Henry III. A similar
voluntary blunder is that of Surita, in his _Annales de la Corona de
Aragon_. This writer represents, in the battles he describes, many
persons who were not present; and this, merely to confer honour on some
particular families.

Fabiana, quoting a French narrative of travels in Italy, took for the
name of the author the words, found at the end of the title-page,
_Enrichi de deux Listes_; that is, "Enriched with two lists:" on this he
observes, "that Mr. Enriched with two lists has not failed to do that
justice to Ciampini which he merited."[91] The abridgers of Gesner's
Bibliotheca ascribe the romance of Amadis to one _Acuerdo Olvido_;
Remembrance, Oblivion; mistaking the French translator's Spanish motto
on the title-page for the name of the author.

D'Aquin, the French king's physician, in his Memoir on the Preparation
of Bark, takes _Mantissa_, which is the title of the Appendix to the
History of Plants, by Johnstone, for the name of an author, and who, he
says, is so extremely rare, that he only knows him by name.

Lord Bolingbroke imagined, that in those famous verses, beginning with
_Excudent alii_, &c., Virgil attributed to the Romans the glory of
having surpassed the Greeks in historical composition: according to his
idea, those Roman historians whom Virgil preferred to the Grecians were
Sallust, Livy, and Tacitus. But Virgil died before Livy had written his
history, or Tacitus was born.

An honest friar, who compiled a church history, has placed in the class
of ecclesiastical writers Guarini, the Italian poet, on the faith of the
title of his celebrated amorous pastoral, _Il Pastor Fido_, "The
Faithful Shepherd;" our good father imagined that the character of a
curate, vicar, or bishop, was represented in this work.

A blunder has been recorded of the monks in the dark ages, which was
likely enough to happen when their ignorance was so dense. A rector of a
parish going to law with his parishioners about paving the church,
quoted this authority from St. Peter--_Paveant illi, non paveam ego_;
which he construed, _They are to pave the church, not I_. This was
allowed to be good law by a judge, himself an ecclesiastic too.

One of the grossest literary blunders of modern times is that of the
late Gilbert Wakefield, in his edition of Pope. He there takes the
well-known "Song by a Person of Quality," which is a piece of ridicule
on the glittering tuneful nonsense of certain poets, as a ser