2. CHAPTER II.
BLUNDERS OF AUTHORS.
MACAULAY, in his life of
Goldsmith in the Encyclopædia
Britannica, relates that that
author, in the History of England, tells
us that Naseby is in Yorkshire, and that
the mistake was not corrected when the
book was reprinted. He further affirms
that Goldsmith was nearly hoaxed into
putting into the History of Greece an
account of a battle between Alexander the
Great and Montezuma. This, however,
is scarcely a fair charge, for the backs of
most of us need to be broad enough to
bear the actual blunders we have made
throughout life without having to bear
those which we almost made.
Goldsmith was a very remarkable
instance of a man who undertook to write
books on subjects of which he knew
nothing. Thus, Johnson said that if he
could tell a horse from a cow that was
the extent of his knowledge of zoology;
and yet the
History of Animated Nature
can still be read with pleasure from the
charm of the author's style.
Some authors are so careless in the
construction of their works as to contradict in
one part what they have already stated in
another. In the year 1828 an amusing
work was published on the clubs of
London, which contained a chapter on
Fighting Fitzgerald, of whom the author
writes: «That Mr. Fitzgerald (unlike his
countrymen generally) was totally devoid
of generosity, no one who ever knew him
will doubt.» In another chapter on the
same person the author flatly contradicts
his own judgment: «In summing up the
catalogue of his vices, however, we ought
not to shut our eyes upon his virtues; of
the latter, he certainly possessed that one
for which his countrymen have always
been so famous, generosity.» The scissors-and-paste compilers are peculiarly liable
to such errors as these; and a writer in
the Quarterly Review proved the Mémoires
de Louis XVIII. (published in 1832) to
be a mendacious compilation from the
Mémoires de Bachaumont by giving examples
of the compiler's blundering. One
of these muddles is well worth quoting,
and it occurs in the following passage:
«Seven bishops—of Puy, Gallard de
Terraube; of Langres, La Luzerne; of
Rhodez, Seignelay-Colbert; of Gast, Le
Tria; of Blois, Laussiere Themines; of
Nancy, Fontanges; of Alais, Beausset;
of Nevers, Seguiran.» Had the compiler
taken the trouble to count his own list,
he would have seen that he had given
eight names instead of seven, and so have
suspected that something was wrong; but
he was not paid to think. The fact is
that there is no such place as Gast, and
there was no such person as Le Tria. The
Bishop of Rhodez was Seignelay-Colbert
de Castle Hill, a descendant of the Scotch
family of Cuthbert of Castle Hill, in
Inverness-shire; and Bachaumont misled
his successor by writing Gast Le Hill for
Castle Hill. The introduction of a stop
and a little more misspelling resulted in
the blunder as we now find i
t.
Authors and editors are very apt to take
things for granted, and they thus fall into
errors which might have been escaped if
they had made inquiries. Pope, in a note
on Measure for Measure, informs us that the
story was taken from Cinthio's novel Dec. 8
Nov. 5, thus contracting the words decade
and novel. Warburton, in his edition of
Shakespeare, was misled by these contractions,
and fills them up as December 8
and November 5. Many blunders are
merely clerical errors of the authors, who
are led into them by a curious association
of ideas; thus, in the Lives of the
Londonderrys, Sir Archibald Alison, when
describing the funeral of the Duke of
Wellington in St. Paul's, speaks of one of
the pall-bearers as Sir Peregrine Pickle,
instead of Sir Peregrine Maitland. Dickens,
in Bleak House, calls Harold Skimpole
Leonard throughout an entire number,
but returns to the old name in a subsequent one.
Few authors require to be more on their
guard against mistakes than historians,
especially as they are peculiarly liable to
fall into them. What shall we think of
the authority of a school book when we
find the statement that Louis Napoleon
was Consul in 1853 before he became
Emperor of the French?
We must now pass from a book of small
value to an important work on the history
of England; but it will be necessary first to
make a few explanatory remarks. Our
readers know that English kings for several
centuries claimed the power of curing
scrofula, or king's evil; but they may not be
so well acquainted with the fact that the
French sovereigns were believed to enjoy
the same miraculous power. Such, however,
was the case; and tradition reported
that a phial filled with holy oil was sent
down from heaven to be used for the
anointing of the kings at their coronation.
We can illustrate this by an anecdote of
Napoleon. Lafayette and the first Consul
had a conversation one day on the government
of the United States. Bonaparte
did not agree with Lafayette's views, and
the latter told him that «he was desirous
of having the little phial broke over his
head.» This sainte ampulle, or holy
vessel, was an important object in the
ceremony, and the virtue of the oil was to
confer the power of cure upon the anointed
king. This the historian could not have
known, or he would not have written:
«The French were confident in themselves,
in their fortunes; in the special
gifts by which they held the stars.» If
this were all the information that was
given us, we should be left in a perfect
state of bewilderment while trying to
understand how the French could hold
the stars, or, if they were able to hold
them, what good it would do them; but
the historian adds a note which, although
it contains some new blunders, gives the
clue to an explanation of an otherwise
inexplicable passage. It is as follows:
«The Cardinal of Lorraine showed Sir
William Pickering the precious ointment
of St. Ampull, wherewith the King of
France was sacred, which he said was sent
from heaven above a thousand years ago,
and since by miracle preserved, through
whose virtue also the king held
les
estroilles.» From this we might imagine
that the holy Ampulla was a person; but
the clue to the whole confusion is to be
found in the last word of the sentence.
As the French language does not contain
any such word as
estroilles, there can be
no doubt that it stands for old French
escroilles, or the king's evil. The change
of a few letters has here made the mighty
difference between the power of curing
scrofula and the gift of holding the stars.
In some copies of John Britton's
Descriptive Sketches of Tunbridge Wells
(1832) the following extraordinary passage
will be found: «Judge Jefferies, a man
who has rendered his name infamous in
the annals of history by the cruelty and
injustice he manifested in presiding at the
trial of King Charles I.» The book was
no sooner issued than the author became
aware of his astonishing chronological
blunder, and he did all in his power to set
the matter right; but a mistake in print
can never be entirely obliterated. However
much trouble may be taken to suppress
a book, some copies will be sure to
escape, and, becoming valuable by the
attempted suppression, attract all the more
attention.
Scott makes David Ramsay, in the
Fortunes of Nigel (chapter ii.), swear «by
the bones of the immortal Napier.» It
would perhaps be rank heresy to suppose
that Sir Walter did not know that
«Napier's bones» were an apparatus for
purposes of calculation, but he certainly
puts the expression in such an ambiguous
form that many of his readers are likely
to suppose that the actual bones of
Napier's body were intended.
Some of the most curious of blunders
are those made by learned men who without
thought set down something which at
another time they would recognise as a
mistake. The following passage from
Mr. Gladstone's Gleanings of Past Years
(vol. i., p. 26), in which the author confuses
Daniel with Shadrach, Meshech, and
Abednego, has been pointed out: «The
fierce light that beats upon a throne is
sometimes like the heat of that furnace in
which only Daniel could walk unscathed,
too fierce for those whose place it is to
stand in its vicinity.» Who would expect
to find Macaulay blundering on a subject
he knew so well as the story of the
Faerie Queene! and yet this is what he
wrote in a review of Southey's edition
of the
Pilgrim's Progress: «Nay, even
Spenser himself, though assuredly one of
the greatest poets that ever lived, could
not succeed in the attempt to make allegory
interesting. . . . One unpardonable
fault, the fault of tediousness, pervades
the whole of the
Fairy Queen. We become
sick of Cardinal Virtues and Deadly
Sins, and long for the society of plain men
and women. Of the persons who read
the first Canto, not one in ten reaches the
end of the first book, and not one in a
hundred perseveres to the end of the
poem. Very few and very weary are
those who are in at the death of the
Blatant Beast.»
5 Macaulay knew well
enough that the Blatant Beast did not
die in the poem as Spenser left it.
The newspaper writers are great sinners,
and what with the frequent ignorance and
haste of the authors and the carelessness
of the printers a complete farrago of
nonsense is sometimes concocted between
them. A proper name is seldom given
correctly in a daily paper, and it is a
frequently heard remark that no notice of
an event is published in which an error in
the names or qualifications of the actors
in it «is not detected by those acquainted
with the circumstances.» The contributor
of the following bit of information to the
Week's News (Nov. 18th, 1871) must
have had a very vague notion of what a
monosyllable is, or he would not have
written, «The author of
Dorothy, De
Cressy, etc., has another novel nearly
ready for the press, which, with the writer's
partiality for monosyllabic titles, is named
Thomasina.» He is perhaps the same
person who remarked on the late Mr.
Robertson's fondness for monosyllables
as titles for his plays, and after instancing
Caste, Ours, and
School, ended his list with
Society. We can, however, fly at higher
game than this, for some twenty years ago
a writer in the
Times fell into the mistake
of describing the entrance of one of the
German states into the Zollverein in terms
that proved him to be labouring under
the misconception that the great Customs-Union was a new organisation. Another
source of error in the papers is the hurry
with which bits of news are printed
before they have been authenticated. Each
editor wishes to get the start of his
neighbour, and the consequence is that they
are frequently deceived. In a number of
the
Literary Gazette for 1837 there is a
paragraph headed «Sir Michael Faraday,»
in which the great philosopher is
congratulated upon the title which had been
conferred upon him. Another source of
blundering is the attempt to answer an
opponent before his argument is thoroughly
understood. A few years ago a
gentleman made d note in the
Notes and
Queries to the effect that a certain custom
was at least 1400 years old, and was probably
introduced into England in the fifth
century. Soon afterwards another gentleman
wrote to the same journal, «Assuredly
this custom was general before A.D. 1400»;
but how he obtained that date out of the
previous communication no one can tell.
The Times made a strange blunder in
describing a gallery of pictures: «Mr.
Robertson's group of `Susannah and the
Elders,' with the name of Pordenone,
contains some passages of glowing colour
which must be set off against a good deal
of clumsy drawing in the central figure of
the chaste
maiden.» As bad as this was
the confusion in the mind of the critic of
the New Gallery, who spoke of Mr. Hallé's
Paolo and Francesca as that masterly
study and production of the old Adam
phase of human nature which Milton
hit off so sublimely in the
Inferno.
A writer in the Notes and Queries
confused Beersheba with Bathsheba, and
conferred on the woman the name of the
place.
It has often been remarked that a
thorough knowledge of the English Bible
is an education of itself, and a
correspondence in the Times in August 1888
shows the value of a knowledge of the
Liturgy of the Church of England. In a
leading article occurred the passage, «We
have no doubt whatever that Scotch
judges and juries will administer indifferent
justice.» A correspondent in Glasgow,
who supposed indifferent to mean inferior,
wrote to complain at the insinuation
that a Scotch jury would not do its
duty. The editor of the Times had little
difficulty in answering this by referring to
the prayer for the Church militant, where
are the words, «Grant unto her [the
Queen's] whole Council and to all that
are put in authority under her, that they
may truly and indifferently minister justice,
to the punishment of wickedness and vice,
and to the maintenance of Thy true
religion, and virtue.»
The compiler of an Anthology made
the following remarks in his preface: «In
making a selection of this kind one sails
between Scylla and Charybdis—the hackneyed
and the strange. I have done my
best to steer clear of both these rocks.»
A leader-writer in a morning paper a
few months ago made the same blunder
when he wrote: «As a matter of fact, Mr.
Gladstone was bound to bump against
either Scylla or Charybdis.» It has
generally been supposed that Scylla only was
a rock.
A most extraordinary blunder was made
in Scientific American eight or ten years
ago. An engraving of a handsome Chelsea
china vase was presented with the
following description: «In England no
regular hard porcelain is made, but a
soft porcelain of great beauty is produced
from kaolin, phosphate of lime,
and calcined silica. The principal works
are situated at Chelsea. The export of
these English porcelains is considerable,
and it is a curious fact that they are
largely imported into China, where they
are highly esteemed. Our engraving
shows a richly ornamented vase in soft
porcelain from the works at Chelsea.»
It could scarcely have been premised
that any one would be so ignorant as
to suppose that Chelsea china was still
manufactured, and this paragraph is a
good illustration of the evils of journalists
writing on subjects about which they know
nothing.
Critics who are supposed to be immaculate
often blunder when sitting in judgment
on the sins of authors. They are
frequently puzzled by reprints, and led into
error by the disinclination of publishers
to give particulars in the preface as
to a book which was written many
years before its republication. A few
years ago was issued a reprint of the
translation of the
Arabian Nights, by
Jonathan Scott, LL.D., which was first
published in 1811. A reviewer having
the book before him overlooked this
important fact, and straightway proceeded
to «slate» Dr. Scott for his supposed
work of supererogation in making a new
translation when Lane's held the field, the
fact really being that Scott's translation
preceded Lane's by nearly thirty years.
Another critic, having to review a
reprint of Galt's Lives of Players, complained
that Mr. Galt had not brought his book
down to the date of publication, being
ignorant of the fact that John Galt died
as long ago as 1839. The reviewer of
Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare committed
the worst blunder of all when he wrote
that those persons who did not know
their Shakespeare might read Mr.
Lamb's paraphrase if they liked, but for
his part he did not see the use of such
works. The man who had never heard
of Charles Lamb and his Tales must have
very much mistaken his vocation when he
set up as a literary critic.
These are all genuine cases, but the
story of Lord Campbell and his criticism
of
Romeo and Juliet is almost too good to
be true. It is said that when the future
Lord Chancellor first came to London
he went to the editor of the
Morning
Chronicle for some work. The editor
sent him to the theatre. «Plain John»
Campbell had no idea he was witnessing
a play of Shakespeare, and he therefore
set to work to sketch the plot of
Romeo
and Juliet, and to give the author a little
wholesome advice. He recommended a
curtailment in parts so as to render it
more suitable to the taste of a cultivated
audience. We can quite understand that
if a story like this was once set into
circulation it was not likely to be allowed to
die by the many who were glad to have a
laugh at the rising barrister.
