will was written was folded up 
 before the ink was dry, and therefore many 
 of the letters were blotted. The legatees 
 asserted that the apostrophe was a blot, 
 and therefore claimed two instead of one 
 hundred thousand francs each. 
 
 Several misprints are always recurring, 
 such as the mixture of the words Topo- 
 graphy and Typography, and Biography 
 with Bibliography. In the prospectus of 
 an edition of the Waverky Novels we 
 read : " The aim of the publishers has 
 been to make it pre-eminent, by beauty 
 of topography and illustration, r:o an edition 
 de luxe." 
 
 Andrew Marvell published a book which
 
 122 Literary Blunders. 
 
 he entitled The Rehearsal Transprosed; but 
 it is seldom that a printer can be induced 
 to print the title otherwise than as The 
 Rehearsal Transposed. 
 
 It must be conceded in favour of printers 
 that some authors do write an execrable 
 hand. One sometimes receives a letter 
 which requires about three readings before 
 it can be understood. At the first time of 
 reading the meaning is scarcely intelligible, 
 at the second time some faint glimpse of the 
 writer's object in writing is obtained, and 
 at the third time the main point of the 
 letter is deciphered. Such men may be 
 deemed to be the plague of printers. A 
 friend of Beloe " the Sexagenarian " was 
 remonstrated with by a printer for being 
 the cause of a large amount of swearing 
 in his office. " Sir," exclaimed Mr. A., 
 " the moment ' copy ' from you is divided 
 among the compositors, volley succeeds 
 volley as rapidly and as loudly as in one 
 of Lord Nelson's victories." 
 
 There is a popular notion among authors 
 that it is not wise to write a clear hand ; and 
 Menage was one of the first to express it. 
 He wrote : " If you desire that no mistakes
 
 Misprints. 1 2 3 
 
 shall appear in the works which you pub- 
 lish, never send well-written copy to the 
 printer, for in that case the manuscript is 
 given to young apprentices, who make a 
 thousand errors ; while, on the other hand, 
 that which is difficult to read is dealt with 
 by the master-printers." It is also related 
 that the late eminent Arabic scholar, i\lr. 
 E. W. Lane, who wrote a particularly good 
 hand, asked his printer how it was that 
 there were always so many errors in his 
 proofs. He was answered that such clear 
 writing was always given to the boys, as 
 experienced compositors could not be 
 spared for it. The late Dean Hook held 
 to this opinion, for when he was asked to 
 allow a sermon to be copied out neatly for 
 the press, he answered that if it were to 
 be printed he would prefer to write it 
 out himself as badly as he could. This 
 practice, if it ever existed, we are told by 
 experienced printers does not exist now. 
 
 It must, one would think, have been 
 the badness of the " copy " that induced 
 the compositors to turn " the nature and 
 theory of the Greek verb " into the native 
 theology of the Greek verb ; " the conser-
 
 124 Literary Blunders. 
 
 vation of energy " into the conversation of 
 energy ; and the " Forest Conservancy 
 Branch " into the Forest Conservatory 
 Branch. 
 
 Some printers go out of their way to 
 make blunders when they are unable to 
 understand their " copy." Thus, in the 
 Times, some years ago, among the contri- 
 butors to the Garibaldi Fund was a book- 
 binder who gave five shillings. The next 
 down in the list was one "A. Lega 
 Fletcher," a name which was printed as A 
 Ledger stitcher. 
 
 Some very extraordinary blunders have 
 been made by the ignorant misreading 
 of an author's contractions. It is said 
 that in a certain paper which was sent 
 to be printed the words Indian Govern- 
 ment were contracted as Indian Govt. 
 This one compositor set up through- 
 out his turn as Indian goat. A writer in 
 one of the Reviews wrote the words " J. C. 
 first invaded Britain," and a worthy com- 
 positor, who made it his business to fill 
 up all the abbreviations, printed this as 
 Jesus Christ instead of Julius Caesar. 
 
 Here it may be remarked that some of
 
 Misprints. i 2 5 
 
 the most extraordinary misprints never 
 get farther than the printing office or the 
 study ; but although they may have been 
 discovered by the reader or the author, 
 they were made nevertheless. 
 
 Sometimes the fun of a misprint con- 
 sists in its elaborateness and complete- 
 ness, and sometimes in its simplicity 
 (perhaps only the change of a letter). 
 Of the first class the transformation of 
 Shirley's well-known lines is a good 
 example : — 
 
 " Only the actions of the just 
 Smell sweet and blossom in the dust " 
 
 is scarcely recognisable as 
 
 " All the low actions of the just 
 Swell out and blow Sam in the dust." 
 
 The statement that " men should work 
 and play Loo," obtained from " men should 
 work and play too," illustrates the second 
 class. 
 
 The version of Pope which was quoted 
 by a correspondent of the Times about a 
 year ago is very charming : — 
 
 '• A little learning is a dangerous thing ; 
 Drink deep, or aste not the aperient spring."
 
 126 Literary Blunders. 
 
 The reporter or printer who mistook the 
 Oxford professor's allusion to the Eu- 
 menides, and quoted him as speaking of 
 " those terrible old Greek goddesses — the 
 Humanities," was still more elaborate in 
 his joke. 
 
 Horace Greeley is well known to have 
 been an exceedingly bad writer ; but when 
 he quoted the well-known line (which is 
 said to be equal to a florin, because there 
 are four tizzies in it) — 
 
 " 'Tis true, 'tis pity, pity 'tis 'tis true," 
 
 one might have expected the compositor 
 to recognise the quotation, instead of print- 
 ing the astonishing calculation — 
 
 «' 'Tis two, 'tis fifty and fifty 'tis, 'tis five." 
 
 This is as bad as the blunder of the 
 printer of the Hampshire paper who is 
 said to have announced that Sir Robert 
 Peel and a party of fiends were engaged 
 shooting peasants at Drayton Manor. 
 
 It is perhaps scarcely fair to quote too 
 many blunders from newspapers, which 
 must often be hurriedly compiled, but 
 naturally they furnish the richest crop.
 
 Misprints. 127 
 
 The point of a leader in an American 
 paper was lost by a misprint, which reads 
 as follows : " We do battle without shot or 
 charge for the cause of the right." This 
 would be a very ineffectual battle, and the 
 proper words were without stint or change. 
 A writer on Holland in one of the 
 magazines quoted Samuel Butler's well- 
 known lines — 
 
 " A country that draws fifty foot of water. 
 
 In which they do not live, but go aboard," 
 which the printer transformed into 
 
 " In which they do not live, but cows abound." 
 
 It is of course easy to invent mis- 
 prints, and therefore one feels a little 
 doubtful sometimes with respect to those 
 which are quoted without chapter and 
 verse. 
 
 One of the most remarkable blunders 
 ever made in a newspaper was connected 
 with the burial of the well-known literary 
 man, John Payne Collier. In the Stan- 
 dard of Sept. 2ist, 1883, it was re- 
 ported that "the remains of the late Mr. 
 John Payne Collier were interred yesterday
 
 12 8 Literary Blunders. 
 
 in Bray Churchyard, near Maidenhead, 
 in the presence of a large number of 
 spectators." The paragraph maker of the 
 Eastern Daily Press had never heard of 
 Payne Collier, so he thought the last name 
 should be printed with a small C, and 
 wanting a heading for his paragraph he 
 invented one straight off, and this is what 
 appeared in that paper : — 
 
 " The Bray Colliery Disaster. The 
 remains of the late John Payne, collier, 
 were interred yesterday afternoon in the 
 Bray Churchyard, in the presence of a 
 large number of friends and spectators." 
 
 This was a brilliant stroke of imagina- 
 tion, for who would expect to find a 
 colliery near Maidenhead ? 
 
 Mr. Sala, writing to Notes and Queries 
 (Third Series, i. 365), says : " Altogether I 
 have long since arrived at the conclusion 
 that there are more ' devils ' in a printing 
 office than are dreamt of in our philo- 
 sophy — the blunder fiends to wit — ever 
 busy in peppering the ' formes ' with errors 
 which defy the minutest revisions of 
 reader, author, sub-editor, and editor." 
 Mr. Sala gives an instance which occurred
 
 Misprints. 129 
 
 to himself. He wrote that Dr. Living- 
 stone wore a cap with a tarnished gold 
 lace band; but the printer altered the 
 word tarnished into famished, to the serious 
 confusion of the passage. 
 
 Some of the most amusing blunders 
 occur by the change of a single letter. 
 Thus, in an account of tlie danger to an 
 express train by a cow getting on the line 
 in front, the reporter was made to say that 
 as the safest course under the circum- 
 stances the engine driver "put on full 
 steam, dashed up against the cow, and 
 literally cut it into calves." A short time 
 ago an account was given in an address of 
 the early struggles of an eminent portrait 
 painter, and the statement appeared in 
 print that, working at the easel from eight 
 o'clock in the morning till eight o'clock 
 at night, the artist " only lay down on the 
 hearthrug for rest and refreshment be- 
 tween the visits of his sisters." This is 
 not so bad, however, as the report that 
 " a bride was accompanied to the altar by 
 tight bridesmaids." A very odd blunder 
 occurred in the World o( Oct. 6th, 1886, 
 one which was so odd that the editor
 
 130 Literary Blunders. 
 
 thought it worthy of notice by himself in 
 a subsequent number. The paragraph in 
 which the misprint occurred related to the 
 filling up of the vicarage of St. Mary's, 
 Islington, which it was thought had been 
 unduly delayed. The trustees in whose 
 gift the living is were informed that if they 
 had a difficulty in finding a clergyman of 
 the proper complexion of low churchism 
 there were still Venns in Kent. Here 
 the natural confusion of the letters zt and 
 n came into play, and as the paragraph 
 was printed it appeared that a Venus of 
 Kent was recommended for the vicarage 
 of St. Mary's. 
 
 The compositor who set up the account 
 of a public welcome to a famous orator 
 must have been fresh from the study of 
 Porson's Catechism of the Swinish Multi- 
 tude when he set up the damaging state- 
 ment that "the crowd rent the air with 
 their snouts.^'' 
 
 Sometimes the blunder consists not in 
 the misprint of a letter, but in a mere 
 transposition, as when an eminent herald 
 and antiquary was dubbed Rogue Croix 
 instead of Rouge Croix. Sometimes a
 
 Misprints, 131 
 
 new but appropriate word results by the 
 thrusting into a recognised word of a re- 
 dundant letter, as when a man died from 
 eating too much goose the verdict was 
 said to have been "death from stuffoca- 
 tion." 
 
 Many of these blunders, although amus- 
 ing to the public, cannot have been alto- 
 gether agreeable to the subjects of them. 
 Mr. Justice Wightman could not have 
 been pleased to see himself described 
 as Mr. Justice Nightman \ and the right 
 reverend prelate who was stated " to be 
 highly pleased with some ecclesiastical 
 iniquities shown to him " must have been 
 considerably scandalised. 
 
 Professor Hales is very much of the 
 opinion of Mr. Sala respecting the labours 
 of the " blunder fiend," and he sent an 
 amusing letter to the Atlienceum, in which 
 he pointed out a curious misprint in one 
 of his own books. As the contents of the 
 letter is very much to the point, readers 
 will perhaps not object to seeing it trans- 
 ferred in its entirety to these pages : — 
 
 " The humour of compositors is apt to be 
 imperfectly appreciated by authors, because
 
 132 Literary Blunders. 
 
 it rather interferes with what the author 
 wishes to say, although it may often say 
 something better. But there is no reason 
 Avhy the general reader should not 
 thoroughly enjoy it. Certainly it ought to 
 be more generously recognised than it is. 
 So many persons at present think of it 
 as merely accidental and fortuitous, as if 
 there was no mind in it, as if all the excel- 
 lent things loosely described as errata, all 
 the curiosce felicitates of the setter-up of 
 texts, were casual blunders. Such a view 
 reminds one of the way in which the last- 
 century critics used to speak of Shakspere 
 — the critics who give him no credit for 
 design or selection, but thought that some- 
 how or other he stumbled into greatness. 
 However, I propose now not to attempt 
 the defence, or, what might be worth the 
 ■effort, the analysis of this species of wit, 
 but only to give what seemed an admir- 
 able instance of it. 
 
 " In a note to the word limboes in the 
 Clarendon Press edition of Milton's 
 Areopagitica, I quoted from Nares's Glos- 
 sary a list of the various limbi believed 
 in by the ' old schoolmen,' and No. 2
 
 misprints. i 3 5 
 
 was 'a limbus patrum where the fathers- 
 of the Church, saints, and martyrs, awaited 
 the general resurrection.' Will any one 
 say it was not a stroke of genius in some 
 printing-office humourist to alter the last 
 word into ' /«surrection ' ? 
 
 " Like all good wit, this change is so 
 suggestive. It raises up a cloud of new 
 ideas, and reduces the hearer to a delight- 
 ful confusion. How strangely it revises 
 all our popular notions ! If even beyond 
 the grave the great problems that keep 
 men here restless and murmuring are not 
 solved ! If even there the rebellious spirit 
 is not quieted ! Nay, if those whom we 
 think of as having won peace for them- 
 selves in this world, do in that join the 
 malcontents, and are each one biding their 
 time — 
 
 ws Ty]v Ai6s Tvpavvid^ eKirep<ruv 0iai. 
 
 " May we not conceive this bold jester,, 
 if haply he were a stonemason, chiselling 
 on some tombstone ' /;?surgam ' ? " 
 
 Allusion has already been made to the 
 persistency of misprints and the difficulty 
 of curing them ; but one of the most
 
 134 Literary Bhindei's. 
 
 ■curious instances of this may be found in 
 a line of Byron's beautiful apostrophe to 
 the ocean in Childe Harold (Canto iv.). 
 The one hundred and eighty-second 
 stanza is usually printed : — 
 
 "Thy shores are empires, changed in all save 
 thee — 
 Assyria, Greece. Rome, Carthage, what are they ? 
 Thy waters wasted them while they were free, 
 And many a tyrant since . . ." 
 
 Not many years ago a critic, asking 
 himself the question when the waters 
 wasted these countries, began to suspect 
 a misprint, and on consulting the manu- 
 script, it was found that he was right. 
 The blunder, which had escaped Byron's 
 own eyes, was corrected, and the third 
 line was printed as originally written : — 
 
 •"Thy waters wash"d them power while they were 
 free." 
 
 The carelessness of printers seems to 
 have culminated in their production of 
 the Scriptures. The old editions of the 
 Bible swarm with blunders, and some of 
 them were supposed to have been made 
 intentionally. It was said that the printer
 
 Misprints, i 3 5 
 
 Field received ;!^i5oo from the Indepen- 
 dents as a bribe to corrupt a text which 
 might sanction their practice of lay- 
 ordination, and in Acts vi. 3 the word ye is 
 substituted for we in several of his editions 
 of the Bible. The verse reads : " Where- 
 fore, brethren, look ye out among ye seven 
 men of honest report, full of the Holy 
 Ghost and wisdom, whom_>'^ may appoint 
 over this business." To such forgeries 
 Butler refers in the lines : — 
 
 " Religion spawn'da various rout 
 Of petulant capricious sects, 
 The maggots of corrupted texts." 
 
 HiuUbras, Part III., Canto 2. 
 
 Dr. Grey, in his notes on this passage, 
 brings forward the charge against Field, 
 and quotes Wotton's Visitation Sermon 
 (1706) in support of it. He also quotes 
 from Cowley's Puritan and Papist as to 
 the practice of corrupting texts : — 
 
 '• They a bold pow'r o'er sacred Scriptures take, 
 Blot out some clauses and some new ones make." 
 
 Pope Sixtus the Fifth's Vulgate so 
 swarmed with errors that paper had to
 
 136 Liter ajy Blunders. 
 
 be pasted over some of the erroneous 
 passages, and the pubHc naturally laughed 
 at the bull prefixed to the first volume 
 which excommunicated any printer who 
 altered the text. This was all the more 
 annoying to the Pope, as he had intended 
 the edition to be specially free from errors, 
 and to attain that end had seen all the 
 proofs himself. Some years ago a copy 
 of this book was sold in France for 12 10 
 francs. 
 
 The King's Printers, Robert Barker and 
 Martin Lucas, in the reign of Charles I. 
 were not excommunicated, but, what per- 
 haps they liked less, were fined ^300 
 by the Court of High Commission for 
 leaving the 7iot out of the seventh com- 
 mandment in an edition of the Bible 
 printed in 1631. Although this story has 
 been frequently quoted it has been dis- 
 believed, and the great bibliographer of 
 Bibles, the late Mr. George Offer, asserted 
 that he and his father searched diligently 
 for it, and could not find it. Now, six 
 copies are known to exist. The late Mr. 
 Henry Stevens gives a most interesting 
 account of the first discovery of the book
 
 Misprints. 137 
 
 in his Recollectio7ts of Mr. James Le7inox, 
 He writes : — 
 
 " Mr. Lennox was so strict an observer 
 of the Sabbath that I never knew of his 
 writing a business letter on Sunday but 
 once. In 1855, while he was staying at 
 Hotel Meurice in Paris, there occurred to 
 me the opportunity one Saturday afternoon, 
 June 1 6th, of identifying the long lost 
 octavo Bible of 1631 with the negative 
 omitted in the seventh commandment, 
 and purchasing it for fifty guineas. No 
 other copy was then known, and the 
 possessor required an immediate answer. 
 However, I raised some points of inquiry, 
 and obtained permission to hold the little 
 sinner and give the answer on Monday. 
 By that evening's post I wrote to Mr. 
 Lennox, and pressed for an immediate 
 reply, suggesting that this prodigal though 
 he returned on Sunday should be 
 bound. Monday brought a letter ' to 
 buy it,' very short, but tender as a fatted 
 calf. On June 21st I exhibited it at a 
 full meeting of the Society of Antiquaries 
 of London, at the same time nicknaming 
 it The Wicked Bible, a name that stuck to
 
 I 3 8 Literary Bhmders. 
 
 it ever since, though six copies are now 
 known. . . . Lord Macaulay was present 
 at the meeting, but did not at first credit 
 the genuineness of the typographical 
 error. Lord Stanhope, however, on 
 borrowing the volume, convinced him 
 that it was the true wicked error." 
 
 Curiously enough, when Mr. Stevens 
 took the Bible home on Saturday night 
 he overhauled his pile of octavo Bibles, 
 and found an imperfect duplicate of the 
 supposed unique " wicked " Bible. When 
 the owner came for his book on Monday 
 morning he was shown the duplicate, and 
 agreed, as his copy was not unique, to 
 take ;^25 for it. The imperfect copy 
 was sold to the British Museum for 
 eighteen guineas, and Mr. Winter Jones 
 was actually so fortunate as to obtain 
 subsequently the missing twenty-three 
 leaves. A third copy came into the 
 hands of Mr. Francis Fry, of Bristol, 
 who sold it to Dr. Bandinel for the 
 Bodleian Library. A fourth copy is in 
 the Euing Library, at Glasgow; a fifth 
 fell into the hands of Mr. Henry J. 
 Atkinson, of Gunnersbury, in 1883; and
 
 Misprints. i 3 9 
 
 a sixth copy was picked up in Ireland 
 by a gentleman of Coventry in 1884. 
 
 In a Bible of 1634 the first verse of 
 the 14th Psalm is printed as " The fool 
 hath said in his heart there is God " ; and 
 in another Bible of 1653 worldly takes 
 the place of godly, and reads, " In order 
 that all the world should esteem the 
 means of arriving at worldly riches." 
 
 If Field was not a knave, as hinted 
 above, he was singularly unfortunate in 
 his blunders ; for in another of his Bibles 
 he also omitted the negative in an im- 
 portant passage, and printed i Corinthians 
 vi. 9 as, " Know ye not that the unrighteous 
 shall inherit the kingdom of God ? " 
 
 It is recorded that a printer's widow 
 in Germany once tampered with the 
 purity of the text of a Bible printed in 
 her house, for which crime she was burned 
 to death. She arose in the night, when 
 all the workmen were in bed, and going 
 to the "forme" entirely changed the 
 meaning of a text which particularly 
 offended her. The text was Gen. iii. 16 
 {" Thy desire shall be to thy husband, 
 iind he shall rule over thee").
 
 140 L iterary Bhi nders. 
 
 This story does not rest on a very firiu 
 foundation, and as the recorder does not 
 mention the date of the occurrence, it 
 must be taken by the reader for what it is 
 worth. The following incident, vouched 
 for by a well-known author, is, however, 
 very similar. James Silk Buckingham 
 relates the following curious anecdote in 
 his Aittohiography : — 
 
 " While working at the Clarendon 
 Printing Office a story was current among 
 the men, and generally believed to be 
 authentic, to the following effect. Some 
 of the gay young students of the Univer- 
 sity, who loved a practical joke, had made 
 themselves sufficiently familiar with the 
 manner in which the types are fixed in 
 certain formes and laid on the press, and 
 with the mode of opening such formes for 
 correction when required ; and when the 
 sheet containing the Marriage Service was 
 about to be worked off, as finally cor- 
 rected, they unlocked the forme, took out 
 a single letter v, and substituted in its 
 place the letter k, thus converting the 
 word live into like. The result was that,, 
 when the sheets were printed, that part
 
 Misprints. i 4 1 
 
 •of the service which rendered the bond 
 irrevocable, was so clianged as to make it 
 easily dissolved — as the altered passage 
 now read as follows : — The minister ask- 
 ing the bridegroom, ' Wilt thou have this 
 woman to be thy wedded wife, to live 
 together after (lod's ordinance in the holy 
 state of matrimony ? Wilt thou love her, 
 comfort her, honour, and keep her in 
 sickness and in health ; and forsaking all 
 other, keep thee only unto her, so long as 
 ye both shall like ? ' To which the man 
 shall answer, ' I will.' The same change 
 was made in the question put to the 
 bride." 
 
 If the culprits who left out a word 
 •deserved to be heavily mulcted in damages, 
 it is difficult to calculate the liability of 
 those who left out whole verses. When 
 Archbishop Ussher was hastening to 
 ■preach at Paul's Cross, he went into a 
 shop to purchase a Bible, and on turning 
 over the pages for his text found it was 
 omitted. 
 
 Andrew Anderson, a careless, faulty 
 printer in Edinburgh, obtained a monopoly 
 .as king's printer, which was exercised on
 
 I '4 2 Litermy Bhmders. 
 
 his death in 1679 by his widow. The 
 productions of her press became worse 
 and worse, and her Bibles were a stand- 
 ing disgrace to the country. Robert 
 Chambers, in his Domestic Annals of 
 Scoflatid, quotes the following specimen 
 from an edition of 1705 : " Whyshouldit- 
 bethougtathingincredi ble w' you, y' 
 God should raise the dead ? " Even this 
 miserable blundering could not have been 
 much worse than the Pearl Bible with 
 six thousand errata mentioned by Isaac 
 Disraeli. 
 
 The first edition of the English Scrip- 
 tures printed in Ireland was published at 
 Belfast in 1716, and is notorious for an 
 error in Isaiah. Sin no more is printed 
 Sin on more. In the following year was 
 published at Oxford the well-known 
 Vinegar Bible, which takes its name from 
 a blunder in the running title of the 
 twentieth chapter of St. Luke's Gospel, 
 where it reads " The parable of the 
 vinegar," instead of " The parable of the 
 vineyard." In a Cambridge Prayer Book 
 of 1778 the thirtieth verse of Psalm cv. is 
 travestied as follows : " Their land brought
 
 Misprints. 143 
 
 forth frogs, yea seveii in their king's 
 chambers." An Oxford Bible of 1792 
 names St. Phihp instead of St. Peter as 
 the disciple who should deny Christ 
 (Luke xxii. 34) ; and in an Oxford New- 
 Testament of 1864 we read, " Rejoice, 
 and be exceeding clad'' (Matt. v. 12). 
 To be impartial, however, it is necessary 
 to mention a Cambridge Bible of 183 1, 
 where Psalm cxix. 93 appears as " I will 
 never forgive thy precepts." A Bible 
 printed at Edinburgh in 1823 contains a 
 curious misprint caused by a likeness in 
 pronunciation of two words, Esther being 
 printed for Easter, " Intending after 
 Esther to bring him forth to the people " 
 (Acts xii. 4). A misprint of the old 
 hundredth Psalm {do well for do dwell) in 
 the Prayer Book might perhaps be con- 
 sidered as an improvement, — 
 
 " All people who on earth do well." 
 
 Errors are specially frequent in figures, 
 often caused by the way in which the 
 characters are cut. The aim of the 
 founder seems to be to make them as 
 much alike as possible, so that it fre-
 
 144 Literary Blunders. 
 
 quently requires a keen eye to discover 
 the difference between a 3 and a 5. In 
 one of Chernac's Mathematical Tables 
 a line fell out before going to press, and 
 instead of being replaced at the bottom 
 of the page it was put in at the top, thus 
 causing twenty-six errors. Besides these, 
 however, only ten errors have been found 
 in the whole work of 1020 pages, all full 
 of figures. Vieta's Canon Mathematicus 
 (1579) is of great rarity, from the author 
 being discontented with the misprints 
 that had escaped his notice, and on that 
 account withdrawing or repurchasing all 
 the copies he could meet with. Some 
 mathematicians, to ensure accuracy, have 
 -made their calculations with the types in 
 their own hands. In the Imperial Dic- 
 tionary of Universal Biography there is a 
 misprint in a date which confuses a whole 
 article. William Ayrton, musical critic, 
 is said to have been born in London 
 about 1 781, but curiously enough his 
 father is reported to have been born three 
 years afterwards (1784); and still more 
 odd, that father was appointed gentleman 
 of the Chapel Royal in 1764, twenty
 
 Misprints. 1 4 5 
 
 years before he is stated to have been 
 born. 
 
 In connection with figures may be 
 mentioned the terrible confusion which 
 is caused by the simple dropping out 
 of a decimal point. Thus a passage 
 in which 6*36 is referred to naturally 
 becomes utter nonsense when 636 is 
 printed instead. Such a misprint is as 
 bad as the blunder of the P'rench com- 
 positor, who, having to set up a passage 
 referring to Captain Cook, turned de Cook 
 into de 600 kilos. An amusing blunder 
 was quoted a few years ago from a German 
 paper where the writer, referring to Prince 
 Bismarck's endeavours to keep on good 
 terms with all the Powers, was made 
 to say, " Prince Bismarck is trying to 
 keep up honest and straightforward rela- 
 tions ivith all the girls." This blunder was 
 caused by the substitution of the word 
 Madchen (girls) for Miichten (powers). 
 
 The French have always been interested 
 in misprints, and they have registered a 
 considerable number. One of the happiest 
 is that one which was caused by Mal- 
 herbe's bad writing, and induced him to 
 
 10
 
 146 Literary Blunders. 
 
 adopt the misprint in his verse in place 
 of that which he had originally written. 
 The lines, written on a daughter of Du 
 Perrier named Rosette, now stand thus : — 
 
 ' ' Mais elle etait du monde oii les plus belles choses 
 Ont le pire destin, 
 Et rose, elle a vecu ce que vivent les roses 
 L'espace d'un matin." 
 
 Malherbe had written,— 
 
 " Et Rosette a vecu ce que vivent les roses ;" 
 
 but forgetting "to cross his tees" the 
 compositor made the fortunate blunder 
 of printing rose elle, which so pleased the 
 author that he let it stand, and modified 
 the following lines in accordance with the 
 printer's improvement. 
 
 Rabelais nearly got into trouble by 
 a blunder of his printer, who in several 
 places set up asne for dme. A council 
 met at the Sorbonne to consider the 
 case against him, and the doctors for- 
 mally denounced Rabelais to Francis I., 
 and requested permission to prosecute 
 him for heresy ; but the king after con- 
 sideration refused to give the permission.
 
 Misprints. 147 
 
 Rabelais then laughed at his accusers for 
 founding a charge of heresy against him 
 on a printer's blunder, but there were 
 strong suspicions that the misprints were 
 intentional. 
 
 These misprints are styled by the 
 French coquilks^ a word whose deriva- 
 tion M. Boutney, author of Didionnaire 
 de r Argot des Typograpkes, is unable 
 to explain after twenty years' search. A 
 number of Longman^s Magazine contains 
 an article on these coquilles, in which 
 very many amusing blunders are quoted. 
 One of these gave rise to a pun which is 
 so excellent that it is impossible to resist 
 the temptation of transferring the anecdote 
 from those pages to these : — 
 
 " In the Rue Richelieu there is a statue 
 of Corneille holding a roll in his hand, 
 on which are inscribed the titles of his 
 principal works. The task of incising 
 these names it appears had been given 
 to an illiterate young apprentice, who 
 thought proper to spell avare with two 
 r's. A wit, observing this, remarked 
 pleasantly, Tiens, voild an avare qui a tin 
 air misa?ithrope (un r mis en trop)."
 
 148 Literary B hinders. 
 
 In a newspaper account of Mr. Glad- 
 stone's religious views the word Anglican 
 is travestied as Afghan^ with the following 
 curious result : " There is no form of faith 
 in existence more effectually tenacious 
 than the Afghan form, which asserts the 
 full catholicity of that branch church 
 whose charter is the English Church 
 Prayer Book." 
 
 In the diary of John Hunter, of Craig- 
 crook, it is recorded that at one of the 
 meetings between the diarist, Leigh Hunt, 
 and Carlyle, " Hunt gave us some capital 
 specimens of absurd errors of the press 
 committed by printers from his copy. 
 One very good one occurs in a paper, 
 where he had said, ' he had a liking for 
 coffee because it always reminded him of 
 the Arabian Nights,' though not men- 
 tioned there, adding, ' as smoking does 
 for the same reason.' This was converted 
 into the following oracular words : ' As 
 sucking does for the snow season ' ! He 
 could not find it in his heart to correct 
 this, and thus it stands as a theme for 
 the profound speculations of the com- 
 mentators."
 
 Mispruits. 1 49 
 
 A very slight misprint will make a 
 great difference ; sometimes an unintelli- 
 gible word is produced, but sometimes 
 the mere transposition of a letter will 
 make a word exactly opposite in its 
 meaning to the original, as unite for un- 
 tie. In Jeremy Taylor's XXV. Sermo7is 
 preached at Golden Grove: Being for the 
 Winter Half-year (London, 1653), p. 247, 
 we read, "It may help to unite the 
 charm," whereas the author wished to 
 say "untie." 
 
 The title of Cobbett's Horse-hoeitig Hus- 
 bandry was easily turned into Horse-shoeing 
 Husbandry, that of the Holy Grail into 
 Holy Gruel, and Layamon's Brut into 
 Layamon's Brat. 
 
 A local paper, reporting the proceedings 
 at the Bath meeting of the British Asso- 
 ciation, affirmed that an eminent chemist 
 had " not been able to find any fluidity 
 in the Bath waters." Fluorine was meant. 
 It was also stated that a geologist asserted 
 that " the bones found in the submerged 
 forests of Devonshire were closely repre- 
 sentative of the British fanner.''^ The last 
 word should have been fauna.
 
 150 Literary Blunders. 
 
 The strife of tongs is suggestive of a 
 more serious battle than that of talk only ; 
 and the compositor who set up Portia's 
 speech — 
 
 "... young Alcides, when he did redeem 
 The virgin tribute paid by howling Troy " 
 
 {Merchant of Venice, act iii., sc. 2), 
 
 and turned the last words into howling 
 Tory, must have been a rabid politician. 
 
 The transposition of " He kissed her 
 under the silent stars " into " He kicked 
 her under the cellar stairs" looks rather 
 too good to be true, and it cannot be 
 vouched for ; but the title " Microscopic 
 Character of the Virtuous Rocks of Mon- 
 tana " is a genuine misprint for vitreous, 
 as is also " Buddha's perfect uselessness " 
 for " Buddha's perfect sinlessness." It is 
 rather startling to find a quotation from 
 the Essay on Alan introduced by the 
 words " as the Pope says," or to find the 
 famous painter Old Crome styled an " old 
 Crone." 
 
 A most amusing instance of a mis- 
 reading may be mentioned here, although 
 it is not a literary blunder. A certain
 
 Misprints. i 5 i 
 
 black cat was named Mephistopheles, 
 a name which greatly puzzled the little 
 girl who played with the cat, so she 
 very sensibly set to work to reduce 
 the name to a form which she could 
 understand, and she arrived at " Miss 
 Pack-of-fleas." 
 
 Sometimes a ludicrous blunder may be 
 made by the mere closing up of two 
 words ; thus the orator who spoke of our 
 " grand Mother Church " had his remark 
 turned into a joke when it 'was printed 
 as " grandmother Church." A still worse 
 blunder was made in an obituary notice 
 of a well-known congressman in an 
 American paper, where the reference to 
 his " gentle, manly spirit " was turned 
 into "gentlemanly spirit." 
 
 Misprints are very irritating to most 
 authors, but some can afford to make fun 
 of the trouble ; thus Hood's amusing 
 lines are probably founded upon some 
 blunder that actually occurred : — 
 
 " But it is frightful to think 
 What nonsense sometimes 
 They make of one's sense, 
 
 And what's worse, of one"s rhymes.
 
 152 Literary Blunders. 
 
 " It was only last week, 
 
 In my ode upon Spring, 
 Which I meant to have made 
 A most beautiful thing, 
 
 " When I talked of the dew-drops 
 From freshly-blown roses, 
 The nasty things made it 
 From freshly-blown noses. 
 
 " And again, when, to please 
 An old aunt, I had tried 
 To commemorate some saint 
 Of her clique who had died, 
 
 " I said he had taken up 
 In heaven his position. 
 And they put it — he'd taken 
 Up to heaven his physician." 
 
 Henry Stephens (Estienne), the learned 
 printer, made a joke over a misprint. The 
 word y^^m was printed with the diphthong 
 ft", so Stephens excused himself by saying 
 in the errata that " le chalcographe a fait 
 une fievre longue (fcebrem) quoique une 
 fievre courte (febrem) soit moins dan- 
 gereux." 
 
 Allusion has already been made in the 
 first chapter to Professor Skeat's ghost
 
 Misprints. 153 
 
 words. Most of these have arisen from 
 misreadings or misprints, and two extra- 
 ordinary instances may be noted here. 
 The purely modern phrase " look sharp " 
 was supposed to have been used in the time 
 of Chaucer, because " loke schappe " (see 
 that you form, etc.) of the manuscript was 
 printed "loke scharpe." In the other 
 instance the scribe wrote yft for ;;/, and 
 thus he turned " chek matyde " into 
 "chek yn a tyde." ^ 
 
 In the Academy for Feb. 25th, 1888, 
 Dr. Skeat explained another discovery 
 of his of the same kind, by which he is 
 able to correct a time-honoured blunder 
 in English literature : — 
 
 "Cambridge : Feb. 14, 18SS. 
 
 " When I explained, in the Academy for 
 January 7 (p. 9), that the word ' Herenus ' 
 is simply a mistake for ' Herines,' i.e., the 
 furies (such being the Middle-English form 
 of Erinnyes), I did not expect that I should 
 so soon light upon another singular per- 
 version of the same word. 
 
 ' Philol. Soc. Trans., 1885-7, pp. 368-9.
 
 154 Literary Blunders. 
 
 " In Chaucer's Works, ed. 1561, fol. 
 322, back, there is a miserable poem, of 
 much later date than that of Chaucer's 
 death, entitled ' The Remedie of Love.' 
 The twelfth stanza begins thus : 
 
 ' Come hither, thou Hermes, and ye furies all 
 Which fer been under us, nigh the nether pole, 
 Where Pluto reigneth,' etc. 
 
 It is clear that ' Hermes ' is a scribal error 
 for 'Herines,' and that the scribe has 
 added ' thou ' out of his own head, to 
 keep ' Hermes ' company. The context 
 bears this out ; for the author utterly 
 rejects the inspiration of the Muses in the 
 preceding stanza, and proceeds to invoke 
 furies, harpies, and, to use his own ex- 
 pression, ' all this lothsome sort.' Many 
 of the lines almost defy scansion, so that 
 no help is to be got from observing the 
 run of the lines. Nevertheless, this fresh 
 instance of the occurrence of ' Herines ' 
 much assists my argument ; all the more 
 so, as it appears in a disguised shape. 
 
 "Walter W. Skeat." 
 
 Sometimes a misprint is intentional, as
 
 Misprints. i 5 5 
 
 in the following instance. At the begin- 
 ning of the century the Courrier des Fays 
 Bas was bought by some young men, who 
 changed its politics, but kept on the editor. 
 The motto of the paper was from Horace : 
 
 " Est modus in rebus," 
 
 and the editor, wishing to let his friends 
 at a distance know that things were not 
 going on quite well between him and his 
 proprietors, printed this motto as, — 
 
 " Est nodus in rebus." 
 
 This was continued for three weeks before 
 it was discovered and corrected by the 
 persons concerned. 
 
 Another kind of misprint which we see 
 occasionally is the misplacement of some 
 lines of type. This may easily occur when 
 the formes are being locked, and the result 
 is naturally nonsense that much confuses 
 the reader. Probably the finest instance of 
 this misplacement occurred some years ago 
 in an edition of Men of the Time (1856), 
 where the entry relating to Samuel Wilber- 
 force, Bishop of Oxford, got mixed up 
 with that of Robert Owen, the Socialist,
 
 156 Literary Blunders. 
 
 with the result that the bishop was stated 
 to be "a confirmed sceptic as regards 
 revealed religion, but a believer in 
 Spiritualism." It was this kind of blunder 
 which suggested the formation of cross- 
 readings, that were once very popular.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 ScHOOLDovs' Blunders. 
 
 IHE blunders of the examined 
 form a fruitful source of amuse- 
 ment for us all, and many 
 comical instances have been published. 
 The mistakes which are constantly occur- 
 ring must naturally be innumerable, but 
 only a few of them rise to the dignity of 
 a blunder. If it be difficult to define a 
 blunder, probably the best illustration of 
 what it is will be found in the answers of 
 the boys under examination. All classes 
 of blunders may be found among these. 
 There are those which show confusion of 
 knowledge, and those which exhibit an 
 insight into the heart of the matter while 
 blundering in the form. Two very good 
 examples occur to one's mind, but it is to 
 be feared that they owe their origin to 
 some keen spirit of mature years. " What
 
 158 Literary Blunders. 
 
 is Faith ? — The quahty by which we are 
 enabled to beheve that which we know is 
 untrue." Surely this must have eman- 
 ated from a wit ! Again, the whole 
 Homeric question is condensed into the 
 following answer : " Some people say that 
 the Homeric poems were not written by 
 Homer, but by another man of the same 
 name." If this is a blunder, who would 
 not wish to blunder so ? 
 
 A large class of schoolboys' blunders 
 consist in a confusion of words somewhat 
 alike in sound, a confusion that is apt to 
 follow some of us through life. " Matins " 
 has been mixed up with "pattens," and 
 described as something to wear on the 
 feet. Nonconformists are said to be 
 persons who cannot form anything, and 
 a tartan is assumed to be an inhabitant 
 of Tartary. The gods are believed by 
 one boy to live on nectarines, and by 
 another to imbibe ammonia. The same 
 desire to make an unintelligible word 
 express a meaning which has caused the 
 recognised but absurd spelling of sovereign 
 (more wisely spelt sovran by Milton) 
 shows itself in the form " Tea-trarck "
 
 Schoolboys^ Blunders. 159 
 
 explained as the title of Herod given to 
 him because he invented or was fond of 
 tea.^ A still finer confusion of ideas is to 
 be found in an answer reported by Miss 
 Graham in the University Correspoiident : 
 " Esau was a man who wrote fables, and 
 who sold the copyright to a publisher for 
 a bottle of potash." 
 
 The following etymological guesses are 
 not so good, but they are worthy of regis- 
 tration. One boy described a blackguard 
 as " one who has been a shoeblack," while 
 another thought he was " a man dressed 
 in black." " Polite " is said to be derived 
 from "Pole," owing to the affability of the 
 Polish race. " Heathen " means " covered 
 with heath " ; but this explanation is 
 commonplace when compared with the 
 brilliant guess — " Heathen, from Latin 
 ' hnethum,' faith, and ' en,' not." 
 
 The boy who explained the meaning of 
 the words fort and fortress must have had 
 rather vague ideas as to masculine and 
 feminine nouns. He wrote: "A fort is 
 a place to put men in, and a fortress a 
 place to put women in." 
 
 ' Cornhill Magazine, June l888, pp. 619-28.
 
 l6o Literary Blunders. 
 
 The little book entitled English as she 
 is Taught, which contains a considerable 
 number of genuine answers to examination 
 questions given in American schools, with 
 a. Commentary by Mark Twain, is full of 
 amusing matter. A large proportion of 
 these answers are of a similar character 
 to those just enumerated, blunders which 
 have arisen from a confusion caused by 
 similarity of sound in the various words, 
 thus, " In Austria the principal occupation 
 is gathering Austrich feathers." The 
 boy who propounded this evidently had 
 much of the stock in trade required 
 for the popular etymologist. " Ireland is 
 called the Emigrant Isle because it is 
 so beautiful and green." " Gorilla warfare 
 was where men rode on gorillas." "The 
 Puritans found an insane asylum in the 
 wilds of America." 
 
 Some of the answers are so funny that 
 it is almost impossible to guess at the 
 train of thought which elicited them, as, 
 " Climate lasts all the time, and weather 
 only a few days." " Sanscrit is not used 
 so much as it used to be, as it went out 
 of use 1500 B.C." The boy who affirmed
 
 Schoolboys' Blunders. i6i 
 
 that " The imports of a country are the 
 things that are paid for ; the exports are 
 the things that are not," did not put the 
 Theory of Exchange in very clear form. 
 
 The knowledge of physiology and of 
 medical subjects exhibited by some of the 
 examined is very amusing. One boy dis- 
 covered a new organ of the body called 
 a chrone : " He had a chronic disease — 
 something the matter with the chrone." 
 Another had a strange notion of how to 
 spell cniiiiology, for he wrote " Chonology 
 is the science of the brane." But best 
 of all is the knowledge of the origin of 
 Bright's disease, shown by the boy who 
 affirms that " John Bright is noted for an 
 incurable disease." 
 
 Much of the blundering of the ex- 
 amined must be traced to the absurd 
 questions of the examiners — questions 
 which, as Mark Twain says, " would 
 oversize nearly anybody's knowledge." 
 And the wish which every examinee 
 has to bring in some subject which he 
 supposes himself to know is perceptible 
 in many answers. The date 1492 seems 
 to be impressed upon every American 
 
 II
 
 1 62 Literary Blunders. 
 
 child's memory, and he cannot rest until 
 he has associated it with some fact, so 
 we learn that George Washington was 
 born in 1492, that St. Bartholomew 
 was massacred in that year, that "the 
 Brittains were the Saxons who entered 
 England in 1492 under Julius Caesar," 
 and, to cap all, that the earth is 1492 
 miles in circumference. 
 
 Many of the best-known examination 
 jokes are associated with Scriptural char- 
 acters. One of the best of these, if also 
 one of the best known, is that of the man 
 who, paraphrasing the parable of the Good 
 Samaritan, and quoting his words to the 
 innkeeper, " When I come again I will 
 repay you," added, " This he said knowing 
 that he should see his face again no more." 
 
 A School Board boy, competing for one 
 of the Peek prizes, carried this confusion 
 of widely different events even farther. 
 He had to write a short biography of 
 Jonah, and he produced the following: 
 " He was the father of Lot, and had two 
 wives. One was called Ishmale and the 
 other Hagher ; he kept one at home, and 
 he turned the other into the dessert, when
 
 Schoolboys' Blunders. 163 
 
 she became a pillow of salt in the daytime 
 and a pillow of fire at night." 'J'he sketch 
 of Moses is equally unhistoric : " Mosses 
 was an Egyptian. He lived in an ark 
 made of bullrushes, and he kept a golden 
 calf and worshipped braizen snakes, and 
 at nothing but kwales and manna for forty 
 years. He was caught by the hair of his 
 head, while riding under the bough of a 
 tree, and he was killed by his son Absalom 
 as he was hanging from the bough." But 
 the ignorance of the schoolboy was quite 
 equalled by the undergraduate who was 
 asked " Who was the first king of Israel ? " 
 and was so fortunate as to stumble on 
 the name of Saul. Finding by the face 
 of the examiner that he had hit upon 
 the right answer, he added confidentially, 
 " Saul, also called Paul."' 
 
 The American child, however, managed 
 to cover a larger space of time in his con- 
 fusion when he said, " Elijah was a good 
 man, who went up to heaven without 
 dying, and threw his cloak down for 
 Queen Elizabeth to step over." 
 
 A boy was asked in an examination, 
 " What did Aloses do with the tabernacle?"
 
 1 64 Literary Bhinders. 
 
 and he promptly answered, " He chucked 
 it out of the camp." The scandalised 
 examiner asked the boy what he meant, 
 and was told that it was so stated in the 
 Bible. On being challenged for the verse, 
 the boy at once repeated "And" Moses 
 took the tabernacle and pitched it without 
 the camp" (Exod. xxxiii. 7). 
 
 The book might be filled with extra- 
 ordinary instances of school translation, 
 but room must be found for one beautiful 
 specimen quoted by Moore in his 
 Diary. A boy having to translate 
 "they ascended by ladders" into Latin, 
 turned out this, " ascendebant per adoles- 
 centiores " (the comparative degree of 
 lad, i.e., ladder). 
 
 The late Mr. Barrett, Musical Examiner 
 to the Society of Arts, gave some curious 
 instances of blundering in his report on 
 the Examinations of 1887, which is printed 
 in the Programme of the Society's Exami- 
 nations for 1888 : — 
 
 "There were occasional indications that 
 the terms were misunderstood. ' Presto ' 
 signifies ' turn over,' ' Lento ' ' with style.' 
 ' Staccato ' was said to mean ' stick on
 
 Schoolboys^ Blunders, 165 
 
 the notes,' or ' notes struck and at once 
 raised.' . . . 
 
 " The names of composers in order of 
 time were generally correctly done, but 
 the particulars concerning the musicians 
 were rather startling. Thus Purcell was 
 said to have written, among other things, 
 an opera called Ebdon and Eneas ; one 
 stated that he was born 1543 and died 
 i595> probably confusing him with Tallis, 
 that he wrote masses and reformed the 
 church music ; another that he was the 
 organist of King's College Chapel, and 
 wrote madrigals. One stated that he was 
 born 1568 and died 1695 j another, not 
 knowing that he had so long passed the 
 allotted period of man's existence, gave 
 his dates 1693, 1685, thus giving him no 
 limit of existence at all. One said he 
 was a German, born somewhere in the 
 nineteenth century, which statement 
 another confirmed by giving his dates as 
 1817 — 1846; and, further, credited him 
 with the composition of The Woman of 
 Samaria, and as having transposed plain- 
 song from tenor to bass. Bach is said to 
 have been the founder of the 'Thames
 
 1 66 Literary Blunders. 
 
 School Lipsic,' the composer of the 
 Seasons, the celebrated writer of opera 
 comique, born i6 — , and having gone 
 through an operation for one of his fingers, 
 turned his attention to composition, wrote 
 operas, and, lastly, that he was born in 
 1756, and died 1880, and that his fame 
 rests on his passions. 
 
 "The facts about Handel are pretty 
 correct ; but we find that Weber wrote 
 Parsifal, The Flying Dutchman, Der Ring 
 derNibulengon. Misdates are 1813 — 1883. 
 Mendelssohn was born 1770, died 1827 
 (Beethoven's dates), studied under Hadyn 
 {sic), and that he composed many operas. 
 Gounod is said to be 'a rather modern 
 musician ' ; he wrote Othello, Three Holy 
 Children, besides Faust and other works. 
 Among the names given as the composer 
 of Nozze di Figaro are Donizetti, William 
 Sterndale Bennett, Gunod, and Sir Mickall 
 Costa. The particulars concerning the 
 real composer are equally interesting, 
 (i) His name is spelt Mozzart, Mosarde, 
 etc. (2) He was a well-known Italian, wrote 
 Medea, and others. (3) His first opera 
 was Idumea, or Idomeo. (4) He composed
 
 Schoolboys' Bhinders. 167 
 
 Lieder ohm luorte, Don Pasquale, Don 
 Goviafina, the Zauberfloat, Feiiges, and 
 his Requiem is the crowning glory of his 
 ' marvellious carere.' (5) He was a 
 German, ' born 1756, at a very early age.' 
 If the dates given by another writer be 
 true (born 1795, died 1659), it is certain 
 that he must have died before he was 
 born." 
 
 Mr. Barrett again reported in 1889 
 some of the strange opinions of those 
 who came to him to be examined : — 
 
 *' The answers to the question ' Who was 
 Rossini ? "What influence did he exercise 
 over the art of music in his time ? ' brought 
 to light much curious and interesting in- 
 telligence. His nationality was various. 
 He was ' a German by birth, but was born 
 at Pesaro in Italy ' ; ' he was born in 
 1670 and died 1826 '; he was a ' French- 
 man,' ' a noted writer of the French,' 
 the place of nativity was ' Pizzarro in 
 Genoa ' ; he was ' an Italian, and made 
 people feel drunk with the sparke and 
 richness of his melody ' ; he composed 
 Oberon, Don Giovanni, Der Frieschtitz, 
 and Stabet Matar. He was ' an accom-
 
 1 68 Literary Blunders. 
 
 plished writer of violin music and pro- 
 duced some of the prettiest melodies ' ; 
 it is ' to him we owe the extension of 
 chords struck together in ar peggio ' ; he 
 was ' the founder of some institution or 
 another ' ; ' the great aim of his life was 
 to make the music he wrote an interpre- 
 tation of the words it was set to ' ; he 
 ' broke many of the laws of music ' ; he 
 ' considerable altered the stage ' ; he 
 'was noted for using many instruments 
 not invented before ' ; in his ' composi- 
 tion he used the chromatic scale very 
 much, and goes very deep in harmony ' ; 
 he ' was the first taking up the style, and 
 therefore to make a great change in 
 music ' ; he was ' the cause of much cen- 
 sure and bickering through his writings ' ; 
 he * promoted a less strict mode of writing 
 and other beneficial things ' ; and, finally, 
 'Giachono Rossini was born at Pezarro 
 in 1792. In the year 1774 there was war 
 raging in Paris between the Gluckists and 
 Piccinists. Gluck wanted to do away with 
 the old restraint of the Italian aria, and 
 improve opera from a dramatic point of 
 view. Piccini remained true to the old
 
 Sc/iool boys' Blunders. 169 
 
 Italian style, and Rossini helped him to 
 carry it on still further by his operas, 
 Taficredi, William Tell, and Dorma del 
 Lagol " 
 
 The child who gave the following brilli- 
 ant answer to the question, " What was 
 the character of Queen Mary ? " must 
 have suffered herself from the troubles 
 supposed to be connected with the pos- 
 session of a stepmother : " She was wilful 
 as a girl and cruel as a woman, but " (adds 
 the pupil) " what can you expect from any 
 one who had had five stepmothers ? " 
 
 The greatest confusion among the 
 examined is usually to be found in the 
 answers to historical and geographical 
 questions. All that one boy knew about 
 Nelson was that he " was buried in 
 St. Paul's Cathedral amid the groans of 
 a dying nation." The student who mixed 
 up Oliver Cromwell with Thomas Crom- 
 well's master Wolsey produced this strange 
 answer : " Oliver Cromwell is said to have 
 exclaimed, as he lay a-dying, If I had 
 served my God as I served my king. He 
 would not have left me to mine enemies." 
 Miss Graham relates in the University
 
 I/O Literary Blunders. 
 
 Correspondent an answer which contains 
 the same confusion with a further one 
 added : " Wolsey was a famous general 
 who fought in the Crimean War, and who, 
 after being decapitated several times, said 
 to Cromwell, Ah ! if I had only served 
 you as you have served me, I would 
 not have been deserted in my old age." 
 "The Spanish Armada," wrote a young 
 man of seventeen, " took place in the 
 reign of Queen Anne ; she married Philip 
 of Spain, who was a very cruel man. 
 The Spanish and the English fought very 
 bravely against each other. The English 
 wanted to conquer Spain. Several battles 
 were fought, in which hundreds of the 
 English and Spanish were defeated. They 
 lost some very large ships, and were at a 
 great loss on both sides." 
 
 The following description of the Nile 
 by a schoolboy is very fine : " The Nile is 
 the only remarkable river in the world. 
 It was discovered by Dr. Livingstone, and 
 it rises in Mungo Park." Constantinople 
 is described thus : " It is on the Golden 
 Horn ; a strong fortress ; has a University, 
 and is the residence of Peter the Great.
 
 Schoolboys Blunder's. 1 7 i 
 
 Its chief building is the SubHme Port." 
 Amongst the additions to our geographical 
 knowledge may be mentioned that Gib- 
 raltar is " an island built on a rock," and 
 that Portugal can only be reached through 
 the St. Bernard's Pass "by means of 
 sledges drawn by reindeer and dogs." 
 "Turin is the capital of China," and 
 " Cuba is a town in Africa very difficult 
 of access." 
 
 One of the finest answers ever given in 
 an examination was that of the boy who 
 was asked to repeat all he knew of Sir 
 Walter Raleigh. This was it: "He in- 
 troduced tobacco into England, and while 
 he was smoking he exclaimed, ' Master 
 Ridley, we have this day lighted such a 
 fire in England as shall never be put 
 out.' " Can that, with any sort of justice, 
 be styled a blunder ? 
 
 The rule that " the King can do no 
 wrong " was carried to an extreme length 
 when a schoolboy blunder of Louis XIV. 
 was allowed to change the gender of 
 a French noun. The King said "un 
 carosse," and that is what it is now. 
 In Cotgrave's Dictionary caivsse appears
 
 1/2 Literary Blunders. 
 
 as feminine, but Menage notes it as 
 having been changed from feminine to 
 masculine. 
 
 It has already been pointed out that 
 some of the blunders of the examined 
 are due to the absurdity of the questions 
 of the examiner. The following excellent 
 anecdote from the late Archdeacon Sin- 
 clair's Sketches of Old Times and Distant 
 Places (1875) shows that even when the 
 question is sound a difficulty may arise 
 by the manner of presenting it : — 
 
 " I was one day conversing with Dr. 
 Williams about schools and school exa- 
 minations. He said : ' Let me give you 
 a curious exapiple of an examination at 
 which I was present in Aberdeen. An 
 English clergyman and a Lowland Scots- 
 man visited one of the best parish schools 
 in that city. They were strangers, but the 
 master received them civilly, and inquired : 
 " Would you prefer that I should speer 
 these boys, or that you should speer them 
 yourselves ? " The English clergyman 
 having ascertained that to speer meant to 
 question, desired the master to proceed. 
 He did so with great success, and the
 
 Schoolboys^ Blunders. 173 
 
 boys answered numerous interrogatories 
 as to the Exodus from Egypt. The 
 clergyman then said he would be glad 
 in his turn to speer the boys, and began : 
 "How did Pharaoh die?" There was 
 a dead silepce. In this dilemma the 
 Lowland gentleman interposed. " I think, 
 sir, the boys are not accustomed to your 
 English accent," and inquired in broad 
 Scotch, " Hoo did Phawraoh dee ? " Again 
 there was a dead silence, till the master 
 said : " I think, gentlemen, you can't speer 
 these boys ; I'll show you how." And he 
 proceeded : " Fat cam to Phawraoh at his 
 hinder end ?" i.e., in his latter days. The 
 boys with one voice answered, " He was 
 drooned " ; and a smart little fellow added, 
 " Ony lassie could hae told you that." 
 The master then explained that in the 
 Aberdeen dialect "to dee" means to die 
 a natural death, or to die in bed : hence 
 the perplexity of the boys, who knew that 
 Pharaoh's end was very different.' " 
 
 The author is able to add to this chapter 
 a thoroughly original series of answers to 
 certain questions relating to acoustics, 
 light and heat, which Professor Oliver
 
 174 Literary Blunders. 
 
 Lodge, F.R.S., has been so kind as to 
 communicate for this work, and which 
 cannot fail to be appreciated by his readers. 
 It must be understood that all these an- 
 swers are genuine, although they are not 
 given verbatim et literatim^ and in some 
 instances one answer is made to contain 
 several blunders. Professor Lodge ex- 
 presses the opinion that the questions 
 might in some instances have been worded 
 better, so as to exclude several of the 
 misapprehensions, and therefore that the 
 answers may be of some service to future 
 setters of questions. He adds that of late 
 the South Kensington papers have become 
 more drearily correct and monotonous, 
 because the style of instruction now 
 available affords less play to exuberant 
 fancy untrammelled by any information 
 regarding the subject in hand. 
 
 1880. — Acoustics, Light and Heat 
 
 Paper. 
 
 Science and Art Department. 
 
 The following are specimens of answers 
 
 given by candidates at recent examinations 
 
 in Acoustics, Light and Heat, held in
 
 Schoolboys' Blunders. 1 7 5 
 
 connection with the Science and Art 
 Department, South Kensington. The 
 answers have not of course all l)een 
 selected from the same paper, neither 
 have they all been chosen for the same 
 reason. 
 
 Question i. — State the relations existing 
 between the pressure, temperature, and 
 density of a given gas. How is it proved 
 that when a gas expands its temperature 
 is diminished ? 
 
 Answer. — Now the answer to the first 
 part of this question is, that the square 
 root of the pressure increases, the square 
 root of the density decreases, and the 
 absolute temperature remains about the 
 same ; but as to the last part of the ques- 
 tion about a gas expanding when its 
 temperature is diminished, I expect I am 
 intended to say I don't believe a word 
 of it, for a bladder in front of a fire 
 expands, but its temperature is not at all 
 diminished. 
 
 Question 2.— If you walk on a dry path 
 between two walls a few feet apart, you 
 hear a musical note or " ring " at each 
 footstep. Whence comes this ?
 
 iy6 Literary Bhmders. 
 
 Answer. — This is similar to phospho- 
 rescent paint. Once any sound gets 
 between two parallel reflectors or walls, 
 it bounds from one to the other and 
 never stops for a long time. Hence it is 
 persistent, and when you walk between 
 the walls you hear the sounds made by 
 those who walked there before you. By 
 following a muffin man down the passage 
 within a short time you can hear most 
 distinctly a musical note, or, as it is more 
 properly termed in the question, a " ring " 
 at every (other) step. 
 
 Qitestio7i 3. — What is the reason that 
 the hammers which strike the strings of 
 a pianoforte are made not to strike the 
 middle of the strings ? Why are the bass 
 strings loaded with coils of wire? 
 
 ^;;^zf'^r.— Because the tint of the clang 
 would be bad. Because to jockey them 
 heavily. 
 
 Question 4. — Explain how to determine 
 the time of vibration of a given tuning- 
 fork, and state what apparatus you would 
 require for the purpose. 
 
 Ansiver. — For this determination I 
 should require an accurate watch beating
 
 Schoolboys' Blunders. 177 
 
 seconds, and a sensitive ear. I mount the 
 fork on a suitable stand, and then, as 
 the second hand of my watch passes the 
 figure 60 on the dial, I draw the bow 
 neatly across one of its prongs. I wait. 
 I listen intently. The throbbing air par- 
 ticles are receiving the pulsations ; the 
 beating prongs are giving up their original 
 force; and slowly yet surely the sound 
 dies away. Still I can hear it, but faintly 
 and with close attention ; and now only 
 by pressing the bones of my head against 
 its prongs. Finally the last trace dis- 
 appears. I look at the time and leave 
 the room, having determined the time of 
 vibration of the common "pitch" fork. 
 This process deteriorates the fork con- 
 siderably, hence a different operation must 
 be performed on a fork which is only leiit. 
 
 Question 6. — What is the difference 
 between a " real " and a " virtual " image ? 
 Give a drawing showing the formation of 
 one of each kind. 
 
 Answer. — You see a real image every 
 morning when you shave. You do not 
 see virtual images at all. The only people 
 who see virtual images are those people 
 
 12
 
 178 Literary Blunders. 
 
 who are not quite right, like Mrs. A. 
 Virtual images are things which don't 
 exist. I can't give you a reliable drawing 
 of a virtual image, because I never saw 
 one. 
 
 Question 8. — How would you disprove, 
 experimentally, the assertion that white 
 light passing through a piece of coloured 
 glass acquires colour from the glass ? What 
 is it that really happens ? 
 
 Answer. — To disprove the assertion (so 
 repeatedly made) that " white light passing 
 through a piece of coloured glass acquires 
 colour from the glass," I would ask the 
 gentleman to observe that the glass has 
 just as much colour after the light has 
 gone through it as it had before. That is 
 what would really happen. 
 
 Question 11. — Explain why, in order to 
 cook food by boiling, at the top of a high 
 mountain, you must employ a different 
 method from that used at the sea level. 
 
 Answer. — It is easy to cook food at the 
 sea level by boiling it, but once you get 
 above the sea level the only plan is to fry 
 it in its own fat. It is, in fact, impossible 
 to boil water above the sea level by any
 
 Schoolboys' Bhmders. 179 
 
 amount of heat. A different method, 
 therefore, would have to be employed to 
 boil food at the top of a high mountain, 
 but what that method is has not yet been 
 discovered. The future may reveal it to 
 a daring experimentalist. 
 
 Question 12. — State what are the con- 
 ditions favourable for the formation of dew. 
 Describe an instrument for determining the 
 dew point, and the method of using it. 
 
 Anstver. — This is easily proved from 
 question i. A body of gas as it ascends 
 expands, cools, and deposits moisture ; so 
 if you walk up a hill the body of gas inside 
 you expands, gives its heat to you, and 
 deposits its moisture in the form of dew 
 or common sweat. Hence these are the 
 favourable conditions ; and moreover it 
 explains why you get warm by ascending 
 a hill, in opposition to the well-known 
 law of the Conservation of Energy. 
 
 Question 13. — On freezing water in a 
 glass tube, the tube sometimes breaks. 
 Why is this ? An iceberg floats with 
 1,000,000 tons of ice above the water 
 line. About how many tons are below 
 the water line?
 
 1 So Literary Blunders. 
 
 Answer. — The water breaks the tube 
 because of capallarity. The iceberg 
 floats on the top because it is lighter, 
 hence no tons are below the water line. 
 Another reason is that an iceberg cannot 
 exceed 1,000,000 tons in weight : hence 
 if this much is above water, none is 
 below. Ice is exceptional to all other 
 bodies except bismuth. All other bodies 
 have 1090 feet below the surface and 
 
 2 feet extra for every degree centigrade. 
 If it were not for this, all fish would die, 
 and the earth be held in an iron grip. 
 
 P.S. — When I say 1090 feet, I mean 
 1090 feet per second. 
 
 Question 14. — If you were to pour a 
 pound of molten lead and a pound of 
 molten iron, each at the temperature of 
 its melting point, upon two blocks of ice, 
 which would melt the most ice, and why ? 
 
 Answer. — This question relates to dia- 
 thermancy. Iron is said to be a diather- 
 manous body (from dia., through, and 
 thermo, I heat), meaning that it gets heated 
 through and through, and accordingly 
 contains a large quantity of real heat. 
 Lead is said to be an athermanous body
 
 Schoolboys^ Blunders. i8l 
 
 (from a, privative, and thermo, I heat), 
 meaning that it gets heated secretly or in 
 a latent manner. Hence the answer to 
 this question depends on which will get 
 the best of it, the real heat of the iron or 
 the latent heat of the lead. Probably the 
 iron will smite furthest into the ice, as 
 molten iron is white and glowing, while 
 melted lead is dull. 
 
 Question 2 1 . — A hollow indiarubber ball 
 full of air is suspended on one arm of a 
 balance and weighed in air. The whole 
 is then covered by the receiver of an air 
 pump. Explain what will happen as the 
 air in the receiver is exhausted. 
 
 Anstver. — The ball would expand and 
 entirely fill the vessell, driving out all before 
 it. The balance being of greater density 
 than the rest would be the last to go, but 
 in the end its inertia would be overcome 
 and all would be expelled, and there would 
 be a perfect vacuum. The ball would 
 then burst, but you would not be aware of 
 the fact on account of the loudness of a 
 sound varying with the density of the place 
 in which it is generated, and not on that 
 in which it is heard.
 
 r82 Literary Blunders. 
 
 Question 27. — Account for the delicate 
 shades of colour sometimes seen on the 
 inside of an oyster shell. State and 
 explain the appearance presented when a 
 beam of light falls upon a sheet of glass 
 on which very fine equi-distant parallel 
 lines have been scratched very close to 
 one another. 
 
 Answer. — The delicate shades are due 
 to putrefaction ; the colours always show 
 best when the oyster has been a bad one. 
 Hence they are considered a defect and 
 are called chromatic aberration. 
 
 The scratches on the glass will arrange 
 themselves in rings round the light, as any 
 one may see at night in a tram car. 
 
 Question 29. — Show how- the hypothe- 
 nuse face of a right-angled prism may be 
 used as a reflector. What connection is 
 there between the refractive index of a 
 medium and the angle at which an emer- 
 gent ray is totally reflected ? 
 
 Answer. — Any face of any prism may 
 be used as a reflector. The con 
 nexion between the refractive index of 
 a medium and the angle at which an 
 emergent ray does not emerge but is
 
 Schoolboys' Blunders. 183 
 
 totally reflected is remarkable and not 
 generally known. 
 
 Question 32. — \\'^hy do the inhabitants 
 of cold climates eat fat ? How would you 
 find experimentally the relative quantities 
 of heat given off when equal weights of 
 sulphur, phosphorus, and carbon are 
 thoroughly burned ? 
 
 Answer. — An inhabitant of cold climates 
 (called Frigid Zoans) eats fat principally 
 because he can't get no lean, also because 
 he wants to rise is temperature. But if 
 equal weights of sulphur phosphorus and 
 carbon are burned in his neighbourhood 
 he will give off eating quite so much. The 
 relative quantities of eat given off will 
 depend upon how much sulphur etc. is 
 burnt and how near it is burned to him. 
 If I knew these facts it would be an easy 
 sum to find the answer. 
 
 1881. 
 
 Question i. — Sound is said to travel 
 about four times as fast in water as in air. 
 How has this been proved ? State your 
 reasons for thinking whether sound travels 
 faster or slower in oil than in water.
 
 184 Literary Blunders. 
 
 Answer {a). — Mr. Colladon, a gentleman 
 who happened to have a boat, wrote to a 
 friend called Mr. Sturm to borrow another 
 boat and row out on the other side of the 
 lake, first providing himself with a large 
 ear-trumpet. Mr. Colladon took a large 
 bell weighing some tons which he put 
 under water and hit furiously. Every time 
 he hit the bell he lit a fusee, and Mr. 
 Sturm looked at his watch. In this way 
 it was found out as in the question. 
 
 It was also done by Mr. Byott who sang 
 at one end of the water pipes of Paris, 
 and a friend at the other end (on whom he 
 could rely) heard the song as if it were a 
 chorus, part coming through the water and 
 part through the air. 
 
 {b) This is done by one person going into 
 a hall (? a well) and making a noise, and 
 another person stays outside and listens 
 where the sound comes from. When Miss 
 Beckwith saves life from drowning, her 
 brother makes a noise under water, and 
 she hearing the sound some time after can 
 calculate where he is and dives for him ; 
 and what Miss Beckwith can do under 
 water, of course a mathematician can do
 
 Schoolboys' Blunders. i S 5 
 
 on dry land. Hence this is how it is 
 done. 
 
 If oil is poured on the water it checks 
 the sound-waves and puts you out. 
 
 Question 2. — W^at would happen if 
 two sound-waves exacdy alike were to 
 meet one another in the open air, moving 
 in opposite directions ? 
 
 Answer. — If the sound-waves which 
 meet in the open air had not come from 
 the same source they would not recognise 
 each others existence, but if they had they 
 would embrace and mutually hold fast, in 
 other words, interfere with and destroy 
 each other. 
 
 Question 9. — Describe any way in 
 which the velocity of light has been 
 measured. 
 
 Answer [a). — A distinguished but 
 Heathen philosopher, Homer, was the first 
 to discover this. He was standing one day 
 at one side of the earth looking at Jupiter 
 when he conjectured that he would take 
 16 minutes to get to the other side. 
 This conjecture he then verified by careful 
 experiment. Now the whole way across 
 the earth is 3,072,000 miles, and dividing
 
 1 86 Literary Blunders. 
 
 this by i6 we get the velocity 192,000 
 miles a second. This is so great that it 
 would take an express train 40 years to 
 do it, and the bullet from a canon over 
 5000 years. 
 
 P.S. — I think the gentlemans name was 
 Romer not Homer, but anyway he was 
 20% wrong and Mr. Fahrenheit and Mr. 
 Celsius afterwards made more careful 
 determinations. 
 
 {U) An Atheistic Scientist (falsely so 
 called) tried experiments on the Satellites 
 of Jupiter. He found that he could 
 delay the eclipse 16 minutes by going to 
 the other side of the earths orbit ; in fact 
 he found he could make the eclipse 
 happen when he liked by simply shifting 
 his position. Finding that credit was 
 given him for determining the velocity 
 of light by this means he repeated it 
 so often that the calendar began to 
 get seriously wrong and there were 
 riots, and Pope Gregory had to set things 
 right. 
 
 Questio7i 10. — Explain why water pipes 
 burst in cold weather. 
 
 Answer. — People who have not studied
 
 Schoolboys' Blunders. 187 
 
 Acoustics think that Thor bursts the pipes, 
 but we know that it is nothing of the kind 
 for Professor Tyndall has burst the my- 
 thologies and has taught us that it is the 
 natural behaviour of water (and bismuth) 
 without which all fish would die and the 
 earth be held in an iron grip.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 Foreigners' English. 
 
 T is not surprising that foreigners 
 should make mistakes when 
 writing in English, and English- 
 men, who know their own deficiencies in 
 this respect, are not likely to be cen- 
 sorious when foreigners fall into these 
 blunders. But when information is printed 
 for the use of Englishmen, one would 
 think that the only wise plan was to have 
 the composition revised by one who is 
 thoroughly acquainted with the language. 
 That this natural precaution is not always 
 taken we have ample evidence. Thus, at 
 Havre, a polyglot announcement of certain 
 local regulations was posted in the harbour, 
 and the notice stood as follows in French : 
 " Un arrangement peut se faire avec le 
 pilote pour de promenades a rames." The 
 following very strange translation into
 
 Foreigners' English. 189 
 
 English appeared below the French : 
 " One arrangement can make himself 
 with the pilot for the walking with roars." 
 
 The papers distributed at international 
 exhibitions are often very oddly worded. 
 Thus, an agent in the French court of 
 one of these, who described himself as 
 an " Ancient Commercial Dealer," stated 
 on a handbill that " being appointed by 
 Tenants of the Exhibition to sell Show 
 Cases, Frames, &c., which this Court 
 incloses, I have the honour to inform 
 Museum Collectors, Librarians, Builders, 
 Shopkeepers, and business persons in 
 general, that the fixed prices will hardly be 
 the real value of the Glasses which adorn 
 them." 
 
 In 1864 was published in Paris a pre- 
 tentious work, consisting of notices of 
 the various literary and scientific societies 
 of the world, which positively swarms with 
 blunders in the portion devoted to England. 
 The new forms into which well-known 
 names are transmogrified must be seen to 
 be believed. Wadham College is printed 
 Washatn, Warwick as Warwick ; and one 
 of our metropolitan parks is said to be
 
 190 Literary Blunders. 
 
 dedicated to a saint whose name does 
 not occur in any calendar, viz., St. Jain^s 
 Park. There is the old confusion re- 
 specting English titles which foreigners 
 find so difficult to understand ; and 
 monsieur and esquire usually appear re- 
 spectively before and after the names of 
 the same persons. The Christian names 
 of knights and baronets are omitted, so 
 that we obtain such impossible forms as 
 " Sir Brown." 
 
 The book is arranged geographically, 
 and in all cases the English word " shire " 
 is omitted, with the result that we come 
 upon such an extremely curious monster 
 as "le Comte de Shrop." 
 
 On the very first page is made the extra- 
 ordinary blunder of turning the Cambrian 
 Archaeological Association into a Catn- 
 bridge Society ; while the Parker Society, 
 whose publications were printed at the 
 University Press, is entered under Canter- 
 bury. It is possible that the Latin name 
 Cajitabrigia has originated this mistake. 
 The Roxburgh Society, although its 
 foundation after the sale of the magnificent 
 library of the Duke of Roxburgh is cor-
 
 Foreigners' English. 1 9 1 
 
 rectly described, is here placed under the 
 county of Roxburgh. The most amusing 
 blunder, however, in the whole book is 
 contained in the following charmingly 
 naive piece of etymology apropos of the 
 Geological and Polytechnic Society of the 
 West Riding of Yorkshire : " On sait qu'en 
 Anglais le mot J^ide se traduit par 
 voyage a cheval ou en voiture ; on pourrait 
 peut-etre penser, des le debut, qu'il s'agit 
 d'une Societe hippique. II n'en est rien ; 
 a I'exemple de I'Association Britannique, 
 dont elle," etc. This pairs off well with 
 the translation of Walker, London, given 
 on a previous page. 
 
 The Germans find the same difficulty 
 with English titles that the French do, 
 and confuse the Sir at the commencement 
 of our letters with Herr or Monsieur. 
 Thus, they frequently address Englishmen 
 as Sir, instead of mister or esquire. We 
 have an instance of this in a publication 
 of no less a learned body than the Royal 
 Academy of Sciences of Munich, who 
 issued in i860 a '• Rede auf Sir Thomas 
 Babington Macaulay." 
 
 An hotel-keeper at Bale translated
 
 192 Literary Blunders. 
 
 "limonade gazeuse" as "gauze lemon- 
 ads"; and the following delightful entry 
 is from the Travellers' Book of the Drei 
 Mohren Hotel at Augsburg, under date 
 Jan. 28th, 1815 : " His Grace Arthur 
 Wellesley, Duke of AVellington, &c., &c., 
 &c. Great honour arrived at the beginning 
 of this year to the three Moors. This illus- 
 trious warrior, whose glorious atchieve- 
 ments which cradled in Asia have filled 
 Europe with his renown, descended in it." 
 It may be thought that, as this is not 
 printed, but only written, it is scarcely fair 
 to preserve it here ; but it really is too 
 good to leave out. 
 
 The keepers of hotels are great sinners 
 in respect to the manner in which they 
 murder the English language. The follow- 
 ing are a few samples of this form of 
 literature, and most readers will recall 
 .others that they have come across in their 
 travels. 
 
 The first is from Salzburg : — 
 
 " George Nelbock begs leave to recom- 
 
 mand his hotel to the Three Allied, situated 
 
 vis-a-vis of the birth house of Mozart, which 
 
 offers all comforts to the meanest charges."
 
 Foreigners' English. 193 
 
 The next notice comes from Rastadt : — 
 
 "Advice of an Hotel. 
 
 " The underwritten has the honour of 
 informing the publick that he has made 
 the acquisition of the hotel to the Savage, 
 well situated in the middle of this city. 
 He shall endeavour to do all duties which 
 gentlemen travellers can justly expect ; 
 and invites them to please to convince 
 themselves of it by their kind lodgings at 
 his house. 
 
 " Basil 
 
 " Ja. Singesem. 
 " Before the tenant of the Hotel to 
 the Stork in this city." 
 
 Whatever may be the ambition of mine 
 host at Pompeii, it can scarcely be the 
 fame of an English scholar : — 
 
 " Restorative Hotel Fine Hok, 
 
 Kept by Frank Prosperi, 
 
 Facing the military quarter 
 
 at Pompei. 
 
 That hotel open since a very few days is 
 renowned for the cheapness of the Apart- 
 
 13
 
 194 Literary Blunders. 
 
 merits and linen, for the exactness of the 
 service, and for the excellence of the true 
 French cookery. Being situated at proxi- 
 mity of that regeneration, it will be propi- 
 tious to receive families, whatever, which 
 will desire to reside alternatively into that 
 town to visit the monuments now found 
 and to breathe thither the salubrity of the 
 air. That establishment will avoid to all 
 travellers, visitors of that sepult city and 
 to the artists (willing draw the antiquities) 
 a great disorder occasioned by tardy and 
 expensive contour of the iron whay people 
 ■will find equally thither a complete sort- 
 ment of stranger wines and of the kingdom, 
 hot and cold baths, stables, coach houses, 
 the whole at very moderated prices. Now 
 all the applications and endeavours of the 
 Hoste will tend always to correspond to 
 the tastes and desires of their customers 
 which will require without doubt to him 
 into that town the reputation whorae, he 
 is ambitious." 
 
 On the occasion of the Universal Exhi- 
 bition of Barcelona in 1888 the Moniteur 
 de r Exposition printed a description of 
 Barcelona in French, German, Spanish,
 
 Foreigners' English. 195 
 
 and English. The latter is so good that 
 it is worthy of being printed in full : — 
 
 " Then there will be in the same Barce- 
 lona the first universal Exposition of 
 Spain. It was not possible to choose a 
 more favorable place, for the capital- 
 town of Catalonia is a first-rate city open 
 to civilization. 
 
 " It is quite out of possibility to deny it 
 to be the industrial and commercial capital 
 of the peninsula and a universal Exposi- 
 tion could not possibly meet in any other 
 place a more lively splendour than in this 
 magnificent town. 
 
 *' Indeed what may want Barcelona to 
 deserve to be called great and handsome ? 
 Are here not to be found archeological 
 and architectural riches, whose specimens 
 are inexhaustible ? 
 
 " What are then those churches whose 
 style it is impossible to find elsewhere, 
 containing altars embellished with truly 
 Spanish magnificence, and so large and 
 imposing cloisters, that there feels any 
 man himself exceedingly small and little ? 
 What those shaded promenades, where 
 the sun cannot almost get through with
 
 196 Literary Blunders. 
 
 the golden tinge of its rays ? what this 
 Rambla where every good citizen of 
 Barcelona must take his walk at least 
 once every day, in order to accomplish the 
 civic pilgrimage of a true Catalanian ? 
 
 *' And that Paseo Colon, so picturesque 
 with its palmtrees and electric light, 
 which makes it like, in the evening, a 
 theatrical decoration, and whose ornament 
 has been very happily just finished ? 
 
 "And that statue of Christopher 
 Colomb, whose installation will be accom- 
 plished in a very short time, whose price 
 may be 500,000 francs? 
 
 "Are not there still a number of proud 
 buildings, richly ornamented, and splendid 
 theaters ? one of them, perhaps the 
 most beautiful, surely the largest (it 
 contains 5000 places) the Liceo, is truly 
 a master-piece, where the spectators are 
 lost in admiration of the riches, the 
 ornaments, the pictures and feel a true 
 regret to turn their eyes from them to 
 look at the stage. 
 
 " You will see coffee houses, where have 
 been spent hundreds of thousands to 
 change their large rooms in enchanted
 
 Foreigners' English. 197 
 
 halls with which it would be difificult to 
 contest even for the palaces of east. 
 
 " And still in those little streets, now 
 very few, so narrow that the inhabitants 
 of their opposite houses can shake hands 
 together, do you not know that doors 
 may loe found which open to yards and 
 staircases worthy of palaces ? 
 
 " Do you not know there are plenty of 
 sculptures, every one of them master- 
 pieces, and that, especially the town 
 and deputation house contain some halls 
 which would make meditate all our great 
 masters ? 
 
 "If we walk through the Catalonia- 
 square to reach the Ensanche, our 
 astonishment becomes still greater. 
 
 " In this Ensanche, a newly-born, but 
 already a great town, there are no streets : 
 there are but promenades with trees on 
 both sides, which not only moderate the 
 rays of the sun through their foliage, but 
 purify the surrounding atmosphere and 
 seem to say to those who are walking 
 beneath their shade : You are breathing 
 here the purest air ! 
 
 " There display the houses plenty of
 
 198 Literary Blunders. 
 
 the rarest sorts of marble. Out and in- 
 doors rules marble, the ceilings of the 
 halls, the staircases, the yards command 
 and force admiration to the spectator, 
 who thought to see only houses and finds 
 monumental buildings. 
 
 " Join to that a Paseo de Gracia with 
 immense perspective ; the promenade of 
 Cortes, 10 kil. long ; some free squares 
 by day- and night-time, in which the rarest 
 plants and the sweetest flowers enchant 
 the passengers eyes and enbalm his 
 
 smell. 
 
 " Join lastly the neighbourhoods, but a 
 short way from the town and put on all 
 sides in communication with it by means 
 of tramways— lines and steam— tramways 
 too ; those places show a very charming 
 scenery for every one who likes natural 
 beauties mingled with those which are 
 created by the genius of man. 
 
 " After that all there is Monjuich, whose 
 proud fortress seems to say : I protect 
 Barcelona : half-way the slope of the 
 mountain, there are Miramar, Vista 
 Alegre, which afford one of the grandest 
 panorama in the world : on the left side,
 
 Foreigners English. 199 
 
 the horizon skirting, some hills which 
 form a girdle, whose indented tops detach 
 them selves from an ever-blue sky ; at 
 the foot of those mountains, the suburbs 
 we have already mentioned, created for 
 the rest and enjoyment of man after his 
 accomplished duty and finished work ; 
 on the lowest skirt Barcelona in a flame 
 with its great buildings, steeples, towers, 
 houses ornamented with flat terraces, and 
 more than all that, its haven, which had 
 been, to say so, conquered over the 
 Mediterranean and harbors daily in itself 
 a large number of ships. 
 
 «' All this ideal Whole is concentrated 
 beneath an enchanting sky, almost as 
 beautiful as the sky of Italy. The cUmate 
 of Barcelona is very much like Nice, the 
 pretty. 
 
 " Winter is here unknown ; in its place 
 there rules a spring, which allows every 
 plant to bud, every most delicate flower 
 to blossom, orangetrees and roses, through- 
 out the whole year. 
 
 " In one word, Barcelona is a magnifi- 
 cent town, which is about to offer to the 
 world a splendid, universal Exposition,
 
 20O Literary Blunders, 
 
 whose success is quite out of doubt deter- 
 mined." 
 
 At the Paris Exhibition of 1889 a 
 Practical Guide was produced for the 
 benefit of the English visitor, which is 
 written throughout in the most astonish- 
 ing jargon, as may be seen from the 
 opening sentences of the "Note of the 
 Editor," which run as follows : " The 
 Universal Exhibition, for whom who comes 
 there for the first time, is a true chaos 
 in which it is impossible to direct and 
 recognize one's self without a guide. 
 What wants the stranger, the visitor who 
 comes to the Exhibition, it is a means 
 which permits him to see all without 
 losing uselessly his time in the most part 
 vain researches." 
 
 This is the account of the first con- 
 ception of the Exhibition: "Who was 
 giving the idea of the Exhibition? The 
 first idea of an Exhibition of the Cen- 
 tenary belongs in reality not to anybody. 
 It was in the air since several years, when 
 divers newspapers, in 1883, bethought 
 them to consecrate several articles to it, 
 and so it became a serious matter. The
 
 Foreigners' English. 20 i 
 
 period of incubation (brooding) lasted 
 since 1883 till the month of March 1884 ; 
 when they considered the question they 
 preoccupied them but about a National 
 Exhibition. Afterwards the ambition 
 increased. The ministery, then presided 
 by Mr. Jules Ferry, thought that if they 
 would give to this commercial and indus- 
 trial manifestation an international charac- 
 ter they would impose the peace not 
 only to France, but to the whole world." 
 The Eiffel Tower gives occasion for 
 some particularly fine writing : " In order 
 to attire the stranger, to create a great 
 attraction which assured the success of 
 the Exhibition, it wanted something ex- 
 ceptional, unrivalled, extraordinary. An 
 engineer presented him, Mr. Eiffel, already 
 known by his considerable and keen 
 works. He proposed to M. Locroy to 
 erect a tower in iron which, reaching the 
 height of three hundred metres, would 
 represent, at the industrial sight, the 
 resultant of the modern progresses. M. 
 Locroy reflected and accepted. Hardly 
 twenty years ago, this project would have 
 appeared fantastic and impossible. The
 
 2 02 Literary Blunders. 
 
 state of the science of the iron construc- 
 tions was not advanced enough, the 
 security given by the calculations was not 
 yet assured; to-day, they know where 
 they are going, they are able to count the 
 force of the wind. The resistance which 
 the iron opposes to it. Mr. Eiffel came 
 at the proper time, and nevertheless how 
 many people have prophetized that the 
 tower would never been constructed. 
 How many critics have fallen upon this 
 audacious project ! It was erected, how- 
 ever, and one perceives it from all Paris ; 
 it astonishes and lets in extasy the stran- 
 gers who come to contemplate it." 
 
 The figures attached to the fountain 
 under the tower are comically described 
 as follows: — 
 
 " Europe under the lines of a woman, 
 leaned upon a printing press to print and 
 a book, seems deeped in reflections. 
 
 "America is young woman, energetic and 
 virginal however, characterising the youth 
 and the audacies of the American people. 
 
 " Asia, the cradle of the human kind, 
 represents the volupty and the sensualism. 
 Her posture, the expression of her figure.
 
 Foreigners^ EiiglisJi. 203 
 
 render well the abandonment of the passion 
 with the oriental people. 
 
 "Africa represented by a figure of a 
 woman in a timid attitude, is well the 
 symbol of the savage people enslaved by 
 the civilisation. 
 
 " Australia finally is figured by a woman 
 buttressed on herself, like an animal not 
 yet tamed, ready to throw itself on its 
 prey, without waiting to be attacked. . . . 
 
 "Above Asia and Africa, the Love and 
 the Sleep, in the shade of a floating 
 drapery. Finally, between Europe and 
 America, a young girl symbolises the 
 History." 
 
 The author commences the account 
 of his first walk as follows : " Thus we 
 begin, at present as we have let him see 
 these two wonderworks which fly at the 
 eyes, the Tower and the fountain, to return 
 on his steps to retake with order this walk 
 of recognition which will permit him, 
 thanks to our watchfulness, to see all in 
 a short time." 
 
 "The History of the human dwelling" 
 is introduced thus : " It is the moment 
 or never to walk among the surprising
 
 204 Literary Blunders. 
 
 restitution, of which M. Garnier the 
 eminent architect of the Opera has made 
 him the promoter. On our left going 
 along the flower-beds from the Tower till 
 here, the constructions of the History of 
 the human Dwelling is unfolded to our 
 eyes. The human Dwelling in all coun- 
 tries and in all times, there is certainly 
 an excellent subject of study. Without 
 doubt the great works do not fail, where 
 conscientious plates enable us to know 
 exactly in which condition where living 
 our ancestors, how their dwellings where 
 disposed in the interior. But nothing 
 approaches the demonstration by the 
 materiality of the fact, and it is struck 
 with this truth that the organisators of 
 the Exhibition resolved to erect an im- 
 provisated town, including houses of all 
 countries and all latitudes." 
 
 The author finishes up his little work 
 in the same self-satisfied manner, which 
 shows how unconscious he was that he 
 was writing rubbish : — 
 
 "There is finished our common walk, 
 and in a happy way, after six days which 
 we dare believe it did not seem to you
 
 Foreigners^ EnglisJi. 205 
 
 long, and tiresome, your curiosity finding 
 a constant aliment at every step which we 
 made you do, in this exhibition without 
 rivalry, where the beauties succeed to 
 the beauties, where one leaves not one 
 pleasure but for a new one. As for us, 
 our task of cicerone is too agreeable 
 to us, that we shall do our best to 
 retain you still near us, in efforcing us 
 to discover still other spectacles, and to 
 present you them after all those you 
 know already." 
 
 If it be absurd to give information to 
 Englishmen in a queer jargon which it is 
 difficult for him to understand, what must 
 be said of those who attempt to teach a 
 language of which they are profoundly 
 ignorant ? Most of us can call to mind 
 instances of exceedingly unidiomatic sen- 
 tences which have been presented to 
 our notice in foreign conversation books ; 
 but certainly the most extraordinary of 
 this class of blunders are to be found in 
 the New Guide of the Conversation in 
 Portuguese afid English, by J. de Fonseca 
 and P. Carolino, which created some 
 stir in the English press a few years
 
 2o6 Literary Blunders. 
 
 ago.^ The authors do not appear to 
 have had even the most distant acquaint- 
 ance with either the spoken or written 
 language, so that many of the sentences 
 are positively unintelligible, although 
 the origin of many of them may be 
 found in a literal translation of certain 
 French sentences. One chapter of this 
 wonderful book is devoted to Idiofisms, 
 which is a singularly appropriate title 
 for such odd English proverbs as the 
 following : — 
 
 "The necessity don't know the low." 
 " To build castles in Espaguish." 
 " So many go the jar to spring, than at 
 last rest there." 
 
 (A little further on we find another 
 version of this well-known proverb : " So 
 much go the jar to spring that at last it 
 break there.") 
 
 "The stone as roll not heap up not 
 foam." 
 
 " He is beggar as a church rat." 
 " To come back at their muttons," 
 
 A selection from this book was printed by 
 ssrs. Field 
 ai she is spoke. 
 
 Messrs. Field & Tuer under the title of English
 
 Foreigners' English. 207 
 
 "Tell me whom thou frequent, I will 
 tell you which you are." 
 
 The apparently incomprehensible sen- 
 tence "He sin in trouble water" is ex- 
 plained by the fact that the translator 
 confused the two French words pecker, 
 to sin, and pecker, to fish. 
 
 The classification adopted by the 
 authors cannot be considered as very 
 scientific. The only colours catalogued 
 are wkite, cray, _i^ride/in, musk, and red ; 
 the only " music's instruments " — a 
 Jiagelet, a dreum, and a kiirdy-gurdy. 
 " Common stones " appear to be load- 
 stones, brick, white lead, and gumstonc. 
 But probably the list of " Chastisements " 
 is one of the funniest things in this Guide 
 to Conversation. The list contains a fine, 
 honourable fine, to break upon, to tear off 
 ike flesh, to draw to four horses. 
 
 The anecdotes chosen for the instruction 
 of the unfortunate Portuguese youth are 
 almost more unintelligible than the rest 
 of the book, and probably the following 
 two anecdotes could not be matched in 
 any other printed book : — 
 
 "The Commander Forbin of Janson,
 
 2o8 Literary Blunders. 
 
 being at a repast with a celebrated 
 Boileau, had undertaken to pun upon 
 her name : — ' What name, told him, carry 
 you thither ? Boileau : I would wish 
 better to call me Drink wine.' The poet 
 was answered him in the same tune : — 
 ' And you, sir, what name have you choice ? 
 Janson : I should prefer to be named 
 John-meal. The meal don't is valuable 
 better than the furfur.' " 
 
 The next is as good : — 
 
 " Plato walking one's self a day to the 
 field with some of their friends. They 
 were to see him Diogenes who was in 
 water untill the chin. The superficies 
 of the water was snowed, for the rescue 
 of the hole that Diogenes was made. 
 Don't look it more told them Plato, and 
 he shall get out soon." 
 
 A large volume entitled Foluglossos was 
 published in Belgium in 1841, which is 
 even more misleading and unintelligible 
 than the Portuguese School Book. The 
 English vocabulary contains some amazing 
 words, such as agridtilce, ales of troops, 
 ancient ness sign, bivacqfire, breasfspellicuky 
 chimney black tnoney, infatuated compass,
 
 Foreigners' English. 209 
 
 jug (vocal), ivindotv, umbrella, etc. At 
 the end of this vocabulary are these 
 notes : — 
 
 " Look the abridged introduction ex- 
 eptless for the english editions, foregoing 
 the french postcript, next after the title 
 page. Just as the numbers, the names 
 of cities, states, seas, mountains and 
 rivers, the christian names of men and 
 woman, and several synonimous, who 
 enter into the composition of many 
 english words, suppressed in the former 
 vocabulary, are explained by the respective 
 categorys and appointed at the general 
 index, look also by these, what is not 
 found here above." 
 
 " Veision alternative. See for the shorter 
 introduction exeptless for the english 
 editions, foregoing the french postscript 
 next after the title page. Just as the 
 numbers &c. . . . their expletives are 
 be given by the respective categorys, and 
 appointed at the general index, to wich 
 is sent back ! " 
 
 We are frequently told that foreigners 
 are much better educated than we are, 
 and that the trade of the world is slipping 
 
 14
 
 2 1 o Literary Blunders. 
 
 through our fingers because we are not 
 taught languages as the foreigners are. 
 This may be so, but one cannot help 
 believing that the dullest of English 
 clerks would be able to hold his own 
 in competition with the ingenious youths 
 who are taught foreign languages on the 
 system adopted by Senhors Fonseca 
 and Carolino, and by the compiler of 
 Poluglossos. 
 
 Guides to a foreign town or country 
 written in English by a foreigner are 
 often very misleading ; in fact, sometimes 
 quite incomprehensible. A contributor 
 to the Notes and Queries sent to that 
 periodical some amusing extracts from a 
 Guide to Amsterdam. The following few 
 lines from a description of the Assize 
 Court give a fair idea of the language : — 
 
 "The forefront has a noble and sub- 
 lime aspect, and is particularly character- 
 istical to what it ought to represent. It 
 is built in a division of three fronts in 
 the corinthic order, each of them consists 
 of four raising columns, resting upon a 
 general basement from the one end of 
 the forefront to the other, and supporting
 
 Foreigners' English. 2 i i 
 
 a cornish, equalling running all over the 
 face." ' 
 
 When it was known that Louis XVIII. 
 was to be restored to the throne of France, 
 a report was circulated that the Duke of 
 Clarence (afterwards William IV.) would 
 take the command of the vessel which was 
 to convey the king to Calais. The people 
 of that town were in a fever of expecta- 
 tion, and having decided to sing God save 
 the Kingm honour of their English visitor, 
 they thought that it would be an additional 
 compliment if they supplemented it with 
 an entirely new verse, which ran as 
 follows : — 
 
 " God save noble Clarence, 
 
 Who brings our King to France, 
 
 God save Clarence ; 
 He maintains the gloiy 
 Of the British navy, 
 Oh God, make him happy, 
 
 God save Clarence."" 
 
 In continuation of the story, it may be 
 said that the Duke did not go to Calais, 
 
 ' Notes and Queries, First Series, iii. 347. 
 ^ Ibid., iv. 131.
 
 2 12 Literary Blunders. 
 
 and that therefore the anthem was not 
 sung. 
 
 The composer of this strange verse 
 succeeded in making pretty fair English, 
 even if his rhymes were somewhat deficient 
 in correctness. This was not the case 
 with a rather famous inscription made by 
 a Frenchman. Monsieur Girardin, who 
 inscribed a stone at Ermenonville in 
 memory of our once famous poet Shen- 
 stone, was not stupid, but rather preter- 
 naturally clever. This inscription is 
 above all praise for the remarkable manner 
 in which the rhymes appeal to the eye 
 instead of the ear ; and moreover it shows 
 how world-famous was that charming 
 garden at Leasowes, near Halesowen, 
 which is now only remembered by the 
 few : — 
 
 " This plain stone 
 
 To William Shenstone. 
 
 In his writings he display'd 
 
 A mind natural. 
 
 At Leasowes he laid 
 
 Arcadian greens rural." 
 
 Dr. Moore, having on a certain occasion 
 excused himself to a Frenchman for using
 
 Foreigners English. 213 
 
 an expression which he feared was not 
 French, received the reply, " Bon monsieur, 
 mais il merite bien de I'etre." Of these 
 lines it is impossible to paraphrase this 
 polite answer, for we cannot say that they 
 deserve to be English.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Adder for nadder, 7. 
 
 Afghan for Anglican, 148. 
 
 Agassiz, Zoological Biography, blunder in, 64. 
 
 Alison's (Sir Archibald) blunder, 34. 
 
 Ampulla (Sainte), 35. 
 
 Amsterdam, Guide to, 210. 
 
 Anderson (Andrew), his disgraceful printing of the 
 
 Bible, 141. 
 Apostrophe, importance of an, 121. 
 Apron for napron, 7. 
 Arabian Nights, translations of) 45. 
 Arden (Pepper), 60. 
 Arlington (Lord), his title taken from the village 
 
 of Harlington, 8. 
 Artaxerxes, 54. 
 Ash's Dictionary, 9, 10. 
 Averrhoes, 54. 
 
 Babington's (Bishop) Exposition of the Lord's 
 
 Prayer, 92. 
 Bachaiunont, M 'moires de, 33. 
 Baly's (Dr.) translation o^ '^\Sx\\qv''s Physiology, 51.
 
 2 1 6 Index. 
 
 Barcelona Exhibition (1888), 194. 
 
 Barker (Robert) and Martin Lucas fined for leav- 
 ing not out of the Seventh Commandment, 
 136. 
 
 Bellarmin, misprints in his works, 79. 
 
 Benserade's joke, 97. 
 
 Bible, blunders in the printing of the, 135. 
 
 incorrect translations of passages in, 58. 
 
 the "Wicked " Bible, 136. 
 
 Bibliographical Blunders, 63-77. 
 
 Bismarck's (Prince) endeavours to keep on good 
 terms with all the Powers, 145. 
 
 Blades's (W.) Shakspere and Typography, 104. 
 
 Blunder, knowledge necessary to make a, 2. 
 
 Blunders, amusing mistakes, i. 
 
 Blunders in General, i -30. 
 
 of Authors, 31-46. 
 
 of Translators, 47-62. 
 
 {Bibliographical), 63-77. 
 
 [Schoolboys'), 157-187. 
 
 Boehm's tract on the Boots of Isaiah, 71. 
 
 Boyle (Robert) becomes Le Boy, 72. 
 
 Brandenburg (Elector of) and Father Wolff, 20, 
 
 Brathwaite's (R.) Strappado for the Divell, 94. 
 
 Breton's (Nicholas) tracts, 81. 
 
 Wit of Wit, 93. 
 
 Bride i^Ld) de Lammeriiiui?; 49. 
 
 Brigham le jeune for Brigham Young, 67. 
 
 Britton's Tunbridge Wells, 37. 
 
 Broch (J. K.), an imaginary author, 64. 
 
 Buckingham's (J. Silk) anecdote of a wilful mis- 
 print, 140.
 
 Index. 2 1 7 
 
 Bulls, a sul)-class of blunders, 24. 
 
 made by others than Irishmen, 25. 
 
 (Negro), 26. 
 
 Burton (Hill) on bulls, 29, 
 
 Butler's (S.) allusion to corrupted texts, 135. 
 
 misprints in his lines, 127. 
 
 Byron's Childe Harold, persistent misprint in, 134. 
 
 CksoHs (Mr. C. J.), 73- 
 Calamities yor Calamites, 116. 
 Calpensis (Flora) not an authoress, 68. 
 Campbell's (Lord) supposed criticism of Romeo and 
 
 jhtliet, 46. 
 Campion, Death and Martyrdom of, 81. 
 Camus, an imaginary author, 65. 
 Canons for chanoines, 48. 
 Capo Basso, 48. 
 Cardan's treatise De Sudti/ttaie without, a misprint, 
 
 97. 
 Careme, Le Patissier Pittoresque, 74. 
 Cartwright (Major), 60. 
 Castlemaine's (Lord) English Globe, 87. 
 Chaucer's works, misprints in, 153. 
 Chelsea porcelain, 43, 
 Chemac's Mathematical Tables, 144. 
 Cicero's (ilr. Tul.) Epistles, 72. 
 
 Offices, 51. 
 
 Cinderella and the glass slipper, 57. 
 Classification, blunders in, 73. 
 Clement XIV. (Pope), 26. 
 Clerk (P. Y..) for Rev. Patrick Keith. 69. 
 Cockeram's .^^^//jA Dictionarie, li.
 
 2 1 8 Index. 
 
 Collier (John Payne), blunder made in a news- 
 paper account of his burial, 127. 
 
 Contractions, ignorant misreading of, 124, 
 
 Coquilles, specimens of, 147. 
 
 Correspondence, etymology of, 9. 
 
 Cow cut into calves, 129. 
 
 Cowley's allusion to corrupted texts, 135. 
 
 Cromwells, confusion of the two, 169. 
 
 Cross readings, 24. 
 
 Cruikshank's (George) real name supposed to be 
 Simon Pure, 70. 
 
 Curmudgeon, etymology of, 10. 
 
 Damne et Calilve, 49. 
 
 Darius, 54. 
 
 Dekker's Satiro-Mastix, errata to, 80. 
 
 Deleted for delited in Shakespeare, 115. 
 
 De Morgan, on authors conecting their own 
 
 proofs, 89. 
 D'Israeli's Curiosities of Literature, 68, 69. 
 Do part for depart, 8. 
 Donis (Nicholas), an imaginary author, 66. 
 Dorus Basilicus, an imaginary author, 65. 
 Dotet in trouble, 55. 
 Draytonj misreading of, 6. 
 
 Edgeworths Essay on Irish Bulls, 28. 
 Emendations of editors, 23. 
 English as she is Spoke, 206. 
 English as she is Taught, 160. 
 Enrichi de Deux Listes (Mons.), 68. 
 Erckmann-Chatrian's Conscript, 56.
 
 Index. 219 
 
 Errata {Lists of), 78-99. 
 
 Estienne's (Henri) joke over a misprint, 152. 
 
 Etymologies (absurd), 9. 
 
 Ewing's (Bishop) Argyllshire Seaweeds, 74. 
 
 Examined, blunders of the, 157. 
 
 Faith, definition of, 158. 
 
 Faraday {Sir Michael), 41. 
 
 Featley's (Dr. Daniel) Romish Fisher Caught in 
 
 his ffwn Net, 96. 
 Field the printer's blunders, 139. 
 Finis Coronal opus, 61. 
 Fitzgerald (Fighting), 32. 
 Fletcher's The Nice Valour, 96. 
 Fonseca and Carolino, Guide of the Conversation,. 
 
 205. 
 Foreigners' English, 188-213. 
 Foulis's edition of Horace, 98. 
 French kings, anointing of the, 35. 
 
 Galt"s Lives of the Playas, 45. 
 
 Gamett's Florilegium Amantis, 75. 
 
 Gascoigne's (George) Droomme of Doontes Day^ 
 91. 
 
 Ghost words, 2. 
 
 Girardin's epitaph on Shenstone at Ermenon- 
 ville, 212. 
 
 Gladstone's (Mr.) Gleanings of Past Years, 38. 
 
 Glanvill's (Joseph) Essays, 86. 
 
 "God save the King," new verse by a French- 
 man, 211. 
 
 Goldsmith's blunders, 31.
 
 2 2 Index. 
 
 Goldsmith's Deserted Village, translation of a line 
 
 in, 56. 
 Gordon (J. E. H.) and B. A. Cantab, 69. 
 Greatrakes (Valentine), blunder in his name, 
 
 118. 
 Greeley's (Horace) bad writing, 126. 
 Grolier not a binder, 19. 
 
 Haggard's (Rider) King Solomon's Mines, 74. 
 Hales's (Prof.) observations on misprints, 131. 
 Hall's (John) Horn Vacivce, 117. 
 Halliwell-Phillipps' Dictionary of Misprints, 
 
 80, lOI. 
 Harrison's (Peter) bull, 29. 
 Henri H. not a potter, 19. 
 Herodote et aussi Jazon, 49. 
 Heywood's (Thomas) Apology for Actors, 83. 
 Hirudo for hirundo, 48. 
 Hit or Miss, 53. 
 
 Holy Gruel for Holy Grail, 149. 
 Homeric poems, author of the, 158. 
 Hood's lines on misprints, 151. 
 Hood (Thomas), Geometricall Instrument called a 
 
 Sector, 82. 
 Hook's (Dean) bad writing, 123. 
 Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, corrections by the 
 
 author, 93. 
 Hopton's (Arthur) Baculum Geodceticutn Via- 
 
 ticum, 83. 
 Horse-shoeing husbandry y^r horse-hoeing, 149. 
 Hotel-keepers' English, 192. 
 Howell's (J.) Deudrologia, 75. 
 Huet, "ancient" Bishop of Avranch, 51.
 
 Index. 2 2 1 
 
 Hugo's (Victor) translation, 50. 
 
 Hunt's (Leigh) specimens of misprints, 148. 
 
 Hyetts Flmvers fro/n the South, 74. 
 
 Ibn Roshd = Averrhoes, 54. 
 Immoral yj7r immortal, 120. 
 Independent Whig, 53. 
 " Indifferent justice," 42. 
 Insurrection /o;- resurrection, 133. 
 
 Jefiferies (Judge) said to have presided at the trial 
 
 of Charles I., 37. 
 Job's wish that his adversary had written a book, 
 
 58- 
 Jonson's (Ben) Every Man in his Humour, 95. 
 Juvenal, edition of, with the first printed errata, 
 
 78. 
 
 Lamartine's Girondins, translation of, 54. 
 
 Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare, 45. 
 
 Lane's (E. W.) good writing, 123. 
 
 La Rochefoucauld as Ruchfucove, 53. 
 
 Layamon's Brat/^r Brut, 149. 
 
 Le Berceau, an imaginary author, 67. 
 
 Leigh's (Edward) table of errata, 79. 
 
 Leviticus supposed to be a man, 1 7. 
 
 Leycester's (Sir Peter) Historical Antiquities, 97. 
 
 Littleton's Latin Dictionary, 10. 
 
 Lodge's (Prof. Oliver) series of examination papers, 
 
 174. 
 Logotypes, 113.
 
 2 2 2 Index. 
 
 London (William) not a bishop, 67. 
 
 Louis XIV., blunder of, 171. 
 
 Secret Memoirs of the Court of. blunder in, 
 
 55- 
 Louis XVIIL, Memoires de, blunders in, 33. 
 
 Love's Last Shift, 52. 
 
 Macaulay's blunder as to the Faerie Queene, 39. 
 
 opinion of Goldsmith's blunders, 31. 
 
 Malherbe's epitaph on Rosette, 145. 
 Mantissa, an imaginary author, 67. 
 Marmontel's Moral Tales, 51. 
 Maroni's (P. V.) The Opera, 73. 
 Marriage Service, misprint in, 8. 
 Marvell's Rehearsal Transprosed, 122. 
 Men of the Time, misprint in, 155. 
 Menage on bad writing, 122. 
 Mephistopheles, 151. 
 
 Milton said to have written the Inferno, 42. 
 Misprints, 100-156. 
 
 (intentional), 155. 
 
 Mispronunciations, 22. 
 
 Misquotations, 21. 
 
 Missce ac Missalis Anaiomia, 1561, book with 
 
 fifteen pages of errata, 79. 
 Mistakes, A New Booke of, 1637, 24. 
 Monosyllabic titles, 40. 
 
 Morgan's (Silvanus) Horologiographia Optica, 85. 
 Morton's Natural History of Northamptotishire, 
 
 89. 
 Mourning Bride, 52. 
 Murray's (Dr.) ghost words. 6.
 
 Index. 223 
 
 Murrell's Cookery, 1632, 112. 
 
 Musical Examinations, blunders in, 164. 
 
 Napier's bones, 38. 
 
 Napoleon III. said to be Consul in 1853, 35 
 
 Nash's Lenten Stnffe, 93. 
 
 Nicholson (Dr. Brinsley) on authors correcting 
 
 their own proofs, 90, 95. 
 Nicolai a man not a place, 65. 
 Nova Scotiayi)/" New Caledonia, 51. 
 
 Oxford Music Hall supposed to be at Oxford, 17. 
 
 Paine (Tom) confused with Thomas Payne, 67. 
 
 Paris Exhibition 1889, English guide to, 2CO. 
 
 Passagio ^G.) not an author, 68. 
 
 Peacham's (Henry) 77ie Mastive, 95. 
 
 Pickle (Sir Peregrine), 34. 
 
 Picus of Mirandula, edition of his works has the 
 
 longest list of errata on record, 78. 
 Playford's (John) Vade Mecnm, 87. 
 Poluglossos, 208. 
 Pope's lines, misprint in, 125. 
 Porcelain, etymology of, 9. 
 
 Person's Catechism of the Szuinish Multitude, 130. 
 Printers' upper and lower cases, no, ill. 
 Proofs corrected by authors in the sixteenth and 
 
 seventeenth centuries, 89. 
 Prynne's Brez'ia Parliamentaria, 60. 
 P}'thagoras as Peter Gower, 53. 
 
 Rabelais' blunder, 146.
 
 2 24 Inaex. 
 
 Raleigh (Sir Walter), 171. 
 
 Ray's (John) Remains, 118. 
 
 Render, a bad translator, 47. 
 
 Richardson's (S.) etymology of correspondence, 
 
 9- 
 Ridings of Yorkshire, 7, 191. 
 Robertson's Scotland, translation of, 49. 
 Robinson (Otis H.), on "Titles of Books," 7$. 
 Roche's (Sir Boyle) bull of the bird that was in 
 
 two places at once, 29. 
 Rogue Croix ^r Rouge Croix, 130. 
 Ruskin's Notes oit Sheepfolds. 73. 
 
 Saints (Imaginary), 13. 
 
 Sala's (Mr.) opinion on misprints, 128. 
 
 San Francisco, Florence, mistaken for San Fran- 
 cisco, California, 18. 
 
 Saroom (Jean), 66. 
 
 Schoolboys' BlimdeiS. 1 57-187, 
 
 Scot's Hop- Garden, 90. 
 
 Scott (Sir Walter), ghost word, 5. 
 
 his real name said to be William, 71. 
 
 Scylla and Charybdis, 43. 
 
 Shakespeare's text improved by attention to the 
 technicalities of printing, 105, 113. 
 
 Sharp's (William) misprint, 120. 
 
 Shelley's Proviethetis Unbotmd, a copy in whole 
 calf, 72. 
 
 Shenstone, epitaph on, by a Frenchman, 212. 
 
 Shirley's lines, misprints in, 125. 
 
 Sinclair's (Archdeacon) anecdote of an examina- 
 tion, 172.
 
 Index. 225 
 
 Sixtus V. (Pope), misprints in his edition of the 
 
 Vulgate, 135. 
 Skeat's (Prof.) ghost words, 2. 
 
 on misprints in Chaucer's works, 153. 
 
 Skimpole (Harold), 34. 
 
 Smith's (Sydney) ghost word, 4. 
 
 Souza's edition of Camoens, 98. 
 
 Stanyhurst's translation of Virgil (1582), 59. 91. 
 
 Stevens (Henry) on the " Wicked " Bible, 136. 
 
 Susannah called a maiden, 41. 
 
 Swinburne's Under the Microscope, 73. 
 
 Tellurium, supposed magnetic qualities of, 52. 
 
 "Thisms">;-thisMS., 119, 
 
 Tongs, strife of, 150. 
 
 Topography y^r typography, 121. 
 
 Translations, humorous, 61. 
 
 Translators said to be traitors, 47. 
 
 Tressan (Comte de), 47. 
 
 Trinity (Master oQ, 60. 
 
 Twain (Mark) on schoolboys' blunders, 160. 
 
 Unite/t?;- untie, 149. 
 Ussher (Archbishop), 141. 
 
 Vagabond (Mr.)/(7rMr. Rambler, 60. 
 
 Vedast (St.)» alias Foster, 13. 
 
 VenusyJ^r Venns. 130. 
 
 Viar (S.), 16. 
 
 Vieta's Canon Mathemaficiis, 144. 
 
 Virtuous Rocksyor Vitreous Rocks, 150. 
 
 Viscontian snakes, 48. 
 
 '5
 
 2 26 hidex. 
 
 Vitus (Saint), i6. 
 
 Wade's (Marshal) roads, 26. 
 
 Walker, London, 53. 
 
 Walpole's (Horace) specimen of a bull, 29. 
 
 WaXsch. for Welsh, 51. 
 
 Warburton's (Bishop) blunder in quoting Cinthio 
 
 34- 
 Watt's Bihliotheca Britannica, blunder in, 63. 
 Welsh rabbit, 52. 
 Wigom (Bishop), 66. 
 
 William IV. when Duke of Clarence, 211. 
 Winton (George), 66. 
 
 Witt's (Richard) AritJunetical Questions, 90. 
 Words that never existed, 3. 
 Writing (bad) of authors, 122. 
 
 Xerxes, 54. 
 Xinoris (Saint), 13. 
 
 Ye for the, 6. 
 
 Yonge's Dynruor Terrace, misprint in, 120. 
 
 Yvery^ History of the House of, 19. 
 
 Zoile (Mons.) et Mdlle. Lycoris, 59. 
 2ollverein, 40. 
 
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