138 ON ERRATA RECEPTA. 



I might have said " estahlished errors" in English, hut this would 

 have been saying too much ; — it would have implied that there were 

 things to be deplored and amended. All this we give up when we 

 adopt the designation Errata Recepta. We at once confess them to 

 he what they are. 



Moreover I had the less scruple in venturing on this title, because 

 the two words Errata Recepta — besides conveying briefly a particular 

 shade of meaning — are both of them almost as familiar to us as 

 English, the one being seen appended, unfortunately, to most printed 

 books ; and the other being associated in the well-known phrase by 

 which the common edition of the Greek Testament is indicated, viz., 

 the Textus Receptus. 



Some of these peculiar usages in our written and spoken English 

 are the astonishment of foreign scholars. They would puzzle many 

 natives, were they suddenly called upon for the rationale of them. 

 We have been taught them in our childhood, as so many dogmas, and 

 we use them without thought. We pass them about like well known 

 coin, of which we have no need to read the inscription ; we trace 

 them on our luxurious note-papers and in our account books, and 

 their familiar look is no more suggestive of farther research than the 

 ancient but handy quill perhaps, with which we have written them 

 down. 



Errata Recepta arrange themselves into numerous classes. (1) 

 There are those that have arisen from the modifications of form in 

 letters and numerical symbols. (2) There are some that appear in 

 the shape of contractions and abbreviations, (3) There are many 

 that have arisen from the Anglicising of foreign words, especially 

 French, Italian, and German. (4) There are some that spring from 

 the vernacularising of unfamiliar expressions — forcing them to say 

 something that shall, at least, seem to convey an idea. (5) Then we 

 have errata recepta which arise from wrong etymologies and from 

 misprints. (6) There are some that spring from grammatical mis- 

 conceptions and confusion in logic, as where the general is put for the 

 special, and the special for the general. (7) Some are variations in 

 the significance of terms, through the lapse of time. (8) We have 

 errata recepta in the quantity or time of vowels in the syllables of 

 derived words. (9) We have errata recepta in the nomenclature of 

 persons, places, and things. (10) We have errata recepta in regard 

 to the drift of certain popular proverbs or sayings. 



