Literary Blunders Part 4

It is scarcely fair to make capital out

of the blunders of booksellers' catalogues, which are often printed in a great hurry, and cannot possibly possess the advantage of correction which a book does. But one or two examples may be given without any censure being intended on the booksellers.

In a French catalogue the works of the famous philosopher Robert Boyle appeared under the following singular French form: BOY (le), Chymista scepticus vel dubia et paradoxa chymico-physica, &c.

''Mr. Tul. Cicero's Epistles'' looks strange, but the mistake is but small.

The very natural blunder respecting the t.i.tle of Sh.e.l.ley's _Prometheus Unbound_ actually did occur; and, what is more, it was expected by Theodore Hook. This is an accurate copy of the description in the catalogue of a year or two back:--

''Sh.e.l.ley's Prometheus _Unbound_.

---- another copy, _in whole calf_.''

and these are Hook's lines:--

''Sh.e.l.ley styles his new poem 'Prometheus Unbound,'

And 'tis like to remain so while time circles round;

For surely an age would be spent in the finding A reader so weak as _to pay for the binding_.''

When books are cla.s.sified in a catalogue the compiler must be peculiarly on his guard if he has the t.i.tles only and not the books before him. Sometimes instances of incorrect cla.s.sification show gross ignorance, as in the instance quoted in the _Athen

Caesoris. _Subject_, Religion.'' Still better is the auctioneer's entry of P. V. Maroni's _The Opera_. Authors, however, are usually so fond of fanciful ear-catching t.i.tles, that every excuse must be made for the cataloguer, who mistakes their meaning, and takes them in their literal signification.

Who can reprove too severely the cla.s.sifier who placed Swinburne's _Under the Microscope_ in his cla.s.s of _Optical Instruments_, or treated Ruskin's _Notes on the Construction of Sheetfolds_ as a work on agricultural appliances? A late instance of an amusing miscla.s.sification is reported from Germany. In the _Orientalische

Bibliographie_, Mr. Rider Haggard's wonderful story _King Solomon's Mines_ is entered as a contribution to ''Alttestamentliche Litteratur.''

The elaborate work by Careme, _Le Patissier Pittoresque_ (1842), which contains designs for confectioners, deceived the bookseller from its plates of pavilions, temples, etc., into supposing it to be a book on architecture, and he accordingly placed it under that heading in his catalogue.

Mr. Daydon Jackson gives several instances of false cla.s.sification in his _Guide to the Literature of Botany_, and remarks that some authors contrive t.i.tles seemingly of set purpose to entrap the unwary. He instances a fine example in the case of Bishop Alexander Ewing's _Feamainn Earraghaidhiell: Argylls.h.i.+re Seaweeds_ (Glasgow, 1872. 8vo). To enhance the delusion, the coloured wrapper is ornamented with some of the common marine alg

Old Collector_. By W. H. Hyett, F.R.S.

Instead of a popular work on the Mediterranean flora by a scientific man, as might reasonably be expected, this is a volume of translations from the Italian and Latin poets. It is scarcely fair to blame the compiler of the _Bibliotheca Historio-Naturalis_ for having ranked both these works among scientific treatises.

The English cataloguer who treated as a botanical book Dr. Garnett's selection from Coventry Patmore's poems, ent.i.tled _Florilegium Amantis_, could claim less excuse for his blunder than the German had. These misleading t.i.tles are no new invention, and the great bibliographer Haller was deceived into including the t.i.tle of James Howell's _Dendrologia, or Dodona's Grove_ (1640), in his _Bibliotheca Botanica_. Professor Otis H. Robinson contributed a very interesting paper on the ''t.i.tles of Books'' to the _Special Report on Public Libraries in the United States of America_ (1876), in which he deals very fully with this difficulty of misleading t.i.tles, and some of his preliminary remarks are very much to the point. He writes:--

''No act of a man's life requires more practical common sense than the naming of his book. If he would make a grocer's sign or an invoice of a cellar of goods or a city directory, he uses no metaphors; his pen does not hesitate for the plainest word. He must make himself understood by common men. But if he makes a book the case is different.

It must have the charm of a pleasing t.i.tle. If there is nothing new within, the back at least must be novel and taking.

He tortures his imagination for something which will predispose the reader in its favour. Mr. Parker writes a series of biographical sketches, and calls it _Morning Stars of the New World_. Somebody prepares seven religious essays, binds them up in a book, and calls it _Seven Stormy Sundays_. Mr. H. T. Tuckerman makes a book of essays on various subjects, and calls it _The Optimist_; and then devotes several pages of preface to an argument, lexicon in hand, proving that the applicability of the term optimist is 'obvious.'

An editor, at intervals of leisure, indulges his true poetic taste for the pleasure of his

friends, or the entertainment of an occasional audience. Then his book appears, ent.i.tled not _Miscellaneous Poems_, but _Asleep in the Sanctum_, by A. A. Hopkins.

Sometimes, not satisfied with one enigma, another is added. Here we have _The Great Iron Wheel; or, Republicanism Backwards and Christianity Reversed_, by J. R.

Graves. These t.i.tles are neither new nor scarce, nor limited to any particular cla.s.s of books. Every case, almost every shelf, in every library contain such. They are as old as the art of book-making. David's lamentation over Saul and Jonathan was called _The Bow_. A single word in the poem probably suggested the name. Three of the orations of

The list of bibliographical blunders might be indefinitely extended, but the subject is somewhat technical, and the above few instances will give a sufficient indication of the pitfalls which lie in the way of the bibliographer--a worker who needs universal knowledge if he is to wend his way safely through the snares in his path.

CHAPTER V.

LISTS OF ERRATA.

THE errata of the early printed books are not numerous, and this fact is easily accounted for when we recollect that these books were superintended in their pa.s.sage through the press by scholars such as the Alduses, Andreas, Bishop of Aleria, Campa.n.u.s Perottus, the Stephenses, and others.

It is said that the first book with a printed errata is the edition of _Juvenal_, with notes of Merula, printed by Gabriel Pierre, at Venice, in 1478; previously the mistakes had been corrected by the pen. One of the longest lists of errata on record, which occupies fifteen folio pages, is in the edition of the works of Picus of Mirandula, printed by k.n.o.blauch, at Strasburg, in 1507. A worse case of blundering will be found in a little book of only one

hundred and seventy-two pages, ent.i.tled _Miss

The author, feeling that such a gross case of blundering required some excuse or explanation, accounted for the misprints by a.s.serting that the devil drenched the ma.n.u.script in the kennel, making it almost illegible, and then obliged the printer to misread it. We may be allowed to believe that the fiend who did all the mischief was the printer's ''devil.''

Cardinal Bellarmin tried hard to get his works printed correctly, but without success, and in 1608 he was forced to publish at Ingolstadt a volume ent.i.tled _Recognitio librorum omnium Roberti Belarmini_, in which he printed eighty-eight pages of errata of his Controversies.

Edward Leigh, in his thin folio volume ent.i.tled _On Religion and Learning_, 1656, was forced to add two closely printed leaves of errata.

Sometimes apparent blunders have been intentionally made; thus, to escape the decree of the Inquisition that the words fatum and fata should not be used in

any work, a certain author printed _facta_ in his book, and added in the errata ''_for_ facta _read_ fata.''

In dealing with our own older literature we find a considerable difference in degree of typographical correctness; thus the old plays of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are often marvels of inaccuracy, and while books of the same date are usually supplied with tables of errata, plays were issued without any such helps to correction. This to some extent is to be accounted for by the fact that many of these plays were surrept.i.tious publications, or, at all events, printed in a hurry, without care. The late Mr. Halliwell Phillipps, in his curious privately printed volume (_A Dictionary of Misprints_, 1887), writes: ''Such tests were really a thousandfold more necessary in editions of plays, but they are practically non-existent in the latter, the brief one which is prefixed to Dekker's _Satiro-Mastix_, 1602, being nearly the only example that is to be found in any that appeared during the literary career of the great dramatist.''

In other branches of literature it is

evident that some care was taken to escape misprints, either by the correction of the printer's reader or of the author. Some of the excuses made for misprints in our old books are very amusing. In a little English book of twenty-six leaves printed at Douay in 1582, and ent.i.tled _A true reporte of the death and martyrdome of M. Campion Jesuite and Preiste, and M.

Sherwin and M. Bryan Preistes, at Tiborne the first of December_ 1581, is this notice at the end:--

''Good reader, pardon all faultes escaped in the printing and beare with the woorkmans.h.i.+p of a strainger.''

Many of Nicholas Breton's tracts were issued surrept.i.tiously, and he protested that many pieces which he had never written were falsely ascribed to him. _The Bower of Delights_ was published without the author's sanction, and the printer (or publisher) Richard Jones made the following address ''to the Gentlemen Readers'' on the blunders which had been made in the book:--

''Pardon mee (good Gentlemen) of my presumption, & protect me, I pray you,

against those Cavellers and findfaults, that never like of any thing that they see printed, though it be never so well compiled. And where you happen to find fault, impute it to bee committed by the Printers negligence, then (otherwise) by any ignorance in the author: and especially in A 3, about the middest of the page, for LIME OR LEAD I pray you read LINE OR LEAD. So shall your poore Printer haue just cause hereafter to be more carefull, and acknowledge himselfe most bounden (at all times) to do your service to the utmost of his power.

''Yours R. J., PRINTER.''

A little scientific book, ent.i.tled _The Making and use of the Geometricall Instrument called a Sector . . . by Thomas Hood_, 1598, has a list of errata headed _Faultes escaped_, with this note of the author or printer:--

''Gentle reader, I pray you excuse these faults, because I finde by experience, that it is an harder matter to print these mathematicall books trew, then bookes of other discourse.''

Arthur Hopton's _Baculum Geod

''The Printer to the Reader.

''For errours past or faults that scaped be, Let this collection give content to thee: A worke of art, the grounds to us unknowne, May cause us erre, thoughe all our skill be showne.

When points and letters, doe containe the sence, The wise may halt, yet doe no great offence.

Then pardon here, such faults that do befall, The next edition makes amends for all.''

Thomas Heywood, the voluminous dramatist, added to his _Apology for Actors_ (1612) an interesting address to the printer of his tract, which, besides drawing attention to the printer's dislike of his errors being called attention to in a table of errata, is singularly valuable for its reference to Shakespeare's annoyance at Jaggard's treatment of him by attributing to his pen Heywood's poems from _Great Britain's Troy_.

''To my approved good Friend, ''MR. NICHOLAS OKES.

''The infinite faults escaped in my

booke of _Britaines Troy_ by the negligence of the printer, as the misquotations, mistaking the sillables, misplacing halfe lines, coining of strange and never heard of words, these being without number, when I would have taken a particular account of the _errata_, the printer answered me, hee would not publish his owne disworkemans.h.i.+p, but rather let his owne fault lye upon the necke of the author. And being fearefull that others of his quality had beene of the same nature and condition, and finding you, on the contrary, so carefull and industrious, so serious and laborious to doe the author all the rights of the presse, I could not choose but gratulate your honest indeavours with this short remembrance. Here, likewise, I must necessarily insert a manifest injury done me in that worke, by taking the two epistles of Paris to Helen, and Helen to Paris, and printing them in a lesse volume under the name of another, which may put the world in opinion I might steale them from him, and hee, to doe himselfe right, hath since published them in his owne name; but as I must ac

knowledge my lines not worthy his patronage under whom he hath publisht them, so the author, I know, much offended with M. Jaggard (that altogether unknowne to him) presumed to make so bold with his name. These and the like dishonesties I knowe you to bee cleere of; and I could wish but to bee the happy author of so worthy a worke as I could willingly commit to your care and workmans.h.i.+p.

''Yours ever, THOMAS HEYWOOD.''

In the eighteenth century printers and authors had become hardened in their sins, and seldom made excuses for the errors of the press, but in the seventeenth century explanations were frequent.

Silva.n.u.s Morgan, in his _Horologiographia Optica. Dialling Universall and Particular, Speculative and Practicall, London_ 1652, comes before his readers with these remarks on the errata:--

''Reader I having writ this some years since, while I was a childe in Art, and by this appear to be little more, for want of a review hath these faults, which I desire thee to mend with thy pen, and if there

be any errour in art, as in chap. 17 which is only true at the time of the Equinoctiall, take that for an oversight, and where thou findest equilibra read equilibrio, and in the dedication (in some copies) read Robert Bateman for Thomas, and side for signe and know that _Optima prima cadunt, pessimus

The list of errata in Joseph Glanvill's _Essays on several important subjects in Philosophy and Religion_ (1676) is prefixed by this note:--

''The Reader is desired to take notice of the following Errours of the Press, some of which are so near in sound, to the words of the author, that they may easily be mistaken for his.''

The next two books to be mentioned were published in the same year--1679.

The n.o.ble author referred to in the first is that Roger Palmer who had the dishonour of being the husband of Charles II.'s notorious mistress, the Countess of Castlemaine. Fortunately for the Earl she no longer bore his name, as she was created d.u.c.h.ess of Cleveland in 1670. Professor De Morgan was inclined to doubt Lord

Castlemaine's authors.h.i.+p, but the following remarks by Joseph Moxon seem to prove that the peer did produce a rough draft of some kind:--