Literary Blunders Part 8

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 astonis.h.i.+ng calculation--

'' 'Tis two, 'tis fifty and fifty 'tis, 'tis five.''

This is as bad as the blunder of the printer of the Hamps.h.i.+re 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 pa.s.sage.

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 circ.u.mstances 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 Mult.i.tude_ 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

''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

However, I propose now not to attempt the defence, or, what might be worth the effort, the a.n.a.lysis 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--

s tn Dis turannd' kprswn ba>.

''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 sh.o.r.es are empires, changed in all save thee-- a.s.syria, 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 ma.n.u.script, it was found that he was right.

The blunder, which had escaped Byron's own eyes, was corrected, and the third line was printed as originally written:--

''Thy waters wash'd them power while they were free.

The carelessness of printers seems to 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

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 subst.i.tuted 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 sp.a.w.n'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 pa.s.sage, 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 pa.s.sages, 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

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, a.s.serted 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 Sat.u.r.day 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 Sat.u.r.day night he overhauled his pile of octavo Bibles, and found an imperfect duplicate of the supposed unique ''wicked'' Bible. When the owner came for his book on Monday morning he was shown the duplicate, and agreed, as his copy was not unique, to take

25 for it. The imperfect copy was sold to the British Museum for eighteen guineas, and Mr. Winter Jones was actually so fortunate as to obtain subsequently the missing twenty-three leaves. A third copy came into the hands of Mr. Francis Fry, of Bristol, who sold it to Dr. Bandinel for the Bodleian Library. A fourth copy is in the Euing Library, at Glasgow; a fifth fell into the hands of Mr. Henry J.

Atkinson, of Gunnersbury,in 1883; and

a sixth copy was picked up in Ireland by a gentleman of Coventry In 1884.