Henry B. Wheatley

“ If it be absurd to give information to Englishmen in a queer jargon which it is difficult for him to understand, what must be said of those who attempt to teach a language of which they are profoundly ignorant? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As blunders are a class of mistakes, so ``bulls'' are a sub-class of blunders. No satisfactory explanation of the word has been given, although it appears to be intimately connected with the word blunder. ”

“ If we searched bibliographical literature we should find a fair crop of authors who never existed; for when once a blunder of this kind is set going, it seems to bear a charmed life. Mr. Daydon Jackson mentions some amusing instances of imaginary authors made out of title-pages in his Guide to the Literature of Botany. ”

“ A writer in a German paper was led into an amusing blunder by an English review a few years ago. The reviewer, having occasion to draw a distinction between George and Robert Cruikshank, spoke of the former as the real Simon Pure. The German, not understanding the allusion, gravely told his readers that George Cruikshank was a pseudonym, the author's real name being Simon Pure. This seems almost too good to be equalled, but a countryman of our own has blundered nearly as grossly. ”

“ Many mistakes are very serious in their consequences, but there is almost always some sense of fun connected with a blunder, which is a mistake usually caused by some mental confusion. Lexicographers state that it is an error due to stupidity and carelessness, but blunders are often caused

by a too great sharpness and quickness. Sometimes a blunder is no mistake at all, as when a man blunders on the right explanation ”

“ At the Paris Exhibition of 1889 a Practical Guide was produced for the benefit of the English visitor, which is written throughout in the most astonishing jargon, as may be seen from the opening sentences of the ``Note of the Editor,'' which run as follows: ``The Universal Exhibition, for whom who comes there for the first time, is a true chaos in which it is impossible to direct and recognize one's self without a guide. ”

“ 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. ”

“ One unpardonable fault, the fault of tediousness, pervades the whole of the Fairy Queen. We become sick of Cardinal Virtues and Deadly Sins, and long for the society of plain men and women. Of the persons who read the first Canto, not one in ten reaches the end of the first book, and not one in a hundred perseveres to the end of the poem. Very few and very weary are those who are in at the death of the Blatant Beast.'' [5] Macaulay knew well enough that the Blatant Beast did not die in the poem as Spenser left it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He must make himself understood by common men. But if he makes a book the case is different. It must have the charm of a pleasing title. If there is nothing new within, the back at least must be novel and taking. He tortures his imagination for something which will predispose the reader in its favour. ”

“ CHAPTER V. LISTS OF ERRATA. THE errata of the early printed books are not numerous, and this fact is easily accounted for when we recollect that these books were superintended in their passage through the press by scholars such as the Alduses, Andreas, Bishop of Aleria, Campanus Perottus, the Stephenses, and others. It is said that the first book with a printed errata is the edition of Juvenal, with notes of Merula, printed by Gabriel Pierre, at Venice, in 1478 ”

“ 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. ”

“ As has already been said, blunders are often made by those who are what we usually call ``too clever by half.'' Surely it was a blunder to change the time- honoured name of King's Bench to Queen's Bench. A queen is a female king, and she reigns as a king ”

“ The 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. ”

“ The keepers of hotels are great sinners in respect to the manner in which they murder the English language. The following are a few samples of this form of literature, and most readers will recall others that they have come across in their travels. ”

“ In a number of the Literary Gazette for 1837 there is a paragraph headed ``Sir Michael Faraday,'' in which the great philosopher is congratulated upon the title which had been conferred upon him. Another source of blundering is the attempt to answer an opponent before his argument is thoroughly understood. A few years ago a gentleman made a note in the Notes and Queries to the effect that a certain custom was at least 1400 years old, and was probably introduced into England in the fifth century. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is caused by a confusion of two or more things, and unless something is known of these things a blunder cannot be made. A perfectly ignorant man has not sufficient knowledge to make a blunder.
An ordinary blunder may die, and do no great harm, but a literary blunder often has an extraordinary life. Of literary blunders probably the philological are the most persistent and the most difficult to kill. In this class may be mentioned (1) Ghost words, as they are called by Professor Skeat—words, that is, which have been registered, but which never really existed ”

“ 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! ”

“ Still, in spite of the fact that all nations fall into these blunders, and that, as it has been said of some, Hibernicis ipsis Hibernior, it is to Ireland that we look for the finest examples of bulls, and we do not usually look in vain.
It is in a Belfast paper that may be read the account of a murder, the result of which is described thus: ``They fired two shots at him; the first shot killed him, but the second was not fatal.'' Connoisseurs in bulls will probably say that this is only a blunder. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The picturesque writer who draws a well-filled-in picture from insufficient data is peculiarly liable to fall into blunders, and when he does fall it is not surprising that less imaginative writers should chuckle over his fall. A few years ago an American editor is said to have received the telegram ``Oxford Music Hall

burned to the ground.'' There was not much information here, and he was ignorant of the fact that this building was in London and in Oxford Street, but he was equal to the occasion. ”

“ The manner in which Dr. Johnson selected the quotations for his Dictionary is well known, and as a general rule these are tolerably accurate; but under the thirteenth heading of the verb to sit will be found a curious perversion of a text of Scripture. There we read, ``Asses are ye that sit in judgement— Judges,'' but of course there is no such passage in the Bible. The correct reading of the tenth verse of the fifth chapter is: ``Speak, ye that ride on white asses, ye that sit in judgment, and walk by the way.''
From misquotations it is an easy step

to pass to mispronunciations. ”

“ In dealing with our own older literature we find a considerable difference in degree of typographical correctness; thus the old plays of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are often marvels of inaccuracy, and while books of the same date are usually supplied with tables of errata, plays were issued without any such helps to correction. ”

“ The author writes: ``It was usual in ancient times with the greatest families, and is by all genealogists allowed to be a mighty evidence of dignity, to use certain nicknames which the French call sobriquets . . . such as `the Lame' or `the Black.'. . . The house of Yvery, not deficient in any

mark or proof of greatness and antiquity, abounds at different periods in instances of this nature. Roger, a younger son of William Youel de Perceval, was surnamed Balbus or the Stutterer.''
Sometimes a blunder has turned out fortunate in its consequences ”

“ The change of a few letters has here made the mighty difference between the power of curing scrofula and the gift of holding the stars.
In some copies of John Britton's Descriptive Sketches of Tunbridge Wells (1832) the following extraordinary passage will be found: ``Judge Jefferies, a man who has rendered his name infamous in the annals of history by the cruelty and injustice he manifested in presiding at the trial of King Charles I.'' The book was no sooner issued than the author became aware of his astonishing chronological blunder, and he did all in his power to set the matter right ”

“ Ash could not have been well read in Arthurian literature, or he would not have turned the noble knight Sir Gawaine into a woman, ``the sister of King Arthur.'' There is a story of a blunder in Littleton's Latin Dictionary, which further research has proved to be no mistake at all. ”

“ Dr. Skeat quotes a curious instance of the misreading of the thorn () as p, by which a strange ghost word is evolved. Whitaker, in his edition of Piers Plowman, reads that Christ ``polede for man,'' which should be tholede, from tholien, to suffer, as there is no such verb as polien.
Dr. J. A. H. Murray, the learned editor of the Philological Society's New English Dictionary, quotes two amusing instances of ghost words in a communication to Notes and Queries (7th S., vii. 305) . ”

“ 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 Times made a strange blunder in describing a gallery of pictures: ``Mr. Robertson's group of `Susannah and the Elders,' with the name of Pordenone, contains some passages of glowing colour

which must be set off against a good deal of clumsy drawing in the central figure of the chaste maiden.'' As bad as this was the confusion in the mind of the critic of the New Gallery, who spoke of Mr Hall's Paolo and Francesca as that masterly study and production of the old Adam phase of human nature which Milton hit off so sublimely in the Inferno. ”