Chapter Erragon to Errors of Authors of E by Brewer's Readers Handbook

Young lambs are very subject to these parasites, but “pigs” are not. Strange that a man living in the country, and not without observation, should blunder so often on natural history.

(19) Critics at fault. The licentiate tells don Quixote that some critics found fault with him for defective memory, and instanced it in this: “We are told that Sancho’s ass is stolen, but the author has forgotten to mention who the thief was.” This is not the case, as we are distinctly informed that it was stolen by Gines de Passamonte, one of the galley-slaves.—Don Quixote, II. i. 3.

(20) Cunningham (Allan) wrote the well-known line, “a wet sheet and a flowing sail.” Now, sheet in nautical language means a rope, and a “wet rope” cannot have been his meaning. In a sailing-boat there are four ropes, called the painter, the halyard, the sheet, and the tack. The painter is to tie the boat to the moorings; the halyard is to haul up the sail; the sheet is put near the end of the boom; and the tack is to fasten the sail to the bottom of the mast.

Nuttall, in his dictionary, erroneously gives “sheet,” a sail, which it never means.

(21) Dickens, in Edwin Drood, puts “rooks and rooks’ nests” (instead of daws) “in the towers of Cloisterham.”

In his Child’s History of England Dickens refers to Edmund earl of Kent as “the poor old lord,” but he was only 28 years of age at the time referred to.

In Little Dorrit (ch. xxxiii.) Tattycoram is supposed to enter “with an iron box two feet square under her arm.” She must have been a pretty strong girl, with very long arms.

In Nicholas Nickleby he represents Mr. Squeers as setting his boys “to hoe turnips” in midwinter.

In The Tale of Two Cities (iii. 4) he says, “The name of the strong man of Old Scripture descended to the chief functionary who worked the guillotine.” But the name of this functionary was Sanson, not Samson.

(22) Froissart tells us that the elder Despenser was 90 years old at death. As he was born in March, 1261, and died in October, 1326, he was 65, not 90.

(23) Galen says that man has seven bones in the sternum (instead of three); and Sylvius, in reply to Vesalius, contends that “in days of yore the robust chests of heroes had more bones than men now bave.”

(24) Goldsmith, in The Traveller (last line but two), speaks of “Luke’s iron crown, and Damien’s bed of steel.” This line contains three blunders: (1) It was not Luke but George Dosa, the Hungarian, who, in 1514, was put to death by a red-hot crown on his head. (2) The name of the regicide who attempted the life of Louis XV. was not Damien but Damiens, although it is true he is called ‘Damien’ in the Gentleman’s Magazine, 1757 (vol. xxvii. pp. 87, 157). (3) Damiens was not tortured to death on a “bed of steel,” but was first flayed alive by pincers, and huge morsels of flesh were plucked from his bones, after which he was torn limb from limb by six wild horses. (See Foster’s Life, bk. iii. 10.)

(25) Greene (Robert) speaks of Delphos as an island; but Delphos, or rather Delphi, was a city of Phocis, and no island. “Six noblemen were sent to the isle of Delphos.”—Donastus and Faunia. Probably he confounded the city of Delphi with the isle of Delos.

(26) Halliwell, in his Archaic Dictionary, says, “Crouchmas means Christmas,” and adds that Tusser is his authority. But this is altogether a mistake. Tusser, in his “May Remembrances,” says: “From bull cow fast, till Crouchmas be past,” i.e. St. Helen’s Day. Tusser evidently means from May 3 (the invention of the Cross) to August 18 (St. Helen’s Day or the Cross-mas), not Christmas.

(27) Hatton (Joseph), in his Three Recruits, etc. (1880), speaks of Jacob as the patriarch who offered up his son in sacrifice to God. Of course he meant Abraham.