New Britain herald., 1918-01-24
BLUNDERS IN LITERATURE.
And Some Sundry Other Masterly
 HowIers From Humber Sources.
Philadelphia Evening Ledger.)

Philadelphia Evening Ledger.)
 From "schoolboy howlers'' to lit erary hoWlers" is not so very long a step, after all. Our enjoyment of them is due partly, no doubt, to a defect in our moral makeup. It is not unlike our enjoyn ent of the spec tacle of a portly man missing a train or the sight of a man-pOrtly also, and carrying an armful of bundles slipping up Cor doWn) on an icy pavement. In the case even of ''schoolboy hoWlers' we feel a pride ful sense of superior knowledge. and in the case of literary howlers'' we experience an accession of impor- tance on discovering the fallibility of famous writers. Indeed, a good many of us would rather criticize than appreciate, and not seldom the less consequential the error is the great CT is it's appeal.
 Perhaps, however. as was once suggested in a graduation essay, the slips Oiterary and otherwise) of great men owe their pleasantness and value principally to their usefulness in reminding and convincing us that We are all human and liable to err the big the little and the mediocre. When Homer nods,' the phrase commonly applied to literary howl crs," is derived from a couplet in Pope's Essay on Criticism" but is often employed in connection somewhat different from that which it had originally. Pope wrote: Those oft are strategens which er-
 TOTS seem, s
 Nor is it. Homer mods, but we that
 dream. ss
 But many a slip is" due to slipsnod writing On the following examples the reader may make his own com IT. Aent:
 Novel readers who like to com bine the classic with the topical may be turning back. now that another great chapter in the history of Con- stantinople is under way, to one Of Walter Ecott's less popular works, Count Robert of Paris" And there they will find one of those. curious slips analogous to the woman novel, ists horse that won the Derby threa years running" and to the eclipse of the sun in King Solon1on's Mines," followed by a moonlight night. Scott, usually accurate in his descriptions, makes the Crusaders wait before crossing bay on the Bosporus until
 
 tide in the Bosporus.
 Some of the great panjandrums of French literature have perpetratcd more amusing ''howlers An ex- ceedingly familiar figure of speech gets the historian Thiers into trouble. "Throughout the day. he writes, torrents of rain poured down and 10000 Austrians bit the dust"
 The weighty and erudite lawyer, M. Torplong, proclaims in one of his somber tones that in the midst of many crumbling institutions that of property stands erect upon it's feet, seated upon justice"
 Francisque Sarcey, the great critic, writes: 'On his helmet waves a miss ing plume,' and, again, Tn the tones of Mile. Ugalde one recognizes her mothers familiar hand"
 Gustave Flaubert takes pains to collate many of the slips of contem- porary writer's but he it is who wrote of a most accomplished lover that with one hand he caressed her hair and with the other he said to her. He describes a duel in which the two adversaries were placed at an equal distance from each other"
 He also refers to a man who was 70 years old and looked twice his age" but doubtless, the author meant just what he says. One of the slips charged against Shakes