``And again, when, to please
An old aunt, I had tried
To commemorate some saint
Of her clique who had died,
``I said he had taken up
In heaven his position,
And they put it—he'd taken
Up to heaven his physician.''
Henry Stephens (Estienne), the learned printer, made a joke over a misprint. The word febris was printed with the diphthong <oe>, so Stephens excused himself by saying in the errata that ``le chalcographe a fait une fi<e!>vre longue (f<oe>brem) quoique une fi<e!>vre courte (febrem) soit moins dangereux.''
Allusion has already been made in the first chapter to Professor Skeat's ghost <p 153>words. Most of these have arisen from misreadings or misprints, and two extraordinary instances may be noted here. The purely modern phrase ``look sharp'' was supposed to have been used in the time of Chaucer, because ``loke schappe'' (see that you form, etc.) of the manuscript was printed ``loke scharpe.'' In the other instance the scribe wrote yn for m, and thus he turned ``chek matyde'' into ``chek yn a tyde.''[12]
[12] Philol. Soc. Trans. 1885-7, pp. 368-9.
In the Academy for Feb. 25th, 1888, Dr. Skeat explained another discovery of his of the same kind, by which he is able to correct a time-honoured blunder in English literature:—
``CAMBRIDGE: Feb. 14, 1888.
``When I explained, in the Academy for January 7 (p. 9), that the word `Herenus ' is simply a mistake for `Herines,' i.e., the furies (such being the Middle-English form of Erinnyes), I did not expect that I should so soon light upon another singular perversion of the same word. <p 154>
``In Chaucer's Works, ed. 1561, fol. 322, back, there is a miserable poem, of much later date than that of Chaucer's death, entitled `The Remedie of Love.' The twelfth stanza begins thus:
`Come hither, thou Hermes, and ye furies all
Which fer been under us, nigh the nether pole,
Where Pluto reigneth,' etc.