Literary Blunders | Page 9

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 wid none at all.''
Still, in spite of the fact that all nations fall into these blunders, and that, as it has been said of some, _Hibernicis ipsis Hibernior_, it is to Ireland that we look for the finest examples of bulls, and we do not usually look in vain.
It is in a Belfast paper that may be read the account of a murder, the result of which is described thus: ``They fired two shots at him; the first shot killed him, but the second was not fatal.'' Connoisseurs in bulls will probably say that this is only a blunder. Perhaps the following will please them better: ``A man was run down by a passenger train and killed; he was injured in a similar way a year ago.''
Here are three good bulls, which fulfil all the conditions we expect in this branch of wit. We know what the writer means,