Literary Blunders: A Chapter in the "History of Human Error"

Produced by Charles Keller
A bit of latin, greek, french, and olde englishe need spellchecked. this whole etext NEEDS spellchecked too!! Index needs checked! There is a <Table> on pages 110-111 that have LOTS of non-ascii characters. Many have the correct encode, but layout needs work!!!
Scanned by Charles Keller with OmniPage Professional OCR software donated by Caere Corporation, 1-800-535-7226. Contact Mike Lough <Mikel@caere.com>
PREFACE. ——
EVERY reader of The Caxtons will remember the description, in that charming novel, of the gradual growth of Augustine Caxton's great work ``The History of Human Error,'' and how, in fact, the existence of that work forms the pivot round which the incidents turn. It was modestly expected to extend to five quarto volumes, but only the first seven sheets were printed by Uncle Jack's Anti-Publishers' Society, ``with sundry unfinished plates depicting the various developments of the human skull (that temple of Human Error),''<p > and the remainder has not been heard of since.
In introducing to the reader a small branch of this inexhaustible subject, I have ventured to make use of Augustine Caxton's title; but I trust that no one will allow himself to imagine that I intend, in the future, to produce the thousand or so volumes which will be required to complete the work.
A satirical friend who has seen the proofs of this little volume says it should be entitled ``Jokes Old and New''; but I find that he seldom acknowledges that a joke is new, and I hope, therefore, my readers will transpose the adjectives, and accept the old jokes for the sake of the new ones. I may claim, at least, that the series of answers to examination questions, which Prof. Oliver Lodge has so kindly supplied me with, comes within the later class.<p _>
I trust that if some parts of the book are thought to be frivolous, the chapters on lists of errata and misprints may be found to contain some useful literary information.