ed by an _Errata_
of 15 pages! The editor, a pious monk, informs us that a very serious
reason induced him to undertake this task: for it is, says he, to
forestal the _artifices of Satan_. He supposes that the Devil, to ruin
the fruit of this work, employed two very malicious frauds: the first
before it was printed, by drenching the MS. in a kennel, and having
reduced it to a most pitiable state, rendered several parts illegible:
the second, in obliging the printers to commit such numerous blunders,
never yet equalled in so small a work. To combat this double machination
of Satan he was obliged carefully to re-peruse the work, and to form
this singular list of the blunders of printers under the influence of
Satan. All this he relates in an advertisement prefixed to the _Errata_.

A furious controversy raged between two famous scholars from a very
laughable but accidental _Erratum_, and threatened serious consequences
to one of the parties. Flavigny wrote two letters, criticising rather
freely a polyglot Bible edited by Abraham Ecchellensis. As this learned
editor had sometimes censured the labours of a friend of Flavigny, this
latter applied to him the third and fifth verses of the seventh chapter
of St. Matthew, which he printed in Latin. Ver 3. _Quid vides festucam
in_ OCULO _fratris tui, et trabem in_ OCULO _tuo non vides_? Ver. 5.
_Ejice primum trabem de_ OCULO _tuo, et tunc videbis ejicere festucam
de_ OCULO _fratris tui_. Ecchellensis opens his reply by accusing
Flavigny of an _enormous crime_ committed in this passage; attempting to
correct the sacred text of the Evangelist, and daring to reject a word,
while he supplied its place by another as _impious_ as _obscene_! This
crime, exaggerated with all the virulence of an angry declaimer, closes
with a dreadful accusation. Flavigny's morals are attacked, and his
reputation overturned by a horrid imputation. Yet all this terrible
reproach is only founded on an _Erratum_! The whole arose from the
printer having negligently suffered the _first letter_ of the word
_Oculo_ to have dropped from the form, when he happened to touch a line
with his finger, which did not stand straight! He published another
letter to do away the imputation of Ecchellensis; but thirty years
afterwards his rage against the negligent printer was not extinguished;
the wits were always reminding him of it.

Of all literary blunders none equalled that of the edition of the
Vulgate, by Sixtus V. H