that it should read `` 'a talked,'' and
Theobald then suggested `` 'a babbled,'' a reading
which has found its way into all texts,
and is never likely to be ousted from its
place. Collier's MS. corrector turned the
sentence into ``as a pen on a table of
green frieze.'' Very few who quote this
passage from Shakespeare have any notion
of how much they owe to Theobald.

Sometimes blunders are intentionally
made--malapropisms which are understood
by the speaker's intimates, but often
astonish strangers--such as the expressions
``the sinecure of every eye,'' ``as white

as the drivelling snow.''[2] Of intentional
mistakes, the best known are those which
have been called cross readings, in which
the reader is supposed to read across the
page instead of down the column of a
newspaper, with such results as the following:--


[2] See _Spectator_, December 24th, 1887, for
specimens of family lingo.



``A new Bank was lately opened at
Northampton-- no money returned.''