notice of the book-fanciers. Consequences from printers' blunders of a
still more tragic character even than this, have been preserved--as for
instance, the fate of Guidi the Italian poet, whose end is said to have
been hastened by the misprints in his poetical paraphrase of the
Homilies of his patron, Clement XI.

An odd accident occurred to a well-known book lately published,
called Men of the Time. It sometimes happens in a printing-office that
some of the types, perhaps a printed line or two, fall out of "the
forme." Those in whose hands the accident occurs generally try to put
things to rights as well as they can, and may be very successful in
restoring appearances with the most deplorable results to the sense. It
happened thus in the instance referred to. A few lines dropping out of
the Life of Robert Owen, the parallelogram Communist, were hustled, as
the nearest place of refuge, into the biography of his closest
alphabetical neighbour--"Oxford, Bishop of." The consequence is that the
article begins as follows:--

"OXFORD, THE RIGHT REVEREND SAMUEL WILBERFORCE, BISHOP OF, was born in
1805. A more kind-hearted and truly benevolent man does not exist. A
sceptic, as regards religious revelation, he is nevertheless an
out-and-out believer in spirit movements."

Whenever this blunder was discovered, the leaf was cancelled; but a few
copies of the book had got into circulation, which some day or other may
be very valuable.

From errors of the press there is a natural transition to the class who
incur the guilt of perpetrating them, and whose peculiar mental
qualities impart to them their special characteristics. That mysterious
body called compositors, through whose hands all literature passes, are
reputed to be a placid and unimpressionable race of practical stoics,
who do their work dutifully, without yielding to the intellectual
influences represented by it. A clause of an Act of Parliament, with all
its whereases, and be it enacteds, and hereby repealeds, creates, it is
said, quite as much emotion in them as the most brilliant burst of the
fashionable poet of the day. They will set you up a psalm or a
blasphemous ditty with the same equanimity, not retaining in their minds
any clear distinction between them. Your writing must be something very
wonderful indeed, before they distinguish it from other "copy," except
by the goodness or badness of the hand. A State paper which all the
world is mad to know about, is