Cleveland daily leader. [volume] ([Cleveland, Ohio]) 1865-1873, 1865-11-06
DAILY LEADER:
4BULLS.'
Slips Of ahe Pen and Anachronisms

: Slips Of the Pen n AnacIlr0nisms
"a late number Of Chambers ,Jonyuo
e has a pleasant paper entitled sSlips of tn,
y Pen, in which the curious blunders o
y some English authors and the anachrop
isns Of others are set forth in formidabl,
array, thuss
AWhen Mrs. Caxton ~innocentlv mad,
e her wiser half the father of an anaehron.
ISM that worthy was much troubled n
3 ssconsequenee. His anachronism was a Iiv.
ing one, or be might have eomforted him.
sell by rejecting that greater authors than
ne lad stood in the same paternaI predicn.
ment Our old English dramatists took
tremendous liberties this way. never al.
9oY2ag considerations of time and place To
stand in the way of any allusion likely to
tell with their audience. Shakespeare
would have been slow to appreciate a
meqern managers anxiety for archaeology
esl fidelity. His Greeks and Romans talk
about cannons and pistols, and his Italian
clowns are thorough cockneys, familiar
With every nook and corner of London.
And-so It Is with other caterers for the
stage. Nat Lee talks about cards in his
tragedy Of Hannibal; 7 Otway makes
Spartan aotables carouse and drink deep /;
Mrs. Cowley's Lacedemonian king speaks
OF the nights still Sabbath; D'Urfey's an
elent Brltains are familiar with Puritans
and paeket-boats; and Rymer Though he
set himself up for a critic supplies a stage
direction for the representative of his
Saxon heroine to pull off her patches,
whenh her lover desires her to lay aside her
ornaments.
"When Colman read Inkle and Yarico'
to DR.. Moseley, the latter exclaimed: 1T
won't do. Stuff Nonsensep fWhyg
asked the alarmed dramatist. why, YOU
say in the finale:
"'Come, let ms dance and sing,
While all barbados bells shall ringr
"1t won't do; there is but one bell in
the island! This mistake was excusable
enough: : but when Milton described
+ "a green mantIing vine,
That crswls along the side OF yon small hill
he must certainly have forgotten he had
laid the scene of "Comus7 in North Wales.
Ernest Jones, describing a battle in his
poem, "The Lost Army says:
"Delay and doubt did more that hour
Than bayonet-charge or carnage-shower; ;
and some lines further on pictures his
hero
:" All worn with wounds. when day was low,
With severed sword and shattered shield;
thus making his battle rather a trial of the
respective powers of ancient and modern
weapons than a conflict between equally
armed foes. Mr.. Thackery perpetrates a
nice little anachronism in "The. New
comes, when he makes Give, in a letter
dated 1873, quoting an Academy Exhibi-
ton c%ritique, ask; why nave we no pic
ture of the sovereign and her August con-
sort from Smee's brush the author, in
his anxiety to compliment the artist, for
getting that there was no consort till 1910.
"a bull in a china shop is scarcely more
out of place than a bull in a serious poem
but accidents will happen to the most reg
ular Of writers. Thus, Millions pen slipped
when he-wrote:
"'The sea-girt isles
That like to rich and various gems inlay
The unadorned bosom Of the deep
a quotation reminding us that the favorite
citation,
Beauty, when unadorned, ad -rned the most
is but asplendid bull, beautiful for its bold
ness.
"Pope, correct Pope, actually tells US;
"'Young Mars in his boundIess mind,
A work t outlast immortal Rome designed
"The author of The Spanish Rogue
makes "a silent noise invade the ear of
hisshero. General Taylor immortalized
by perpetrating one of the grand
bulls on record, in which he attained
what a certain literary professor calls "a
perfection hardly to be surpassed In his
Presidential address he announced to the :
Congress that the United States
were at peace with all the world. and con- :
-inued to cherish relations of amity with .
The rest of mankind. Much simpler was a
of an English glitter, during the
Indian mutiny, who informed the public.
the Times, that thanks to the
measures of Colonel Edwards, the 1
at Fort Machison 'weren I'M
and taken aback. and being called
Ipon, laid down their arms There was Z
very astonishing in an Irish news a
stating that Robespierre left no e
behind him, except a brother. o
Who was killed at the same time; but it Il
vas startling to have an English journal 9
ssure US that her Majesty Queen Victoria 4
vas the last person to wear another 7
crown Q
"A single ill-chosen word often %suiiices, !,
v the suggestion of incongruous ideas, to q
what should be sublime utterly Y
idiculous. One can hardly believe that a .
like Dryden could write: l
my sOuli is packing up, and just on wing .
such a line would have come with better :,
race from the author of "The Courage Z
us Turk" a play containing the follow Il
ng curious passage: y
"'IIow now, ye Heavens grow you h
proud, that you must needs put on curled locks, :,
nd ciothe yourselves in periwigs Of fire. u
Yearly equalled in absurdity by this from o
Vat. Lees Gdipus 81
g. Each trembling ghost shall rise, P
And leave their grisly king without a waiter a
When the news of Captain Cooks death "
0whyhee came to England, the poetas- P
of course, fastened to improve the h
~ccasion. One of the results oftheir enthu- Il
iasm was a monody commencing a
=" Minerva in Heaven disoonsolate mourned =
The loss-o her Cook IL
opening sufficiently to upset the gravity T
f the great navigator's dearest friend. q
Addison lays it down as a maxim that n
Then a nation abounds in physicians it
rows thin of people. Fillibuster Hen r
seems to have agreed with the es- :