Here it may be remarked that some of p 125the most extraordinary misprints never get farther than the printing office or the study; but although they may have been discovered by the reader or the author, they were made nevertheless.

Sometimes the fun of a misprint consists in its elaborateness and completeness, and sometimes in its simplicity (perhaps only the change of a letter).  Of the first class the transformation of Shirley’s well-known lines is a good example:—­

     ``Only the actions of the just
       Smell sweet and blossom in the dust.’’

is scarcely recognisable as

     ``All the low actions of the just
       Swell out and blow Sam in the dust.’’

The statement that ``men should work and play Loo,’’ obtained from ``men should work and play too,’’ illustrates the second class.

The version of Pope which was quoted by a correspondent of the Times about a year ago is very charming:—­

     ``A little learning is a dangerous thing;
       Drink deep, or taste not the aperient spring.’

p 126The reporter or printer who mistook the Oxford professor’s allusion to the Eumenides, and quoted him as speaking of ``those terrible old Greek goddesses—­the Humanities,’’ was still more elaborate in his joke.

Horace Greeley is well known to have been an exceedingly bad writer; but when he quoted the well-known line (which is said to be equal to a florin, because there are four tizzies in it)—­

     `` ’Tis true, ’tis pity, pity ’tis ‘tis true,’’

one might have expected the compositor to recognise the quotation, instead of printing the astonishing calculation—­

     `` ’Tis two, ’tis fifty and fifty ’tis, ‘tis five.’’

This is as bad as the blunder of the printer of the Hampshire paper who is said to have announced that Sir Robert Peel and a party of fiends were engaged shooting peasants at Drayton Manor.

It is perhaps scarcely fair to quote too many blunders from newspapers, which must often be hurriedly compiled, but naturally they furnish the richest crop. p 127The point of a leader in an American paper was lost by a misprint, which reads as follows:  ``We do battle without shot or charge for the cause of the right.’’ This would be a very ineffectual battle, and the proper words were without stint or change.

A writer on Holland in one of the magazines quoted Samuel Butler’s well-known lines—­

     ``A country that draws fifty foot of water,
     . . . . . . . 
     In which they do not live, but go aboard,’’

which the printer transformed into

     ``In which they do not live, but cows abound.’’

It is of course easy to invent misprints, and therefore one feels a little doubtful sometimes with respect to those which are quoted without chapter and verse.