In the early stages of the art of printing, typographical errors were far more numerous than in books of modern execution, where there is a real effort to attain to ordinary accuracy. It was then very common for a volume of ordinary size to contain page upon page of errata at the close. One of the most remarkable instances of this kind was the curious treatise of Edward Leigh, 'On Religion and Learning,' published in 1656. At the close of the work were two folio pages of corrections in very minute characters. The author himself complains as follows: 'We have no Plantier or Stevens (two celebrated printers of another day) amongst us; and it is no easy task to specify the chiefest errata; false interpunctions there are too many; here a letter wanting, there a letter too much; a syllable too much, one letter for another; words joined, which should be severed; words misplaced, chronological mistakes, &c.'
Leigh's case, however, was not so hard as that of a monk, who wrote and published the 'Anatomy of the Mass,' in 1561. The work itself contained only one hundred and seventy-two pages, to which were added FIFTEEN pages of errata. The pious monk wrote an apology for these inaccuracies, which, if true, proved that his case was indeed a cruel one clearly proving, moreover, that even if the devil had originally assisted Doctor Faustus and Gutenberg in the invention, his brimstone majesty very soon became sick of his bargain. The monk avers that he wrote the work to circumvent the artifices of Satan, and that the devil, ever on the alert, undertook to circumvent him. For this purpose Satan, in the first place, caused the MS. to be drenched in a kennel, until it was rendered comparatively illegible; and, in the second place, he compelled the printers to perpetrate more typographical blunders than had ever before been made in a book of no greater magnitude. But the malice of Lucifer did not end here. He compelled the priest to act under his influence while making the corrections!
But they were not all unintentional errors of the press in those days that appeared such. There were words and phrases interdicted by the Pope and the Inquisition; and sometimes by adroit management the interdicted word, though not inserted in the text, could be arrived at in the table of errata.
It is a singular fact, that the edition of the Latin Vulgate, by Pope Sixtus the Fifth, although his Holiness carefully superintended every sheet as it passed through the press, has ever remained without a rival in typographical inaccuracy. Still more curious was the fact, that the Pope, in the plenitude of pontifical infallibility, prefixed to the first volume a bull of excommunication against any and every printer, who in reprinting the work, should ever make any alteration in the text. To the amazement of the public, however, when the Bible appeared, it swarmed with errors too numerous for an errata. In a multitude of instances it was necessary to reprint whole passages in scraps, and paste over the incorrect verses. Great efforts were made to call in the edition; and it is now only to be found among rare collections, as a monument of literary blunders. If the Devil ever troubles himself about the correction of proofsheets, he was much more likely to be standing at the Pope's elbow while the Bible was printing, than to be bothering his head in regard to the poor monk's mass book to which allusion has been made.
Typographical errors happen in a variety of ways; sometimes by carelessness, sometimes by the ignorance and stupidity of the printer, and sometimes by design. Occurring in either way, they are often ludicrous, and sometimes productive of positive evil. A few examples of each variety will suffice.
In the fine description of the Pantheon, by Akenside, the expressive phrase 'SEVERELY great,' not being understood by the printer, who undertook to think for himself, was printed 'serenely great.'
An edition of the Bible was once published in England, in which the word not was omitted in the seventh commandment. For this offence, whether by carelessness or by design, the archbishop imposed the heaviest penalty ever recorded in the annals of literary history. The edition was required to be called in and destroyed, and a fine imposed of £20,000 sterling.
There was a more severe punishment than even this awarded in Germany once, for a wilful alteration of the sacred text. It seems that in Gen. iii. 16, the Hebrew word which has been rendered husband in the English translation, is lord in the German. It is the passage in which God tells Eve: 'And thy desire shall be to thy husband, who shall rule over thee.' The German word signifying lord is HERR; and in the same language the word NARR answers for fool. The case was this: A new edition of the Bible was printing at the house of a widow, whose husband had been a printer. The spirited lady, not liking the subordinate station of her sex, and having acquired a little knowledge of the art, watched an opportunity by night to enter the printing office; and while the form was lying on the press, she carefully drew out the letters H and e, and inserted in their stead the letters Na. The outrage was not discovered in season, and the Bible went forth declaring that man should be the woman's fool. Such, probably, is too often the case, but the gentlemen would not like to see it in print. Gravely, however, the person committing such an offence must needs stand in awful apprehension of the fearful curse denounced in the conclusion of the Apocalypse.
An edition of the Catholic Missal was once published in France, in which the accidental substitution merely of the letter u for an a, was the cause of a shocking blunder, changing, as it did, the word calotte (an ecclesiastical cap or mitre) into culotte, which, as my readers are aware, means, in drawing-room English, a gentleman's small clothes. The error occurred in one of the directions for conducting the service, where it is said: "Here the priest will take off his culotte!"
Among the errors that have occurred through design, was one which happened in the old Hudson Balance, when the Rev. Dr. Croswell was the editor of that ancient and excellent journal. A merchant by the name of Peter Cole chanced to get married. Cole, however, was very unpopular, and was not one of the brightest intelligences even of those days. The bride, too, was a little more no than yes, in her intellectual furnishment. It used to be a common practice in the country, in sending marriages to the press, to tack on a bit of poetry in the shape of some sweet hymenial sentimentality. In compliance with this custom, the groomsman added a line or two from one of the poets, where the bard speaks of the bliss of the marriage state, 'when heart meets heart reciprocally soft.' The wicked boys in the printing office, however, corrected the poet, making the stanza read thus:
'When head meets head, reciprocally soft.'
Another instance, more ludicrous still, was the following: A lad in a printing office, who knew more about type setting than he did of the Greek mythology, in looking over a poem they were printing, came upon the name of Hecate, one of the lady divinities of the lower world, occurring in a line like this:
'Shall reign the Hecate of the deepest hell.'
The boy, thinking he had discovered an error, ran to the master printer, and inquired eagerly whether there was an e in cat. 'Why, no, you blockhead,' was the reply. Away went the boy to the press room, and extracted the objectionable letter. But fancy the horror of both poet and publisher, when the poem appeared with the line: