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
requir