``While working at the Clarendon Printing Office a story was current among the men, and generally believed to be authentic, to the following effect. Some of the gay young students of the University, who loved a practical joke, had made themselves sufficiently familiar with the manner in which the types are fixed in certain formes and laid on the press, and with the mode of opening such formes for correction when required; and when the sheet containing the Marriage Service was about to be worked off, as finally corrected, they unlocked the forme, took out a single letter v, and substituted in its place the letter k, thus converting the word live into like. The result was that, when the sheets were printed, that part <p 141>of the service which rendered the bond irrevocable, was so changed as to make it easily dissolved—as the altered passage now read as follows:—The minister asking the bridegroom, `Wilt thou have this woman to be thy wedded wife, to live together after God's ordinance in the holy state of matrimony? Wilt thou love her, comfort her, honour, and keep her in sickness and in health; and forsaking all other, keep thee only unto her, so long as ye both shall like?' To which the man shall answer, `I will.' The same change was made in the question put to the bride.''
If the culprits who left out a word deserved to be heavily mulcted in damages, it is difficult to calculate the liability of those who left out whole verses. When Archbishop Ussher was hastening to preach at Paul's Cross, he went into a shop to purchase a Bible, and on turning over the pages for his text found it was omitted.
Andrew Anderson, a careless, faulty printer in Edinburgh, obtained a monopoly as king's printer, which was exercised on <p 142>his death in 1679 by his widow. The productions of her press became worse and worse, and her Bibles were a standing disgrace to the country. Robert Chambers, in his Domestic Annals of Scotland, quotes the following specimen from an edition of 1705: ``Whyshouldit- bethougtathingincredi ble w<tS> you, y<tS> God should raise the dead?'' Even this miserable blundering could not have been much worse than the Pearl Bible with six thousand errata mentioned by Isaac Disraeli.
The first edition of the English Scriptures printed in Ireland was published at Belfast in 1716, and is notorious for an error in Isaiah. Sin no more is printed Sin on more. In the following year was published at Oxford the well-known Vinegar Bible, which takes its name from a blunder in the running title of the twentieth chapter of St. Luke's Gospel, where it reads ``The parable of the vinegar,'' instead of ``The parable of the vineyard.'' In a Cambridge Prayer Book of 1778 the thirtieth verse of Psalm cv. is travestied as follows: ``Their land brought <p 143>forth frogs, yea seven in their king's chambers.'' An Oxford Bible of 1792 names St. Philip instead of St. Peter as the disciple who should deny Christ (Luke xxii. 34); and in an Oxford New Testament of 1864 we read, ``Rejoice, and be exceeding clad'' (Matt. v. 12). To be impartial, however, it is necessary to mention a Cambridge Bible of 1831, where Psalm cxix. 93 appears as ``I will never forgive thy precepts.'' A Bible printed at Edinburgh in 1823 contains a curious misprint caused by a likeness in pronunciation of two words, Esther being printed for Easter, ``Intending after Esther to bring him forth to the people'' (Acts xii. 4). A misprint of the old hundredth Psalm (do well for do dwell) in the Prayer Book might perhaps be considered as an improvement,—
``All people who on earth do well.''
Errors are specially frequent in figures, often caused by the way in which the characters are cut. The aim of the founder seems to be to make them as much alike as possible, so that it fre<p 144>quently requires a keen eye to discover the difference between a 3 and a 5. In one of Chernac's Mathematical Tables a line fell out before going to press, and instead of being replaced at the bottom of the page it was put in at the top, thus causing twenty-six errors. Besides these, however, only ten errors have been found in the whole work of 1020 pages, all full of figures. Vieta's Canon Mathematicus (1579) is of great rarity, from the author being discontented with the misprints that had escaped his notice, and on that account withdrawing or repurchasing all the copies he could meet with. Some mathematicians, to ensure accuracy, have made their calculations with the types in their own hands. In the Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography there is a misprint in a date which confuses a whole article. William Ayrton, musical critic, is said to have been born in London about 1781, but curiously enough his father is reported to have been born three years afterwards (1784); and still more odd, that father was appointed gentleman of the Chapel Royal in 1764, twenty <p 145>years before he is stated to have been born.
In connection with figures may be mentioned the terrible confusion which is caused by the simple dropping out of a decimal point. Thus a passage in which 6.36 is referred to naturally becomes utter nonsense when 636 is printed instead. Such a misprint is as bad as the blunder of the French compositor, who, having to set up a passage referring to Captain Cook, turned de Cook into de 600 kilos. An amusing blunder was quoted a few years ago from a German paper where the writer, referring to Prince Bismarck's endeavours to keep on good terms with all the Powers, was made to say, ``Prince Bismarck is trying to keep up honest and straightforward relations with all the girls.'' This blunder was caused by the substitution of the word M<a:>dchen (girls) for M<a:>chten (powers).
The French have always been interested in misprints, and they have registered a considerable number. One of the happiest is that one which was caused by Malherbe's bad writing, and induced him to <p 146>adopt the misprint in his verse in place of that which he had originally written. The lines, written on a daughter of Du Perrier named Rosette, now stand thus:—
``Mais elle <e'>tait du monde o<u!> les plus belles choses
Ont le pire destin,
Et rose, elle a v<e'>cu ce que vivent les roses
L'espace d'un matin.''
Malherbe had written,—