From misquotations it is an easy step p 22to pass to mispronunciations.  These are mostly too common to be amusing, but sometimes the blunderers manage to hit upon something which is rather comic.  Thus an ignorant reader coming upon a reference to an angle of forty-five degrees was puzzled, and astonished his hearers by giving it out as angel of forty-five degrees.  This blunderer, however, was outdone by the speaker who described a distinguished personage ``as a very indefate’mgable young man,’’ adding, ``but even he must succuumb’’ (suck ’um) at last.

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 absurdity of the change of sex in the description is more clearly seen when we find in a Prayer-book published soon after the Queen’s accession Her Majesty described as ``our Queen and Governess.’’

Editors of classical authors are often laughed at for their emendations, but p 23sometimes unjustly.  When we consider the crop of blunders that have gathered about the texts of celebrated books, we shall be grateful for the labours of brilliant scholars who have cleared these away and made obscure passages intelligible.

One of the most remarkable emendations ever made by an editor is that of Theobald in Mrs. Quickly’s description of Falstaff’s deathbed (King Henry V., act ii., sc. 4).  The original is unintelligible:  ``his nose was as sharp as a pen and a table of greene fields.’’ A friend suggested that it should read `` ‘a talked,’’ and Theobald then suggested `` ‘a babbled,’’ a reading which has found its way into all texts, and is never likely to be ousted from its place.  Collier’s MS. corrector turned the sentence into ``as a pen on a table of green frieze.’’ Very few who quote this passage from Shakespeare have any notion of how much they owe to Theobald.

Sometimes blunders are intentionally made—­malapropisms which are understood by the speaker’s intimates, but often astonish strangers—­such as the expressions ``the sinecure of every eye,’’ ``as white p 24as the drivelling snow.’’[2] Of intentional mistakes, the best known are those which have been called cross readings, in which the reader is supposed to read across the page instead of down the column of a newspaper, with such results as the following:—­

[2] See Spectator, December 24th, 1887, for specimens of family lingo.

``A new Bank was lately opened at Northampton—­?pointer no money returned.’’

``The Speaker’s public dinners will commence next week—­admittance, 3/- to see the animals fed.’’

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.  Equally the thing itself has not been very accurately defined.