Literary Blunders: A Chapter in the 'History of Human Error' - Henry B. Wheatley

Dr. Grey, in his notes on this passage, brings forward the charge against Field, and quotes Wotton's Visitation Sermon (1706) in support of it. He also quotes from Cowley's Puritan and Papist as to the practice of corrupting texts:—

``They a bold pow'r o'er sacred Scriptures take,
Blot out some clauses and some new ones make.''

Pope Sixtus the Fifth's Vulgate so swarmed with errors that paper had to be pasted over some of the erroneous passages, and the public naturally laughed at the bull prefixed to the first volume which excommunicated any printer who altered the text. This was all the more annoying to the Pope, as he had intended the edition to be specially free from errors, and to attain that end had seen all the proofs himself. Some years ago a copy of this book was sold in France for 1210 francs.

The King's Printers, Robert Barker and Martin Lucas, in the reign of Charles I. were not excommunicated, but, what perhaps they liked less, were fined <Pd>300 by the Court of High Commission for leaving the not out of the seventh commandment in an edition of the Bible printed in 1631. Although this story has been frequently quoted it has been disbelieved, and the great bibliographer of Bibles, the late Mr. George Offer, asserted that he and his father searched diligently for it, and could not find it. Now, six copies are known to exist. The late Mr. Henry Stevens gives a most interesting account of the first discovery of the book in his Recollections of Mr. James Lennox. He writes:—

``Mr. Lennox was so strict an observer of the Sabbath that I never knew of his writing a business letter on Sunday but once. In 1855, while he was staying at Hotel Meurice in Paris, there occurred to me the opportunity one Saturday afternoon, June 16th, of identifying the long lost octavo Bible of 1631 with the negative omitted in the seventh commandment, and purchasing it for fifty guineas. No other copy was then known, and the possessor required an immediate answer. However, I raised some points of inquiry, and obtained permission to hold the little sinner and give the answer on Monday. By that evening's post I wrote to Mr. Lennox, and pressed for an immediate reply, suggesting that this prodigal though he returned on Sunday should be bound. Monday brought a letter `to buy it,' very short, but tender as a fatted calf. On June 21st I exhibited it at a full meeting of the Society of Antiquaries of London, at the same time nicknaming it The Wicked Bible, a name that stuck to it ever since, though six copies are now known. . . . Lord Macaulay was present at the meeting, but did not at first credit the genuineness of the typographical error. Lord Stanhope, however, on borrowing the volume, convinced him that it was the true wicked error.''

Curiously enough, when Mr. Stevens took the Bible home on Saturday night he overhauled his pile of octavo Bibles, and found an imperfect duplicate of the supposed unique ``wicked'' Bible. When the owner came for his book on Monday morning he was shown the duplicate, and agreed, as his copy was not unique, to take <Pd>25 for it. The imperfect copy was sold to the British Museum for eighteen guineas, and Mr. Winter Jones was actually so fortunate as to obtain subsequently the missing twenty-three leaves. A third copy came into the hands of Mr. Francis Fry, of Bristol, who sold it to Dr. Bandinel for the Bodleian Library. A fourth copy is in the Euing Library, at Glasgow; a fifth fell into the hands of Mr. Henry J. Atkinson, of Gunnersbury,in 1883; and a sixth copy was picked up in Ireland by a gentleman of Coventry In 1884.

In a Bible of 1634 the first verse of the 14th Psalm is printed as ``The fool hath said in his heart there is God''; and in another Bible of 1653 worldly takes the place of godly, and reads, ``In order that all the world should esteem the means of arriving at worldly riches.''

If Field was not a knave, as hinted above, he was singularly unfortunate in his blunders; for in another of his Bibles he also omitted the negative in an important passage, and printed I Corinthians vi. 9 as, ``Know ye not that the unrighteous shall inherit the kingdom of God?''

It is recorded that a printer's widow in Germany once tampered with the purity of the text of a Bible printed in her house, for which crime she was burned to death. She arose in the night, when all the workmen were in bed, and going to the ``forme'' entirely changed the meaning of a text which particularly offended her. The text was Gen. iii. 16 (``Thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee'').

This story does not rest on a very firm foundation, and as the recorder does not mention the date of the occurrence, it must be taken by the reader for what it is worth. The following incident, vouched for by a well-known author, is, however, very similar. James Silk Buckingham relates the following curious anecdote in his Autobiography:—