Sir Richard Steele, being asked why his countrymen were so addicted to making bulls, said he believed there must be something in the air of Ireland, adding, “I dare say if an Englishman were born there he would do the same.”
Mr. Cunningham, to whom we are indebted for the interesting notes to Johnson’s “Lives of the Poets,” pronounces his author the most distinguished of his cotemporaries.
Sir Walter Scott perpetrates a curious blunder in one of his novels, in making certain of his characters behold a sunset over the waters of a seaport on the eastern coast of Scotland.
The following occurs in Dr. Latham’s English Language. Speaking of the genitive or possessive case, he says,—
“In the plural number, however, it is rare; so rare, indeed, that whenever the plural ends in s (as it always does) there is no genitive.”
Byron says,—
I stood in Venice on the Bridge of Sighs,
A palace and a prison on each hand.
(He meant a palace on one hand, and a prison on the other.)
Dr. Johnson, in his Dictionary, defines a garret as “a room on the highest floor in the house,” and a cock-loft as “the room over the garret.”