Literary Blunders Part 6

CHAPTER VI.

MISPRINTS.

OF all literary blunders misprints are the most numerous, and no one who is conversant with the inside of a printing-office will be surprised at this; in fact, he is more likely to be struck with the freedom from error of the innumerable productions issued from the press than to be surprised at the blunders which he may come across. The possibilities of error are endless, and a frequent cause is to be found in the final correction, when a line may easily get transposed.

On this account many authors will prefer to leave a trivial error, such as a wrong stop, in a final revise rather than risk the possibilities of blundering caused by the unlocking of the type. Of course a large number of misprints are far from amusing, while a sense of fun will sometimes be

obtained by a trifling transposition of letters. Authors must be on the alert for misprints, although ordinary misspellings should not be left for them by the printer's reader; but they are usually too intent on the structure of their own sentences to notice these misprints. The curious point is that a misprint which has pa.s.sed through proof and revise unnoticed by reader and author will often be detected immediately the perfected book is placed in the author's hands. The blunder which has. .h.i.therto remained hidden appears to start out from the page, to the author's great disgust.

One reason why misprints are overlooked is that every word is a sort of pictorial object to the eye. We do not spell the word, but we guess what it is by the first and last letters and its length, so that a wrong letter in the body of the word is easily overlooked.

It is an important help to the editor of a corrupt text to know what misprints are the most probable, and for this purpose the late Mr. Halliwell Phillipps printed for private circulation _A Dictionary of Misprints, found in printed books of the

sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, compiled for the use of verbal critics and especially for those who are engaged in editing the works of Shakespeare and our other early Dramatists_ (1887). In the note at the end of this book Mr. Phillipps writes: ''The readiest access to those evidences will be found in the old errata, and it will be seen, on an examination of the latter, that misprints are abundant in final and initial letters, in omissions, in numerals, and in verbal transpositions; but unquestionably the most frequent in p.r.o.nouns, articles, conjunctions, and prepositions.

When we come to words outside the four latter, there is a large proportion of examples that are either of rare occurrence or unique. Some of the blunders that are recorded are sufficiently grotesque: _e.g., Ile starte thence poore for Ile starve their poore,--he formaketh what for the fire maketh hot_. It must, indeed, be confessed that the conjectural emendator, if he dispenses with the quasi-authority of contemporary precedents, has an all but unlimited range for the exercise of his ingenuity, the unsettled spellings of our

ancestors rendering almost any emendation, however extravagant, a typographical possibility. A large number of their misprints could only have been perpetrated in the midst of the old orthographies.

Under no other conditions could _ice_ have been converted into _ye_, _air_ into _time_, _home_ into _honey_, _attain_ into _at any_, _sun_ into _sinner_, _stone_ into _story_, _deem_ into _deny_, _dire_ into _dry_, the old spellings of the italicised words being respectively, yce, yee, ayre, tyme, home, honie, attaine, att anie, sunne, sinner, stone, storie, deeme, denie, dire, drie. The form of the long _s_ should also be sometimes taken into consideration, for it could only have been owing to its use that such a word as _some_ could have been misprinted _four, niece_ for _wife, prefer_ for _preserve, find_ for _fifth_, the variant old spellings being foure, neese, preferre.''

Among the instances of misprints given in this Dictionary may be noticed the following: actions _for_ axioms, agreement _for_ argument, all-eyes _for_ allies, aloud _for_ allowed, banish'd _for_ ravish'd, cancel _for_ cantel, candle _for_ caudle, culsedness

_for_ ourselves, eye-sores _for_ oysters, felicity _for_ facility, Hector _for_ nectar, intending _for_ indenting, John _for_ Jehu, Judges _for_ Indies, scene _for_ seene, sixteen _for_ s.e.xton, and _for_ sixty-one, tops _for_ toy, Venus _for_ Venice.

In connection with this work may be mentioned the late Mr. W. Blades's _Shakspere and Typography, being an attempt to show Shakspere's personal connection with, and technical knowledge of the Art of Printing, also Remarks upon some common typographical errors with especial reference to the text of Shakspere_ (1872), a small work of very great interest and value. Mr. Blades writes: ''Now these typographical blunders will, in the majority of cases, be found to fall into one of three cla.s.ses, viz.:--

''Errors of the ear;

''Errors of the eye; and

''Errors from what, in printers' language, is called 'a foul case.'

''I. _Errors of the Ear_.--Every compositor when at work reads over a few words of his copy, and retains them in his mind until his fingers have picked

up the various types belonging to them.

While the memory is thus repeating to itself a phrase, it is by no means unnatural, nor in practice is it uncommon, for some word or words to become unwittingly supplanted in the mind by others which are similar in sound. It was simply a mental transposition of syllables that made the actor exclaim,--

'My Lord, stand back and let the parson cough '

instead of

'My Lord, stand back and let the coffin pa.s.s'

_Richard III_., i. 2.

And, by a slight confusion of sound, the word _mistake_ might appear in type as must take:--

'So you mistake your husbands.'

_Hamlet_, iii. 2.

Again, _idle votarist_ would easily become _idol votarist_--

'I am no idle votarist.'--_Timon_, iv. 3;

and _long delays_ become transformed to _longer days_--

'This done, see that you take no long delays.

_t.i.tus_, iv. 2.

From the time of Gutenberg until now this similarity of sound has been a fruitful source of error among printers.

''II. _Errors of the Eye_.--The eye often misleads the hand of the compositor, especially if he be at work upon a crabbed ma.n.u.script or worn-out reprint. Take out a dot, and _This time goes manly_ becomes

'This tune goes manly.' _Macbeth_, iv. 3.

So a clogged letter turns _What beast was't then_? into _What boast was't then_?--

'Lady M. What beast was't then, That made you break this enterprise to me?'

_Macbeth_, i. 7.

Examples might be indefinitely multiplied from many an old book, so I will quote but one more instance. The word _preserve_ spelt with a long _s_ might without much carelessness be misread _preferre_ (I _Henry VI_., iii. 2), and thus entirely alter the sense.

''III. _Errors from a 'foul case_.'--This cla.s.s of errors is of an entirely different

kind from the two former. They came from within the man, and were from the brain; this is from without, mechanical in its origin as well as in its commission. As many readers may never have seen the inside of a printing office, the following short explanation may be found useful: A 'case' is a shallow wooden drawer, divided into numerous square receptacles called 'boxes,' and into each box is put one sort of letter only, say all _a_'s, or _b_'s, or _c_'s. The compositor works with two of these cases slanting up in front of him, and when, from a shake, a slip, or any other accident, the letters become misplaced the result is technically known as 'a foul case.' A further result is, that the fingers of the workman, although going to the proper box, will often pick up a wrong letter, he being entirely unconscious the while of the fact.

''Now, if we can discover any law which governs this abnormal position of the types --if, for instance, we can predicate that the letter _o_, when away from its own, will be more frequently found in the box appropriated to letter _a_ than any other; that _b_

has a general tendency to visit the _l_ box, and _l_ the _v_ box; and that _d_, if away from home, will be almost certainly found among the _n_'s; if we can show this, we shall then lay a good foundation for the re-examination of many corrupt or disputed readings in the text of Shakspere, some of which may receive fresh life from such a treatment.

''To start with, let us obtain a definite idea of the arrangement of the types in both 'upper' and 'lower' case in the time of Shakspere--a time when long _s_'s, with the logotypes _ct_, _ff_, _fi_, _ffi_, _ffl_, _sb_, _sh_, _si_, _sl_, _ss_, _ssi_, _ssl_, and others, were in daily use.''

Mr. Blades then refers to Moxon's _Mechanical Exercises_, 1683, which contains a representation of the compositors'

cases in the seventeenth century, which may be presumed to be the same in form as those used in Shakespeare's day.

Various alterations have been made in the arrangement of the cases, with the object of placing the letters more conveniently. The present form is shown on pp. 110, 111.

Mr. Blades proceeds: ''The chief cause of a 'foul' case was the same in Shakspere's time as now; and no one interested in the subject should omit visiting a printing office, where he could personally inspect the operation. Suppose a compositor at work 'distributing'; the upper and lower cases, one above the other, slant at a considerable angle towards him, and as the types fall quickly from his fingers they form conical heaps in their respective boxes, spreading out in a manner very similar to the sand in the lower half of an hour-gla.s.s. Now, if the compositor allows his case to become too full, the topmost letters in each box will certainly slide down into the box below, and occasionally, though rarely, into one of the side boxes. When such letters escape notice, they necessarily cause erroneous spelling, and sometimes entirely change the whole meaning of a sentence.

But now comes the important question: Are errors of this kind ever discovered, and especially do they occur in Shakspere?

Doubtless they do, but to what extent a long and careful examination alone can

A B C D E F G <> H I K L M N O <*> P Q R S T V W X Y Z U J X Y Z U J

A B C D E F G 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 H I K L M N O 8 9 0 <1> <1> <3> k P Q R S T V W

LOWER CASE.

& [ ] j ' Thin and ( ) ? ! ; Leaders. fl middling s.p.a.ces.

-- e Leaders. ff b c d i s f g ffl Leaders. fi ffi En Em l m n h o y p , w quads. quads.

Hair s.p.a.ces.

z q : v u t thick s.p.a.ces a r Large quods.

x . <.>

show. As examples merely, and to show the possible change in sense made by a single wrong letter, I will quote one or two instances:--

'Were they not _forc'd_ with those that should be ours, We might have met them darefull, beard to beard.'

_Macbeth_, v. 5.[9]