STUDENTS' BLUNDERS.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.'
Srn,—A fortnight since, I was looking over the papers of some theological students, one of the subjects being the Epistle to Philemon. The relations of Christianity to slavery appeared among the questions. Much was said by my examinees as to the cruel treatment of their slaves by the Romans, and one of them startled me not a little by the statement that "Nero ordered a slave to be thrown to the goldfinches for moving in his presence." Such an amusing travesty of the old tale of Vedins Pollio sentencing a slave who had broken a crystal goblet to be thrown to the lampreys in his ponds, deserves a place among "Students' Blunders." The mental process which converted " lampreys " into "gold-fish," and " gold- fish " into "goldfinches," is curious.
Some years since, when examining candidates for Holy Orders, I asked, among other archaic words in the Bible, the meaning of " rereward." One of the answers—and that from a Fellow of a College, whose papers generally were excellent— was, that it was "a double reward ; a re-reward."
Yet again another, who afterwards became a Fellow of his College, having in the Classical Tripos Examination to translate the line of Theocritus,—
Terpciewes3 Ahoy itireA4vro KixtTbs aAelcpap,
(" He broke up from the head of the casks the four-years-old wax "), rendered it; "The ape removed from his head the scurf which had been on it four years." The similarity of IriBan, and .riene misled him into this grotesque blunder.
The above blunders I can vouch for. The following I only know by hearsay. It was current at Cambridge in my under- graduate days. " Finitimus oratori poeta, sermone licentior, numeris restrictior." This was rendered, it was said : "An orator lived next door to a poet, more loose in his talk, but more guarded than numbers." No word is really mistrans- lated, and yet how amusingly is the meaning perverted !—I
Previous page
