of our p 103ancestors rendering almost any emendation, however extravagant, a typographical possibility.  A large number of their misprints could only have been perpetrated in the midst of the old orthographies.  Under no other conditions could ice have been converted into ye, air into time, home into honey, attain into at any, sun into sinner, stone into story, deem into deny, dire into dry, the old spellings of the italicised words being respectively, yce, yee, ayre, tyme, home, honie, attaine, att anie, sunne, sinner, stone, storie, deeme, denie, dire, drie.  The form of the long s should also be sometimes taken into consideration, for it could only have been owing to its use that such a word as some could have been misprinted four, niece for wife, prefer for preserve, find for fifth, the variant old spellings being foure, neese, preferre.’’

Among the instances of misprints given in this Dictionary may be noticed the following:  actions for axioms, agreement for argument, all-eyes for allies, aloud for allowed, banish’d for ravish’d, cancel for cantel, candle for caudle, culsedness p 104_for_ ourselves, eye-sores for oysters, felicity for facility, Hector for nectar, intending for indenting, John for Jehu, Judges for Indies, scene for seene, sixteen for sexton, and for sixty-one, tops for toy, Venus for Venice.

In connection with this work may be mentioned the late Mr. W. Blades’s Shakspere and Typography, being an attempt to show Shakspere’s personal connection with, and technical 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 very great interest and value.  Mr. Blades writes:  ``Now these typographical blunders will, in the majority of cases, be found to fall into one of three classes, viz.:—­

``Errors of the ear;

``Errors of the eye; and

``Errors from what, in printers’ language, is called `a foul case.’

``I. Errors of the Ear.—­Every compositor when at work reads over a few words of his copy, and retains them in his mind until his fingers have picked p 105up the various 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 words to become unwittingly supplanted in the mind by others which are similar in sound.  It was simply a mental transposition of syllables that made the actor exclaim,—­

`My Lord, stand back and let the parson cough ’

instead of

`My Lord, stand back and let the coffin pass’
                              Richard III., i. 2.