leaves separating from each other. Therefore,
in order to remedy these artifices of
Satan, it has been found necessary, after
printing, to go entirely through the work, and
set down all the mistakes, notwithstanding
their great number." I am very much
inclined to think that the devil who threw this
book in the mud, was the printer's devil.

The fate of Cardinal Bellarmine's
Controversies, was even worse than that of the
Anatomy of Missals, although his eminence
refrained from ascribing it to diabolical agency.
Being vexed at perceiving, on close examination,
that numberless errors existed in all the
editions of the work in question, he had a
manuscript copy made which was entirely
free from faults, and confided it to a printer
at Venice, with the strictest injunctions to be
careful and correct. His precautions, however,
were useless, and he found himself under the
necessity of publishing a book intituled,
Recognitio Librorum Omnium Roberti Bellarmini,
(Ingoldstadt, sixteen hundred and eight, in
octavo), in which he pointed out all the
mistakes that had been made in the Venetian
edition. The errata occupied eighty-eight
pages by itself. The author complains
bitterly in his preface, that in more than forty
places the printer has made him say "yes," for
"no," and "no" for "yes." Another learned
man, the Dominican F. Garcia, found yet a
lower deep than Cardinal Bellarmine. He
published in fifteen hundred and seventy-
eight, in quarto, a list of the mistakes which
had crept into the existing impression of the
Trance of St. Thomas. It occupied a hundred
and eleven pages. While on the subject of
mistakes by wholesale, I may mention the
first edition of the works of Pico de la Mirandola,
published at Strasburg in fifteen hundred
and seven, in folio. It contains a list of errata
of fifteen pages; "the most," says Chevillier,
"that I ever remember to have seen in so
small a volume." It was not that mistakes
abounded because of the novelty of the art of
printing, for, nearly a century and a half after
its invention, it appears that the works printed
in Paris were so incorrect as to elicit the
animadversion of the Government. In issuing
a series of regulations to the librarians of that
capital in sixteen hundred and forty-nine, the
department charged with the superintendence
of printed works, observes: "There are so
few good books printed in Paris, and what
are printed there are evidently so greatly
neglected, both on account of the bad paper
and the want of care in printing, that it may
truly be considered a national shame, and an
injury to the state." Paris has long been free
from the reproach of inaccuracy, though there
is still something to amend in a general way
with respect to the quality of the paper.

Commend me, however, for bad materials, to
the country in which printing originated. I
have before me, amongst other German books
which closely resemble it, a copy of Ebers's
large Wörterbuch, published at Leipsic, in
seventeen hundred and ninety-nine, that
seems, from the colour and texture of the
leaves, to have been printed on old blankets
liberally interwoven with glistening
fragments of straw. .But, perhaps, in a Dictionary
a little chaff is allowable.

The greatest printers have always been
distinguished, not only by the beauty of their
type, but by the correctness of its appliance.
Aldus Minutius, in the supplication
which he addressed to Pope Leo the Tenth
(prefixed to his edition of Plato, in fifteen
hundred and thirteen), says that he experienced
so much regret when he discovered
mistakes in his editions, that he would
willingly, if he could, correct every one of them
at the cost of a crown of gold each. And,
after all, he would not have expended any
very large sum, for accuracy is as valuable a
feature of the Aldine editions, as the clearness
and delicacy of the printing. The
Errata of the Commentaries on the Latin
language, by Etienne Dolet, indicate only
eight mistakes, although the work is in two
volumes folio. Only three appear in the
treatise of Budæus, De Asse, printed by
Vascosan; and, if the Scaligeriana is to be
trusted, Cardan's treatise, De Subtilitate, by
the same, in fifteen hundred and fifty-seven,
contains not a single misprint. These statistics,
however, are somewhat dull: let me
turn to a more lively branch of the subject.

A very notable misprint is to be found
in the works of Rabelais, which very nearly
got him into trouble. The monks and
doctors of theology, furious against him
on account of the vituperative epithets by
which he assailed them, eagerly sought in his
works for the means of convicting him of
heresy. A council was held at the Sorbonne,
and the twenty-second and twenty-third chapters
of the third book of the Pantagruel were
selected as the pièces de conviction (proofs
against him). The former of these, which is a
sermon, after the usual fashion of Panurge,
against the mendicant friars, contained— they
decreed— in one word, twice repeated there,
and once in the latter chapter, the entire
principle of Atheism. It was the substitution
by the printer of "asne" for "ame"
"ass" for "soul." These are the passages:
"II ha grievement peché. Son asne s'en va a
trente mille panerées de diables." ("He has
grievously sinned; his ass is sent to thirty
thousand paniers-full of devils.") "II est
par la vertus beuf, hérétique. Je dy hérétique
formé, hérétique clavelé, hérétique
bruslable comme une belle petite horologe.
Son asne s'en va à trente mille
charetées des diables." ("He is, by the vertus
boeuf (an untranslateable oath) a heretic. I
say a heretic formed with the rot,* a heretic
* Hérétique clavelé has literally this signification; but
it has a special punning allusion to Clavelier (or
Clavele), a clockmaker of La Rochelle, who was burnt for
heresy, together with a wooden clock which he had
made.