This incident is given in Henry B. Wheatley's ``Literary Blunders,'' a very charming book, but one that could have been made more interesting to me had it recorded the curious blunder which Frederick Saunders makes in his ``Story of Some Famous Books.'' On page 169 we find this information: ``Among earlier American bards we instance Dana, whose imaginative poem `The Culprit Fay,' so replete with poetic beauty, is a fairy tale of the highlands of the Hudson. The origin of the poem is traced to a conversation with Cooper, the novelist, and Fitz-Greene Halleck, the poet, who, speaking of the Scottish streams and their legendary associations, insisted that the American rivers were not susceptible of like poetic treatment. Dana thought otherwise, and to make his position good produced three days after this poem.''
It may be that Saunders wrote the name Drake, for it was James Rodman Drake who did ``The Culprit Fay.'' Perhaps it was the printer's fault that the poem is accredited to Dana. Perhaps Mr. Saunders writes so legible a hand that the printers are careless with his manuscript.
``There is,'' says Wheatley, ``there is a popular notion among authors that it is not wise to write a clear hand. Menage was one of the first to express it. He wrote: `If you desire that no mistake shall appear in the works which you publish, never send well-written copy to the printer, for in that case the manuscript is given to young apprentices, who make a thousand errors; while, on the other hand, that which is difficult to read is dealt with by the master- printers.' ''
The most distressing blunder I ever read in print was made at the time of the burial of the famous antiquary and litterateur, John Payne Collier. In the London newspapers of Sept. 21, 1883, it was reported that ``the remains of the late Mr. John Payne Collier were interred yesterday in Bray churchyard, near Maidenhead, in the presence of a large number of spectators.''
Thereupon the Eastern daily press published the following remarkable perversion: ``The Bray Colliery Disaster. The remains of the late John Payne, collier, were interred yesterday afternoon in the Bray churchyard in the presence of a large number of friends and spectators.''
Far be it from the book-lover and the book-collector to rail at blunders, for not unfrequently these very blunders make books valuable. Who cares for a Pine's Horace that does not contain the ``potest'' error? The genuine first edition of Hawthorne's ``Scarlet Letter'' is to be determined by the presence of a certain typographical slip in the introduction. The first edition of the English Scriptures printed in Ireland (1716) is much desired by collectors, and simply because of an error.
Isaiah bids us ``sin no more,'' but the Belfast printer, by some means or another, transposed the letters in such wise as to make the injunction read ``sin on more.''
