Literary Blunders: A Chapter in the History of Human Error""

, 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 h

sprints, 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 h

tions; 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 nu

for allowed, banish'd for ravish'd, cancel for cantel, candle for caudle, culsedness

for ourselves, eye-sores for oysters, felicity for facility, Hector

chnical 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

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rious 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 w

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