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Typo: A Monthly Newspaper and Literary Review, Volume 5

[miscellaneous paragraphs]

With regard to the French Academy's abandonment of its great Dictionary, it may be mentioned (says the Printing Times) that it continues the Historical Dictionary of the French Language, which, according to false rumor, has been dropped. The Academy is also preparing for 1900 an eighth edition of the Dictionnaire de l' Académie —the law and the testimony for printers' readers and those who concern themselves with the uniformity of orthography and syntax.

The clever little sketch, « The Cyclopeedy, » which we copy from the Chicago News, is not very greatly exaggerated. The tantalising references to unpublished portions of the work, which exasperated Leander Hobart, are an invariable feature of books of the kind. And this recalls an anecdote which is absolutely true. Some years ago, a theological publisher, who belonged to the extreme literalist school, and whose constituency were to a large extent like-minded, began the publication, in parts, of a Dictionary of the Bible. The article « Deluge » was assigned to a professor who was held to be a high authority. When the article came in, the publisher, to his horror, found that the writer had given many reasons for his belief that a literal universal deluge was impossible, and that the narative could not have been intended to be understood in the sense in which it was read by our forefathers. The publisher paid for the article, and suppressed it. There was no time to obtain another, as the presses were waiting, and he therefore inserted

Deluge.—See Flood.

Another scholar was engaged to write the article « Flood, » which came to hand just as the printers were ready for it. Dreadful to relate, it set forth views even more « advanced » than those of the former writer. There was no alternative but to defer the subject again, and readers who had been referred to « Flood, » found, when the F section came to hand:

Flood.—See Noah.

Before the letter N was reached, a writer had been secured whose scholarship was a secondary consideration to his orthodoxy.

The leniency shown to the East Coast editor lately charged with criminal libel, who grossly aggravated his offence by the method of his defence, has recalled the very different measure meted out in 1888 to the unhappy John Baldwin, for lampooning the Gisborne Town Clerk. Mr Baldwin was of weak constitution, his habits had not been as regular as they might have been, and his sentence of six months' imprisonment turned out to be a sentence of death. His term was purposely shortened that he might die at home, where, on Christmas Day, and within a fortnight of his release, he passed away. The essence of the libel was an insinuation that the officer in question, in his capacity of Harbor Board Clerk, had improperly made use of public funds; and as this official was generally respected the charge caused a good deal of local indignation. The affair has had a strange sequel. On the 1st April, this gentleman, telling his wife that he was going to bathe, went to the end of the breakwater, undressed, and plunged in at a place where it was scarcely possible he could regain the shore. He was drowned, and his body was not recovered for some time. Investigation of his books has since revealed heavy defalcations, both in harbor board and borough funds, and systematic falsifications of accounts, extending over a period of several years. The libel, which cost John Baldwin his life, turns out to have been true. Not only this, but another libel refering to a local magnate, for which Baldwin had to answer civilly, and which involved him in ruinous costs and damages, was some months since verified to the letter. In « libels, » as in other offences, the law of contraries appears to prevail. The newspaper-man who incautiously exposes grave abuses pays a heavy penalty; the malignant and vindictive traducer of his neighbor sometimes escapes almost scot-free.