ed up one copy in
Paris for fifty guineas.

Rabelais' printer got the satirical doctor into deep water for
printing asne for ame; the council of the Sorbonne took the matter up
and asked Francis I. to prosecute Rabelais for heresy; this the king
declined to do, and Rabelais proceeded forthwith to torment the council
for having founded a charge of heresy upon a printer's blunder.

Once upon a time the Foulis printing establishment at Glasgow
determined to print a perfect Horace; accordingly the proof sheets were
hung up at the gates of the university, and a sum of money was paid for
every error detected.

Notwithstanding these precautions the edition had six uncorrected
errors in it when it was finally published. Disraeli says that the
so-called Pearl Bible had six thousand errata! The works of Picus of
Mirandula, Strasburg, 1507, gave a list of errata covering fifteen
folio pages, and a worse case is that of "Missae ac Missalis Anatomia"
(1561), a volume of one hundred and seventy-two pages, fifteen of which
are devoted to the errata. The author of the Missae felt so deeply
aggrieved by this array of blunders that he made a public explanation
to the effect that the devil himself stole the manuscript, tampered
with it, and then actually compelled the printer to misread it.

I am not sure that this ingenious explanation did not give origin to
the term of "printer's devil."

It is frightful to think
What nonsense sometimes
They make of one's sense
And, what's worse, of one's rhymes.

It was only last week,
In my ode upon spring,
Which I meant to have made
A most beautiful thing,

When I talked of the dewdrops
From freshly blown roses,
The nasty things made it
From freshly blown noses.

We can fancy Richard Porson's rage (for Porson was of violent temper)
when, having written the statement that "the crowd rent the air with
their shouts," his printer made the line read "the crowd rent the air
with their snouts." However, this error was a natural one, since it
occurs in the "Catechism of the Swinish Multitude." Royalty only are
privileged when it comes to the matter of blundering. When Louis XIV.
was a boy he one day spoke of "un carosse"; he should have said "une
carosse," but he was king, and having changed the gender of carosse the
change was accepted, and unto this day carosse is masculine.

That errors should occur in newspapers is not rema