The daily morning journal and courier., 1896-12-10

mond, oversetting candle on the H.
 brary table. Newton was out of the room at the moment, and when he re- turned the great dog came to meet him, jOyfully Wagging the banner of a tail that had done such much damage. The philosopher was equal to the emergen- cy "Ah Diamond" he exclaimed, when he saw the charred remnants of his pa pers, thou little knowest the mischief thou hast done" Much less patience was shown by Anthony Urcaeus, a phil osOpher and classical critic of the fif- teenth century whose manuscripts were destroyed by fire during his ab- sence. He became Insane, and in his rawlings constantly called on God to know why he had been so i'll treated
 His blasphemies shocked all hearers. He told the Almighty if, at the point of death, he should be so weak as to pray, he did not wish to be heard, as, after such treatment he preferred to live in hell rather than in heaven. Thomas Carlyle came very near the fate of Urcaeus after the manuscript of the second volume of his French Revolution" was destroyed. He had loaned the work to a. friend who de- sired to read it, and he loaned it to an- other. This man, while reading 1t, left it on his table one night in mass of papers, and the next morning care less servant used it to start fire. Car lyle became almost distracted when he learned of his loss, and his depression ipp yYrh ha at first unable to reproduce it. But, throwing aside all serious occupations, he gave several weeks to novel reading as a means of diversions; then set to work again, and finally rewrote the en- tire second volume.
 The lapse of memory, to which all men are occasionally subject, are among the most pronounced misfor- tunes of a literary character, and par ticularly of a writer There is some thing curiously treacherous about the human memory. Not only does it fail at times when it should do it's best work, but it sometimes confidently as- sures it's owner that it is right when 1t is in the wrong. There is tradition in one of the German universities of a very great scholar, renowned for his attainments and also for his memory, which. indeed. seemed to have been little short of miraculous. When this marvel of knowledge was on his death- bed one of his scholars asked as a parting word, the most valuable hint or suggestion that the old professor could make. The old man opened his lips, and his pupils gathered around ex- pecting a verbal pearl of great price to drop from them. Always verify your citations,' said the dying profess sOr, and gave up the ghost. The ad- vice was worthy of the man and mo- ment for of all things to a scholar there is no labor more needful He may feel morally sure that he can give a quo tation in the words of the author and he may be entirely mistaken, for the mental substitution of one little word for another may show to the initiated that, while he means well, he is not exact either in his information or in his way of stating it. He may be perfect ly sure of his dates and have them transposed; he may use one name when he means to use another; he may at tribute a saying to one man when the credit is due to another. Macaulay had a phenomenal memory, but when writ ing his essay on Oliver Goldsmith and speaking of the nasty and careless man. her in which much of that authors work was done, the great essayist wrote vicar of Wakefield when he intended to write History of Greece" and so, until he could correct the mis- take in the next issue of the review, the classic Macaulay posed before the pub lie as a man who thought the vicar of Wakefield' a badly written book.
 A book might be composed on the blunders made by authors through mo- mentary fOrgetfulness , or from that queer Oscitancy which sometimes comes to the most acute intelligence. Aken- side had a fit of this temporary mental alteration when he wrote He views the Ganges from Alpine heights" and Allison, the historian, must have been similarly afflicted when he made Sir Pengrine Pickle one of the pallbearers of the Duke of Wellington. Cervan- tes' immortal work is filled with blund- CTS of forgetfulness. In one place he tells us about the galley slaves setting upon the Don and seizing Mambrinos s helmet; they broke 1t all to pieces. or to be exact. ''in a thousand pieces, '' while a little later Don Quixote comes marching from his chamber armed cap- a-pie with barber's basin on his head In one place Gines de Passemonte steals Sancho's Dapple, and a few pages fur ther on we are told about the Don rid ing along the highway, while Sancho contentedly logged after seated on his