r own time. Of the death of the
notorious Robespierre, guillotined in 1794, we find in Chalmers'
Biographical Dictionary that he died July 10th, in Rees's Cyclopaedia,
July 28th, and in Alison's History of Europe, July 29th. Doubtless it is
some comfort to reflect, in view of his many crimes, that the bloody
tyrant of the Jacobins is really dead, irrespective of the date, about
which biographers may dispute. Of the English mechanician Joseph Bramah,
inventor of the Bramah lock, we learn from the English Cyclopaedia, that
he died in 1814, and from Rose's Biographical Dictionary, that he died in
1815.

Now, although a large share of the errors and discrepancies that abound
in biographical dictionaries and other books of reference may be
accounted for by misprints, others by reckoning old style instead of new,
and many more by carelessness of writers and transcribers, it is plain
that all the variations cannot be thus accounted for. Nothing is more
common in printing offices than to find a figure 6 inverted serving as a
9, a 5 for a 3, or a 3 for an 8, while 8, 9, and O, are frequently
interchanged. In such cases, a keen-eyed proof-reader may not always be
present to prevent the falsification of history; and it is a fact, not
sufficiently recognized, that to the untiring vigilance, intelligence,
and hard, conscientious labors of proof-readers, the world owes a deeper
debt of gratitude than it does to many a famous maker of books. It is
easy enough to make books, Heaven knows, but to make them correct, "_Hic
labor, hoc opus est_."

A high authority in encyclopaedical lore tells us that the best
accredited authorities are at odds with regard to the birth or death of
individuals in the enormous ratio of from twenty to twenty-five per cent.
of the whole number in the biographical dictionaries. The Portuguese poet
Camoens is said by some authorities to have been born in 1517, and by
others in 1525; a discrepancy of eight years. Chateaubriand is declared
by the English Cyclopaedia to have been born September 4th, 1768;
September 14th, 1768, by the Nouvelle Biographie generale of Dr. Hoefer;
and September 4th, 1769, by the Conversations-Lexicon. Of course it is
clear that all these authorities cannot be right; but which of the three
is so, is matter of extreme doubt, leaving the student of facts perplexed
and uncertain at the very point where certainty is not only most
important, but most confidently expected.

Of another kind