Literary Blunders

and the remainder has not been heard
of since.

In introducing to the reader a small
branch of this inexhaustible subject, I
have ventured to make use of Augustine
Caxton's title; but I trust that
no one will allow himself to imagine
that I intend, in the future, to produce
the thousand or so volumes which will
be required to complete the work.

A satirical friend who has seen the
proofs of this little volume says it
should be entitled ``Jokes Old and New'';
but I find that he seldom acknowledges
that a joke is new, and I hope, therefore,
my readers will transpose the
adjectives, and accept the old jokes for
the sake of the new ones. I may claim,
at least, that the series of answers to
examination questions, which Prof.
Oliver Lodge has so kindly supplied
me with, comes within the later class.

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

I have availed myself of the published
communications of my friends
Professors Hales and Skeat and Dr.
Murray on Literary Blunders, and
my best thanks are also due to several
friends who have helped me with some
curious instances, and I would specially
mention Sir George Birdwood,
K.C.I.E., C.SI.., Mr. Edward Clodd,
Mr. R. B. Prosser, and Sir Henry
Trueman Wood_.

CONTENTS.
----
CHAPTER

BLUNDERS IN GENERAL.

PAGE

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

CHAPTER II.

BLUNDERS OF AUTHORS.

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

CHAPTER III.

BLUNDERS OF TRANSLATORS.
PAGE

``Translators are traitors''--Amusing
translations--Translations of names--
Cinderella--``Oh that mine adversary had
written a book''--Perversions of the
true meaning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

CHAPTER IV.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL BLUNDERS.

Watt's _Bibliotheca Britannica_--Imaginary
authors--Faulty classification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

CHAPTER V.

LISTS OF ERRATA.

Early use of errata--Intentional blunders--
Authors correct their books--Ineffectual
attempts to be immaculate--Misprints
never corrected. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

CHAPTER VI.

MISPRINTS.

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

PAGE
CHAPTER VII.

SCHOOLBOYS' BLUNDERS.

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

CHAPTER VIII.

FOREIGNERS ENGLISH.

Exhibition English--French Work on the
Societies of the World--Hotel keepers'
English--Barcelona Exhibition--Paris
Exhibition of 1889--How to learn English--
Foreign Guides in so called English
--Addition to God save the King--
Shenstone. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .188

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



LITERARY BLUNDERS.

CHAPTER I.

BLUNDERS IN GENERAL.

THE words ``blunder'' and ``mistake''
are often treated as
synonyms; thus we usually
call our own blunders mistakes, and
our friends style our mistakes blunders.
In truth the class of blunders is a sub-
division of the _genus_ mistakes. Many
mistakes are very serious in their
consequences, but there is almost always some
sense of fun connected with a blunder,
which is a mistake usually caused by some
mental confusion. Lexicographers state
that it is an error due to stupidity and
carelessness, but blunders are often caused

by a too great sharpness and quickness.
Sometimes a blunder is no mistake at all,
as when a man blunders on the right
explanation; thus he arrives at the right goal,
but by an unorthodox road. Sir Roger
L'Estrange says that ``it is one thing to
forget a matter of fact, and another to
_blunder_ upon the reason of it.''

Some years ago there was an article in
the _Saturday Review_ on ``the knowledge
necessary to make a blunder,'' and this
title gives the clue to what a blunder really
is. It is caused by a confusion of two
or more things, and unless something is
known of these things a blunder cannot
be made. A perfectly ignorant man has
not sufficient knowledge to make a blunder.

An ordinary blunder may die, and do
no great harm, but a literary blunder often
has an extraordinary life. Of literary
blunders probably the philological are the
most persistent and the most difficult to
kill. In this class may be mentioned (1)
Ghost words, as they are called by Professor
Skeat--words, that is, which have been
registered, but which never really existed;
(2) Real words that exist through a mis

take;
and (3) Absurd etymologies, a large
division crammed with delicious blunders.

1. Professor Skeat, in his presidential
address to the members of the Philological
Society in 1886, gave a most interesting
account of some hundred ghost words, or
words which have no real existence. Those
who wish to follow out this subject must
refer to the _Philological Transactions_, but
four specially curious instances may be
mentioned here. These four words are
``abacot,'' ``knise,'' ``morse,'' and ``polien.''
_Abacot_ is defined by Webster as ``the cap
of state formerly used by English kings,
wrought into the figure of two crowns'';
but Dr. Murray, when he was preparing
the _New English Dictionary_, discovered
that this was an interloper, and unworthy
of a place in the language. It was found
to be a mistake for _by-cocket_, which is the
correct word. In spite of this exposure
of the impostor, the word was allowed
to stand, with a woodcut of an abacot,
in an important dictionary published
subsequently, although Dr. Murray's
remarks were quoted. This shows how
difficult it is to kill a word which has

once found shelter in our dictionaries.
_Knise_ is a charming word which first
appeared in a number of the _Edinburgh
Review_ in 1808. Fortunately for the fun
of the thing, the word occurred in an
article on Indian Missions, by Sydney
Smith. We read, ``The Hindoos have
some very strange customs, which it would
be desirable to abolish. Some swing on
hooks, some run _knises_ through their
hands, and widows burn themselves to
death.'' The reviewer was attacked for
his statement by Mr. John Styles, and he
replied in an article on Methodism printed
in the _Edinburgh_ in the following year.
Sydney Smith wrote: ``Mr. Styles is
peculiarly severe upon us for not being more
shocked at their piercing their limbs with
_knises_ . . . it is for us to explain the plan
and nature of this terrible and unknown
piece of mechanism. A _knise_, then, is
neither more nor less than a false print in
the _Edinburgh Review_ for a knife; and
from this blunder of the printer has Mr.
Styles manufactured this Ddalean instrument
of torture called a _knise_.'' A similar
instance occurs in a misprint of a passage

of one of Scott's novels, but here there is
the further amusing circumstance that the
etymology of the false word was settled to
the satisfaction of some of the readers. In
the majority of editions of _The Monastery_,
chapter x., we read: ``Hardened wretch
(said Father Eustace), art thou but this
instant delivered from death, and dost thou
so soon morse thoughts of slaughter?''
This word is nothing but a misprint of
_nurse_; but in _Notes and Queries_ two
independent correspondents accounted for the
word _morse_ etymologically. One explained
it as ``to prime,'' as when one primes a
musket, from O. Fr. _amorce_, powder for the
touchhole (Cotgrave), and the other by ``to
bite'' (Lat. _mordere_), hence ``to indulge
in biting, stinging or gnawing thoughts of
slaughter.'' The latter writes: ``That the
word as a misprint should have been
printed and read by millions for fifty
years without being challenged and altered
exceeds the bounds of probability.'' Yet
when the original MS. of Sir Walter Scott
was consulted, it was found that the word
was there plainly written _nurse_.

The Saxon letter for _th_ () has long

been a sore puzzle to the uninitiated, and
it came to be represented by the letter y.
Most of those who think they are writing
in a specially archaic manner when they
spell ``ye'' for ``the'' are ignorant of this,
and pronounce the article as if it were the
pronoun. Dr. Skeat quotes a curious instance
of the misreading of the thorn ()
as _p_, by which a strange ghost word is
evolved. Whitaker, in his edition of Piers
Plowman, reads that Christ ``_polede_ for
man,'' which should be _tholede_, from
_tholien_, to suffer, as there is no such
verb as _polien_.

Dr. J. A. H. Murray, the learned editor
of the Philological Society's _New English
Dictionary_, quotes two amusing instances
of ghost words in a communication to
_Notes and Queries_ (7th S., vii. 305). He
says: ``Possessors of Jamieson's Scottish
Dictionary will do well to strike out the
fictitious entry _cietezour_, cited from Bellenden's
_Chronicle_ in the plural _cietezouris_,
which is merely a misreading of cietezanis
(_i.e_. with Scottish z = = y), _cieteyanis_ or
citeyanis, Bellenden's regular word for
_citizens_. One regrets to see this absurd

mistake copied from Jamieson (unfortunately
without acknowledgment) by the
compilers of Cassell's _Encyclopdic Dictionary_.''

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

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

which nonsense is solemnly reproduced in
Campbell's _Specimens of the British Poets_,
iii. 16. It may save some readers a needless
reference to the dictionary to remember
that it is a misprint for cliffy, a favourite
word of Drayton's.''

2. In contrast to supposed words that
never did exist, are real words that exist
through a mistake, such as _apron_ and _adder_,
where the _n_, which really belongs to the
word itself, has been supposed, mistakenly,
to belong to the article; thus apron should
be napron (Fr. _naperon_), and adder should
be nadder (A.-S. _nddre_). An amusing
confusion has arisen in respect to the
Ridings of Yorkshire, of which there are
three. The word should be _triding_, but
the _t_ has got lost in the adjective, as West
Triding became West Riding. The origin of

the word has thus been quite lost sight of,
and at the first organisation of the Province
of Upper Canada, in 1798, the county of
Lincoln was divided into _four_ ridings and
the county of York into _two_. York was
afterwards supplied with _four_.

Sir Henry Bennet, in the reign of
Charles II., took his title of Earl of
Arlington owing to a blunder. The proper
name of the village in Middlesex is
Harlington.

A curious misunderstanding in the
Marriage Service has given us two words
instead of one. We now vow to remain
united till death us _do part_, but the
original declaration, as given in the first
Prayer Book of Edward VI., was: ``I, N.,
take thee N., to my wedded wife, to have
and to hold from this day forward, for
better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in
sickness and in health, to love and to
cherish, till death us depart [or separate].''

It is not worth while here to register the
many words which have taken their present
spelling through a mistaken view of their
etymology. They are too numerous, and
the consideration of them would open up a

question quite distinct from the one now
under consideration.

3. Absurd etymology was once the rule,
because guessing without any knowledge
of the historical forms of words was
general; and still, in spite of the modern
school of philology, which has shown us
the right way, much wild guessing continues
to be prevalent. It is not, however,
often that we can point to such a brilliant
instance of blundering etymology as that
to be found in Barlow's English Dictionary
(1772). The word _porcelain_ is there
said to be ``derived from _pour cent annes_,
French for a hundred years, it having been
imagined that the materials were matured
underground for that term of years.''

Richardson, the novelist, suggests an
etymology almost equal to this. He
writes, ``What does correspondence mean?
It is a word of Latin origin: a compound
word; and the two elements here brought
together are _respondeo_, I answer, and _cor_,
the heart: _i.e_., I answer feelingly, I reply
not so much to the head as to the heart.''

Dr. Ash's English Dictionary, published
in 1775, is an exceedingly useful work, as

containing many words and forms of words
nowhere else registered, but it contains
some curious mistakes. The chief and
best-known one is the explanation of the
word _curmudgeon_--``from the French
cur, unknown, and _mechant_, a correspondent.''
The only explanation of this
absurdly confused etymology is that an
ignorant man was employed to copy from
Johnson's Dictionary, where the authority
was given as ``an unknown correspondent,''
and he, supposing these words to be a
translation of the French, set them down
as such. The two words _esoteric_ and
_exoteric_ were not so frequently used in the
last century as they are now; so perhaps
there may be some excuse for the following
entry: ``Esoteric (adj. an incorrect
spelling) exoteric.'' Dr. Ash could not
have been well read in Arthurian literature,
or he would not have turned the noble
knight Sir Gawaine into a woman, ``the
sister of King Arthur.'' There is a story
of a blunder in Littleton's Latin Dictionary,
which further research has proved to be
no mistake at all. It is said that when
the Doctor was compiling his work, and

announced the word _concurro_ to his
amanuensis, the scribe, imagining from the
sound that the six first letters would give
the translation of the verb, said ``Concur,
sir, I suppose?'' to which the Doctor
peevishly replied, ``Concur--condog!''
and in the edition of 1678 ``condog'' is
printed as one interpretation of _concurro_.
Now, an answer to this story is that, however
odd a word ``condog'' may appear,
it will be found in Henry Cockeram's
_English Dictionarie_, first published in
1623. The entry is as follows: ``to agree,
concurre, cohere, condog, condiscend.''

Mistakes are frequently made in respect
of foreign words which retain their original
form, especially those which retain their
Latin plurals, the feminine singular being
often confused with the neuter plural. For
instance, there is the word _animalcule_
(plural _animalcules_), also written _animalculum
_(plural _animalcula_). Now, the
plural _animalcula_ is often supposed to be
the feminine singular, and a new plural is
at once made--_animalcul_. This blunder
is one constantly being made, while it is
only occasionally we see a supposed plural

_strat_ in geology from a supposed singular
strata, and the supposed singular _formulum_
from a supposed plural _formula_ will probably
turn up some day.

In connection with popular etymology,
it seems proper to make a passing mention
of the sailors' perversion of the Bellerophon
into the Billy Ruffian, the Hirondelle
into the Iron Devil, and La Bonne
Corvette into the Bonny Cravat. Some
of the supposed changes in public-house
signs, such as Bull and Mouth from
``Boulogne mouth,'' and Goat and Compasses
from ``God encompasseth us,'' are
more than doubtful; but the Bacchanals
has certainly changed into the Bag o' nails,
and the George Canning into the George
and Cannon. The words in the language
that have been formed from a false analogy
are so numerous and have so often been
noted that we must not allow them to
detain us here longer.

Imaginary persons have been brought
into being owing to blundering misreading.
For instance, there are many saints
in the Roman calendar whose individuality
it would not be easy to prove. All

know how St. Veronica came into being,
and equally well known is the origin of
St. Ursula and her eleven thousand virgins.
In this case, through the misreading of
her name, the unfortunate virgin martyr
Undecimilla has dropped out of the
calendar.

Less known is the origin of Saint Xynoris,
the martyr of Antioch, who is noticed in
the _Martyrologie Romaine_ of Baronius.
Her name was obtained by a misreading
of Chrysostom, who, referring to two
martyrs, uses the word s> (couple or
pair).

In the City of London there is a church
dedicated to St. Vedast, which is situated
in Foster Lane, and is often described as
St. Vedast, _alias_ Foster. This has puzzled
many, and James Paterson, in his _Pietas
Londinensis_ (1714), hazarded the opinion
that the church was dedicated to ``two
conjunct saints.'' He writes: ``At the
first it was called St. Foster's in memory
of some founder or ancient benefactor,
but afterwards it was dedicated to St.
Vedast, Bishop of Arras.'' Newcourt
makes a similar mistake in his
_Reper

torium_, but Thomas Fuller knew the
truth, and in his _Church History_ refers to
``St. Vedastus, _anglice_ St. Fosters.'' This
is the fact, and the name St. Fauster or
Foster is nothing more than a corruption
of St. Vedast, all the steps of which we
now know. My friend Mr. Danby P. Fry
worked this out some years ago, but his
difficulty rested with the second syllable
of the name Foster; but the links in the
chain of evidence have been completed
by reference to Mr. H. C. Maxwell Lyte's
valuable Report on the Manuscripts of the
Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's. The
first stage in the corruption took place in
France, and the name must have been
introduced into this country as Vast.
This loss of the middle consonant is in
accordance with the constant practice in
early French of dropping out the consonant
preceding an accented vowel, as
_reine_ from _regina_. The change of
_Augustine_ to _Austin_ is an analogous
instance. _Vast_ would here be pronounced
_Vaust_, in the same way as the word _vase_
is still sometimes pronounced _vause_. The
interchange of _v_ and _f_, as in the cases of

_Vane_ and _Fane_ and _fox_ and _vixen_, is too
common to need more than a passing
notice. We have now arrived at the form
St. Faust, and the evidence of the old
deeds of St. Paul's explains the rest,
showing us that the second syllable has grown
out of the possessive case. In one of
8 Edward III. we read of the ``King's
highway, called Seint Fastes lane.'' Of
course this was pronounced St. _Fausts_,
and we at once have the two syllables.
The next form is in a deed of May 1360,
where it stands as ``Seyn Fastreslane.''
We have here, not a final _r_ as in the latest
form, but merely an intrusive trill. This
follows the rule by which thesaurus became
_treasure, Hebudas, Hebrides_, and _culpatus,
culprit_. After the great Fire of London,
the church was re-named St. Vedast (_alias_
Foster)--a form of the name which it
had never borne before, except in Latin
deeds as Vedastus.[1] More might be said

of the corruptions of names in the cases
of other saints, but these corruptions are
more the cause of blunders in others than
blunders in themselves. It is not often
that a new saint is evolved with such an
English name as Foster.


[1] See an article by the Author in _The Athenum_,
January 3rd, 1885, p. 15; and a paper by the
Rev. W. Sparrow Simpson in the _Jourral of
the British Archological Association_ (vol. xliii.,
p. 56).



The existence of the famous St. Vitus
has been doubted, and his dance (_Chorea
Sancti Vit_) is supposed to have been
originally _chorea invita_. But the strangest
of saints was S. Viar, who is thus accounted
for by D'Israeli in his _Curiosities of
Literature_:--

``Mabillon has preserved a curious
literary blunder of some pious Spaniards
who applied to the Pope for consecrating a
day in honour of Saint Viar. His Holiness
in the voluminous catalogue of his saints
was ignorant of this one. The only proof
brought forward for his existence was this
inscription:--

S. VIAR.

An antiquary, however, hindered one more
festival in the Catholic calendar by
convincing them that these letters were only
the remains of an inscription erected for

an ancient surveyor of the roads; and he
read their saintship thus:--

[PREFECTV]S VIAR[VM].''


Foreign travellers in England have
usually made sad havoc of the names of
places. Hentzner spelt Gray's Inn and
Lincoln's Inn phonetically as Grezin and
Linconsin, and so puzzled his editor that he
supposed these to be the names of two
giants. A similar mistake to this was that
of the man who boasted that ``not all the
British House of Commons, not the whole
bench of Bishops, not even Leviticus himself,
should prevent him from marrying his
deceased wife's sister.'' One of the jokes
in Mark Twain's _Huckleberry Finn_
(ch. xxiii.) turns on the use of this same
expression ``Leviticus himself.''

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

burned to the ground.'' There was not
much information here, and he was ignorant
of the fact that this building was in
London and in Oxford Street, but he was
equal to the occasion. He elaborated a
remarkable account of the destruction
by fire of the principal music hall of
academic Oxford. He told how it was
situated in the midst of historic colleges
which had miraculously escaped destruction
by the flames. These flames, fanned
into a fury by a favourable wind, lit up
the academic spires and groves as they
ran along the rich cornices, lapped the
gorgeous pillars, shrivelled up the roof
and grasped the mighty walls of the
ancient building in their destructive
embraces.

In 1882 an announcement was made
in a weekly paper that some prehistoric
remains had been found near the Church
of San Francisco, Florence. The note
was reproduced in an evening paper and
in an antiquarian monthly with words in
both cases implying that the locality of
the find was San Francisco, California.
It is a common mistake of those who

have heard of Grolier bindings to suppose
that the eminent book collector was a
binder; but this is nothing to that of the
workman who told the writer of this that
he had found out the secret of making
the famous Henri II. or Oiron ware. ``In
fact,'' he added, ``I could make it as well
as Henry Deux himself.'' The idea of the
king of France working in the potteries
is exceedingly fine.

Family pride is sometimes the cause
of exceedingly foolish blunders. The
following amusing passage in Anderson's
_Genealogical History of the House of Yvery_
(1742) illustrates a form of pride ridiculed
by Lord Chesterfield when he set up on
his walls the portraits of Adam de Stanhope
and Eve de Stanhope. The having a
stutterer in the family will appear to most
readers to be a strange cause of pride.
The author writes: ``It was usual in ancient
times with the greatest families, and is by
all genealogists allowed to be a mighty
evidence of dignity, to use certain nicknames
which the French call sobriquets . . .
such as `the Lame' or `the Black.'. . .
The house of Yvery, not deficient in any

mark or proof of greatness and antiquity,
abounds at different periods in instances
of this nature. Roger, a younger son of
William Youel de Perceval, was surnamed
Balbus or the Stutterer.''