of typographical correctness; thus the old
plays of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries are often marvels of inaccuracy,
and while books of the same date are
usually supplied with tables of errata,
plays were issued without any such helps
to correction. This to some extent is to
be accounted for by the fact that many of
these plays were surreptitious publications,
or, at all events, printed in a hurry, without
care. The late Mr. Halliwell Phillipps, in
his curious privately printed volume (_A
Dictionary of Misprints_, 1887), writes:
``Such tests were really a thousandfold
more necessary in editions of plays, but
they are practically non-existent in the
latter, the brief one which is prefixed
to Dekker's _Satiro-Mastix_, 1602, being
nearly the only example that is to be
found in any that appeared during the
literary career of the great dramatist.''

In other branches of literature it is

evident that some care was taken to escape
misprints, either by the correction of the
printer's reader or of the author. Some
of the excuses made for misprints in our
old books are very amusing. In a little
English book of twenty-six leaves printed
at Douay in 1582, and entitled _A true