A better or more reliable collection of printers' blunders—a very
comprehensive category, by tbe way—than that contained in a brochure entitled the Printer's Devil, and which has just been pub- lished by Cousins and Co., we have never come across. The writer, who styles himself " Anglo-Scotus," is evidently a practical printer,
and gives to the public the results of a varied and, possibly, even bitter experience,—a fact which possibly accounts for some digressions that are intended for the reproof, correction, and instruction of brother-craftsmen. He gives only mistakes—some detected, some, unhappily, not detected—that have come, or been brought under, his own notice ; and he sets down nothing in malice. One wonders if all compositors' errors are unintentional. Possibly "a broad joke from Jerome" was the work of a printer whose knowledge of the Fathers was equal to Lord Randolph Churchill's; and we are willing to believe that " Passing round the Mount of Olives, we suddenly came upon a magnificent view of Jones," however likely to be true in these globe-trotting days, was a joint triumph of a compositor's literality and the late Dean Stanley's penmanship. But "Tartar Researches " in place of "Barter Resartus " is surely too good to have been unintentional. The best of a collection of this kind is that it will set experienced writers a-thinking of " the awfully good things " that are not in it. A. book of anecdotes fails to effect its purpose unless one leaves it off with an appetite.
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