injustice he manifested in presiding at the
trial of King Charles I.'' The book was
no sooner issued than the author became
aware of his astonishing chronological
blunder, and he did all in his power to set
the matter right; but a mistake in print
can never be entirely obliterated. However
much trouble may be taken to suppress
a book, some copies will be sure to
escape, and, becoming valuable by the
attempted suppression, attract all the more
attention.

Scott makes David Ramsay, in the

_Fortunes of Nigel_ (chapter ii.), swear ``by
the bones of the immortal Napier.'' It
would perhaps be rank heresy to suppose
that Sir Walter did not know that
``Napier's bones'' were an apparatus for
purposes of calculation, but he certainly
puts the expression in such an ambiguous
form that many of his readers are likely
to suppose that the actual bones of
Napier's body were intended.

Some of the most curious of blunders
are those made by learned men who without
thought set down something which at
another time they would recognise as a
mistake. The following passage from