the late Mr. Halliwell Phillipps printed
for private circulation _A Dictionary of
Misprints, found in printed books of the

sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, compiled
for the use of verbal critics and especially
for those who are engaged in editing the
works of Shakespeare and our other early
Dramatists_ (1887). In the note at the
end of this book Mr. Phillipps writes:
``The readiest access to those evidences
will be found in the old errata, and it will
be seen, on an examination of the latter,
that misprints are abundant in final and
initial letters, in omissions, in numerals,
and in verbal transpositions; but
unquestionably the most frequent in pronouns,
articles, conjunctions, and prepositions.
When we come to words outside the
four latter, there is a large proportion of
examples that are either of rare occurrence
or unique. Some of the blunders that are
recorded are sufficiently grotesque: _e.g.,
Ile starte thence poore for Ile starve their
poore,--he formaketh what for the fire
maketh hot_. It must, indeed, be confessed
that the conjectural emendator, if he
dispenses with the quasi-authority of
contemporary precedents, has an all but
unlimited range for the exercise of his
ingenuity, the unsettled spellings of our