This curious production is avowedly from the other side of the Tweed, and I would ask if its paternity is known to any of your antiquarian correspondents there or here.
The Fragment is preceded by a very remarkable Preface, containing "some reasons why this little piece has thus been thrown off in such a loose and disorderly manner;" among which figure the desire "to disperse a parcel of them gratis,—because they are, perhaps, worth nothing; that nobody may pay for his folly but himself; that, if his Fragment is damned, which it probably may be, he will thenceforth drop any farther correspondence with Adam, Noah, Abraham, &c.; and, lastly, that he may be benefited by the criticisms upon its faults and failings, while he himself lurks cunningly behind the curtain. But if, after all," says the facetious author, "this little northern urchin shall chance to spring forward under the influence of a more southern and warmer sun, the author will then endeavour to bring his goods to market as plump, fresh, and fair as the soil will admit."
I presume, however, the public did not call for any of the farther instalments promised in the title.
J. O.
ERRATA IN PRINTED BIBLES.
Mr. D'Israeli, in his Curiosities of Literature, has an article entitled "The Pearl Bibles and Six Thousand Errata," in which he gives some notable specimens of the blunders perpetrated in the printing of Bibles in earlier times. The great demand for them prompted unscrupulous persons to supply it without much regard to carefulness or accuracy; and, besides, printers were not so expert as at the present day.
"The learned Ussher," Mr. D'Israeli tells us, "one day hastening to preach at Paul's Cross, entered the shop of one of the stationers, as booksellers were then called, and inquiring for a Bible of the London edition, when he came to look for his text, to his astonishment and his horror he discovered that the verse was omitted in the Bible! This gave the first occasion of complaint to the king, of the insufferable negligence and incapacity of the London press; and first bred that great contest which followed between the University of Cambridge and the London stationers, about the right of printing Bibles."
Even during the reign of Charles I., and in the time of the Commonwealth, the manufacture of spurious Bibles was carried on to an alarming extent. English Bibles were fabricated in Holland for cheapness, without any regard to accuracy. Twelve thousand of these (12mo.) Bibles, with notes, were seized by the King's printers as being contrary to the statute; and a large impression of these Dutch-English Bibles were burned, by order of the Assembly of Divines, for certain errors. The Pearl (24mo.) Bible, printed by Field, in 1653, contains some scandalous blunders;—for instance, Romans, vi. 13.: "Neither yield ye your members as instruments of righteousness unto sin"—for unrighteousness. 1 Cor. vi. 9.: "Know ye not that
the unrighteous shall inherit the kingdom of God?"—for shall not inherit.