himself a fortune with his sword. Voltaire put it in French, which, retranslated, reads, "What care I for lands? With my sword I will make a fortune cutting meat."

The late centennial celebration of Shakspeare's birthday in England called forth numerous publications relating to the works and times of the immortal dramatist. Among them was a new translation of "Hamlet," by the Chevalier de Chatelain, who also translated Halleck's "Alnwick Castle," "Burns," and "Marco Bozzaris." Our readers are, of course, familiar with

the following lines:

"How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable

Seem to me all the uses of this world!

Fie on't! Oh, fie! 'tis an unweeded garden

That grows to seed; things rank, and gross in nature,
Possess it merely."

The chevalier, less successful with the English than with the modern American poet, thus renders them into French :

"Fi done! fi done! Ces jours qu'on nous montrons superbes Sont un vilain jardin rempli de folles herbes,

Qui donnent de l'ivraie, et certes rien de plus

Si ce n'est les engins du cholera-morbus."

Some of the funniest mistranslations on record have been bequeathed by Victor Hugo. Most readers will remember his rendering of a peajacket as paletot a la purée de pois, and of the Frith of Forth as le cinquième de le quatrième.

The French translator of one of Sir Walter Scott's novels, knowing nothing of that familiar name for toasted cheese, "a Welsh rabbit," rendered it literally by "un lapin du pays de Galles," or a rabbit of Wales, and then informed his readers in a foot-note that the lapins or rabbits of Wales have a very superior flavor, and are very tender, which cause them to be in great request in England and Scotland. A writer in the Neapolitan paper, Il Giornale della due Sicilie, was more ingenuous. He was translating from an English paper the account of a man who killed his wife by striking her with a

poker; and at the end of his story the honest journalist, with a modesty unusual in his craft, said, "Non sappiamo per certo se questo pokero Inglese sia uno strumento domestico o bensi chirurgico"-"We are not quite certain whether this English poker [pokero] be a domestic or surgical instrument."

In the course of the famous Tichborne trial, the claimant, when asked the meaning of laus Deo semper, said it meant "the laws of God forever, or permanently." An answer not less ludicrous was given by a French Sir Roger, who, on being asked to translate numero Deus impare gaudet, unhesitatingly replied, "Le numéro deux se réjouit d'être impair."

Some of the translations of the Italian operas in the librettos, which are sold to the audience, are ludicrous enough. Take, for instance, the lines in Roberto il diavolo,

Egli era, dicessi
Abitatore

Del tristo Imperio.

Which some smart interpreter rendered

"For they say he was

A citizen of the black emporium."

Misquotations.

IN Mr Collins' account of Homer's Iliad, in Blackwood's Ancient Classics for English Readers, occurs the following:— "The spirit horsemen who rallied the Roman line in the great fight with the Latins at Lake Regillus, the shining stars who lighted the sailors on the stormy Adriatic, and gave their names to the ship in which St. Paul was cast away."

If the reader will take the trouble to refer to the Acts of the Apostles, xxviii, 11, he will find, that the ship of Alexandria, "whose sign was Castor and Pollux," was not the vessel in which St. Paul was shipwrecked near Malta, but the ship in

which he safely voyaged from the island of "the barbarous people" to Puteoli for Rome.

The misquotations of Sir Walter Scott have frequently attracted attention. One of the most unpardonable occurs in The Heart of Mid-Lothian, chapter xlvii.:

"The least of these considerations always inclined Butler to measures of conciliation, in so far as he could accede to them, without compromising principle; and thus our simple and unpretending heroine had the merit of those peacemakers, to whom it is pronounced as a benediction, that they shall inherit the

earth."

On turning to the gospel of Matthew, v. 9, we find that the benediction pronounced upon the peacemakers was that "they shall be called the children of God." It is the meek who are to "inherit the earth," (ver. 5).

Another of Scott's blunders occurs in Ivanhoe. The date of this story "refers to a period towards the end of the reign of Richard I." (chap. i.) Richard died in 1199. Nevertheless, Sir Walter makes the disguised Wamba style himself "a poor brother of the Order of St. Francis," although the Order was not founded until 1210, and, of course, the saintship of the founder had a still later date.

Again in Waverley (chap. xii.) he puts into the mouth of Baron Bradwardine the words "nor would I utterly accede to the objurgation of the younger Plinius in the fourteenth book of his Historia Naturalis." The great Roman naturalist whose thirty-seven books on Natural History were written eighteen centuries ago, was the Elder Pliny.

Alison, in his History of Europe, speaks of the Grand Duke Constantine of Russia, the Viceroy of Poland, as the son of the emperor Paul I. and the celebrated empress Catherine. This Catherine was the mother of Paul, and wife of Peter III., Paul's father. Constantine's mother, i.e. Paul's wife, was a princess of Würtemberg.

Another of Archibald's singular errors is his translation of droit du timbre (stamp duty) into "timber duties." This is about as sensible as his quoting with approbation from De Tocqueville the false and foolish assertion that the American people are "regardless of historical records or monuments," and that future historians will be obliged "to write the history of the present generation from the archives of other lands." Such ignorance of American scholarship and research and of the vigorous vitality of American Historical Societies, is unpardonable.

Disraeli thus refers to a curious blunder in Nagler's Kunstler-Lexicon, concerning the artist Cruikshank:

Some years ago the relative merits of George Cruikshank and his brother were contrasted in an English Review, and George was spoken of as "the real Simon Pure"-the first who had illustrated "Scenes of Life in London." Unaware of the real significance of a quotation which has become proverbial among us, the German editor begins his memoir of Cruikshank by gravely informing us that he is an English artist "whose real name is Simon Pure!" Turning to the artists un der letter P. we accordingly read, "Pure (Simon), the real name of the celebrated caricaturist, George Cruikshank.”

This will remind some of our readers of the index which refers to Mr Justice Best. A searcher after something or other, running his eye down the index through letter B, arrived at the reference "Best-Mr. Justice-his great mind." Desiring to be better acquainted with the particulars of this assertion, he turned to the page referred to, and there found, to his entire satisfaction, "Mr. Justice Best said he had a great mind to commit the witness for prevarication."

In the fourth canto of Don Juan, stanza CX., Byron says: Oh, darkly, deeply, beautifully blue,

As some one somewhere sings about the sky.

Byron was mistaken in thinking his quotation referred to the sky. The line is in Southey's Madoc, canto V., and describes fish. A note intimates that dolphins are meant.

"Though in blue ocean seen,
Blue, darkly, deeply, beautifully blue,
In all its rich variety of shades,
Suffused with glowing gold."

Fabrications.

THE DESCRIPTION OF THE SAVIOUR'S PERSON.

CHALMERS charges upon Huarte (a native of French Navarre) the publication (as genuine and authentic) of the Letter of Lentulus (the Proconsul of Jerusalem) to the Roman Senate, describing the person and manners of our Lord, and for which, of course, he deservedly censures him. A copy of the letter will be found in the chapter of this volume headed I. H. S.

A CLEVER HOAX ON SIR WALTER SCOTT.

The following passage occurs in one of Sir Walter Scott's letters to Southey, written in September, 1810:

A witty rogue, the other day, who sent me a letter subscribed Detector," proved me guilty of stealing a passage from one of Vida's Latin poems, which I had never seen or heard of; yet there was so strong a general resemblance as fairly to authorize "Detector's" suspicion.

Lockhart remarks thereupon:

The lines of Vida which "Detector" had enclosed to Scott, as the obvious original of the address to "Woman,” in Marmion, closing with

"When pain and anguish wring the brow,

A ministering angel thou!"

end as follows: and it must be owned that if Vida had really written them, a more extraordinary example of casual coincidence could never have been pointed out.