[7] Notes and Queries, 7th Series, viii. 73.



Another proof of the general practice will be found in N. Breton's The Wit of Wit (1599):—

"What faultes are escaped in the printing, finde by discretion, and excuse the Author by other worke that let him from attendance to the Presse; non h che non s. N. B. Gent.''

At the end of Nash's dedication "To his Readers,'' Lenten Stuffe (1599), is this interesting statement: "Apply it for me for I am called away to correct the faults of the press, that escaped in my absence from the printing house.''

Richard Brathwaite, when publishing his Strappado for the Divell (1615), made an excuse for not having seen all the proofs. The whole note is well worthy of reproduction:—

"Upon the Errata.

"Gentlemen (humanum est errare), to confirme which position, this my booke (as many other are) hath his share of errors; so as I run ad prlum tanquam ad prlium, in typos quasi in scippos; but my comfort is if I be strappadoed by the multiplicite of my errors, it is but answerable to my title: so as I may seem to diuine by my style, what I was to indure by the presse. Yet know judicious disposed gentlemen, that the intricacie of the copie, and the absence of the author from many important proofes were occasion of these errors, which defects (if they bee supplied by your generous convenience and curtuous disposition) I doe vowe to satisfie your affectionate care with a more serious surueigh in my next impression. . . . For other errors as the misplacing of commaes, colons, and periods (which as they are in euerie page obvious, so many times they invert the sence), I referre to your discretion (judicious gentle-men) whose lenity may sooner supply them, then all my industry can portray them.''

In The Mastive, or Young Whelpe of the Olde Dogge, Epigrams and Satyres (1615), an anonymous work of Henry Peacham, we read:—

"The faultes escaped in the Printing (or any other omission) are to be excused by reason of the authors absence from the Presse, who thereto should have given more due instructions.''

Dr. Brinsley Nicholson brought forward two very interesting passages on the correcting of proofs from old plays. The first, which looks very like an allusion to the custom, is from the 1601 edition of Ben Jonson's Every Man in his Humour (act. ii., sc. 3), where Lorenzo, junior, says, "My father had the proving of your copy, some houre before I saw it.'' The second is from Fletcher's The Nice Valour (1624 or 1625), act. iv., sc. 1. Lapet says to his servant (the clown Goloshio), "So bring me the last proof, this is corrected''; and Goloshio having gone and returned, the following ensues:—

Lap. What says my Printer now? Clown. Here's your last Proof, Sir. You shall have perfect Books now in a twinkling.[8]

[8]2 Notes and Queries, 7th Series, viii. 253.



The following address, which contains a curious excuse of Dr. Daniel Featley for not having corrected the proofs of his book The Romish Fisher Caught in his own Net (1624), is very much to the point:—

"I entreat the courteous reader to understand that the greater part of the book was printed in the time of the great frost; when by reason that the Thames was shut up, I could not conveniently procure the proofs to be brought unto mee, before they were wrought off; whereupon it fell out that many very grosse escapes passed the press, and (which was the worst fault of all) the third part is left unpaged.''

As a later example we may cite from Sir Peter Leycester's Historical Antiquities (1673), where we find this note: "Reader, By reason of the author's absence, several faults have escaped the press: those which are the most material thou art desir'd to amend, and to pardon them all.''

Printed mistakes are usually considered by the sufferers matters of somewhat serious importance; and we picture to ourselves an author stalking up and down his room and tearing his hair when he first discovers them; but Benserade, the French poet, was able to make a joke of the subject. This is the rondeau which he placed at the end of his version of Les Metamorphoses d'Ovide:—

"Pour moi, parmi des fautes innombrables, Je n'en connais que deux considrables, Et dont je fais ma dclaration, C'est l'entreprise et l'excution; A mon avis fautes irrparables Dans ce volume.''

According to the Scaligerana, Cardan's treatise De Subtilitate, printed by Vascosan in 1557, does not contain a single misprint; but, on the whole, it may be very seriously doubted whether an immaculate edition of any work ever issued from the press. The story is well known of the serious attempt made by the celebrated Glasgow printers Foulis to free their edition of Horace from any chance of error. They caused the proof-sheets after revision to be hung up at the gate of the University, with the offer of a reward to any one who discovered a misprint. In spite of all this care there are, according to Dibdin, six uncorrected errors in this edition.

According to Isaac Disraeli, the goal of freedom from blunders was nearly reached by Dom Joze Souza, with the assistance of Didot in 1817, when he published his magnificent edition of As Lusiadas of Camoens. However, an uncorrected error was discovered in some copies, occasioned by the misplacing of one of the letters in the word Lusitano. A like case occurred a few years ago at an eminent London printer's. A certain book was about to be printed, and instructions were issued that special care was to be taken with the printing. It was read over by the chief reader, and all seemed to have gone well, when a mistake was discovered upon the title-page.

It may be mentioned here, with respect to tables of errata, that they are frequently neglected in subsequent books. There are many books in which the same blunders have been repeated in various editions, although they had been pointed out in an early issue.



CHAPTER VI.

MISPRINTS.

OF all literary blunders misprints are the most numerous, and no one who is conversant with the inside of a printing-office will be surprised at this; in fact, he is more likely to be struck with the freedom from error of the innumerable productions issued from the press than to be surprised at the blunders which he may come across. The possibilities of error are endless, and a frequent cause is to be found in the final correction, when a line may easily get transposed. On this account many authors will prefer to leave a trivial error, such as a wrong stop, in a final revise rather than risk the possibilities of blundering caused by the unlocking of the type. Of course a large number of misprints are far from amusing, while a sense of fun will sometimes be obtained by a trifling transposition of letters. Authors must be on the alert for misprints, although ordinary misspellings should not be left for them by the printer's reader; but they are usually too intent on the structure of their own sentences to notice these misprints. The curious point is that a misprint which has passed through proof and revise unnoticed by reader and author will often be detected immediately the perfected book is placed in the author's hands. The blunder which has hitherto remained hidden appears to start out from the page, to the author's great disgust. One reason why misprints are overlooked is that every word is a sort of pictorial object to the eye. We do not spell the word, but we guess what it is by the first and last letters and its length, so that a wrong letter in the body of the word is easily overlooked.

It is an important help to the editor of a corrupt text to know what misprints are the most probable, and for this purpose the late Mr. Halliwell Phillipps printed for private circulation A Dictionary of Misprints, found in printed books of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, compiled for the use of verbal critics and especially for those who are engaged in editing the works of Shakespeare and our other early Dramatists (1887). In the note at the end of this book Mr. Phillipps writes: "The readiest access to those evidences will be found in the old errata, and it will be seen, on an examination of the latter, that misprints are abundant in final and initial letters, in omissions, in numerals, and in verbal transpositions; but unquestionably the most frequent in pronouns, articles, conjunctions, and prepositions. When we come to words outside the four latter, there is a large proportion of examples that are either of rare occurrence or unique. Some of the blunders that are recorded are sufficiently grotesque: e.g., Ile starte thence poore for Ile starve their poore,—he formaketh what for the fire maketh hot. It must, indeed, be confessed that the conjectural emendator, if he dispenses with the quasi-authority of contemporary precedents, has an all but unlimited range for the exercise of his ingenuity, the unsettled spellings of our ancestors rendering almost any emendation, however extravagant, a typographical possibility. A large number of their misprints could only have been perpetrated in the midst of the old orthographies. Under no other conditions could ice have been converted into ye, air into time, home into honey, attain into at any, sun into sinner, stone into story, deem into deny, dire into dry, the old spellings of the italicised words being respectively, yce, yee, ayre, tyme, home, honie, attaine, att anie, sunne, sinner, stone, storie, deeme, denie, dire, drie. The form of the long s should also be sometimes taken into consideration, for it could only have been owing to its use that such a word as some could have been misprinted four, niece for wife, prefer for preserve, find for fifth, the variant old spellings being foure, neese, preferre.''

Among the instances of misprints given in this Dictionary may be noticed the following: actions for axioms, agreement for argument, all-eyes for allies, aloud for allowed, banish'd for ravish'd, cancel for cantel, candle for caudle, culsedness for ourselves, eye-sores for oysters, felicity for facility, Hector for nectar, intending for indenting, John for Jehu, Judges for Indies, scene for seene, sixteen for sexton, and for sixty-one, tops for toy, Venus for Venice.

In connection with this work may be mentioned the late Mr. W. Blades's Shakspere and Typography, being an attempt to show Shakspere's personal connection with, and technical knowledge of the Art of Printing, also Remarks upon some common typographical errors with especial reference to the text of Shakspere (1872), a small work of very great interest and value. Mr. Blades writes: "Now these typographical blunders will, in the majority of cases, be found to fall into one of three classes, viz.:—

"Errors of the ear;

"Errors of the eye; and

"Errors from what, in printers' language, is called 'a foul case.'

"I. Errors of the Ear.—Every compositor when at work reads over a few words of his copy, and retains them in his mind until his fingers have picked up the various types belonging to them. While the memory is thus repeating to itself a phrase, it is by no means unnatural, nor in practice is it uncommon, for some word or words to become unwittingly supplanted in the mind by others which are similar in sound. It was simply a mental transposition of syllables that made the actor exclaim,—

'My Lord, stand back and let the parson cough '

instead of

'My Lord, stand back and let the coffin pass' Richard III., i. 2.

And, by a slight confusion of sound, the word mistake might appear in type as must take:—

'So you mistake your husbands.' Hamlet, iii. 2.

Again, idle votarist would easily become idol votarist—

'I am no idle votarist.'—Timon, iv. 3;

and long delays become transformed to longer days—

'This done, see that you take no long delays. Titus, iv. 2.

From the time of Gutenberg until now this similarity of sound has been a fruitful source of error among printers.

"II. Errors of the Eye.—The eye often misleads the hand of the compositor, especially if he be at work upon a crabbed manuscript or worn-out reprint. Take out a dot, and This time goes manly becomes

'This tune goes manly.' Macbeth, iv. 3.

So a clogged letter turns What beast was't then? into What boast was't then?—

'Lady M. What beast was't then, That made you break this enterprise to me?' Macbeth, i. 7.

Examples might be indefinitely multiplied from many an old book, so I will quote but one more instance. The word preserve spelt with a long s might without much carelessness be misread preferre (I Henry VI., iii. 2), and thus entirely alter the sense.

"III. Errors from a 'foul case.'—This class of errors is of an entirely different kind from the two former. They came from within the man, and were from the brain; this is from without, mechanical in its origin as well as in its commission. As many readers may never have seen the inside of a printing office, the following short explanation may be found useful: A 'case' is a shallow wooden drawer, divided into numerous square receptacles called 'boxes,' and into each box is put one sort of letter only, say all a's, or b's, or c's. The compositor works with two of these cases slanting up in front of him, and when, from a shake, a slip, or any other accident, the letters become misplaced the result is technically known as 'a foul case.' A further result is, that the fingers of the workman, although going to the proper box, will often pick up a wrong letter, he being entirely unconscious the while of the fact.

"Now, if we can discover any law which governs this abnormal position of the types —if, for instance, we can predicate that the letter o, when away from its own, will be more frequently found in the box appropriated to letter a than any other; that b has a general tendency to visit the l box, and l the v box; and that d, if away from home, will be almost certainly found among the n's; if we can show this, we shall then lay a good foundation for the re-examination of many corrupt or disputed readings in the text of Shakspere, some of which may receive fresh life from such a treatment.

"To start with, let us obtain a definite idea of the arrangement of the types in both 'upper' and 'lower' case in the time of Shakspere—a time when long s's, with the logotypes ct, ff, fi, ffi, ffl, sb, sh, si, sl, ss, ssi, ssl, and others, were in daily use.''

Mr. Blades then refers to Moxon's Mechanical Exercises, 1683, which contains a representation of the compositors' cases in the seventeenth century, which may be presumed to be the same in form as those used in Shakespeare's day. Various alterations have been made in the arrangement of the cases, with the object of placing the letters more conveniently. The present form is shown on pp. 110, 111.

Mr. Blades proceeds: "The chief cause of a 'foul' case was the same in Shakspere's time as now; and no one interested in the subject should omit visiting a printing office, where he could personally inspect the operation. Suppose a compositor at work 'distributing'; the upper and lower cases, one above the other, slant at a considerable angle towards him, and as the types fall quickly from his fingers they form conical heaps in their respective boxes, spreading out in a manner very similar to the sand in the lower half of an hour-glass. Now, if the compositor allows his case to become too full, the topmost letters in each box will certainly slide down into the box below, and occasionally, though rarely, into one of the side boxes. When such letters escape notice, they necessarily cause erroneous spelling, and sometimes entirely change the whole meaning of a sentence. But now comes the important question: Are errors of this kind ever discovered, and especially do they occur in Shakspere? Doubtless they do, but to what extent a long and careful examination alone can

UPPER CASE. A B C D E F G H I K L M N O P Q R S T V W X Y Z U J X Y Z U J A B C D E F G 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 H I K L M N O 8 9 0 k P Q R S T V W

LOWER CASE. & [ ] j ' Thin and ( ) ? ! ; Leaders. fl middling spaces. — e Leaders. ff b c d i s f g ffl Leaders. fi ffi En Em l m n h o y p , w quads. quads. Hair spaces. z q : v u t thick spaces a r Large quods. x .

show. As examples merely, and to show the possible change in sense made by a single wrong letter, I will quote one or two instances:—

'Were they not forc'd with those that should be ours, We might have met them darefull, beard to beard.' Macbeth, v. 5.[9]

[9] Collier's MS. corrector substituted farc'd for forc'd.

The word forced should be read farced, the letter o having evidently dropped down into a box. The enemy's ranks were not forced with Macbeth's followers, but farced or filled up. In Murrell's Cookery, 1632, this identical word is used several times; we there see that a farced leg of mutton was when the meat was all taken out of the skin, mixed with herbs, etc., and then the skin filled up again.

'I come to thee for charitable license . . . To booke our dead.' Henry V., iv. 7.

So all the copies, but 'to book' is surely a modern commercial phrase, and the Herald here asked leave simply to 'look,' or to examine, the dead for the purpose of giving honourable burial to their men of rank. In the same sense Sir W. Lucie, in the First Part of Henry VI., says:—

'I come to know what prisoners thou hast tane, And to survey the bodies of the dead.'

We cannot imagine an officer with pen, inkhorn, and paper, at a period when few could write, 'booking' the dead. We may, I think, take it for granted that here the letter b had fallen over into the l box.''

Another point to bear in mind is the existence of such logotypes as fi, si, etc., so that, as Mr. Blades says, "the change of light into sight must not be considered as a question of a single letter—of s in the l box,'' because the box containing si is far away from the l box, and their contents could not well get mixed.

To these instances given by Mr. Blades may be added a very interesting correction suggested to the author some years ago by a Shakespearian student. When Isabella visits her brother in prison, the cowardly Claudio breaks forth in complaint, and paints a vivid picture of the horrors of the damned:—

"Ay, but to die, and go we know not where; To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot; This sensible warm motion to become A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice; To be imprisoned in the viewless winds, And blown with restless violence round about The pendent world; or to be worse than worst Of those that lawless and incertain thoughts Imagine howling!—'tis too horrible! The weariest and most loathed worldly life That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment Can lay on nature, is a paradise To what we fear of death.'' Measure for Measure, act iii., sc. 1.

We have here, in the expression "delighted spirit,'' a difficulty which none of the commentators have as yet been able to explain. Warburton said that the adjective meant "accustomed to ease and delights,'' but this was not a very successful guess, although Steevens adopted it. Sir Thomas Hanmer altered delighted to dilated, and Dr. Johnson mentions two suggested emendations, one being benighted and the other delinquent. None of these suggestions can be corroborated by a reference to the plans of the printers' cases, but it will be seen that the one now proposed is much strengthened by the position of the boxes in those plans. The suggested word is deleted, which accurately describes the spirits as destroyed, or blotted out of existence. The word is common in the printing office, and it was often used in literature.

If we think only of the recognised spelling of the word delighted we shall find that there are three letters to alter, but if we take the older spelling, delited, the change is very easily made, for it will be noticed that the letters in the i box might easily tumble over into the e box.

There is a very curious description of hell in Bede's Ecclesiastical History, where the author speaks of "deformed spirits'' who leap from excess of heat to cutting cold, and it is not improbable that Shakespeare may have had this passage in his mind when he put these words into the mouth of Claudio.[10]

[10] An article on this point will be found in The Antiquary, vol. viii. (1883), p. 200.



It is taken for granted that the compositor is not likely to put his hand into the wrong box, so that if a wrong letter is used, it must have fallen out of its place.

An important class of misprints owes its origin to this misplacement; but, as noticed by Mr. Blades, there are other classes, such as misspellings caused by the compositor's ignorance or misunderstanding. We must remember that the printer has to work fast, and if he does not recognise a word he is very likely to turn it into something he does understand. Thus the title of a paper in the Philosophical Transactions was curiously changed in an advertisement, and the Calamites, a species of fossil plants of the coal measures, with but slight change appeared as "The True Fructification of Calamities.'' This is a blunder pretty sure to be made, and within a few days of writing this, the author has seen a reference to "Notes on some Pennsylvanian Calamities.'' As an instance of less excusable ignorance, we shall often find the word gauge printed as guage.

One of the slightest of misprints was the cause of an odd query in the second series of Notes and Queries, which, by the way, has never yet been answered. In John Hall's Hor Vaciv (1646) there is this passage, alluding to the table game called tick-tack. The author wrote: "Tick tack sets a man's intentions on their guard. Errors in this and war can be but once amended''; but the printer joined the two words "and war'' into one, and this puzzled the correspondent of the Notes and Queries (v. 272). He asked: "Who can quote another passage from any author containing this word? I have hunted after it in many dictionaries without avail. It means, I suppose, antagonism or contest, and resembles in form many Anglo-Saxon words which never found their way into English proper.'' The blunder was not discovered, and another correspondent wrote: "The word andwar would surely modernise into hand-war. Is not andirons (handirons) a parallel word of the same genus?' In the General Index we find "Andwar, an old English word.'' So much for the long life of a very small blunder.

A very similar blunder to this of "andwar'' occurs in Select Remains of the learned John Ray with his Life by the late William Derham, which was published in 1760 with a dedication to the Earl of Macclesfield, President of the Royal Society, signed by George Scott. In Derham's Life of Ray a list of books read by Ray in 1667 is printed from a letter to Dr. Lister, and one of these is printed "The Business about great Rakes.'' Mr. Scott must have been puzzled with this title; but he was evidently a man not to be daunted by a difficulty, for he added a note to this effect: "They are now come into general use among the farmers, and are called drag rakes.'' Who would suspect after this that the title is merely a misprint, and that the pamphlet refers to the proceedings of Valentine Greatrakes, the famous stroker, who claimed equal power with the kings and queens of England in curing the king's evil? This blunder will be found uncorrected in Dr. Lankester's Memorials of John Ray, published by the Ray Society in 1846, and does not seem to have been suspected until the Rev. Richard Hooper called attention to it a short time ago in Notes and Queries.[11]

[11] Seventh Series, iv. 225.



An amusing instance of the invention of a new word was afforded when the printer produced the words "a noticeable fact in thisms'' instead of "this MS.''

The misplacement of a stop, or the transposition of a letter, or the dropping out of one, will make sad havoc of the sense of a passage, as when we read of the immoral works of Milton. It was, however, a very complimentary misprint by which it was made to appear that a certain town had a remarkably high rate of morality. In the address to Dr. Watts by J. Standen prefixed to that author's Hor Lyric (Leeds, 1788) this same misprint occurs, to the serious confusion of Mr. Standen's meaning,— "With thought sublime And high sonorous words, thou sweetly sing'st To thy immoral lyre.''

On another page of this same book Watts' "daring flight'' is transposed to darling flight.

In Miss Yonge's Dynevor Terrace a portion of one word was joined on to another with the awkward result that a young lady is described "without stretched arms.''

The odd results of the misplacement of stops must be familiar to most readers; but it is not often that they are so serious as in the following instances. William Sharp, the celebrated line engraver, believed in the Divine mission of the madman Richard Brothers, and engraved a portrait of that worthy with the following inscription beneath it: "Fully believing this to be the man appointed by God, I engrave his likeness.—W. SHARP.'' The writing engraver by mistake put the comma after the word appointed, and omitted it at the latter part of the sentence, thus giving a ludicrous effect to the whole inscription. Many impressions were struck off before the mistake was discovered and rectified. The question of an apostrophe was the ground of a civil action a few years ago in Switzerland; and although the anecdote refers to a manuscript, and not to a printed document, it is inserted here because it illustrates the subject. A gentleman left a will which ended thus: "Et pour tmoigner mes neveux Charles et Henri de M—— toute mon affection je lgue chacun d'eux cent mille francs.'' The paper upon which the will was written was folded up before the ink was dry, and therefore many of the letters were blotted. The legatees asserted that the apostrophe was a blot, and therefore claimed two instead of one hundred thousand francs each.

Several misprints are always recurring, such as the mixture of the words Topography and Typography, and Biography with Bibliography. In the prospectus of an edition of the Waverley Novels we read: "The aim of the publishers has been to make it pre-eminent, by beauty of topography and illustration, as an dition de luxe.''

Andrew Marvell published a book which he entitled The Rehearsal Transprosed; but it is seldom that a printer can be induced to print the title otherwise than as The Rehearsal Transposed.

It must be conceded in favour of printers that some authors do write an execrable hand. One sometimes receives a letter which requires about three readings before it can be understood. At the first time of reading the meaning is scarcely intelligible, at the second time some faint glimpse of the writer's object in writing is obtained, and at the third time the main point of the letter is deciphered. Such men may be deemed to be the plague of printers. A friend of Beloe "the Sexagenarian'' was remonstrated with by a printer for being the cause of a large amount of swearing in his office. "Sir,'' exclaimed Mr. A., "the moment 'copy' from you is divided among the compositors, volley succeeds volley as rapidly and as loudly as in one of Lord Nelson's victories.''

There is a popular notion among authors that it is not wise to write a clear hand; and Mnage was one of the first to express it. He wrote: "If you desire that no mistakes shall appear in the works which you publish, never send well-written copy to the printer, for in that case the manuscript is given to young apprentices, who make a thousand errors; while, on the other hand, that which is difficult to read is dealt with by the master-printers.'' It is also related that the late eminent Arabic scholar, Mr. E. W. Lane, who wrote a particularly good hand, asked his printer how it was that there were always so many errors in his proofs. He was answered that such clear writing was always given to the boys, as experienced compositors could not be spared for it. The late Dean Hook held to this opinion, for when he was asked to allow a sermon to be copied out neatly for the press, he answered that if it were to be printed he would prefer to write it out himself as badly as he could. This practice, if it ever existed, we are told by experienced printers does not exist now.

It must, one would think, have been the badness of the "copy'' that induced the compositors to turn "the nature and theory of the Greek verb'' into the native theology of the Greek verb; "the conservation of energy'' into the conversation of energy; and the "Forest Conservancy Branch'' into the Forest Conservatory Branch.

Some printers go out of their way to make blunders when they are unable to understand their "copy.'' Thus, in the Times, some years ago, among the contributors to the Garibaldi Fund was a bookbinder who gave five shillings. The next down in the list was one "A. Lega Fletcher,'' a name which was printed as A Ledger stitcher.

Some very extraordinary blunders have been made by the ignorant misreading of an author's contractions. It is said that in a certain paper which was sent to be printed the words Indian Government were contracted as Indian Govt. This one compositor set up throughout his turn as Indian goat. A writer in one of the Reviews wrote the words "J. C. first invaded Britain,'' and a worthy compositor, who made it his business to fill up all the abbreviations, printed this as Jesus Christ instead of Julius Csar.

Here it may be remarked that some of the most extraordinary misprints never get farther than the printing office or the study; but although they may have been discovered by the reader or the author, they were made nevertheless.

Sometimes the fun of a misprint consists in its elaborateness and completeness, and sometimes in its simplicity (perhaps only the change of a letter). Of the first class the transformation of Shirley's well-known lines is a good example:—

"Only the actions of the just Smell sweet and blossom in the dust.''

is scarcely recognisable as

"All the low actions of the just Swell out and blow Sam in the dust.''

The statement that "men should work and play Loo,'' obtained from "men should work and play too,'' illustrates the second class.

The version of Pope which was quoted by a correspondent of the Times about a year ago is very charming:—

"A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the aperient spring.'

The reporter or printer who mistook the Oxford professor's allusion to the Eumenides, and quoted him as speaking of "those terrible old Greek goddesses—the Humanities,'' was still more elaborate in his joke.

Horace Greeley is well known to have been an exceedingly bad writer; but when he quoted the well-known line (which is said to be equal to a florin, because there are four tizzies in it)—

" 'Tis true, 'tis pity, pity 'tis 'tis true,''

one might have expected the compositor to recognise the quotation, instead of printing the astonishing calculation—

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

This is as bad as the blunder of the printer of the Hampshire paper who is said to have announced that Sir Robert Peel and a party of fiends were engaged shooting peasants at Drayton Manor.

It is perhaps scarcely fair to quote too many blunders from newspapers, which must often be hurriedly compiled, but naturally they furnish the richest crop. The point of a leader in an American paper was lost by a misprint, which reads as follows: "We do battle without shot or charge for the cause of the right.'' This would be a very ineffectual battle, and the proper words were without stint or change.

A writer on Holland in one of the magazines quoted Samuel Butler's well- known lines—

"A country that draws fifty foot of water, . . . . . . . In which they do not live, but go aboard,''

which the printer transformed into

"In which they do not live, but cows abound.''

It is of course easy to invent misprints, and therefore one feels a little doubtful sometimes with respect to those which are quoted without chapter and verse.

One of the most remarkable blunders ever made in a newspaper was connected with the burial of the well-known literary man, John Payne Collier. In the Standard of Sept. 21st, 1883, it was reported that "the remains of the late Mr. John Payne Collier were interred yesterday in Bray Churchyard, near Maidenhead, in the presence of a large number of spectators.'' The paragraph maker of the Eastern Daily Press had never heard of Payne Collier, so he thought the last name should be printed with a small C, and wanting a heading for his paragraph he invented one straight off, and this is what appeared in that paper:—

"The Bray Colliery Disaster. The remains of the late John Payne, collier, were interred yesterday afternoon in the Bray Churchyard, in the presence of a large number of friends and spectators.''

This was a brilliant stroke of imagination, for who would expect to find a colliery near Maidenhead?

Mr. Sala, writing to Notes and Queries (Third Series, i. 365), says: "Altogether I have long since arrived at the conclusion that there are more 'devils' in a printing office than are dreamt of in our philosophy— the blunder fiends to wit—ever busy in peppering the 'formes' with errors which defy the minutest revisions of reader, author, sub-editor, and editor.'' Mr. Sala gives an instance which occurred to himself. He wrote that Dr. Livingstone wore a cap with a tarnished gold lace band; but the printer altered the word tarnished into famished, to the serious confusion of the passage.

Some of the most amusing blunders occur by the change of a single letter. Thus, in an account of the danger to an express train by a cow getting on the line in front, the reporter was made to say that as the safest course under the circumstances the engine driver "put on full steam, dashed up against the cow, and literally cut it into calves.'' A short time ago an account was given in an address of the early struggles of an eminent portrait painter, and the statement appeared in print that, working at the easel from eight o'clock in the morning till eight o'clock at night, the artist "only lay down on the hearthrug for rest and refreshment between the visits of his sisters.'' This is not so bad, however, as the report that "a bride was accompanied to the altar by tight bridesmaids.'' A very odd blunder occurred in the World of Oct. 6th, 1886, one which was so odd that the editor thought it worthy of notice by himself in a subsequent number. The paragraph in which the misprint occurred related to the filling up of the vicarage of St. Mary's, Islington, which it was thought had been unduly delayed. The trustees in whose gift the living is were informed that if they had a difficulty in finding a clergyman of the proper complexion of low churchism there were still Venns in Kent. Here the natural confusion of the letters u and n came into play, and as the paragraph was printed it appeared that a Venus of Kent was recommended for the vicarage of St. Mary's.

The compositor who set up the account of a public welcome to a famous orator must have been fresh from the study of Porson's Catechism of the Swinish Multitude when he set up the damaging statement that "the crowd rent the air with their snouts.''

Sometimes the blunder consists not in the misprint of a letter, but in a mere transposition, as when an eminent herald and antiquary was dubbed Rogue Croix instead of Rouge Croix. Sometimes a new but appropriate word results by the thrusting into a recognised word of a redundant letter, as when a man died from eating too much goose the verdict was said to have been "death from stuffocation.''

Many of these blunders, although amusing to the public, cannot have been altogether agreeable to the subjects of them. Mr. Justice Wightman could not have been pleased to see himself described as Mr. Justice Nightman; and the right reverend prelate who was stated "to be highly pleased with some ecclesiastical iniquities shown to him'' must have been considerably scandalised.

Professor Hales is very much of the opinion of Mr. Sala respecting the labours of the "blunder fiend,'' and he sent an amusing letter to the Athenum, in which he pointed out a curious misprint in one of his own books. As the contents of the letter is very much to the point, readers will perhaps not object to seeing it transferred in its entirety to these pages:—

"The humour of compositors is apt to be imperfectly appreciated by authors, because it rather interferes with what the author wishes to say, although it may often say something better. But there is no reason why the general reader should not thoroughly enjoy it. Certainly it ought to be more generously recognised than it is. So many persons at present think of it as merely accidental and fortuitous, as if there was no mind in it, as if all the excellent things loosely described as errata, all the curios felicitates of the setter-up of texts, were casual blunders. Such a view reminds one of the way in which the last- century critics used to speak of Shakspere —the critics who give him no credit for design or selection, but thought that somehow or other he stumbled into greatness. However, I propose now not to attempt the defence, or, what might be worth the effort, the analysis of this species of Wit, but only to give what seemed an admirable instance of it.

"In a note to the word limboes in the Clarendon Press edition of Milton's Areopagitica, I quoted from Nares's Glossary a list of the various limbi believed in by the 'old schoolmen,' and No. 2 was 'a limbus patrum where the fathers of the Church, saints, and martyrs, awaited the general resurrection.' Will any one say it was not a stroke of genius in some printing-office humourist to alter the last word into 'insurrection'?

"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 'Insurgam'?''

Allusion has already been made to the persistency of misprints and the difficulty of curing them; but one of the most curious instances of this may be found in a line of Byron's beautiful apostrophe to the ocean in Childe Harold (Canto iv.). The one hundred and eighty-second stanza is usually printed:—

"Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee— Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they? Thy waters wasted them while they were free, And many a tyrant since . . .''

Not many years ago a critic, asking himself the question when the waters wasted these countries, began to suspect a misprint, and on consulting the manuscript, it was found that he was right. The blunder, which had escaped Byron's own eyes, was corrected, and the third line was printed as originally written:—

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

The carelessness of printers seems to hare culminated in their production of the Scriptures. The old editions of the Bible swarm with blunders, and some of them were supposed to have been made intentionally. It was said that the printer Field received 1500 from the Independents as a bribe to corrupt a text which might sanction their practice of lay- ordination, and in Acts vi. 3 the word ye is substituted for we in several of his editions of the Bible. The verse reads: "Wherefore, brethren, look ye out among ye seven men of honesr report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom, whom ye may appoint over this business.'' To such forgeries Butler refers in the lines:—

"Religion spawn'd a various rout Of petulant capricious sects, The maggots of corrupted texts.'' Hudibras, Part III., Canto 2.

Dr. Grey, in his notes on this passage, brings forward the charge against Field, and quotes Wotton's Visitation Sermon (1706) in support of it. He also quotes from Cowley's Puritan and Papist as to the practice of corrupting texts:—

"They a bold pow'r o'er sacred Scriptures take, Blot out some clauses and some new ones make.''

Pope Sixtus the Fifth's Vulgate so swarmed with errors that paper had to be pasted over some of the erroneous passages, and the public naturally laughed at the bull prefixed to the first volume which excommunicated any printer who altered the text. This was all the more annoying to the Pope, as he had intended the edition to be specially free from errors, and to attain that end had seen all the proofs himself. Some years ago a copy of this book was sold in France for 1210 francs.

The King's Printers, Robert Barker and Martin Lucas, in the reign of Charles I. were not excommunicated, but, what perhaps they liked less, were fined 300 by the Court of High Commission for leaving the not out of the seventh commandment in an edition of the Bible printed in 1631. Although this story has been frequently quoted it has been disbelieved, and the great bibliographer of Bibles, the late Mr. George Offer, asserted that he and his father searched diligently for it, and could not find it. Now, six copies are known to exist. The late Mr. Henry Stevens gives a most interesting account of the first discovery of the book in his Recollections of Mr. James Lennox. He writes:—

"Mr. Lennox was so strict an observer of the Sabbath that I never knew of his writing a business letter on Sunday but once. In 1855, while he was staying at Hotel Meurice in Paris, there occurred to me the opportunity one Saturday afternoon, June 16th, of identifying the long lost octavo Bible of 1631 with the negative omitted in the seventh commandment, and purchasing it for fifty guineas. No other copy was then known, and the possessor required an immediate answer. However, I raised some points of inquiry, and obtained permission to hold the little sinner and give the answer on Monday. By that evening's post I wrote to Mr. Lennox, and pressed for an immediate reply, suggesting that this prodigal though he returned on Sunday should be bound. Monday brought a letter 'to buy it,' very short, but tender as a fatted calf. On June 21st I exhibited it at a full meeting of the Society of Antiquaries of London, at the same time nicknaming it The Wicked Bible, a name that stuck to it ever since, though six copies are now known. . . . Lord Macaulay was present at the meeting, but did not at first credit the genuineness of the typographical error. Lord Stanhope, however, on borrowing the volume, convinced him that it was the true wicked error.''

Curiously enough, when Mr. Stevens took the Bible home on Saturday night he overhauled his pile of octavo Bibles, and found an imperfect duplicate of the supposed unique "wicked'' Bible. When the owner came for his book on Monday morning he was shown the duplicate, and agreed, as his copy was not unique, to take 25 for it. The imperfect copy was sold to the British Museum for eighteen guineas, and Mr. Winter Jones was actually so fortunate as to obtain subsequently the missing twenty-three leaves. A third copy came into the hands of Mr. Francis Fry, of Bristol, who sold it to Dr. Bandinel for the Bodleian Library. A fourth copy is in the Euing Library, at Glasgow; a fifth fell into the hands of Mr. Henry J. Atkinson, of Gunnersbury,in 1883; and a sixth copy was picked up in Ireland by a gentleman of Coventry In 1884.

In a Bible of 1634 the first verse of the 14th Psalm is printed as "The fool hath said in his heart there is God''; and in another Bible of 1653 worldly takes the place of godly, and reads, "In order that all the world should esteem the means of arriving at worldly riches.''

If Field was not a knave, as hinted above, he was singularly unfortunate in his blunders; for in another of his Bibles he also omitted the negative in an important passage, and printed I Corinthians vi. 9 as, "Know ye not that the unrighteous shall inherit the kingdom of God?''

It is recorded that a printer's widow in Germany once tampered with the purity of the text of a Bible printed in her house, for which crime she was burned to death. She arose in the night, when all the workmen were in bed, and going to the "forme'' entirely changed the meaning of a text which particularly offended her. The text was Gen. iii. 16 ("Thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee'').

This story does not rest on a very firm foundation, and as the recorder does not mention the date of the occurrence, it must be taken by the reader for what it is worth. The following incident, vouched for by a well-known author, is, however, very similar. James Silk Buckingham relates the following curious anecdote in his Autobiography:—

"While working at the Clarendon Printing Office a story was current among the men, and generally believed to be authentic, to the following effect. Some of the gay young students of the University, who loved a practical joke, had made themselves sufficiently familiar with the manner in which the types are fixed in certain formes and laid on the press, and with the mode of opening such formes for correction when required; and when the sheet containing the Marriage Service was about to be worked off, as finally corrected, they unlocked the forme, took out a single letter v, and substituted in its place the letter k, thus converting the word live into like. The result was that, when the sheets were printed, that part of the service which rendered the bond irrevocable, was so changed as to make it easily dissolved—as the altered passage now read as follows:—The minister asking the bridegroom, 'Wilt thou have this woman to be thy wedded wife, to live together after God's ordinance in the holy state of matrimony? Wilt thou love her, comfort her, honour, and keep her in sickness and in health; and forsaking all other, keep thee only unto her, so long as ye both shall like?' To which the man shall answer, 'I will.' The same change was made in the question put to the bride.''

If the culprits who left out a word deserved to be heavily mulcted in damages, it is difficult to calculate the liability of those who left out whole verses. When Archbishop Ussher was hastening to preach at Paul's Cross, he went into a shop to purchase a Bible, and on turning over the pages for his text found it was omitted.

Andrew Anderson, a careless, faulty printer in Edinburgh, obtained a monopoly as king's printer, which was exercised on his death in 1679 by his widow. The productions of her press became worse and worse, and her Bibles were a standing disgrace to the country. Robert Chambers, in his Domestic Annals of Scotland, quotes the following specimen from an edition of 1705: "Whyshouldit- bethougtathingincredi ble w you, y God should raise the dead?'' Even this miserable blundering could not have been much worse than the Pearl Bible with six thousand errata mentioned by Isaac Disraeli.

The first edition of the English Scriptures printed in Ireland was published at Belfast in 1716, and is notorious for an error in Isaiah. Sin no more is printed Sin on more. In the following year was published at Oxford the well-known Vinegar Bible, which takes its name from a blunder in the running title of the twentieth chapter of St. Luke's Gospel, where it reads "The parable of the vinegar,'' instead of "The parable of the vineyard.'' In a Cambridge Prayer Book of 1778 the thirtieth verse of Psalm cv. is travestied as follows: "Their land brought forth frogs, yea seven in their king's chambers.'' An Oxford Bible of 1792 names St. Philip instead of St. Peter as the disciple who should deny Christ (Luke xxii. 34); and in an Oxford New Testament of 1864 we read, "Rejoice, and be exceeding clad'' (Matt. v. 12). To be impartial, however, it is necessary to mention a Cambridge Bible of 1831, where Psalm cxix. 93 appears as "I will never forgive thy precepts.'' A Bible printed at Edinburgh in 1823 contains a curious misprint caused by a likeness in pronunciation of two words, Esther being printed for Easter, "Intending after Esther to bring him forth to the people'' (Acts xii. 4). A misprint of the old hundredth Psalm (do well for do dwell) in the Prayer Book might perhaps be considered as an improvement,—

"All people who on earth do well.''

Errors are specially frequent in figures, often caused by the way in which the characters are cut. The aim of the founder seems to be to make them as much alike as possible, so that it frequently requires a keen eye to discover the difference between a 3 and a 5. In one of Chernac's Mathematical Tables a line fell out before going to press, and instead of being replaced at the bottom of the page it was put in at the top, thus causing twenty-six errors. Besides these, however, only ten errors have been found in the whole work of 1020 pages, all full of figures. Vieta's Canon Mathematicus (1579) is of great rarity, from the author being discontented with the misprints that had escaped his notice, and on that account withdrawing or repurchasing all the copies he could meet with. Some mathematicians, to ensure accuracy, have made their calculations with the types in their own hands. In the Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography there is a misprint in a date which confuses a whole article. William Ayrton, musical critic, is said to have been born in London about 1781, but curiously enough his father is reported to have been born three years afterwards (1784); and still more odd, that father was appointed gentleman of the Chapel Royal in 1764, twenty years before he is stated to have been born.

In connection with figures may be mentioned the terrible confusion which is caused by the simple dropping out of a decimal point. Thus a passage in which 6.36 is referred to naturally becomes utter nonsense when 636 is printed instead. Such a misprint is as bad as the blunder of the French compositor, who, having to set up a passage referring to Captain Cook, turned de Cook into de 600 kilos. An amusing blunder was quoted a few years ago from a German paper where the writer, referring to Prince Bismarck's endeavours to keep on good terms with all the Powers, was made to say, "Prince Bismarck is trying to keep up honest and straightforward relations with all the girls.'' This blunder was caused by the substitution of the word Mdchen (girls) for Mchten (powers).

The French have always been interested in misprints, and they have registered a considerable number. One of the happiest is that one which was caused by Malherbe's bad writing, and induced him to adopt the misprint in his verse in place of that which he had originally written. The lines, written on a daughter of Du Perrier named Rosette, now stand thus:—

"Mais elle tait du monde o les plus belles choses Ont le pire destin, Et rose, elle a vcu ce que vivent les roses L'espace d'un matin.''

Malherbe had written,—

"Et Rosette a vcu ce que vivent les roses;''

but forgetting "to cross his tees'' the compositor made the fortunate blunder of printing rose elle, which so pleased the author that he let it stand, and modified the following lines in accordance with the printer's improvement.

Rabelais nearly got into trouble by a blunder of his printer, who in several places set up asne for me. A council met at the Sorbonne to consider the case against him, and the doctors formally denounced Rabelais to Francis I., and requested permission to prosecute him for heresy; but the king after consideration refused to give the permission. Rabelais then laughed at his accusers for founding a charge of heresy against him on a printer's blunder, but there were strong suspicions that the misprints were intentional.

These misprints are styled by the French coquilles, a word whose derivation M. Boutney, author of Dictionnaire de l'Argot des Typographes, is unable to explain after twenty years' search. A number of Longman's Magazine contains an article on these coquilles, in which very many amusing blunders are quoted. One of these gave rise to a pun which is so excellent that it is impossible to resist the temptation of transferring the anecdote from those pages to these:—

"In the Rue Richelieu there is a statue of Corneille holding a roll in his hand, on which are inscribed the titles of his principal works. The task of incising these names it appears had been given to an illiterate young apprentice, who thought proper to spell avare with two r's. A wit, observing this, remarked pleasantly, Tiens, voil an avare qui a un air misanthrope (un r mis en trop).''

In a newspaper account of Mr. Gladstone's religious views the word Anglican is travestied as Afghan, with the following curious result: "There is no form of faith in existence more effectually tenacious than the Afghan form, which asserts the full catholicity of that branch church whose charter is the English Church Prayer Book.''

In the diary of John Hunter, of Craigcrook, it is recorded that at one of the meetings between the diarist, Leigh Hunt, and Carlyle, "Hunt gave us some capital specimens of absurd errors of the press committed by printers from his copy. One very good one occurs in a paper, where he had said, 'he had a liking for coffee because it always reminded him of the Arabian Nights,' though not mentioned there, adding, 'as smoking does for the same reason.' This was converted into the following oracular words: 'As sucking does for the snow season'! He could not find it in his heart to correct this, and thus it stands as a theme for the profound speculations of the commentators.''

A very slight misprint will make a great difference; sometimes an unintelliglble word is produced, but sometimes the mere transposition of a letter will make a word exactly opposite in its meaning to the original, as unite for untie. In Jeremy Taylor's XXV. Sermons preached at Golden Grove: Being for the Winter half-year (London, 1653), p. 247, we read, "It may help to unite the charm,'' whereas the author wished to say "untie.''

The title of Cobbett's Horse-hoeing Husbandry was easily turned into Horse-shoeing Husbandry, that of the Holy Grail into Holy Gruel, and Layamon's Brut into Layamon's Brat.

A local paper, reporting the proceedings at the Bath meeting of the British Asso{sic} ciation, affirmed that an eminent chemist had "not been able to find any fluidity in the Bath waters.'' Fluorine was meant. It was also stated that a geologist asserted that "the bones found in the submerged forests of Devonshire were closely representative of the British farmer.'' The last word should have been fauna.

The strife of tongs is suggestive of a more serious battle than that of talk only; and the compositor who set up Portia's speech—

". . . young Alcides, when he did redeem The virgin tribute paid by howling Troy'' (Merchant of Venice, act iii., sc. 2),

and turned the last words into howling Tory, must have been a rabid politician.

The transposition of "He kissed her under the silent stars'' into "He kicked her under the cellar stairs'' looks rather too good to be true, and it cannot be vouched for; but the title "Microscopic Character of the Virtuous Rocks of Montana'' is a genuine misprint for vitreous, as is also "Buddha's perfect uselessness'' for "Buddha's perfect sinlessness.'' It is rather startling to find a quotation from the Essay on Man introduced by the words "as the Pope says,'' or to find the famous painter Old Crome styled an "old Crone.''

A most amusing instance of a misreading may be mentioned here, although it is not a literary blunder. A certain black cat was named Mephistopheles a name which greatly puzzled the little girl who played with the cat, so she very sensibly set to work to reduce the name to a form which she could understand, and she arrived at "Miss Pack-of-fleas.''

Sometimes a ludicrous blunder may be made by the mere closing up of two words; thus the orator who spoke of our "grand Mother Church'' had his remark turned into a joke when it was printed as "grandmother Church.'' A still worse blunder was made in an obituary notice of a well-known congressman in an American paper, where the reference to his "gentle, manly spirit'' was turned into "gentlemanly spirit.''

Misprints are very irritating to most authors, but some can afford to make fun of the trouble; thus Hood's amusing lines are probably founded upon some blunder that actually occurred:—

"But it is frightful to think What nonsense sometimes They make of one's sense, And what's worse, of one's rhymes.

"It was only last week, In my ode upon Spring, Which I meant to have made A most beautiful thing,

"When I talked of the dew-drops From freshly-blown roses, The nasty things made it From freshly-blown noses.

"And again, when, to please An old aunt, I had tried To commemorate some saint Of her clique who had died,

"I said he had taken up In heaven his position, And they put it—he'd taken Up to heaven his physician.''

Henry Stephens (Estienne), the learned printer, made a joke over a misprint. The word febris was printed with the diphthong , so Stephens excused himself by saying in the errata that "le chalcographe a fait une fivre longue (fbrem) quoique une fivre courte (febrem) soit moins dangereux.''

Allusion has already been made in the first chapter to Professor Skeat's ghost words. Most of these have arisen from misreadings or misprints, and two extraordinary instances may be noted here. The purely modern phrase "look sharp'' was supposed to have been used in the time of Chaucer, because "loke schappe'' (see that you form, etc.) of the manuscript was printed "loke scharpe.'' In the other instance the scribe wrote yn for m, and thus he turned "chek matyde'' into "chek yn a tyde.''[12]

[12] Philol. Soc. Trans. 1885-7, pp. 368-9.



In the Academy for Feb. 25th, 1888, Dr. Skeat explained another discovery of his of the same kind, by which he is able to correct a time-honoured blunder in English literature:—

"CAMBRIDGE: Feb. 14, 1888.

"When I explained, in the Academy for January 7 (p. 9), that the word 'Herenus ' is simply a mistake for 'Herines,' i.e., the furies (such being the Middle-English form of Erinnyes), I did not expect that I should so soon light upon another singular perversion of the same word.

"In Chaucer's Works, ed. 1561, fol. 322, back, there is a miserable poem, of much later date than that of Chaucer's death, entitled 'The Remedie of Love.' The twelfth stanza begins thus:

'Come hither, thou Hermes, and ye furies all Which fer been under us, nigh the nether pole, Where Pluto reigneth,' etc.

It is clear that 'Hermes' is a scribal error for 'Herines,' and that the scribe has added 'thou' out of his own head, to keep 'Hermes' company. The context bears this out; for the author utterly rejects the inspiration of the Muses in the preceding stanza, and proceeds to invoke furies, harpies, and, to use his own expression, 'all this lothsome sort.' Many of the lines almost defy scansion, so that no help is to be got from observing the run of the lines. Nevertheless, this fresh instance of the occurrence of 'Herines' much assists my argument; all the more so, as it appears in a disguised shape. "WALTER W. SKEAT.''

Sometimes a misprint is intentional, as in the following instance. At the beginning of the century the Courrier des Pays Bas was bought by some young men, who changed its politics, but kept on the editor. The motto of the paper was from Horace:

"Est modus in rebus,''

and the editor, wishing to let his friends at a distance know that things were not going on quite well between him and his proprietors, printed this motto as,—

"Est nodus in rebus.''

This was continued for three weeks before it was discovered and corrected by the persons concerned.

Another kind of misprint which we see occasionally is the misplacement of some lines of type. This may easily occur when the formes are being locked, and the result is naturally nonsense that much confuses the reader. Probably the finest instance of this misplacement occurred some years ago in an edition of Men of the Time (1856), where the entry relating to Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, got mixed up with that of Robert Owen, the Socialist, with the result that the bishop was stated to be "a confirmed sceptic as regards revealed religion, but a believer in Spiritualism.'' It was this kind of blunder which suggested the formation of cross- readings, that were once very popular.



CHAPTER VIL

SCHOOLBOYS' BLUNDERS.

THE blunders of the examined form a fruitful source of amusement for us all, and many comical instances have been published. The mistakes which are constantly occurring must naturally be innumerable, but only a few of them rise to the dignity of a blunder. If it be difficult to define a blunder, probably the best illustration of what it is will be found in the answers of the boys under examination. All classes of blunders may be found among these. There are those which show confusion of knowledge, and those which exhibit an insight into the heart of the matter while blundering in the form. Two very good examples occur to one's mind, but it is to be feared that they owe their origin to some keen spirit of mature years. "What is Faith?—The quality by which we are enabled to believe that which we know is untrue.'' Surely this must have emanated from a wit! Again, the whole Homeric question is condensed into the following answer: "Some people say that the Homeric poems were not written by Homer, but by another man of the same name.'' If this is a blunder, who would not wish to blunder so?

A large class of schoolboys' blunders consist in a confusion of words somewhat alike in sound, a confusion that is apt to follow some of us through life. "Matins'' has been mixed up with "pattens,'' and described as something to wear on the feet. Nonconformists are said to be persons who cannot form anything, and a tartan is assumed to be an inhabitant of Tartary. The gods are believed by one boy to live on nectarines, and by another to imbibe ammonia. The same desire to make an unintelligible word express a meaning which has caused the recognised but absurd spelling of sovereign (more wisely spelt sovran by Milton) shows itself in the form "Tea-trarck'' explained as the title of Herod given to him because he invented or was fond of tea.[13] A still finer confusion of ideas is to be found in an answer reported by Miss Graham in the University Correspondent: "Esau was a man who wrote fables, and who sold the copyright to a publisher for a bottle of potash.''

[13] Cornhill Magazine, June 1888, pp. 619-28.



The following etymological guesses are not so good, but they are worthy of registration. One boy described a blackguard as "one who has been a shoeblack,'' while another thought he was "a man dressed in black.'' "Polite'' is said to be derived from "Pole,'' owing to the affability of the Polish race. "Heathen'' means "covered with heath''; but this explanation is commonplace when compared with the brilliant guess—"Heathen, from Latin 'hthum,' faith, and 'en,' not.''

The boy who explained the meaning of the words fort and fortress must have had rather vague ideas as to masculine and feminine nouns. He wrote: "A fort is a place to put men in, and a fortress a place to put women in.''

The little book entitled English as she is Taught, which contains a considerable number of genuine answers to examination questions given in American schools, with a Commentary by Mark Twain, is full of amusing matter. A large proportion of these answers are of a similar character to those just enumerated, blunders which have arisen from a confusion caused by similarity of sound in the various words, thus, "In Austria the principal occupation is gathering Austrich feathers.'' The boy who propounded this evidently had much of the stock in trade required for the popular etymologist. "Ireland is called the Emigrant Isle because it is so beautiful and green.'' "Gorilla warfare was where men rode on gorillas.'' "The Puritans found an insane asylum in the wilds of America.''

Some of the answers are so funny that it is almost impossible to guess at the train of thought which elicited them, as, "Climate lasts all the time, and weather only a few days.'' "Sanscrit is not used so much as it used to be, as it went out of use 1500 B.C.'' The boy who affirmed that "The imports of a country are the things that are paid for; the exports are the things that are not,'' did not put the Theory of Exchange in very clear form.

The knowledge of physiology and of medical subjects exhibited by some of the examined is very amusing. One boy discovered a new organ of the body called a chrone: "He had a chronic disease— something the matter with the chrone.'' Another had a strange notion of how to spell craniology, for he wrote "Chonology is the science of the brane.'' But best of all is the knowledge of the origin of Bright's disease, shown by the boy who affirms that "John Bright is noted for an incurable disease.''

Much of the blundering of the examined must be traced to the absurd questions of the examiners—questions which, as Mark Twain says, "would oversize nearly anybody's knowledge.'' And the wish which every examinee has to bring in some subject which he supposes himself to know is perceptible in many answers. The date 1492 seems to be impressed upon every American child's memory, and he cannot rest until he has associated it with some fact, so we learn that George Washington was born in 1492, that St. Bartholomew was massacred in that year, that "the Brittains were the Saxons who entered England in 1492 under Julius Csar,'' and, to cap all, that the earth is 1492 miles in circumference.

Many of the best-known examination jokes are associated with Scriptural characters. One of the best of these, if also one of the best known, is that of the man who, paraphrasing the parable of the Good Samaritan, and quoting his words to the innkeeper, "When I come again I will repay you,'' added, "This he said knowing that he should see his face again no more.''

A School Board boy, competing for one of the Peek prizes, carried this confusion of widely different events even farther. He had to write a short biography of Jonah, and he produced the following: "He was the father of Lot, and had two wives. One was called Ishmale and the other Hagher; he kept one at home, and he turned the other into the dessert, when she became a pillow of salt in the daytime and a pillow of fire at night.'' The sketch of Moses is equally unhistoric: "Mosses was an Egyptian. He lived in an ark made of bullrushes, and he kept a golden calf and worshipped braizen snakes, and et nothing but kwales and manna for forty years. He was caught by the hair of his head, while riding under the bough of a tree, and he was killed by his son Absalom as he was hanging from the bough.'' But the ignorance of the schoolboy was quite equalled by the undergraduate who was asked "Who was the first king of Israel?'' and was so fortunate as to stumble on the name of Saul. Finding by the face of the examiner that he had hit upon the right answer, he added confidentially, "Saul, also called Paul.''

The American child, however, managed to cover a larger space of time in his confusion when he said, "Elijah was a good man, who went up to heaven without dying, and threw his cloak down for Queen Elizabeth to step over.''

A boy was asked in an examination, "What did Moses do with the tabernacle?'' and he promptly answered, "He chucked it out of the camp.'' The scandalised examiner asked the boy what he meant, and was told that it was so stated in the Bible. On being challenged for the verse, the boy at once repeated "And Moses took the tabernacle and pitched it without the camp'' (Exod. xxxiii. 7).

The book might be filled with extraordinary instances of school translation, but room must be found for one beautiful specimen quoted by Moore in his Diary. A boy having to translate "they ascended by ladders'' into Latin, turned out this, "ascendebant per adolescentiores'' (the comparative degree of lad, i.e., ladder).

The late Mr. Barrett, Musical Examiner to the Society of Arts, gave some curious instances of blundering in his report on the Examinations of 1887, which is printed in the Programme of the Society's Examinations for 1888:—

"There were occasional indications that the terms were misunderstood. 'Presto' signifies 'turn over,' 'Lento' 'with style.' 'Staccato' was said to mean 'stick on the notes,' or 'notes struck and at once raised.'

"The names of composers in order of time were generally correctly done, but the particulars concerning the musicians were rather startling. Thus Purcell was said to have written, among other things, an opera called Ebdon and Eneas; one stated that he was born 1543 and died 1595, probably confusing him with Tallis, that he wrote masses and reformed the church music; another that he was the organist of King's College Chapel, and wrote madrigals. One stated that he was born 1568 and died 1695; another, not knowing that he had so long passed the allotted period of man's existence, gave his dates 1693, 1685, thus giving him no limit of existence at all. One said he was a German, born somewhere in the nineteenth century, which statement another confirmed by giving his dates as 1817-1846; and, further, credited him with the composition of The Woman of Samaria, and as having transposed plain- song from tenor to bass. Bach is said to have been the founder of the 'Thames School Lipsic,' the composer of the Seasons, the celebrated writer of opera comique, born 16—, and having gone through an operation for one of his fingers, turned his attention to composition, wrote operas, and, lastly, that he was born in 1756, and died 1880, and that his fame rests on his passions.

"The facts about Handel are pretty correct; but we find that Weber wrote Parsifal, The Flying Dutchman, Der Ring der Nibulengon. His dates are 1813-1883. Mendelssohn was born 1770, died 1827 (Beethoven's dates), studied under Hadyn (sic), and that he composed many operas. Gounod is said to be 'a rather modern musician'; he wrote Othello, Three Holy Children, besides Faust and other works. Among the names given as the composer of Nozze di Figaro are Donizetti, William Sterndale Bennett, Gunod, and Sir Mickall Costa. The particulars concerning the real composer are equally interesting. (1) His name is spelt Mozzart, Mosarde, etc. (2) He was a well-known Italian, wrote Medea, and others. (3) His first opera was Idumea, or Idomeo. (4) He composed Lieder ohne worte, Don Pasquale, Don Govianna, the Zauberfloat, Feuges, and his Requiem is the crowning glory of his 'marvellious carere.' (5) He was a German, 'born 1756, at a very early age.' If the dates given by another writer be true (born 1795, died 1659), it is certain that he must have died before he was born.''

Mr. Barrett again reported in 1889 some of the strange opinions of those who came to him to be examined:—

"The answers to the question 'Who was Rossini? What influence did he exercise over the art of music in his time?' brought to light much curious and interesting intelligence. His nationality was various. He was 'a German by birth, but was born at Pesaro in Italy'; 'he was born in 1670 and died 1826'; he was a 'Frenchman,' 'a noted writer of the French,' the place of nativity was 'Pizzarro in Genoa'; he was 'an Italian, and made people feel drunk with the sparke and richness of his melody'; he composed Oberon, Don Giovanni; Der Frischutz, and Stabet Matar. He was 'an accomplished writer of violin music and produced some of the prettiest melodies'; it is 'to him we owe the extension of chords struck together in ar peggio'; he was 'the founder of some institution or another'; 'the great aim of his life was to make the music he wrote an interpretation of the words it was set to'; he 'broke many of the laws of music'; he 'considerable altered the stage'; he 'was noted for using many instruments not invented before'; in his 'composition he used the chromatic scale very much, and goes very deep in harmony'; he 'was the first taking up the style, and therefore to make a great change in music'; he was 'the cause of much censure and bickering through his writings'; he 'promoted a less strict mode of writing and other beneficial things'; and, finally, 'Giachono Rossini was born at Pezarro in 1792. In the year 1774 there was war raging in Paris between the Gluckists and Piccinists. Gluck wanted to do away with the old restraint of the Italian aria, and improve opera from a dramatic point of view. Piccini remained true to the old Italian style, and Rossini helped him to carry it on still further by his operas, Tancredi, William Tell, and Dorma del Lago.' ''

The child who gave the following brilliant answer to the question, "What was the character of Queen Mary?'' must have suffered herself from the troubles supposed to be connected with the possession of a stepmother: "She was wilful as a girl and cruel as a woman, but'' (adds the pupil) "what can you expect from any one who had had five stepmothers?''

The greatest confusion among the examined is usually to be found in the answers to historical and geographical questions. All that one boy knew about Nelson was that he "was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral amid the groans of a dying nation.'' The student who mixed up Oliver Cromwell with Thomas Cromwell's master Wolsey produced this strange answer: "Oliver Cromwell is said to have exclaimed, as he lay a-dying, If I had served my God as I served my king, He would not have left me to mine enemies.'' Miss Graham relates in the University Correspondent an answer which contains the same confusion with a further one added: "Wolsey was a famous general who fought in the Crimean War, and who, after being decapitated several times, said to Cromwell, Ah! if I had only served you as you have served me, I would not have been deserted in my old age.'' "The Spanish Armada,'' wrote a young man of seventeen, "took place in the reign of Queen Anne; she married Philip of Spain, who was a very cruel man. The Spanish and the English fought very bravely against each other. The English wanted to conquer Spain. Several battles were fought, in which hundreds of the English and Spanish were defeated. They lost some very large ships, and were at a great loss on both sides.''

The following description of the Nile by a schoolboy is very fine: "The Nile is the only remarkable river in the world. It was discovered by Dr. Livingstone, and it rises in Mungo Park.'' Constantinople is described thus: "It is on the Golden Horn; a strong fortress; has a University, and is the residence of Peter the Great. Its chief building is the Sublime Port.'' Amongst the additions to our geographical knowledge may be mentioned that Gibraltar is "an island built on a rock,'' and that Portugal can only be reached through the St. Bernard's Pass "by means of sledges drawn by reindeer and dogs.'' "Turin is the capital of China,'' and "Cuba is a town in Africa very difficult of access.''

One of the finest answers ever given in an examination was that of the boy who was asked to repeat all he knew of Sir Walter Raleigh. This was it: "He introduced tobacco into England, and while he was smoking he exclaimed, 'Master Ridley, we have this day lighted such a fire in England as shall never be put out.' '' Can that, with any sort of justice, be styled a blunder?

The rule that "the King can do no wrong'' was carried to an extreme length when a schoolboy blunder of Louis XIV. was allowed to change the gender of a French noun. The King said "un carosse,'' and that is what it is now. In Cotgrave's Dictionary carosse appears as feminine, but Mnage notes it as having been changed from feminine to masculine.

It has already been pointed out that some of the blunders of the examined are due to the absurdity of the questions of the examiner. The following excellent anecdote from the late Archdeacon Sinclair's Sketches of Old Times and Distant Places (1875) shows that even when the question is sound a difficulty may arise by the manner of presenting it:—

"I was one day conversing with Dr. Williams about schools and school examinations. He said: 'Let me give you a curious example of an examination at which I was present in Aberdeen. An English clergyman and a Lowland Scotsman visited one of the best parish schools in that city. They were strangers, but the master received them civilly, and inquired: "Would you prefer that I should speer these boys, or that you should speer them yourselves?'' The English clergyman having ascertained that to speer meant to question, desired the master to proceed. He did so with great success, and the boys answered numerous interrogatories as to the Exodus from Egypt. The clergyman then said he would be glad in his turn to speer the boys, and began: "How did Pharaoh die?'' There was a dead silence. In this dilemma the Lowland gentleman interposed. "I think, sir, the boys are not accustomed to your English accent,'' and inquired in broad Scotch, "Hoo did Phawraoh dee?'' Again there was a dead silence, till the master said: "I think, gentlemen, you can't speer these boys; I'll show you how.'' And he proceeded: "Fat cam to Phawraoh at his hinder end?'' i.e., in his latter days. The boys with one voice answered, "He was drooned''; and a smart little fellow added, "Ony lassie could hae told you that.'' The master then explained that in the Aberdeen dialect "to dee'' means to die a natural death, or to die in bed: hence the perplexity of the boys, who knew that Pharaoh's end was very different.' ''

The author is able to add to this chapter a thoroughly original series of answers to certain questions relating to acoustics, light and heat, which Professor Oliver Lodge, F.R.S., has been so kind as to communicate for this work, and which cannot fail to be appreciated by his readers. It must be understood that all these answers are genuine, although they are not given verbatim et literatim, and in some instances one answer is made to contain several blunders. Professor Lodge expresses the opinion that the questions might in some instances have been worded better, so as to exclude several of the misapprehensions, and therefore that the answers may be of some service to future setters of questions. He adds that of late the South Kensington papers have become more drearily correct and monotonous, because the style of instruction now available affords less play to exuberant fancy untrammelled by any information regarding the subject in hand.

1880.—ACOUSTICS, LIGHT AND HEAT PAPER.

Science and Art Department.

The following are specimens of answers given by candidates at recent examinations in Acoustics, Light and Heat, held in connection with the Science and Art Department, South Kensington. The answers have not of course all been selected from the same paper, neither have they all been chosen for the same reason.

Question I.—State the relations existing between the pressure, temperature, and density of a given gas. How is it proved that when a gas expands its temperature is diminished?

Answer.—Now the answer to the first part of this question is, that the square root of the pressure increases, the square root of the density decreases, and the absolute temperature remains about the same; but as to the last part of the question about a gas expanding when its temperature is diminished, I expect I am intended to say I don't believe a word of it, for a bladder in front of a fire expands, but its temperature is not at all diminished.

Question 2.—If you walk on a dry path between two walls a few feet apart, you hear a musical note or "ring'' at each footstep. Whence comes this?

Answer.—This is similar to phosphorescent paint. Once any sound gets between two parallel reflectors or walls, it bounds from one to the other and never stops for a long time. Hence it is persistent, and when you walk between the walls you hear the sounds made by those who walked there before you. By following a muffin man down the passage within a short time you can hear most distinctly a musical note, or, as it is more properly termed in the question, a "ring'' at every (other) step.

Question 3.—What is the reason that the hammers which strike the strings of a pianoforte are made not to strike the middle of the strings? Why are the bass strings loaded with coils of wire?

Answer.—Because the tint of the clang would be bad. Because to jockey them heavily.

Question 4.—Explain how to determine the time of vibration of a given tuning- fork, and state what apparatus you would require for the purpose.

Answer.—For this determination I should require an accurate watch beating seconds, and a sensitive ear. I mount the fork on a suitable stand, and then, as the second hand of my watch passes the figure 60 on the dial, I draw the bow neatly across one of its prongs. I wait. I listen intently. The throbbing air particles are receiving the pulsations; the beating prongs are giving up their original force; and slowly yet surely the sound dies away. Still I can hear it, but faintly and with close attention; and now only by pressing the bones of my head against its prongs. Finally the last trace disappears. I look at the time and leave the room, having determined the time of vibration of the common "pitch'' fork. This process deteriorates the fork considerably, hence a different operation must be performed on a fork which is only lent.

Question 6.—What is the difference between a "real'' and a "virtual'' image? Give a drawing showing the formation of one of each kind.

Answer.—You see a real image every morning when you shave. You do not see virtual images at all. The only people who see virtual images are those people who are not quite right, like Mrs. A. Virtual images are things which don't exist. I can't give you a reliable drawing of a virtual image, because I never saw one.

Question 8.—How would you disprove, experimentally, the assertion that white light passing through a piece of coloured glass acquires colour from the glass? What is it that really happens?

Answer.—To disprove the assertion (so repeatedly made) that "white light passing through a piece of coloured glass acquires colour from the glass,'' I would ask the gentleman to observe that the glass has just as much colour after the light has gone through it as it had before. That is what would really happen.

Question 11.—Explain why, in order to cook food by boiling, at the top of a high mountain, you must employ a different method from that used at the sea level.

Answer.—It is easy to cook food at the sea level by boiling it, but once you get above the sea level the only plan is to fry it in its own fat. It is, in fact, impossible to boil water above the sea level by any amount of heat. A different method, therefore, would have to be employed to boil food at the top of a high mountain, but what that method is has not yet been discovered. The future may reveal it to a daring experimentalist.

Question 12.—State what are the conditions favourable for the formation of dew. Describe an instrument for determining the dew point, and the method of using it.

Answer.—This is easily proved from question 1. A body of gas as it ascends expands, cools, and deposits moisture; so if you walk up a hill the body of gas inside you expands, gives its heat to you, and deposits its moisture in the form of dew or common sweat. Hence these are the favourable conditions; and moreover it explains why you get warm by ascending a hill, in opposition to the well-known law of the Conservation of Energy.

Question 13.—On freezing water in a glass tube, the tube sometimes breaks. Why is this? An iceberg floats with 1,000,000 tons of ice above the water line. About how many tons are below the water line?

Answer.—The water breaks the tube because of capallarity. The iceberg floats on the top because it is lighter, hence no tons are below the water line. Another reason is that an iceberg cannot exceed 1,000,000 tons in weight: hence if this much is above water, none is below. Ice is exceptional to all other bodies except bismuth. All other bodies have 1090 feet below the surface and 2 feet extra for every degree centigrade. If it were not for this, all fish would die, and the earth be held in an iron grip.

P.S.—When I say 1090 feet, I mean 1090 feet per second.

Question 14.—If you were to pour a pound of molten lead and a pound of molten iron, each at the temperature of its melting point, upon two blocks of ice, which would melt the most ice, and why?

Answer.—This question relates to diathermancy. Iron is said to be a diathermanous body (from dia, through, and thermo, I heat), meaning that it gets heated through and through, and accordingly contains a large quantity of real heat. Lead is said to be an athermanous body (from a, privative, and thermo, I heat), meaning that it gets heated secretly or in a latent manner. Hence the answer to this question depends on which will get the best of it, the real heat of the iron or the latent heat of the lead. Probably the iron will smite furthest into the ice, as molten iron is white and glowing, while melted lead is dull.

Question 21.—A hollow indiarubber ball full of air is suspended on one arm of a balance and weighed in air. The whole is then covered by the receiver of an air pump. Explain what will happen as the air in the receiver is exhausted.

Answer.—The ball would expand and entirely fill the vessell, driving out all before it. The balance being of greater density than the rest would be the last to go, but in the end its inertia would be overcome and all would be expelled, and there would be a perfect vacuum. The ball would then burst, but you would not be aware of the fact on account of the loudness of a sound varying with the density of the place in which it is generated, and not on that in which it is heard.

Question 27.—Account for the delicate shades of colour sometimes seen on the inside of an oyster shell. State and explain the appearance presented when a beam of light falls upon a sheet of glass on which very fine equi-distant parallel lines have been scratched very close to one another.

Answer.—The delicate shades are due to putrefaction; the colours always show best when the oyster has been a bad one. Hence they are considered a defect and are called chromatic aberration.

The scratches on the glass will arrange themselves in rings round the light, as any one may see at night in a tram car.

Question 29.—Show how the hypothenuse face of a right-angled prism may be used as a reflector. What connection is there between the refractive index of a medium and the angle at which an emergent ray is totally reflected?

Answer.—Any face of any prism may be used as a reflector. The connexion between the refractive index of a medium and the angle at which an emergent ray does not emerge but is totally reflected is remarkable and not generally known.

Question 32.—Why do the inhabitants of cold climates eat fat? How would you find experimentally the relative quantities of heat given off when equal weights of sulphur, phosphorus, and carbon are thoroughly burned?

Answer.—An inhabitant of cold climates (called Frigid Zoans) eats fat principally because he can't get no lean, also because he wants to rise is temperature. But if equal weights of sulphur phosphorus and carbon are burned in his neighbourhood he will give off eating quite so much. The relative quantities of eat given off will depend upon how much sulphur etc. is burnt and how near it is burned to him. If I knew these facts it would be an easy sum to find the answer.

1881.

Question 1.—Sound is said to travel about four times as fast in water as in air. How has this been proved? State your reasons for thinking whether sound travels faster or slower in oil than in water.

Answer(a).—Mr. Colladon, a gentleman who happened to have a boat, wrote to a friend called Mr. Sturm to borrow another boat and row out on the other side of the lake, first providing himself with a large ear-trumpet. Mr. Colladon took a large bell weighing some tons which he put under water and hit furiously. Every time he hit the bell he lit a fusee, and Mr. Sturm looked at his watch. In this way it was found out as in the question.

It was also done by Mr. Byott who sang at one end of the water pipes of Paris, and a friend at the other end (on whom he could rely) heard the song as if it were a chorus, part coming through the water and part through the air.

(b) This is done by one person going into a hall (? a well) and making a noise, and another person stays outside and listens where the sound comes from. When Miss Beckwith saves life from drowning, her brother makes a noise under water, and she hearing the sound some time after can calculate where he is and dives for him; and what Miss Beckwith can do under water, of course a mathematician can do on dry land. Hence this is how it is done.

If oil is poured on the water it checks the sound-waves and puts you out.

Question 2.—What would happen if two sound-waves exactly alike were to meet one another in the open air, moving in opposite directions?

Answer.—If the sound-waves which meet in the open air had not come from the same source they would not recognise each others existence, but if they had they would embrace and mutually hold fast, in other words, interfere with and destroy each other.

Question 9.—Describe any way in which the velocity of light has been measured.

Answer (a).—A distinguished but Heathen philosopher, Homer, was the first to discover this. He was standing one day at one side of the earth looking at Jupiter when he conjectured that he would take 16 minutes to get to the other side. This conjecture he then verified by careful experiment. Now the whole way across the earth is 3,072,000 miles, and dividing this by 16 we get the velocity 192,000 miles a second. This is so great that it would take an express train 40 years to do it, and the bullet from a canon over 5000 years.

P.S.—I think the gentlemans name was Romer not Homer, but anyway he was 20% wrong and Mr. Fahrenheit and Mr. Celsius afterwards made more careful determinations.

(b) An Atheistic Scientist (falsely so called) tried experiments on the Satellites of Jupiter. He found that he could delay the eclipse 16 minutes by going to the other side of the earths orbit; in fact he found he could make the eclipse happen when he liked by simply shifting his position. Finding that credit was given him for determining the velocity of light by this means he repeated it so often that the calendar began to get seriously wrong and there were riots, and Pope Gregory had to set things right.

Question 10.—Explain why water pipes burst in cold weather.

Answer.—People who have not studied Acoustics think that Thor bursts the pipes, but we know that it is nothing of the kind for Professor Tyndall has burst the mythologies and has taught us that it is the natural behaviour of water (and bismuth) without which all fish would die and the earth be held in an iron grip,



CHAPTER VIII.

FOREIGNERS' ENGLISH.

IT is not surprising that foreigners should make mistakes when writing in English, and Englishmen, who know their own deficiencies in this respect, are not likely to be censorious when foreigners fall into these blunders. But when information is printed for the use of Englishmen, one would think that the only wise plan was to have the composition revised by one who is thoroughly acquainted with the language. That this natural precaution is not always taken we have ample evidence. Thus, at Havre, a polyglot announcement of certain local regulations was posted in the harbour, and the notice stood as follows in French: "Un arrangement peut se faire avec le pilote pour de promenades rames.'' The following very strange translation into English appeared below the French: "One arrangement can make himself with the pilot for the walking with roars.''