rland in Henry IV.

Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless,
So dull, so dead in look, so _woe-begone_--

which he renders "_Ainsi douleur! va-t'en!"_

The Abbe Gregoire affords another striking proof of the errors to which
foreigners are liable when they decide on the _language_ and _customs_
of another country. The Abbe, in the excess of his philanthropy, to show
to what dishonourable offices human nature is degraded, acquaints us
that at London he observed a sign-board, proclaiming the master as
_tueur des punaises de sa majeste_! Bug-destroyer to his majesty! This
is, no doubt, the honest Mr. Tiffin, in the Strand; and the idea which
must have occurred to the good Abbe was, that his majesty's bugs were
hunted by the said destroyer, and taken by hand--and thus human nature
was degraded!

A French writer translates the Latin title of a treatise of Philo-Judaeus
_Omnis bonus liber est_, Every good man is a free man, by _Tout livre
est bon_. It was well for him, observes Jortin, that he did not live
within the reach of the Inquisition, which might have taken this as a
reflection on the _Index Expurgatorius_.

An English translator turned "Dieu _defend_ l'adultere" into "God
_defends_ adultery."--Guthrie, in his translation of Du Halde, has "the
twenty-sixth day of the _new_ moon." The whole age of the moon is but
twenty-eight days. The blunder arose from his mistaking the word
_neuvieme_ (ninth) for _nouvelle_ or _neuve_ (new).

The facetious Tom Brown committed a strange blunder in his translation
of Gelli's Circe. The word _Starne_, not aware of its signification, he
boldly rendered _stares_, probably from the similitude of sound; the
succeeding translator more correctly discovered _Starne_ to be
red-legged partridges!

In Charles II.'s reign a new collect was drawn, in which a new epithet
was added to the king's title, that gave great offence, and occasioned
great raillery. He was styled _our most religious king_. Whatever the
signification of _religious_ might be in the _Latin_ word, as importing
the sacredness of the king's person, yet in the _English language_ it
bore a signification that was no way applicable to the king. And he was
asked by his familiar courtiers, what must the nation think when they
heard him prayed for as their _most religious king_?--Literary blunders
of this nature are frequently discovered in the versions of good
classical scholars, who would make the _English_ servilely be