now, who would elect such members to the Legislature deserve nothing else than contempt.
The fourth paper established in New York was called the Evening Post. It was commenced by Henry De Forest in 1746. It was remarkable chiefly for stupidity, looseness of grammar, and worse orthography, and died before it was able to go alone.
In 1752 the New York Mercury was commenced, and in 1763 the title was changed to the New York Gazette and Weekly Mercury. This paper was established and published by Hugh Gaine, at the sign of the Bible and Crown, Hanover square. It was conducted with taste and ability, and became the best newspaper in the Colonies. In 1763, Gaine was arraigned by the Assembly for publishing a part of its proceedings without permission, and withal incorrectly. He was a gentleman of a kind spirit, and never had the power to withhold an apology when it was asked. He accordingly apologized, was reprimanded, and discharged.
As the storm of war drew on in 1775, the Mercury contained a series of patriotic papers, under the signature of the Watch Tower. But as the British forces drew near to New York, the patriotism of Gaine began to cool; and during the whole course of the Revolutionary war, his Mercury afforded very accurate indications of the state of the contest. When with the Whigs, Hugh Gaine was a Whig. When with the Royalists, he was loyal. When the contest was doubtful, equally doubtful were the politics of Hugh Gaine. In short, he was the most perfect pattern of the genuine non-committal. On the arrival of the British army he removed to Newark for a while; but soon returned to the city and published a paper devoted to the cause of the Crown. His course was a fruitful theme for the wags of the day; and at the peace, a poetical petition from Gaine to the Senate of the State, setting forth his life and conduct, was got up with a good deal of talent and humor. His paper ceased with the war.
Another paper, called the New York Gazette, was commenced by Wayman, the former associate of Parker. In 1766, Wayman was arrested for a contempt of the Assembly, upon no other charge than that of two typographical errors in printing the speech of Sir Henry Moore, the Governor of the Colony. One of these errors consisted in printing the word NEVER for ever; and the other was the omission of the word NO, by reason of which the meaning of the sentence was reversed. Wayman protested that it was a mere inadvertency; but so tenacious were legislators in those days of 'privilege,' that an investigation was instituted; but in the end the transgressor was discharged from 'durance vile,' on condition of acknowledging his fault, asking pardon, and promising to behave more circumspectly for the future.
The Assembly, however, was more rigid in this case, from the suspicion entertained that one of the errors was intentional; but such was clearly not the fact.
Nothing can be more annoying to authors and publishers than errors of the press; and yet those who are unskilled in the art of printing, can scarcely conceive the difficulty of avoiding them. The art of proof reading with perfect accuracy is an high and difficult attainment. To arrive at ordinary accuracy in a daily newspaper, requires the reading and correction of at least two proofs; and even then an editor, who has not become case hardened, by long practice and long endurance, will often be shocked at the transformation of sense into nonsense, or the murdering of one of his happiest conceits, or the plucking of the point out of one of his neatest paragraphs, by a typographical error.
In the early stages of the art of printing, typographical errors were far more numerous than in books of modern execution, where there is a real effort to attain to ordinary accuracy. It was then very common for a volume of ordinary size to contain page upon page of errata at the close. One of the most remarkable instances of this kind was the curious treatise of Edward Leigh, 'On Religion and Learning,' published in 1656. At the close of the work were two folio pages of corrections in very minute characters. The author himself complains as follows: 'We have no Plantier or Stevens (two celebrated printers of another day) amongst us; and it is no easy task to specify the chiefest errata; false interpunctions there are too many; here a letter wanting, there a letter too much; a syllable too much, one letter for another; words joined, which should be severed; words misplaced, chronological mistakes, &c.'
Leigh's case, however, was not so hard as that of a monk, who wrote and published the 'Anatomy of the Mass,' in 1561. The work itself contained only one hundred and seventy-two pages, to which were added FIFTEEN pages of errata. The pious monk wrote an apology for these inaccuracies, which, if true, proved that his case was indeed a cruel one – clearly proving, moreover, that even if the devil had originally assisted Doctor Faustus and Gutenberg in the invention, his brimstone majesty very soon became sick of his bargain. The monk avers that he wrote the work to circumvent the artifices of Satan, and that the devil, ever on the alert, undertook to circumvent him. For this purpose Satan, in the first place, caused the MS. to be drenched in a kennel, until it was rendered comparatively illegible; and, in the second place, he compelled the printers to perpetrate more typographical blunders than had ever before been made in a book of no greater magnitude. But the malice of Lucifer did not end here. He compelled the priest to act under his influence while making the corrections!
But they were not all unintentional errors of the press in those days that appeared such. There were words and phrases interdicted by the Pope and the Inquisition; and sometimes by adroit management the interdicted word, though not inserted in the text, could be arrived at in the table of errata.
It is a singular fact, that the edition of the Latin Vulgate, by Pope Sixtus the Fifth, although his Holiness carefully superintended every sheet as it passed through the press, has ever remained without a rival in typographical inaccuracy. Still more curious was the fact, that the Pope, in the plenitude of pontifical infallibility, prefixed to the first volume a bull of excommunication against any and every printer, who in reprinting the work, should ever make any alteration in the text. To the amazement of the public, however, when the Bible appeared, it swarmed with errors too numerous for an errata. In a multitude of instances it was necessary to reprint whole passages in scraps, and paste over the incorrect verses. Great efforts were made to call in the edition; and it is now only to be found among rare collections, as a monument of literary blunders. If the Devil ever troubles himself about the correction of proofsheets, he was much more likely to be standing at the Pope's elbow while the Bible was printing, than to be bothering his head in regard to the poor monk's mass book to which allusion has been made.
Typographical errors happen in a variety of ways; sometimes by carelessness, sometimes by the ignorance and stupidity of the printer, and sometimes by design. Occurring in either way, they are often ludicrous, and sometimes productive of positive evil. A few examples of each variety will suffice.
In the fine description of the Pantheon, by Akenside, the expressive phrase 'SEVERELY great,' not being understood by the printer, who undertook to think for himself, was printed 'serenely great.'
An edition of the Bible was once published in England, in which the word not was omitted in the seventh commandment. For this offence, whether by carelessness or by design, the archbishop imposed the heaviest penalty ever recorded in the annals of literary history. The edition was required to be called in and destroyed, and a fine imposed of £20,000 sterling.
There was a more severe punishment than even this awarded in Germany once, for a wilful alteration of the sacred text. It seems that in Gen. iii. 16, the Hebrew word which has been rendered husband in the English translation, is lord in the German. It is the passage in which God tells Eve: 'And thy desire shall be to thy husband, who shall rule over thee.' The German word signifying lord is HERR; and in the same language the word NARR answers for fool. The case was this: A new edition of the Bible was printing at the house of a widow, whose husband had been a printer. The spirited lady, not liking the subordinate station of her sex, and having acquired a little knowledge of the art, watched an opportunity by night to enter the printing office; and while the form was lying on the press, she carefully drew out the letters H and e, and inserted in their stead the letters Na. The outrage was not discovered in season, and the Bible went forth declaring that man should be the woman's fool. Such, probably, is too often the case, but the
