ERRATA RECEPTA. 55 



effect on tb6 members of his own confraternity, by tbe too-plentiful 

 •exbibition of the metal whose name is an enduring memorial of the sad 

 catastrophe ? Not so. Two letters in different syllables have merely 

 exchanged places. The n should have .been wh.ere the m stands. 

 They are only the old familiar Antinomians alter all. The occurring 

 of the same error twice in the same paragraph helps the impression 

 that nothing is wrong. — It is singular to observe how in rendering 

 the commonest names blunders will sometimes occur. A quotation 

 from Gray's well-known " Ode on a distant prospect of Eton Col- 

 lege " ha^ a rather ludicrous appearance as given in Mr. Timbs' very 

 interesting "School-days of Eminent Men," p. 218. It runs thus : 



" Say Father Thomas, for thou hast seen 

 Full many a sprightly race," &c. 



Some infatuation seized the compositor here to set up "Thomas" 

 instead of "Thames." A typical mis-rendering of a proper name 

 •combined with- a reduction in rank of its initial letter preverts the 

 sense without exciting suspicion, in a couplet from the Dunciad, as 

 given in the 1st edition of Friswell's "Eamiliar Words" : 



" 'Sow night descending, the proud scene was o'er, 

 But liv'd in settled numbers one day more." 



It should be "Settle's numbers," Pope's insinuation being (what 

 would have been the actual fact had it not been for that very allusion) 

 that Elkanah Settle's verses would be forgotten in a day. 



The effect produced by errors of this kind is often, however, quite 

 Tinsensational. The apparent sense of the words is good, and such 

 as to give full contentment, to the simple public. It seemed by no 

 means an incredible announcement when, some months since, the 

 papers everywhere circulated the intelligence that the Messrs. Cham- 

 bers of Edinburgh, were about to issue a " History of Publishers." 

 The subject, no doubt, struck many persons as one not devoid of 

 interest. It turned out, however, that the forthcoming work was a 

 "History of Peebleshire." When the readers of the London Beview, 

 in its January number of the present year (1866), were more than 

 once given to understand that there had.^een in former times in the 

 United States, an itinerant notability of the name of Lorenzo Daiu, 

 the generality of them, of course, knew no better. A very mild 

 specimen of a correction to be seen in a recent "Little's Living Age," 

 deserves to be here set down on account of its instructiveness to 



