CHAPTER VI._Literary Blunders: A Chapter in the "History of Human Error"

MISPRINTS.

OF 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 possibilities

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

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

Misprints, found in printed books of the

sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, compiled

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

unquestionably 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.,

Ile starte thence poore for Ile starve their

poore,--he formaketh what for the fire

maketh hot_. It must, indeed, be confessed

that the conjectural emendator, if he

dispenses with the quasi-authority of

contemporary precedents, has an all but

unlimited range for the exercise of his

ingenuity, the unsettled spellings of our

ancestors rendering almost any

emendation, 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 _time_, _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

consideration, for it could only have been

owing to its use that such a word as _some_

could have been misprinted _four, niece_ for

_wife, prefer_ for _preserve, find_ for _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, culsedness

_for_ ourselves, eye-sores _for_ oysters, felicity

_for_ facility, Hector _for_ nectar, intending

_for_ indenting, John _for_ Jehu, Judges _for_

Indies, scene _for_ seene, sixteen _for_ 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 show Shakspere's personal

connection with, and technical knowledge of

the Art of Printing, also Remarks upon

some common typographical errors with

especial reference 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 compositor

when at work reads over a few

words of his copy, and retains them in

his mind until his fingers have picked

up the various types belonging to them.

While the memory is thus repeating to

itself a phrase, it is by no means

unnatural, nor in practice is it uncommon,

for some word or words to become

unwittingly 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

must take:--

`So you mistake your husbands.'

_Hamlet_, iii. 2.

Again, _idle votarist_ would easily become

_idol votarist_--

`I am no idle votarist.'--_Timon_, iv. 3;

and _long delays_ become transformed to

_longer days_--

`This done, see that you take no long delays.

_Titus_, iv. 2.

From the time of Gutenberg until now

this similarity of sound has been a fruitful

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 was't

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 _preserve_

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

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 _a_'s, or _b_'s,

or _c_'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

misplaced 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 _o_, when away from its own, will be

more frequently found in the box appropriated

to letter _a_ than any other; that _b_

has a general tendency to visit the _l_ box,

and _l_ the _v_ box; and that _d_, if away

from home, will be almost certainly found

among the _n_'s; if we can show this, we

shall then lay a good foundation for the

re-examination of many corrupt or disputed

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 _s_'s,

with the logotypes _ct_, _ff_, _fi_, _ffi_, _ffl_, _sb_, _sh_,

_si_, _sl_, _ss_, _ssi_, _ssl_, and others, were in daily

use.''

Mr. Blades then refers to Moxon's

_Mechanical Exercises_, 1683, which contains

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

conveniently. The present form is shown

on pp. 110, 111.

Mr. Blades proceeds: ``The chief cause

of a `foul' case was the same in Shakspere's

time as now; and no one interested

in the subject should omit visiting

a printing office, where he could personally

inspect the operation. Suppose a

compositor 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

<Table>

UPPER CASE.

<a'> <e'> <i'> <o'> <u'> <SE> <DDag> A B C D E F G

<a!> <e!> <i!> <o!> <u!> <||> <Dag> H I K L M N O

<a^> <e^> <i^> <o^> <u^> <?> <*> P Q R S T V W

X Y Z <AE> <OE> U J X Y Z <AE> <OE> U J

<a:> <e:> <i:> <o:> <u:> <c,> <Pd> A B C D E F G

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 H I K L M N O

8 9 0 <1/4> <1/2> <3/4> k P Q R S T V W

LOWER CASE.

& [ ] <ae> <oe> j ' Thin and ( ) ? ! ; Leaders. fl

middling spaces.

-- e Leaders. ff

b c d i s f g

ffl Leaders. fi

ffi En Em

l m n h o y p , w quads. quads.

Hair

spaces.

z q :

v u t thick spaces a r Large quods.

x . <.>

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.[9]

[9] Collier's MS. corrector substituted _farc'd_ for _forc'd_.

The word _forced_ should be read _farced_,

the letter _o_ 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

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 _Henry 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 _b_ had fallen over into the _l_

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

_l_ box,'' because the box containing _si_ is

far away from the _l_ box, and their contents

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 Isabella

visits her brother in prison, the

cowardly Claudio breaks forth in

complaint, 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. 1.

We have here, in the expression ``delighted

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

mentions two suggested emendations,

one being _benighted_ and the other

_delinquent_. 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

_i_ 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

Shakespeare may have had this passage in his

mind when he put these words into the

mouth of Claudio.[10]

[10] An article on this point will be found in _The

Antiquary_, vol. viii. (1883), p. 200.

It is taken for granted that the

compositor is not likely 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

misunderstanding. 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 understand.

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

reference to ``Notes on some Pennsylvanian

Calamities.'' As an instance of less

excusable ignorance, we shall often find the

word _gauge_ printed as _guage_.

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 _Hor<ae> Vaciv<ae>_ (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 and Queries_ (v. 272). He

asked: ``Who can quote another passage

from any author containing this word?

I have hunted after it in many dictionaries

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

_hand-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

``andwar'' 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

evidently 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

proceedings of Valentine Greatrakes, the

famous stroker, who claimed equal power

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_.[11]

[11] Seventh Series, iv. 225.

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

_Hor<ae> Lyric<ae>_ (Leeds, 1788) this same

misprint occurs, to the serious confusion

of Mr. Standen's meaning,--

``With thought sublime

And high sonorous words, thou sweetly sing'st

To thy _immoral_ 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,

believed 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

likeness.--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

mistake was discovered and rectified. The

question of an apostrophe was the ground

of a civil action a few years ago in

Switzerland; and although the anecdote refers to

a manuscript, and not to a printed document,

it is inserted here because it illustrates

the subject. A gentleman left a will

which ended thus: ``Et pour t<e'>moigner

<a!> mes neveux Charles et Henri de M----

toute mon affection je l<e!>gue <a!> chacun

_d'eux_ 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

Topography and Typography, and Biography

with Bibliography. In the prospectus of

an edition of the _Waverley Novels_ we

read: ``The aim of the publishers has

been to make it pre-eminent, by beauty

of _topography_ and illustration, as an _<e'>dition

de luxe_.''

Andrew Marvell published a book which

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

M<e'>nage was one of the first to express it.

He wrote: ``If you desire that no mistakes

shall appear in the works which you publish,

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, Mr.

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 conservation

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 contributors

to the Garibaldi Fund was a bookbinder

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 Government

were contracted as Indian Govt.

This one compositor set up throughout

his turn as _Indian goat_. A writer in

one of the Reviews wrote the words ``J. C.

first invaded Britain,'' and a worthy

compositor, who made it his business to fill

up all the abbreviations, printed this as

_Jesus Christ_ instead of Julius C<ae>sar.

Here it may be remarked that some of

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 consists

in its elaborateness and completeness,

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 taste not the aperient spring.'

The reporter or printer who mistook the

Oxford professor's allusion to the

Eumenides, 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

printing 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.

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

misprints, 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 _Standard_

of Sept. 21st, 1883, it was reported

that ``the remains of the late Mr.

John Payne Collier were interred yesterday

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

imagination, 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 philosophy--

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

to himself. He wrote that Dr.

Livingstone 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 the 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 circumstances

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 between

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_ of Oct. 6th, 1886,

one which was so odd that the editor

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 _u_ 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 Multitude_

when he set up the damaging statement

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

new but appropriate word results by the

thrusting into a recognised word of a

redundant letter, as when a man died from

eating too much goose the verdict was

said to have been ``death from stuffocation.''

Many of these blunders, although

amusing to the public, cannot have been

altogether 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 _Athen<ae>um_, 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

transferred in its entirety to these pages:--

``The humour of compositors is apt to be

imperfectly appreciated by authors, because

it rather interferes with what the author

wishes to say, although it may often say

something better. But there is no reason

why 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

excellent things loosely described as _errata_, all

the _curios<ae> 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 somehow

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 admirable

instance of it.

``In a note to the word _limboes_ in the

Clarendon Press edition of Milton's

_Areopagitica_, I quoted from Nares's Glossary

a list of the various _limbi_ believed

in by the `old schoolmen,' and No. 2

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 `_in_surrection'?

``Like all good wit, this change is so

suggestive. It raises up a cloud of new

ideas, and reduces the hearer to a delightful

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 themselves

in this world, do in that join the

malcontents, and are each one biding their

time--

<gr <w!>s t<h!>n Di<o!>s turann<i'>d' <e'>kp<<e'>rswn b<i'>a>.

``May we not conceive this bold jester,

if haply he were a stonemason, chiselling

on some tombstone `_In_surgam'?''

Allusion has already been made to the

persistency of misprints and the difficulty

of curing them; but one of the most

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

manuscript, 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

hare 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

Field received <Pd>1500 from the

Independents 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: ``Wherefore,

brethren, look ye out among ye seven

men of honesr report, full of the Holy

Ghost and wisdom, whom _ye_ may appoint

over this business.'' To such forgeries

Butler refers in the lines:--

``Religion spawn'd a various rout

Of petulant capricious sects,

The maggots of corrupted texts.''

_Hudibras_, 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

be pasted over some of the erroneous

passages, and the public 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 1210

francs.

The King's Printers, Robert Barker and

Martin Lucas, in the reign of Charles I.

were not excommunicated, but, what perhaps

they liked less, were fined <Pd>300

by the Court of High Commission for

leaving the _not_ out of the seventh

commandment in an edition of the Bible

printed in 1631. Although this story has

been frequently quoted it has been

disbelieved, 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

in his _Recollections of Mr. James Lennox_.

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 16th, 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

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 <Pd>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

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 important

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,

and he shall rule over thee'').

This story does not rest on a very firm

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 _Autobiography_:--

``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 University,

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

corrected, 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

of the service which rendered the bond

irrevocable, was so changed as to make it

easily dissolved--as the altered passage

now read as follows:--The minister asking

the bridegroom, `Wilt thou have this

woman to be thy wedded wife, to live

together after God'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

his death in 1679 by his widow. The

productions of her press became worse and

worse, and her Bibles were a standing

disgrace to the country. Robert

Chambers, in his _Domestic Annals of

Scotland_, quotes the following specimen

from an edition of 1705: ``Whyshouldit-

bethougtathingincredi ble w<tS> you, y<tS>

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 Scriptures

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

forth frogs, yea seven in their king's

chambers.'' An Oxford Bible of 1792

names St. Philip 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 1831,

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

considered 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

frequently 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

Dictionary 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 1781, 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

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 French compositor,

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 relations

_with all the girls_.'' This blunder was

caused by the substitution of the word

M<a:>dchen (girls) for M<a:>chten (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 Malherbe's

bad writing, and induced him to

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 <e'>tait du monde o<u!> les plus belles choses

Ont le pire destin,

Et rose, elle a v<e'>cu ce que vivent les roses

L'espace d'un matin.''

Malherbe had written,--

``Et Rosette a v<e'>cu 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 _<a^>me_. A council

met at the Sorbonne to consider the

case against him, and the doctors formally

denounced Rabelais to Francis I.,

and requested permission to prosecute

him for heresy; but the king after

consideration refused to give the permission.

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 _coquilles_, a word whose derivation

M. Boutney, author of _Dictionnaire

de l'Argot des Typographes_, 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, voil<a!> an avare qui a un

air misanthrope_ (un r mis en trop).''

In a newspaper account of Mr. Gladstone'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

Craigcrook, 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 mentioned

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 commentators.''

A very slight misprint will make a

great difference; sometimes an unintelliglble

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

_untie_. In Jeremy Taylor's _XXV. Sermons

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-hoeing

Husbandry_ 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{sic}

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

representative of the British _farmer_.'' The last

word should have been _fauna_.

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 Montana''

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 Man_ 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

misreading may be mentioned here, although

it is not a literary blunder. A certain

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.

``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 _febris_ was printed with the diphthong

<_oe_>, so Stephens excused himself by saying

in the errata that ``le chalcographe a fait

une fi<e!>vre longue (f<oe>brem) quoique une

fi<e!>vre courte (febrem) soit moins dangereux.''

Allusion has already been made in the

first chapter to Professor Skeat's ghost

words. Most of these have arisen from

misreadings or misprints, and two

extraordinary 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 _yn_ for _m_, and

thus he turned ``chek matyde'' into

``chek yn a tyde.''[12]

[12] _Philol. Soc. Trans_. 1885-7, pp. 368-9.

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, 1888.

``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

perversion of the same word.

``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

expression, `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

in the following instance. At the

beginning of the century the _Courrier des Pays

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

Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, got mixed up

with that of Robert Owen, the Socialist,

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.