And sagaciously interpreting this to be the _wife_ of Carausius, makes
a new personage start up in history; he contrives even to give some
_theoretical Memoirs_ of the _August Oriuna_.[92]
Father Sirmond was of opinion that St. Ursula and her eleven thousand
Virgins were all created out of a blunder. In some ancient MS. they
found _St. Ursula et Undecimilla V. M._ meaning St. Ursula and
_Undecimilla_, Virgin Martyrs; imagining that _Undecimilla_ with the
_V._ and _M._ which followed, was an abbreviation for _Undecem Millia
Martyrum Virginum_, they made out of _Two Virgins_ the whole _Eleven
Thousand_!
Pope, in a note on Measure for Measure, informs us, that its story was
taken from Cinthio's Novels, _Dec._ 8. _Nov._ 5. That is, _Decade 8,
Novel 5._ The critical Warburton, in his edition of Shakspeare, puts the
words in full length thus, _December_ 8, _November 5._
When the fragments of Petronius made a great noise in the literary
world, Meibomius, an erudit of Lubeck, read in a letter from another
learned scholar from Bologna, "We have here _an entire Petronius_; I saw
it with mine own eyes, and with admiration." Meibomius in post-haste is
on the road, arrives at Bologna, and immediately inquires for the
librarian Capponi. He inquires if it were true that they had at Bologna
_an entire Petronius_? Capponi assures him that it was a thing which had
long been public. "Can I see this Petronius? Let me examine
it!"--"Certainly," replies Capponi, and leads our erudit of Lubeck to
the church where reposes _the body of St. Petronius_. Meibomius bites
his lips, calls for his chaise, and takes his flight.
A French translator, when he came to a passage of Swift, in which it is
said that the Duke of Marlborough _broke_ an officer; not being
acquainted with this Anglicism, he translated it _roué_, broke on a
wheel!
Cibber's play of "_Love's Last Shift_" was entitled "_La Dernière
Chemise de l'Amour_." A French writer of Congreve's life has taken his
_Mourning_ for a _Morning_ Bride, and translated it _L'Espouse du
Matin_.
Sir John Pringle mentions his having cured a soldier by the use of two
quarts of _Dog and Duck water_ daily: a French translator specifies it
as an excellent _broth_ made of a duck and a dog! In a recent catalogue
compiled by a French writer of _Works on Natural History_, he has
inserted the well-known "Essay on _Irish Bulls_" by the Edgeworths. The
proof, if it required any, that a Frenchman cannot understand the
idiomatic style of Shakspeare appears in a French translator, who prided
himself on giving a verbal translation of our great poet, not approving
of Le Tourneur's paraphrastical version. He found in the celebrated
speech of Northumberland in Henry IV.
Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless,
So dull, so dead in look, so _woe-begone_--
which he renders "_Ainsi douleur! va-t'en!"_
The Abbé Gregoire affords another striking proof of the errors to which
foreigners are liable when they decide on the _language_ and _customs_
of another country. The Abbé, in the excess of his philanthropy, to show
to what dishonourable offices human nature is degraded, acquaints us
that at London he observed a sign-board, proclaiming the master as
_tueur des punaises de sa majesté_! Bug-destroyer to his majesty! This
is, no doubt, the honest Mr. Tiffin, in the Strand; and the idea which
must have occurred to the good Abbé was, that his majesty's bugs were
hunted by the said destroyer, and taken by hand--and thus human nature
was degraded!
A French writer translates the Latin title of a treatise of Philo-Judæus
_Omnis bonus liber est_, Every good man is a free man, by _Tout livre
est bon_. It was well for him, observes Jortin, that he did not live
within the reach of the Inquisition, which might have taken this as a
reflection on the _Index Expurgatorius_.
An English translator turned "Dieu _défend_ l'adultère" into "God
_defends_ adultery."--Guthrie, in his translation of Du Halde, has "the
twenty-sixth day of the _new_ moon." The whole age of the moon is but
twenty-eight days. The blunder arose from his mistaking the word
_neuvième_ (ninth) for _nouvelle_ or _neuve_ (new).
The facetious Tom Brown committed a strange blunder in his translation
of Gelli's Circe. The word _Starne_, not aware of its signification, he
boldly rendered _stares_, probably from the similitude of sound; the
succeeding translator more correctly discovered _Starne_ to be
red-legged partridges!
In Charles II.'s reign a new collect was drawn, in which a new epithet
was added to the king's title, that gave great offence, and occasioned
great raillery. He was styled _our most religious king_. Whatever the
signification of _religious_ might be in the _Latin_ word, as importing
the sacredness of the king's person, yet in the _English language_ it
bore a signification that was no way applicable to the king. And he was
asked by his familiar courtiers, what must the nation think when they
heard him prayed for as their _most religious king_?--Literary blunders
of this nature are frequently discovered in the versions of good
classical scholars, who would make the _English_ servilely bend to the
Latin and Greek. Even Milton has been justly censured for his free use
of Latinisms and Grecisms.
The blunders of modern antiquaries on sepulchral monuments are numerous.
One mistakes _a lion_ at a knight's feet for a _curled water dog_;
another could not distinguish _censers_ in the hands of angels from
_fishing-nets_; _two angels_ at a lady's feet were counted as her two
cherub-like _babes_; and another has mistaken a _leopard_ and a
_hedgehog_ for a _cat_ and a _rat!_ In some of these cases, are the
antiquaries or the sculptors most to be blamed?[93]
A literary blunder of Thomas Warton is a specimen of the manner in which
a man of genius may continue to blunder with infinite ingenuity. In an
old romance he finds these lines, describing the duel of Saladin with
Richard Coeur de Lion:--
A _Faucon brode_ in hande he bare,
For he thought he wolde thare
Have slayne Richard.
He imagines this _Faucon brode_ means a _falcon bird_, or a hawk, and
that Saladin is represented with this bird on his fist to express his
contempt of his adversary. He supports his conjecture by noticing a
Gothic picture, supposed to be the subject of this duel, and also some
old tapestry of heroes on horseback with hawks on their fists; he
plunges into feudal times, when no gentleman appeared on horseback
without his hawk. After all this curious erudition, the rough but
skilful Ritson inhumanly triumphed by dissolving the magical fancies of
the more elegant Warton, by explaining a _Faucon brode_ to be nothing
more than a _broad faulchion_, which, in a duel, was certainly more
useful than a _bird_. The editor of the private reprint of Hentzner, on
that writer's tradition respecting "the Kings of Denmark who reigned in
England" buried in the Temple Church, metamorphosed the two Inns of
Court, _Gray's Inn_ and _Lincoln's Inn_, into the names of the Danish
kings, _Gresin_ and _Lyconin_.[94]
Bayle supposes that Marcellus Palingenius, who wrote the poem entitled
the _Zodiac_, the twelve books bearing the names of the signs, from this
circumstance assumed the title of _Poeta Stellatus_. But it appears that
this writer was an Italian and a native of _Stellada_, a town in the
Ferrarese. It is probable that his birthplace originally produced the
conceit of the title of his poem: it is a curious instance how critical
conjecture may be led astray by its own ingenuity, when ignorant of the
real fact.