One of the most remarkable blunders ever made in a newspaper was connected with the burial of the well-known literary man, John Payne Collier. In the Standard of Sept. 21st, 1883, it was reported that ``the remains of the late Mr. John Payne Collier were interred yesterday <p 128>in Bray Churchyard, near Maidenhead, in the presence of a large number of spectators.'' The paragraph maker of the Eastern Daily Press had never heard of Payne Collier, so he thought the last name should be printed with a small C, and wanting a heading for his paragraph he invented one straight off, and this is what appeared in that paper:—
``The Bray Colliery Disaster. The remains of the late John Payne, collier, were interred yesterday afternoon in the Bray Churchyard, in the presence of a large number of friends and spectators.''
This was a brilliant stroke of imagination, for who would expect to find a colliery near Maidenhead?
Mr. Sala, writing to Notes and Queries (Third Series, i. 365), says: ``Altogether I have long since arrived at the conclusion that there are more `devils' in a printing office than are dreamt of in our philosophy— the blunder fiends to wit—ever busy in peppering the `formes' with errors which defy the minutest revisions of reader, author, sub-editor, and editor.'' Mr. Sala gives an instance which occurred <p 129>to himself. He wrote that Dr. Livingstone wore a cap with a tarnished gold lace band; but the printer altered the word tarnished into famished, to the serious confusion of the passage.
Some of the most amusing blunders occur by the change of a single letter. Thus, in an account of the danger to an express train by a cow getting on the line in front, the reporter was made to say that as the safest course under the circumstances the engine driver ``put on full steam, dashed up against the cow, and literally cut it into calves.'' A short time ago an account was given in an address of the early struggles of an eminent portrait painter, and the statement appeared in print that, working at the easel from eight o'clock in the morning till eight o'clock at night, the artist ``only lay down on the hearthrug for rest and refreshment between the visits of his sisters.'' This is not so bad, however, as the report that ``a bride was accompanied to the altar by tight bridesmaids.'' A very odd blunder occurred in the World of Oct. 6th, 1886, one which was so odd that the editor <p 130>thought it worthy of notice by himself in a subsequent number. The paragraph in which the misprint occurred related to the filling up of the vicarage of St. Mary's, Islington, which it was thought had been unduly delayed. The trustees in whose gift the living is were informed that if they had a difficulty in finding a clergyman of the proper complexion of low churchism there were still Venns in Kent. Here the natural confusion of the letters u and n came into play, and as the paragraph was printed it appeared that a Venus of Kent was recommended for the vicarage of St. Mary's.
The compositor who set up the account of a public welcome to a famous orator must have been fresh from the study of Porson's Catechism of the Swinish Multitude when he set up the damaging statement that ``the crowd rent the air with their snouts.''
Sometimes the blunder consists not in the misprint of a letter, but in a mere transposition, as when an eminent herald and antiquary was dubbed Rogue Croix instead of Rouge Croix. Sometimes a <p 131>new but appropriate word results by the thrusting into a recognised word of a redundant letter, as when a man died from eating too much goose the verdict was said to have been ``death from stuffocation.''
Many of these blunders, although amusing to the public, cannot have been altogether agreeable to the subjects of them. Mr. Justice Wightman could not have been pleased to see himself described as Mr. Justice Nightman; and the right reverend prelate who was stated ``to be highly pleased with some ecclesiastical iniquities shown to him'' must have been considerably scandalised.
Professor Hales is very much of the opinion of Mr. Sala respecting the labours of the ``blunder fiend,'' and he sent an amusing letter to the Athen<ae>um, in which he pointed out a curious misprint in one of his own books. As the contents of the letter is very much to the point, readers will perhaps not object to seeing it transferred in its entirety to these pages:—
``The humour of compositors is apt to be imperfectly appreciated by authors, because <p 132>it rather interferes with what the author wishes to say, although it may often say something better. But there is no reason why the general reader should not thoroughly enjoy it. Certainly it ought to be more generously recognised than it is. So many persons at present think of it as merely accidental and fortuitous, as if there was no mind in it, as if all the excellent things loosely described as errata, all the curios<ae> felicitates of the setter-up of texts, were casual blunders. Such a view reminds one of the way in which the last- century critics used to speak of Shakspere —the critics who give him no credit for design or selection, but thought that somehow or other he stumbled into greatness. However, I propose now not to attempt the defence, or, what might be worth the effort, the analysis of this species of Wit, but only to give what seemed an admirable instance of it.