manufactured. are very good. A country editor, dwelling on the death of a village maid, whose obituary he was writing, detailed her dying injunction that no monument should be placed above her grave, but a plain slab, with the simple inscription "Mary." On reading the proof of his article, however, he became doubtful of the correctness of her Christian name, and hurriedly ran his pencil through it as a preliminary to correction. One of the townsfolk dropping in at that moment assured him that the young girl's name was "Mary," and he accordingly dotted a line below the erased word, writing in the margin of the proof the usual direction "stet" (let it stand). He was somewhat astonished the next morning on learning from the paper that the dying girl had requested, as a last favour, that upon her tombstone should be placed "the simple inscription, 'Stet.'" It availed him nothing that he endeavoured to explain to the tearful but indignant parents that the mistake, after all, was not so very bad. Many of the people believed that he had actually attempted to improve the poor girl's dying injunction with his "college lingo."

These American instances, however,

A widower in the same place wished his elderly wife to be celebrated, and he himself was allowed to write the obituary. In the proof the editor noted that the lady was described as 66 being remarkable for her chastity -instead of "charity "—an odd commendation.

There is a work greatly recherché from a singular oddity:-Dr. Bonnell Thornton was passing through the press a splendid folio work. In a certain page a space (as printers term it) stood up: the Doctor (and this shows the misfortune of not understanding "printers' marks"), instead of writing or making the sign for dele opposite the line with the objectionable

little mark, wrote on a head-page "take out horizontal line at page so and so❞—the compositor inserted these words as a displayed line in the head-page whereon they were written; the "reader" passed it in the revise, and it was so worked off. Being eventually detected, the leaf was of course cancelled. Any copy, therefore, with these wrongly inserted words, is consequently eagerly sought after. Such errors arise, of course, from indifferent and bad writing, some of which is absolutely distracting. But it is a fact that no matter how indifferent or difficult to read, the printers, if they have to deal with much of it, soon learn to read it. They more protest against the confusion of alterations and insertions, which are often impossible to follow. Burke's "Letter to a Noble Lord" was printed off and the proof sent to him, but was returned to the printingoffice with so many alterations and passages interlined, that the compositors refused to correct it as it was, took the whole matter to pieces, and reset the copy; and there is little doubt that to the illegible caligraphy of many writers with their sometimes innumerable alterations, additions, &c., is to be attributed much of the "Errata" to be found in most publications. Truly some "copy" looks as if a spider had been dipped in ink and permitted to perambulate the paper, and so cover it with undecipherable hieroglyphics; this was the character in which the poetry of the Rev. W. Lisle Bowles was written. Of the writing of Dr. Rees, the well-known editor of "The Cyclopædia," it is said it seemed as if he had used a burnt stick, and that on one occasion the printers clubbed their money and presented him with a hundred good pens, begging him to use them for their sakes if not for his own. The "Georgian

Era" states that there is an instance on record of three volumes of corrections being written to one volume of proofs !

In the history of the "chapel" or printing-office there are many strange incidents. How curious, for instance, are those beings who at their desk have "composed" their types without "copy," being author and printer at the same moment. The intermediate writing was omitted. There are many books which have been made in this fashion.

There was a book published in 1844 called "Colloquies Desultory, but chiefly upon Poetry, &c." -a volume of 250 pages, but not a word of it was really ever written. The clever author, printer, and publisher, Mr. Lordan of Romsey, set up the types as fast as he mentally composed the book, and the latter, as a critic truly says, is highly creditable to the author, who, however, never wrote it. It has been affirmed that Dugald Graham, the Rhyming Chronicler of the Rebellion of 1745, used to compose and set up his works in type without committing them to writing. There was a French novelist who, being like our Richardson, a printer, composed a volume in type, and thus this book was likewise printed without having been written. William Cowdroy, editor, proprietor, and printer of the Manchester Gazette (1814), whilst employed at Chester as editor and compositor, displayed this faculty of composing his paragraphs without writing them. The practice was first adopted by Thomas Jonathan Wooler, the printer of the Black Dwarf. He was also its editor and article-producer," composed" his articles (in a double sense of the phrase) at case. E. W. Forster, of the Hants Guardian, used to relate :-"From my earliest connection with

E

a newspaper, now many years ago, it has been my practice to compose all leaders from case direct, without the help of any copy whatever. I have followed this plan in many other ways connected with newspaper work; and what it is desirable to communicate to the public is the fact that the rate of composing' coincides admirably with the flow of thought; that to furnish a good leader, or anything else, it is a great advantage to produce it from the head direct, ignoring the use of pen and paper."

§ DE Cartons and of the Englisb

Printers.

HE subject of our English printer Caxton is really a fascinating one, and has furnished food for the artist, the poet, and the story-teller. The learned and laborious Blades has written a profound account of his life and works in one of the most interesting of such treatises-a dungeon of learning, though perhaps too technical for "the general." Indeed, it is surprising to see what the indefatigable 、labour of antiquaries and expenditure of money have done both for Caxton and Shakespeare. But by this tremendous and assiduous toil, and the premiums offered in the shape of costly prices, an astonishing number of the printer's works have been recovered, and will be preserved securely for generations born hundreds of years hence-unless, indeed, convulsions arise, such as the descent of barbarian hordes, or a revolutionary rising, when these libraries may be sacked or burnt, as in the case of the revolutions of 1830 and 1870.

One of the Spencer family, in an interesting lecture on the Althorp Library, gives a summary of the Caxton treasures in that wonderful library. Mr.