Literary Blunders | Page 9

sometimes unjustly. When we consider the crop of blunders
that have gathered about the texts of celebrated books, we shall be
grateful for the labours of brilliant scholars who have cleared these
away and made obscure passages intelligible.
One of the most remarkable emendations ever made by an editor is that
of Theobald in Mrs. Quickly's description of Falstaff's deathbed (King

Henry V., act ii., sc. 4). The original is unintelligible: ``his nose was as
sharp as a pen and a table of greene fields.'' A friend suggested that it
should read `` 'a talked,'' and Theobald then suggested `` 'a babbled,'' a
reading which has found its way into all texts, and is never likely to be
ousted from its place. Collier's MS. corrector turned the sentence into
``as a pen on a table of green frieze.'' Very few who quote this passage
from Shakespeare have any notion of how much they owe to Theobald.
Sometimes blunders are intentionally made--malapropisms which are
understood by the speaker's intimates, but often astonish
strangers--such as the expressions ``the sinecure of every eye,'' ``as
white

as the drivelling snow.''[2] Of intentional mistakes, the
best known are those which have been called cross readings, in which
the reader is supposed to read across the page instead of down the
column of a newspaper, with such results as the following:--
[2] See Spectator, December 24th, 1887, for specimens of family lingo.

``A new Bank was lately opened at Northampton-- no
money returned.''
``The Speaker's public dinners will commence next week--admittance,
3/- to see the animals fed.''
As blunders are a class of mistakes, so ``bulls'' are a sub-class of
blunders. No satisfactory explanation of the word has been given,
although it appears to be intimately connected with the word blunder.
Equally the thing itself has not been very accurately defined.
The author of A New Booke of Mistakes, 1637, which treats of ``Quips,
Taunts, Retorts, Flowts, Frumps, Mockes, Gibes, Jestes, etc.,'' says in
his address to the Reader, ``There are moreover other simple mistakes
in speech which pass

under the name of Bulls, but if any man
shall demand of mee why they be so called, I must put them off with
this woman's reason, they are so because they bee so.'' All the author
can affirm is that they have no connection with the inns and playhouses

of his time styled the Black Bulls and the Red Bulls. Coleridge's
definition is the best: ``A bull consists in a mental juxtaposition of
incongruous ideas with the sensation but without the sense of
connection.''[3]
[3] Southey's Omniana, vol. i., p. 220.

Bulls are usually associated with the Irish, but most other nations are
quite capable of making them, and Swift is said to have intended to
write an essay on English bulls and blunders. Sir Thomas Trevor, a
Baron of the Exchequer 1625-49, when presiding at the Bury Assizes,
had a cause about wintering of cattle before him. He thought the charge
immoderate, and said, ``Why, friend, this is most unreasonable; I
wonder thou art not ashamed, for I myself have known a beast wintered
one whole summer for a noble.'' The man at

once, with ready
wit, cried, ``That was a bull, my lord.'' Whereat the company was
highly amused.[4]
[4] Thoms, Anecdotes and Traditions, 1839, p 79

One of the best-known bulls is that inscribed on the obelisk near Fort
William in the Highlands of Scotland. In this inscription a very clumsy
attempt is made to distinguish between natural tracks and made roads:--
``Had you seen these roads before they were made, You would lift up
your hands and bless General Wade.''
The bulletins of Pope Clement XIV.'s last illness, which were
announced at the Vatican, culminated in a very fair bull. The notices
commenced with ``His Holiness is very ill,'' and ended with ``His
Infallibility is delirious.''
Negro bulls have frequently been reported, but the health once
proposed by a worthy black is perhaps as good an instance as could be
cited. He pledged ``De Gobernor ob our State! He come

in wid

much opposition; he go out