When Dante published his "Inferno," the simplicity of the age accepted it as a true narrative of his descent into hell.
When the Utopia of Sir Thomas More was first published, it occasioned a pleasant mistake. This political romance represents a perfect, but visionary republic, in an island supposed to have been newly discovered in America. "As this was the age of discovery," says Granger, "the learned Budaeus, and others, took it for a genuine history; and considered it as highly expedient, that missionaries should be sent thither, in order to convert so wise a nation to Christianity."
It was a long while after publication that many readers were convinced that Gulliver's Travels were fictitious.[90]
But the most singular blunder was produced by the ingenious "Hermippus Redivivus" of Dr. Campbell, a curious banter on the hermetic philosophy, and the universal medicine; but the grave irony is so closely kept up, that it deceived for a length of time the most learned. His notion of the art of prolonging life, by inhaling the breath of young women, was eagerly credited. A physician, who himself had composed a treatise on health, was so influenced by it, that he actually took lodgings at a female boarding-school, that he might never be without a constant supply of the breath of young ladies. Mr. Thicknesse seriously adopted the project. Dr. Kippis acknowledged that after he had read the work in his youth, the reasonings and the facts left him several days in a kind of fairy land. I have a copy with manuscript notes by a learned physician, who seems to have had no doubts of its veracity. After all, the intention of the work was long doubtful; till Dr. Campbell assured a friend it was a mere jeu-d'esprit; that Bayle was considered as standing without a rival in the art of treating at large a difficult subject, without discovering to which side his own sentiments leaned: Campbell had read more uncommon books than most men, and wished to rival Bayle, and at the same time to give many curious matters little known.
Palavicini, in his History of the Council of Trent, to confer an honour on M. Lansac, ambassador of Charles IX. to that council, bestows on him a collar of the order of Saint Esprit; but which order was not instituted till several years afterwards by Henry III. A similar voluntary blunder is that of Surita, in his _Annales de la Corona de Aragon_. This writer represents, in the battles he describes, many persons who were not present; and this, merely to confer honour on some particular families.
Fabiana, quoting a French narrative of travels in Italy, took for the name of the author the words, found at the end of the title-page, _Enrichi de deux Listes_; that is, "Enriched with two lists:" on this he observes, "that Mr. Enriched with two lists has not failed to do that justice to Ciampini which he merited."[91] The abridgers of Gesner's Bibliotheca ascribe the romance of Amadis to one _Acuerdo Olvido_; Remembrance, Oblivion; mistaking the French translator's Spanish motto on the title-page for the name of the author.
D'Aquin, the French king's physician, in his Memoir on the Preparation of Bark, takes _Mantissa_, which is the title of the Appendix to the History of Plants, by Johnstone, for the name of an author, and who, he says, is so extremely rare, that he only knows him by name.
Lord Bolingbroke imagined, that in those famous verses, beginning with _Excudent alii_, &c., Virgil attributed to the Romans the glory of having surpassed the Greeks in historical composition: according to his idea, those Roman historians whom Virgil preferred to the Grecians were Sallust, Livy, and Tacitus. But Virgil died before Livy had written his history, or Tacitus was born.
An honest friar, who compiled a church history, has placed in the class of ecclesiastical writers Guarini, the Italian poet, on the faith of the title of his celebrated amorous pastoral, _Il Pastor Fido_, "The Faithful Shepherd;" our good father imagined that the character of a curate, vicar, or bishop, was represented in this work.
A blunder has been recorded of the monks in the dark ages, which was likely enough to happen when their ignorance was so dense. A rector of a parish going to law with his parishioners about paving the church, quoted this authority from St. Peter--_Paveant illi, non paveam ego_; which he construed, _They are to pave the church, not I_. This was allowed to be good law by a judge, himself an ecclesiastic too.
One of the grossest literary blunders of modern times is that of the late Gilbert Wakefield, in his edition of Pope. He there takes the well-known "Song by a Person of Quality," which is a piece of ridicule on the glittering tuneful nonsense of certain poets, as a serious composition. In a most copious commentary, he proves that every line seems unconnected with its brothers, and that the whole reflects disgrace on its author! A circumstance which too evidently shows how necessary the knowledge of modern literary history is to a modern commentator, and that those who are profound in verbal Greek are not the best critics on English writers.
The Abbe Bizot, the author of the medallic history of Holland, fell into a droll mistake. There is a medal, struck when Philip II. set forth his _invincible Armada_, on which are represented the King of Spain, the Emperor, the Pope, Electors, Cardinals, &c., with their eyes covered with a bandage, and bearing for inscription this fine verse of Lucretius:--
O caecas hominum menteis! O pectora caeca!
The Abbe, prepossessed with the prejudice that a nation persecuted by the Pope and his adherents could not represent them without some insult, did not examine with sufficient care the ends of the bandages which covered the eyes and waved about the heads of the personages represented on this medal: he rashly took them for _asses' ears_, and as such they are engraved!
Mabillon has preserved a curious literary blunder of some pious Spaniards, who applied to the Pope for consecrating a day in honour of _Saint Viar_. His holiness, in the voluminous catalogue of his saints, was ignorant of this one. The only proof brought forward for his existence was this inscription:--
S. VIAR.
An antiquary, however, hindered one more festival in the Catholic calendar, by convincing them that these letters were only the remains of an inscription erected for an ancient surveyor of the roads; and he read their saintship thus:--
PRAEFECTUS VIARUM.
Maffei, in his comparison between Medals and Inscriptions, detects a literary blunder in Spon, who, meeting with this inscription,
Maximo VI Consule
takes the letters VI for numerals, which occasions a strange anachronism. They are only contractions of _Viro Illustri_--V I.
As absurd a blunder was this of Dr. Stukeley on the coins of Carausius; finding a battered one with a defaced inscription of
FORTVNA AVG.
he read it
ORIVNA AVG.
And sagaciously interpreting this to be the _wife_ of Carausius, makes a new personage start up in history; he contrives even to give some _theoretical Memoirs_ of the _August Oriuna_.[92]
Father Sirmond was of opinion that St. Ursula and her eleven thousand Virgins were all created out of a blunder. In some ancient MS. they found _St. Ursula et Undecimilla V. M._ meaning St. Ursula and _Undecimilla_, Virgin Martyrs; imagining that _Undecimilla_ with the _V._ and _M._ which followed, was an abbreviation for _Undecem Millia Martyrum Virginum_, they made out of _Two Virgins_ the whole _Eleven Thousand_!
Pope, in a note on Measure for Measure, informs us, that its story was taken from Cinthio's Novels, _Dec._ 8. _Nov._ 5. That is, _Decade 8, Novel 5._ The critical Warburton, in his edition of Shakspeare, puts the words in full length thus, _December_ 8, _November 5._
When the fragments of Petronius made a great noise in the literary world, Meibomius, an erudit of Lubeck, read in a letter from another learned scholar from Bologna, "We have here _an entire Petronius_; I saw it with mine own eyes, and with admiration." Meibomius in post-haste is on the road, arrives at Bologna, and immediately inquires for the librarian Capponi. He inquires if it were true that they had at Bologna _an entire Petronius_? Capponi assures him that it was a thing which had long been public. "Can I see this Petronius? Let me examine it!"--"Certainly," replies Capponi, and leads our erudit of Lubeck to the church where reposes _the body of St. Petronius_. Meibomius bites his lips, calls for his chaise, and takes his flight.
A French translator, when he came to a passage of Swift, in which it is said that the Duke of Marlborough _broke_ an officer; not being acquainted with this Anglicism, he translated it _roue_, broke on a wheel!
Cibber's play of "_Love's Last Shift_" was entitled "_La Derniere Chemise de l'Amour_." A French writer of Congreve's life has taken his _Mourning_ for a _Morning_ Bride, and translated it _L'Espouse du Matin_.
Sir John Pringle mentions his having cured a soldier by the use of two quarts of _Dog and Duck water_ daily: a French translator specifies it as an excellent _broth_ made of a duck and a dog! In a recent catalogue compiled by a French writer of _Works on Natural History_, he has inserted the well-known "Essay on _Irish Bulls_" by the Edgeworths. The proof, if it required any, that a Frenchman cannot understand the idiomatic style of Shakspeare appears in a French translator, who prided himself on giving a verbal translation of our great poet, not approving of Le Tourneur's paraphrastical version. He found in the celebrated speech of Northumberland in Henry IV.
Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless,
So dull, so dead in look, so _woe-begone_--
which he renders "_Ainsi douleur! va-t'en!"_
The Abbe Gregoire affords another striking proof of the errors to which foreigners are liable when they decide on the _language_ and _customs_ of another country. The Abbe, in the excess of his philanthropy, to show to what dishonourable offices human nature is degraded, acquaints us that at London he observed a sign-board, proclaiming the master as _tueur des punaises de sa majeste_! Bug-destroyer to his majesty! This is, no doubt, the honest Mr. Tiffin, in the Strand; and the idea which must have occurred to the good Abbe was, that his majesty's bugs were hunted by the said destroyer, and taken by hand--and thus human nature was degraded!
A French writer translates the Latin title of a treatise of Philo-Judaeus _Omnis bonus liber est_, Every good man is a free man, by _Tout livre est bon_. It was well for him, observes Jortin, that he did not live within the reach of the Inquisition, which might have taken this as a reflection on the _Index Expurgatorius_.
An English translator turned "Dieu _defend_ l'adultere" into "God _defends_ adultery."--Guthrie, in his translation of Du Halde, has "the twenty-sixth day of the _new_ moon." The whole age of the moon is but twenty-eight days. The blunder arose from his mistaking the word _neuvieme_ (ninth) for _nouvelle_ or _neuve_ (new).
The facetious Tom Brown committed a strange blunder in his translation of Gelli's Circe. The word _Starne_, not aware of its signification, he boldly rendered _stares_, probably from the similitude of sound; the succeeding translator more correctly discovered _Starne_ to be red-legged partridges!
In Charles II.'s reign a new collect was drawn, in which a new epithet was added to the king's title, that gave great offence, and occasioned great raillery. He was styled _our most religious king_. Whatever the signification of _religious_ might be in the _Latin_ word, as importing the sacredness of the king's person, yet in the _English language_ it bore a signification that was no way applicable to the king. And he was asked by his familiar courtiers, what must the nation think when they heard him prayed for as their _most religious king_?--Literary blunders of this nature are frequently discovered in the versions of good classical scholars, who would make the _English_ servilely bend to the Latin and Greek. Even Milton has been justly censured for his free use of Latinisms and Grecisms.
The blunders of modern antiquaries on sepulchral monuments are numerous. One mistakes _a lion_ at a knight's feet for a _curled water dog_; another could not distinguish _censers_ in the hands of angels from _fishing-nets_; _two angels_ at a lady's feet were counted as her two cherub-like _babes_; and another has mistaken a _leopard_ and a _hedgehog_ for a _cat_ and a _rat!_ In some of these cases, are the antiquaries or the sculptors most to be blamed?[93]
A literary blunder of Thomas Warton is a specimen of the manner in which a man of genius may continue to blunder with infinite ingenuity. In an old romance he finds these lines, describing the duel of Saladin with Richard Coeur de Lion:--
A _Faucon brode_ in hande he bare,
For he thought he wolde thare
Have slayne Richard.
He imagines this _Faucon brode_ means a _falcon bird_, or a hawk, and that Saladin is represented with this bird on his fist to express his contempt of his adversary. He supports his conjecture by noticing a Gothic picture, supposed to be the subject of this duel, and also some old tapestry of heroes on horseback with hawks on their fists; he plunges into feudal times, when no gentleman appeared on horseback without his hawk. After all this curious erudition, the rough but skilful Ritson inhumanly triumphed by dissolving the magical fancies of the more elegant Warton, by explaining a _Faucon brode_ to be nothing more than a _broad faulchion_, which, in a duel, was certainly more useful than a _bird_. The editor of the private reprint of Hentzner, on that writer's tradition respecting "the Kings of Denmark who reigned in England" buried in the Temple Church, metamorphosed the two Inns of Court, _Gray's Inn_ and _Lincoln's Inn_, into the names of the Danish kings, _Gresin_ and _Lyconin_.[94]
Bayle supposes that Marcellus Palingenius, who wrote the poem entitled the _Zodiac_, the twelve books bearing the names of the signs, from this circumstance assumed the title of _Poeta Stellatus_. But it appears that this writer was an Italian and a native of _Stellada_, a town in the Ferrarese. It is probable that his birthplace originally produced the conceit of the title of his poem: it is a curious instance how critical conjecture may be led astray by its own ingenuity, when ignorant of the real fact.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 90: The first edition had all the external appearance of truth: a portrait of "Captain Lemuel Gulliver, of Redriff, aetat. suae lviii." faces the title; and maps of all the places, he only, visited, are carefully laid down in connexion with the realities of geography. Thus "Lilliput, discovered A.D. 1699," lies between Sumatra and Van Dieman's Land. "Brobdignag, discovered A.D. 1703," is a peninsula of North America. One Richard Sympson vouches for the veracity of his "antient and intimate friend," in a Preface detailing some "facts" of Gulliver's Life. Arbuthnot says he "lent the book to an old gentleman, who went immediately to his map to search for Lilliput."]
[Footnote 91: In Nagler's _Kunstler-Lexicon_ is a whimsical error concerning a living English artist--George Cruikshank. Some years ago the relative merits of himself and brother were contrasted in an English review, and George was spoken of as "The real Simon Pure"--the first who had illustrated scenes of "Life in London." Unaware of the real significance of a quotation which has become proverbial among us, the German editor begins his Memoir of Cruikshank, by gravely informing us that he is an English artist, "whose real name is Simon Pure!" Turning to the artists under the letter P, we accordingly read:--"PURE (Simon), the real name of the celebrated caricaturist, George Cruikshank."]
[Footnote 92: The whole of Dr. Stukeley's tract is a most curious instance of learned perversity and obstinacy. The coin is broken away where the letter F should be, and Stukeley himself allows that the upper part of the T might be worn away, and so the inscription really be _Fortuna Aug_; but he cast all such evidence aside, to construct an imaginary life of an imaginary empress; "that we have no history of this lady," he says, "is not to be wondered at," and he forthwith imagines one; that she was of a martial disposition, and "signalized herself in battle, and obtained a victory," as he guesses from the laurel wreath around her bust on the coin; her name he believes to be Gaulish, and "equivalent to what we now call Lucia," and that a regiment of soldiers was under her command, after the fashion of "the present Czarina," the celebrated Catherine of Russia.]
[Footnote 93: One of the most curious pictorial and antiquarian blunders may be seen in Vallancey's _Collectanea_. He found upon one of the ancient stones on the Hill of Tara an inscription which he read _Beli Divose_, "to Belus, God of Fire;" but which ultimately proved to be the work of some idler who, lying on the stone, cut upside down his name and the date of the year, E. Conid, 1731; upon turning this engraving, the fact is apparent.]
[The end]
Isaac D\'Israeli's essay: Literary Blunders