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Literary Blunders by Henry Benjamin Wheatley
page 74 of 211 (35%)

---- another copy, _in whole calf_.''
and these are Hook's lines:--

``Shelley styles his new poem `Prometheus Unbound,'
And 'tis like to remain so while time circles round;

For surely an age would be spent in the finding
A reader so weak as _to pay for the binding_.''


When books are classified in a catalogue
the compiler must be peculiarly on his
guard if he has the titles only and not
the books before him. Sometimes instances
of incorrect classification show
gross ignorance, as in the instance quoted
in the _Athenum_ lately. Here we have
a crop of blunders: ``_Title_, Commentarii
De Bello Gallico in usum Scholarum
Liber Tirbius. _Author_, Mr. C. J.
Caesoris. _Subject_, Religion.'' Still better
is the auctioneer's entry of P. V. Maroni's
_The Opera_. Authors, however, are usually
so fond of fanciful ear-catching titles, that
every excuse must be made for the cataloguer,
who mistakes their meaning, and
takes them in their literal signification.
Who can reprove too severely the classifier
who placed Swinburne's _Under the
Microscope_ in his class of _Optical

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