CHAPTER IV.
BIBLIOGRAPEIICAL BLUNDERS. Literary Blunders; A Chapter in the "History of Human Error." | ||
4. CHAPTER IV.
BIBLIOGRAPEIICAL BLUNDERS.
THERE is no class that requires to be dealt with more leniently than do bibliographers, for pitfalls are before and behind them. It is impossible for any one man to see all the books he describes in a general bibliography; and, in consequence of the necessity of trusting to second-hand information, he is often led imperceptibly into gross error. Watt's Bibliotheca Britannica is a most useful and valuable work, but, as may be expected from so comprehensive a compilation, many mistakes have crept into it: for instance, under the head of Philip Beroaldus, we find the following title of a work: «A short view of the Persian Monarchy, published at the end of Daniel's Works.» The mystery of the last part of the title is cleared up when we
Two blunders that a bibliographer is very apt to fall into are the rolling of different authors of the same name into one, and the creation of an author who never existed. The first kind we may illustrate by mentioning the dismay of the worthy Bishop Jebb, when he found himself identified in Watt's Bibliotheca with his uncle, the Unitarian writer. Of the second kind we might point out the names of men whose lives have been written and yet who never existed. In the Zoological Biography of Agassiz, published by the Ray Society, there is an imaginary author, by name J. K. Broch, whose work, Entomologische Briefe, was published in 1823. This pamphlet is really anonymous, and was written by
In a French book on the invention of printing, the sentence «Le berceau de l'imprimerie» was misread by a German, who turned Le Berceau into a man D'Israeli tells us that Mantissa, the title
If we searched bibliographical literature we should find a fair crop of authors who never existed; for when once a blunder of this kind is set going, it seems to bear a charmed life. Mr. Daydon Jackson mentions some amusing instances of imaginary authors made out of title-pages in his Guide to the Literature of Botany. An anonymous work of A. Massalongo, entitled Graduale Passagio delle Crittogame alle Fanerogame (1876), has been entered in a German bibliography as written by G. Passagio. In an English list Kelaart's Flora Calpensis: Reminiscences of Gibraltar (1846) appears as the work of a lady—
A very amusing, but a quite excusable error, was made by Allibone in his Dictionary of English Literature, under the heading of Isaac D'Israeli. He notices new editions of that author's works revised by the Right Hon. the Chancellor of the Exchequer, of course Isaac's son Benjamin, afterwards Prime Minister and Earl of Beaconsfield; but unfortunately there were two Chancellors in 1858, and Allibone chooses the wrong one, printing, as useful information to the reader, that the reviser was Sir George
A writer in a German paper was led into an amusing blunder by an English review a few years ago. The reviewer, having occasion to draw a distinction between George and Robert Cruikshank, spoke of the former as the real Simon Pure. The German, not understanding the allusion, gravely told his readers that George Cruikshank was a pseudonym, the author's real name being Simon Pure. This seems almost too good to be equalled, but a countryman of our own has blundered nearly as grossly. William Taylor, in his Historic Survey of German Poetry (1830), prints the following absurd statement: «Godfred of Berlichingen is one
Jacob Boehm, the theosophist, wrote some Reflections on a theological treatise by one Isaiah Stiefel, 6 the title of which puzzled one of his modern French biographers. The word Stiefel in German means a boot, and the Frenchman therefore gave the title of Boehm's tract as «Reflexions sur les Bottes d'Isaie.»
It is scarcely fair to make capital out
In a French catalogue the works of the famous philosopher Robert Boyle appeared under the following singular French form: BOY (le), Chymista scepticus vel dubia et paradoxa chymico-physica, &c.
«Mr. Tul. Cicero's Epistles» looks strange, but the mistake is but small. The very natural blunder respecting the title of Shelley's Prometheus Unbound actually did occur; and, what is more, it was expected by Theodore Hook. This is an accurate copy of the description in the catalogue of a year or two back:—
«Shelley's Prometheus Unbound.
— another copy, in whole calf.» and these are Hook's lines:—
And 'tis like to remain so while time circles round;
A reader so weak as to pay for the binding.»
When books are classified in a catalogue
the compiler must be peculiarly on his
guard if he has the titles only and not
the books before him. Sometimes instances
of incorrect classification show
gross ignorance, as in the instance quoted
in the Athenæum lately. Here we have
a crop of blunders: «Title, Commentarii
De Bello Gallico in usum Scholarum
Liber Tirbius. Author, Mr. C. J.
Caesoris. Subject, Religion.» Still better
is the auctioneer's entry of P. V. Maroni's
The Opera. Authors, however, are usually
so fond of fanciful ear-catching titles, that
every excuse must be made for the cataloguer,
who mistakes their meaning, and
takes them in their literal signification.
Who can reprove too severely the classifier
who placed Swinburne's Under the
Microscope in his class of Optical
Instruments, or treated Ruskin's Notes on the
Construction of Sheetfolds as a work on
agricultural appliances? A late instance
of an amusing misclassification is reported
from Germany. In the Orientalische
The elaborate work by Careme, Le Patissier Pittoresque (1842), which contains designs for confectioners, deceived the bookseller from its plates of pavilions, temples, etc., into supposing it to be a book on architecture, and he accordingly placed it under that heading in his catalogue.
Mr. Daydon Jackson gives several
instances of false classification in his Guide
to the Literature of Botany, and remarks
that some authors contrive titles seemingly
of set purpose to entrap the unwary. He
instances a fine example in the case of
Bishop Alexander Ewing's Feamainn
Earraghaidhiell: Argyllshire Seaweeds
(Glasgow, 1872. 8vo). To enhance the
delusion, the coloured wrapper is
ornamented with some of the common marine
algæ, but the inside of the volume
consists solely of pastoral addresses. Another
example will be found in Flowers from
the South, from the Hortus Siccus of an
«No act of a man's life requires more practical common sense than the naming of his book. If he would make a grocer's sign or an invoice of a cellar of goods or a city directory, he uses no metaphors; his pen does not hesitate for the plainest word. He must make himself understood by common men. But if he makes a book the case is different. It must have the charm of a pleasing title. If there is nothing new within, the back at least must be novel and taking. He tortures his imagination for something which will predispose the reader in its favour. Mr. Parker writes a series of biographical sketches, and calls it Morning Stars of the New World. Somebody prepares seven religious essays, binds them up in a book, and calls it Seven Stormy Sundays. Mr. H. T. Tuckerman makes a book of essays on various subjects, and calls it The Optimist; and then devotes several pages of preface to an argument, lexicon in hand, proving that the applicability of the term optimist is `obvious.' An editor, at intervals of leisure, indulges his true poetic taste for the pleasure of his
The list of bibliographical blunders might be indefinitely extended, but the subject is somewhat technical, and the above few instances will give a sufficient indication of the pitfalls which lie in the way of the bibliographer—a worker who needs universal knowledge if he is to wend his way safely through the snares in his path.
CHAPTER IV.
BIBLIOGRAPEIICAL BLUNDERS. Literary Blunders; A Chapter in the "History of Human Error." | ||