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 causedp 1 p 2by 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 misp 3take; 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 p 4once found shelter in our dictionaries. Knise is a charming word which first appeared in a number of the Edinburgh Review in 1808.