the types in their own hands.  In the Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography there is a misprint in a date which confuses a whole article.  William Ayrton, musical critic, is said to have been born in London about 1781, but curiously enough his father is reported to have been born three years afterwards (1784); and still more odd, that father was appointed gentleman of the Chapel Royal in 1764, twenty p 145years before he is stated to have been born.

In connection with figures may be mentioned the terrible confusion which is caused by the simple dropping out of a decimal point.  Thus a passage in which 6.36 is referred to naturally becomes utter nonsense when 636 is printed instead.  Such a misprint is as bad as the blunder of the French compositor, who, having to set up a passage referring to Captain Cook, turned de Cook into de 600 kilos.  An amusing blunder was quoted a few years ago from a German paper where the writer, referring to Prince Bismarck’s endeavours to keep on good terms with all the Powers, was made to say, ``Prince Bismarck is trying to keep up honest and straightforward relations with all the girls.’’ This blunder was caused by the substitution of the word Ma:dchen (girls) for Ma:chten (powers).

The French have always been interested in misprints, and they have registered a considerable number.  One of the happiest is that one which was caused by Malherbe’s bad writing, and induced him to p 146adopt the misprint in his verse in place of that which he had originally written.  The lines, written on a daughter of Du Perrier named Rosette, now stand thus:—­

 ``Mais elle e’tait du monde ou! les plus belles choses
     Ont le pire destin,
   Et rose, elle a ve’cu ce que vivent les roses
     L’espace d’un matin.’’

Malherbe had written,—­

 ``Et Rosette a ve’cu ce que vivent les roses;’’

but forgetting ``to cross his tees’’ the compositor made the fortunate blunder of printing rose elle, which so pleased the author that he let it stand, and modified the following lines in accordance with the printer’s improvement.

Rabelais nearly got into trouble by a blunder of his printer, who in several places set up asne for _a^me_.  A council met at the Sorbonne to consider the case against him, and the doctors formally denounced Rabelais to Francis I., and requested permission to prosecute him for heresy; but the king after consideration refused to give the permission. p 147Rabelais then laughed at his accusers for founding a charge of heresy against him on a printer’s blunder, but there were strong suspicions that the misprints were intentional.

These misprints are styled by the French coquilles, a word whose derivation M. Boutney, author of Dictionnaire de l’Argot des Typographes, is unable to explain after twenty years’ search.  A number of Longman’s Magazine contains an article on these coquilles, in which very many amusing blunders are quoted.  One of these gave rise to a pun which is so excellent that it is impossible to resist the temptation of transferring the anecdote from those pages to these:—­