Literary Blunders eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 144 pages of information about Literary Blunders.

Literary Blunders eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 144 pages of information about Literary Blunders.

Andrew Anderson, a careless, faulty printer in Edinburgh, obtained a monopoly as king’s printer, which was exercised on p 142his death in 1679 by his widow.  The productions of her press became worse and worse, and her Bibles were a standing disgrace to the country.  Robert Chambers, in his Domestic Annals of Scotland, quotes the following specimen from an edition of 1705:  ``Whyshouldit-bethougtathingincredi ble wtS you, ytS God should raise the dead?’’ Even this miserable blundering could not have been much worse than the Pearl Bible with six thousand errata mentioned by Isaac Disraeli.

The first edition of the English Scriptures printed in Ireland was published at Belfast in 1716, and is notorious for an error in Isaiah. Sin no more is printed Sin on more.  In the following year was published at Oxford the well-known Vinegar Bible, which takes its name from a blunder in the running title of the twentieth chapter of St. Luke’s Gospel, where it reads ``The parable of the vinegar,’’ instead of ``The parable of the vineyard.’’ In a Cambridge Prayer Book of 1778 the thirtieth verse of Psalm cv. is travestied as follows:  ``Their land brought p 143forth frogs, yea seven in their king’s chambers.’’ An Oxford Bible of 1792 names St. Philip instead of St. Peter as the disciple who should deny Christ (Luke xxii. 34); and in an Oxford New Testament of 1864 we read, ``Rejoice, and be exceeding clad’’ (Matt. v. 12).  To be impartial, however, it is necessary to mention a Cambridge Bible of 1831, where Psalm cxix. 93 appears as ``I will never forgive thy precepts.’’ A Bible printed at Edinburgh in 1823 contains a curious misprint caused by a likeness in pronunciation of two words, Esther being printed for Easter, ``Intending after Esther to bring him forth to the people’’ (Acts xii. 4).  A misprint of the old hundredth Psalm (do well for do dwell) in the Prayer Book might perhaps be considered as an improvement,—­

          ``All people who on earth do well.’’

Errors are specially frequent in figures, often caused by the way in which the characters are cut.  The aim of the founder seems to be to make them as much alike as possible, so that it frep 144quently requires a keen eye to discover the difference between a 3 and a 5.  In one of Chernac’s Mathematical Tables a line fell out before going to press, and instead of being replaced at the bottom of the page it was put in at the top, thus causing twenty-six errors.  Besides these, however, only ten errors have been found in the whole work of 1020 pages, all full of figures.  Vieta’s Canon Mathematicus (1579) is of great rarity, from the author being discontented with the misprints that had escaped his notice, and on that account withdrawing or repurchasing all the copies he could meet with.  Some mathematicians, to ensure accuracy, have made their calculations with

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Literary Blunders from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.