Literary Blunders Part 10

In the _Academy_ for Feb. 25th, 1888, Dr. Skeat explained another discovery of his of the same kind, by which he is able to correct a time-honoured blunder in English literature:--

''CAMBRIDGE: _Feb_. 14, 1888.

''When I explained, in the _Academy_ for January 7 (p. 9), that the word 'Herenus '

is simply a mistake for 'Herines,' _i.e_., the furies (such being the Middle-English form of Erinnyes), I did not expect that I should so soon light upon another singular perversion of the same word.

''In Chaucer's Works, ed. 1561, fol.

322, back, there is a miserable poem, of much later date than that of Chaucer's death, ent.i.tled 'The Remedie of Love.'

The twelfth stanza begins thus:

'Come hither, thou Hermes, and ye furies all Which fer been under us, nigh the nether pole, Where Pluto reigneth,' etc.

It is clear that 'Hermes' is a scribal error for 'Herines,' and that the scribe has added 'thou' out of his own head, to keep 'Hermes' company. The context bears this out; for the author utterly rejects the inspiration of the Muses in the preceding stanza, and proceeds to invoke furies, harpies, and, to use his own expression, 'all this lothsome sort.' Many of the lines almost defy scansion, so that no help is to be got from observing the run of the lines. Nevertheless, this fresh instance of the occurrence of 'Herines'

much a.s.sists my argument; all the more so, as it appears in a disguised shape.

''WALTER W. SKEAT.''

Sometimes a misprint is intentional, as

in the following instance. At the beginning of the century the _Courrier des Pays Bas_ was bought by some young men, who changed its politics, but kept on the editor.

The motto of the paper was from Horace:

''Est modus in rebus,''

and the editor, wis.h.i.+ng to let his friends at a distance know that things were not going on quite well between him and his proprietors, printed this motto as,--

''Est nodus in rebus.''

This was continued for three weeks before it was discovered and corrected by the persons concerned.

Another kind of misprint which we see occasionally is the misplacement of some lines of type. This may easily occur when the formes are being locked, and the result is naturally nonsense that much confuses the reader. Probably the finest instance of this misplacement occurred some years ago in an edition of _Men of the Time_ (1856), where the entry relating to Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, got mixed up with that of Robert Owen, the Socialist,

with the result that the bishop was stated to be ''a confirmed sceptic as regards revealed religion, but a believer in Spiritualism.'' It was this kind of blunder which suggested the formation of cross- readings, that were once very popular.

CHAPTER VIL

SCHOOLBOYS' BLUNDERS.

THE blunders of the examined form a fruitful source of amus.e.m.e.nt for us all, and many comical instances have been published.

The mistakes which are constantly occurring must naturally be innumerable, but only a few of them rise to the dignity of a blunder. If it be difficult to define a blunder, probably the best ill.u.s.tration of what it is will be found in the answers of the boys under examination. All cla.s.ses of blunders may be found among these.

There are those which show confusion of knowledge, and those which exhibit an insight into the heart of the matter while blundering in the form. Two very good examples occur to one's mind, but it is to be feared that they owe their origin to some keen spirit of mature years. ''What

is Faith?--The quality by which we are enabled to believe that which we know is untrue.'' Surely this must have emanated from a wit! Again, the whole Homeric question is condensed into the following answer: ''Some people say that the Homeric poems were not written by Homer, but by another man of the same name.'' If this is a blunder, who would not wish to blunder so?

A large cla.s.s of schoolboys' blunders consist in a confusion of words somewhat alike in sound, a confusion that is apt to follow some of us through life. ''Matins''

has been mixed up with ''pattens,'' and described as something to wear on the feet. Nonconformists are said to be persons who cannot form anything, and a tartan is a.s.sumed to be an inhabitant of Tartary. The G.o.ds are believed by one boy to live on nectarines, and by another to imbibe ammonia. The same desire to make an unintelligible word express a meaning which has caused the recognised but absurd spelling of _sovereign_ (more wisely spelt _sovran_ by Milton) shows itself in the form ''Tea-trarck''

explained as the t.i.tle of Herod given to him because he invented or was fond of tea.[13] A still finer confusion of ideas is to be found in an answer reported by Miss Graham in the _University Correspondent_: ''Esau was a man who wrote fables, and who sold the copyright to a publisher for a bottle of potash.''

[13] _Cornhill Magazine_, June 1888, pp. 619-28.

The following etymological guesses are not so good, but they are worthy of registration. One boy described a blackguard as ''one who has been a s...o...b..ack,'' while another thought he was ''a man dressed in black.'' ''Polite'' is said to be derived from ''Pole,'' owing to the affability of the Polish race. ''Heathen'' means ''covered with heath''; but this explanation is commonplace when compared with the brilliant guess--''Heathen, from Latin 'h

The boy who explained the meaning of the words _fort_ and _fortress_ must have had rather vague ideas as to masculine and feminine nouns. He wrote: ''A fort is a place to put men in, and a fortress a place to put women in.''

The little book ent.i.tled _English as she is Taught_, which contains a considerable number of genuine answers to examination questions given in American schools, with a Commentary by Mark Twain, is full of amusing matter. A large proportion of these answers are of a similar character to those just enumerated, blunders which have arisen from a confusion caused by similarity of sound in the various words, thus, ''In Austria the princ.i.p.al occupation is gathering Austrich feathers.'' The boy who propounded this evidently had much of the stock in trade required for the popular etymologist. ''Ireland is called the Emigrant Isle because it is so beautiful and green.'' ''Gorilla warfare was where men rode on gorillas.'' ''The Puritans found an insane asylum in the wilds of America.''

Some of the answers are so funny that it is almost impossible to guess at the train of thought which elicited them, as, ''Climate lasts all the time, and weather only a few days.'' ''Sanscrit is not used so much as it used to be, as it went out of use 1500 B.C.'' The boy who affirmed

that ''The imports of a country are the things that are paid for; the exports are the things that are not,'' did not put the Theory of Exchange in very clear form.

The knowledge of physiology and of medical subjects exhibited by some of the examined is very amusing. One boy discovered a new organ of the body called a chrone: ''He had a chronic disease-- something the matter with the chrone.''

Another had a strange notion of how to spell _craniology_, for he wrote ''Chonology is the science of the brane.'' But best of all is the knowledge of the origin of Bright's disease, shown by the boy who affirms that ''John Bright is noted for an incurable disease.''

Much of the blundering of the examined must be traced to the absurd questions of the examiners--questions which, as Mark Twain says, ''would oversize nearly anybody's knowledge.''

And the wish which every examinee has to bring in some subject which he supposes himself to know is perceptible in many answers. The date 1492 seems to be impressed upon every American

child's memory, and he cannot rest until he has a.s.sociated it with some fact, so we learn that George Was.h.i.+ngton was born in 1492, that St. Bartholomew was ma.s.sacred in that year, that ''the Brittains were the Saxons who entered England in 1492 under Julius C

and, to cap all, that the earth is 1492 miles in circ.u.mference.

Many of the best-known examination jokes are a.s.sociated with Scriptural characters. One of the best of these, if also one of the best known, is that of the man who, paraphrasing the parable of the Good Samaritan, and quoting his words to the innkeeper, ''When I come again I will repay you,'' added, ''This he said knowing that he should see his face again no more.''

A School Board boy, competing for one of the Peek prizes, carried this confusion of widely different events even farther.

He had to write a short biography of Jonah, and he produced the following: ''He was the father of Lot, and had two wives. One was called Ishmale and the other Hagher; he kept one at home, and he turned the other into the dessert, when

she became a pillow of salt in the daytime and a pillow of fire at night.'' The sketch of Moses is equally unhistoric: ''Mosses was an Egyptian. He lived in an ark made of bullrushes, and he kept a golden calf and wors.h.i.+pped braizen snakes, and et nothing but kwales and manna for forty years. He was caught by the hair of his head, while riding under the bough of a tree, and he was killed by his son Absalom as he was hanging from the bough.'' But the ignorance of the schoolboy was quite equalled by the undergraduate who was asked ''Who was the first king of Israel?''

and was so fortunate as to stumble on the name of Saul. Finding by the face of the examiner that he had hit upon the right answer, he added confidentially, ''Saul, also called Paul.''

The American child, however, managed to cover a larger s.p.a.ce of time in his confusion when he said, ''Elijah was a good man, who went up to heaven without dying, and threw his cloak down for Queen Elizabeth to step over.''

A boy was asked in an examination, ''What did Moses do with the tabernacle?''

and he promptly answered, ''He chucked it out of the camp.'' The scandalised examiner asked the boy what he meant, and was told that it was so stated in the Bible. On being challenged for the verse, the boy at once repeated ''And Moses took the tabernacle and _pitched_ it without the camp'' (Exod. x.x.xiii. 7).

The book might be filled with extraordinary instances of school translation, but room must be found for one beautiful specimen quoted by Moore in his _Diary_. A boy having to translate ''they ascended by ladders'' into Latin, turned out this, ''ascendebant per adolescentiores'' (the comparative degree of lad, _i.e_., ladder).

The late Mr. Barrett, Musical Examiner to the Society of Arts, gave some curious instances of blundering in his report on the Examinations of 1887, which is printed in the _Programme of the Society's Examinations for_ 1888:--

''There were occasional indications that the terms were misunderstood. 'Presto'

signifies 'turn over,' 'Lento' 'with style.'

'Staccato' was said to mean 'stick on

the notes,' or 'notes struck and at once raised.'

''The names of composers in order of time were generally correctly done, but the particulars concerning the musicians were rather startling. Thus Purcell was said to have written, among other things, an opera called _Ebdon and Eneas_; one stated that he was born 1543 and died 1595, probably confusing him with Tallis, that he wrote ma.s.ses and reformed the church music; another that he was the organist of King's College Chapel, and wrote madrigals. One stated that he was born 1568 and died 1695; another, not knowing that he had so long pa.s.sed the allotted period of man's existence, gave his dates 1693, 1685, thus giving him no limit of existence at all. One said he was a German, born somewhere in the nineteenth century, which statement another confirmed by giving his dates as 1817-1846; and, further, credited him with the composition of _The Woman of Samaria_, and as having transposed plain- song from tenor to ba.s.s. Bach is said to have been the founder of the 'Thames

School Lipsic,' the composer of the _Seasons_, the celebrated writer of opera comique, born 16--, and having gone through an operation for one of his fingers, turned his attention to composition, wrote operas, and, lastly, that he was born in 1756, and died 1880, and that his fame rests on his pa.s.sions.

''The facts about Handel are pretty correct; but we find that Weber wrote _Parsifal, The Flying Dutchman, Der Ring der Nibulengon_. His dates are 1813-1883.

Mendelssohn was born 1770, died 1827 (Beethoven's dates), studied under Hadyn (_sic_), and that he composed many operas.

Gounod is said to be 'a rather modern musician'; he wrote _Oth.e.l.lo, Three Holy Children_, besides _Faust_ and other works.

Among the names given as the composer of _Nozze di Figaro_ are Donizetti, William Sterndale Bennett, Gunod, and Sir Mickall Costa. The particulars concerning the real composer are equally interesting.

(1) His name is spelt Mozzart, Mosarde, etc. (2) He was a well-known Italian, wrote _Medea_, and others. (3) His first opera was _Idumea, or Idomeo_. (4) He composed

_Lieder ohne worte, Don Pasquale, Don Govianna_, the _Zauberfloat, Feuges_, and his _Requiem_ is the crowning glory of his 'marvellious carere.' (5) He was a German, 'born 1756, at a very early age.'

If the dates given by another writer be true (born 1795, died 1659), it is certain that he must have died before he was born.''

Mr. Barrett again reported in 1889 some of the strange opinions of those who came to him to be examined:--