Literary Blunders: A Chapter in the "History of Human Error" — Henry B. Wheatley

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LITERARY BLUNDERS

A CHAPTER IN THE

``_HISTORY OF HUMAN ERROR_''

BY
HENRY B. WHEATLEY, F.S.A.

PREFACE.
----

EVERY reader of The Caxtons
_will remember the description,
in that charming novel,
of the gradual growth of Augustine
Caxton's great work ``The History
of Human Error,'' and how, 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-Publishers' Society, ``with
sundry unfinished plates depicting the
various developments of the human
skull (that temple of Human Error),''
and the remainder 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 Augustine
Caxton's title; but I trust that
no one will 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 ``Jokes Old and New'';
but I find that he seldom acknowledges
that a joke is new, and I hope, therefore,
my readers will transpose the
adjectives, and accept the old jokes for
the sake of the new ones. I may claim,
at least, that the series of answers to
examination questions, which Prof.
Oliver Lodge has so kindly supplied
me with, comes within the later class.

I trust that if some parts of the
book are thought to be frivolous, the
chapters on lists of errata and misprints
may be found to contain some
useful literary information.

I have availed myself of the published
communications 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 helped me with some
curious instances, and I would specially
mention Sir George Birdwood,
K.C.I.E., C.SI.., Mr. Edward Clodd,
Mr. R. B. Prosser, and Sir Henry
Trueman Wood_.

CONTENTS.
----
CHAPTER

BLUNDERS IN GENERAL.

PAGE

Distinction between a blunder and a mistake--
Long life of a literary blunder
--Professor Skeat's ``ghost words''--
Dr. Murray's ``ghost words''--Marriage
Service--Absurd etymology--
Imaginary persons--Family pride--
Fortunate blunders--Misquotations--
Bulls from Ireland and elsewhere . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1

CHAPTER II.

BLUNDERS OF AUTHORS.

Goldsmith--French memoir writers--
Historians--Napier's bones--Mr. Gladstone--
Lord Macaulay--Newspaper
writers--Critics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

CHAPTER III.

BLUNDERS OF TRANSLATORS.
PAGE

``Translators are traitors''--Amusing
translations--Translations of names--
Cinderella--``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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

CHAPTER VI.

MISPRINTS.

Misprints not always amusing--A
Dictionary of Misprints--Blades's
Shakspere and Typography--Upper and
lower cases--Stops--Byron--Wicked
Bible--Malherbe--Coquilles--Hood's
lines--Chaucer--Misplacement of type . . . . . . . . . . . . .100

PAGE
CHAPTER VII.

SCHOOLBOYS' BLUNDERS.

Cleverness of these blunders--
Etymological guesses--_English as she is
Taught_--Scriptural confusions--
Musical blunders--History and geography--
How to question--Professor
Oliver Lodge's specimens of answers to
examination papers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .157

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 English--
Foreign Guides in so called English
--Addition to God save the King--
Shenstone. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .188

INDEX. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .215

LITERARY BLUNDERS.

CHAPTER I.

BLUNDERS IN GENERAL.

THE words ``blunder'' and ``mistake''
are often treated as
synonyms; thus we usually
call our own blunders mistakes, and
our friends style our mistakes blunders.
In truth the class of blunders is a sub-
division of the genus mistakes. Many
mistakes are very serious in their
consequences, 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
by a too great sharpness and quickness.
Sometimes a blunder is no mistake at all,
as when a man blunders on the right
explanation; 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
blunder 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 (1)
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 mistake;
and (3) Absurd etymologies, a large
division crammed with delicious blunders.

1. 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 New English Dictionary, discovered
that this was an interloper, and unworthy
of a place in the language. It was found
to be a mistake for by-cocket, 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
remarks were quoted. This shows how
difficult it is to kill a word which has
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 Edinburgh in the following year.
Sydney Smith wrote: ``Mr. Styles is
peculiarly 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 knise, 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 D<ae>dalean instrument
of torture called a knise.'' A similar
instance occurs in a misprint of a passage
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
nurse; but in Notes and Queries two
independent correspondents accounted for the
word morse 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 MS. of Sir Walter Scott
was consulted, it was found that the word
was there plainly written nurse.

The Saxon letter for th (<?p>) has long
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 instance
of the misreading of the thorn (<?p>)
as p, by which a strange ghost word is
evolved. Whitaker, in his edition of Piers
Plowman, reads that Christ ``_polede_ for
man,'' which should be tholede, from
tholien, to suffer, as there is no such
verb as polien.

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 Bellenden's
Chronicle in the plural cietezouris,
which is merely a misreading of cietezanis
(i.e. with Scottish z = <?z> = y), cieteyanis or
citeyanis, Bellenden's regular word for
citizens. One regrets to see this absurd
mistake copied from Jamieson (unfortunately
without acknowledgment) by the
compilers of Cassell's Encyclop<ae>dic Dictionary.''

``Some editions of Drayton's _Barons
Wars_, Bk. VI., st. xxxvii., read--

`` `And ciffy Cynthus with a thousand birds,'

which nonsense is solemnly reproduced in
Campbell's Specimens of the British Poets,
iii. 16. It may save some readers a needless
reference to the dictionary to remember
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. n<ae>ddre). 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
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 four ridings and
the county of York into two. York was
afterwards supplied with four.

Sir Henry Bennet, in the reign of
Charles II., took his title of Earl of
Arlington 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
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 philology, which has shown us
the right way, much wild guessing continues
to be prevalent. It is not, however,
often that we can point to such a brilliant
instance of blundering etymology as that
to be found in Barlow's English Dictionary
(1772). The word porcelain 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.''

Dr. Ash's English Dictionary, published
in 1775, is an exceedingly useful work, as
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
c<oe>ur, unknown, and mechant, a correspondent.''
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 following
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
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, however
odd a word ``condog'' may appear,
it will be found in Henry Cockeram's
English Dictionarie, 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 animalcule
(plural animalcules), also written _animalculum
_(plural animalcula). Now, the
plural animalcula is often supposed to be
the feminine singular, and a new plural is
at once made--animalcul<ae>. This blunder
is one constantly being made, while it is
only occasionally we see a supposed plural
strat<ae> in geology from a supposed singular
strata, and the supposed singular formulum
from a supposed plural formula will probably
turn up some day.

In connection with popular etymology,
it seems proper to make a passing mention
of the sailors' perversion of the Bellerophon
into the Billy Ruffian, the Hirondelle
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 Compasses
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 misreading.
For instance, there are many saints
in the Roman calendar whose individuality
it would not be easy to prove. All
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 Romaine of Baronius.
Her name was obtained by a misreading
of Chrysostom, who, referring to two
martyrs, uses the word <gr xunwr<i!>s> (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_ (1714), 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
Repertorium, but Thomas Fuller knew the
truth, and in his Church 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
difficulty 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 consonant
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 v and f, as in the cases of
Vane 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,
showing 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. Faust<e'>s,
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.[1] More might be said
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.

[1] See an article by the Author in The Athen<ae>um, January 3rd, 1885, p. 15; and a paper by the Rev. W. Sparrow Simpson in the Jourral of the British Arch<ae>ological Association (vol. xliii., p. 56).

The existence of the famous St. Vitus
has been doubted, and his dance (_Chorea
Sancti Vit<ae>_) 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
convincing them that these letters were only
the remains of an inscription erected for
an ancient surveyor of the roads; and he
read their saintship thus:--

[PREFECTV]S 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 himself,
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-filled-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 received
the telegram ``Oxford Music Hall
burned to the ground.'' There was not
much information here, and he was ignorant
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 destruction
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 announcement 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
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
evidence 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
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 Germany
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 Wolff; 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.
It was thought that the mediation of the
confessor had much to do with the
accomplishment of the Elector's wishes.

Misquotations form a branch of literary
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
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
indefat<e'm>gable young man,'' adding, ``but even
he must succ<uu>mb'' (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
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 emendations
ever made by an editor is that of
Theobald in Mrs. Quickly's description of
Falstaff's deathbed (King Henry V., 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
Theobald then suggested `` 'a babbled,'' a reading
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 understood
by the speaker's intimates, but often
astonish strangers--such as the expressions
``the sinecure of every eye,'' ``as white
as the drivelling snow.''[2] 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 following:--

[2] See Spectator, December 24th, 1887, for specimens of family lingo.

``A new Bank was lately opened at
Northampton--<?pointer> 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 New Booke of Mistakes,
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
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.''[3]

[3] Southey's Omniana, vol. i., p. 220.

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 unreasonable;
I wonder thou art not ashamed, for
I myself have known a beast wintered one
whole summer for a noble.'' The man at
once, with ready wit, cried, ``That was a
bull, my lord.'' Whereat the company
was highly amused.[4]

[4] Thoms, Anecdotes and Traditions, 1839, p 79

One of the best-known bulls is that
inscribed 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 lift 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 Holiness
is very ill,'' and ended with ``His
Infallibility is delirious.''

Negro bulls have frequently been
reported, 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
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.''
Connoisseurs in bulls will probably say that
this is only a blunder. Perhaps the
following 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
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 land
of Ireland''; but one of the main objects
of the Essay on Irish Bulls, 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
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
gaol 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 punishment
of transportation for seven years--
``half to go to the king, and the other half
to the informer.'' Peter Harrison, an
annotator 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 Walpole 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
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 overflowing,
and is not yet full.''

CHAPTER II.

BLUNDERS OF AUTHORS.

MACAULAY, in his life of
Goldsmith in the _Encyclop<ae>dia
Britannica_, 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 affirms
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
instance of a man who undertook to write
books on subjects of which he knew
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 Animated Nature
can still be read with pleasure from the
charm of the author's style.

Some authors are so careless in the
construction 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 Review proved the _M<e'>moires
de Louis XVIII_. (published in 1832) to
be a mendacious compilation from the
M<e'>moires de Bachaumont by giving examples
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 Langres, La Luzerne; of
Rhodez, Seignelay-Colbert; of Gast, Le
Tria; of Blois, 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.

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 contractions,
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 association
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 subsequent 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
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, however,
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 government
of the United States. Bonaparte
did not agree with Lafayette's views, and
the latter told him that ``he was desirous
of having the little phial broke over his
head.'' This sainte ampulle, or holy
vessel, was an important object in the
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 themselves,
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
estroilles_.'' From this we might imagine
that the holy Ampulla was a person; but
the clue to the whole confusion is to be
found in the last word of the sentence.
As the French language does not contain
any such word as estroilles, 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
Descriptive 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. However
much trouble may be taken to suppress
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
Fortunes of Nigel (chapter 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 without
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 which the 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
wrote in a review of Southey's edition
of the Pilgrim's Progress: ``Nay, even
Spenser himself, though assuredly one of
the greatest poets that ever lived, could
not succeed in the attempt to make allegory
interesting. . . . One unpardonable
fault, the fault of tediousness, pervades
the whole of the Fairy Queen. We become
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.''[5] Macaulay knew well
enough that the Blatant Beast did not
die in the poem as Spenser left it.

[5] Edinburgh Review, vol. liv. (1831), p. 452.

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
nonsense is sometimes concocted between
them. A proper name is seldom given
correctly in a daily paper, and it is a
frequently heard remark that no notice of
an event is published in which an error in
the names or qualifications 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. 18th, 1871) 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
Thomasina.'' He is perhaps the same
person who remarked on the late Mr.
Robertson's fondness for monosyllables
as titles for 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
with which bits of news are printed
before they have been authenticated. Each
editor wishes to get the start of his
neighbour, 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
congratulated upon the title which had been
conferred upon him. Another source of
blundering is the attempt to answer an
opponent before his argument is thoroughly
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 probably
introduced into England in the fifth
century. Soon afterwards another gentleman
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
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 Hall<e'>'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
confused 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
correspondence 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 indifferent
justice.'' A correspondent in Glasgow,
who supposed indifferent to mean inferior,
wrote to complain at the insinuation
that a Scotch jury would not do its
duty. The editor of the Times had little
difficulty in answering this by referring to
the prayer for the Church militant, where
are the words, ``Grant unto her [the
Queen's] whole 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 hackneyed
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
generally 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 Chelsea
china vase was presented with the
following description: ``In England no
regular hard porcelain is made, but a
soft porcelain of great beauty is produced
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 immaculate
often blunder when sitting in judgment
on the sins of authors. They are
frequently 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
translation of the Arabian Nights, by
Jonathan Scott, LL.D., which was first
published in 1811. 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
reprint of Galt's Lives of Players, complained
that Mr. Galt had not brought his book
down to the date of publication, being
ignorant of the fact that John Galt died
as long ago as 1839. The reviewer of
Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare committed
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
story of Lord Campbell and his criticism
of Romeo and 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
circulation 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.

THE 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 English, traduced in French, and overset
in Dutch. Colton, the author of Lacon,
mentions a half-starved German at Cambridge
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
literature, 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
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 hir<u?>do, and the
translator, overlooking the mark of
contraction, declared to the astonished world
on the authority of Plato that the _horse-
leech_ instead of the swallow was the harbinger
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'Archev<e^>que de Cantorbery
avait fait placer des canons dans
les stalles de la cath<e'>drale.'' He quite
overlooked the word chanoines, which he
should have used. This use of a word
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 Damn<e'> et Calilve, meaning the
Hitopodesa, or Pilpay's Fables. His
translator calls them the fables of the damned
Calilve. This is on a par with De
Quincey's specimen of a French Abb<e'>'s
Greek. Having to paraphrase the Greek
words ``<gr 'Hrodotos kai iaxwn>'' (Herodotus
even while Ionicizing), the Frenchman
rendered them ``Herodote et aussi Jazon,''
thus creating a new author, one Jazon.
In the Present State of Peru, a compilation
from the Mercurio Peruano, 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 of John Knox: ``He was so active
and vigorous a preacher that he was like
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 transformed
the Firth 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 surprised
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
M<u:>ller'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, but
nevertheless 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 converting
the German word W<a:>lsch, 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
(terrestrial 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 _un
lapin du pays de Galles_. 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 Cibber's
play of Love's Last Shift she called it _La
derni<e!>re chemise de l'amour_. A like
translation of Congreve's Mourning Bride is
given in good faith in the first edition of
Peignot's Manuel du Bibliophile, 1800,
where it is described as _L'<E'>pouse de
Matin_; and the translation which Walpole
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 Frapp<e'> ou Mademoiselle,
and the Independent Whig into _La
Perruque Ind<e'>pendante_.

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<e'>,'' gives from the
Biblioth<e!>que Universelle the extraordinary
translation of the title of Mr. Barrie's
comedy, Walker, London, as _Londres qui
se prom<e!>ne_.