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Typo: A Monthly Newspaper and Literary Review, Volume 5

[miscellaneous paragraphs]

A Wellington youth of sixteen, according to a newspaper correspondent, has constructed a violin entirely from a material believed to be quite new for the purpose—that which forms the foundation of an ordinary felt hat—calico hardened with shellac. The instrument, he says, was perfectly made, and its appearance in shape, color, and finish was just that of an ordinary wooden violin. In tone it was somewhat sweeter, but lacked volume, a fault which no doubt would disappear with age.

Mr Walter Besant, writing on the subject of printers' blunders, says: « A most exasperating error crept into the last number of the Author. The writer was made to say that Mr Andrew Lang had 'collected Langisms.' This stood for 'edited Longinus.' In a certain book for which I am half responsible, reference was made to sorrows 'as evanescent as childhood's earache.' In the first edition this appeared as 'carache.' The error passed unobserved. In the cheap edition, the printer thought the word should be in italics. It now stands carache, and looks almost French. » (« Ear-ache » should always be printed with the hyphen. Had this been done, the error would have been avoided.) A writer in the Pall Mall Gazette directs Mr Besant's attention to a curious printers' (?) error in A Son of Vulcan, a book for which Mr B. is half responsible. The hero's eyes are of interchangeable colors—sometimes blue and at other times hazel.

One of the commonest and most irritating blunders of the penny-a-liner is to use the term « demise » for « decease. » « The demise of the Crown » is a legal expression with a definite meaning; the Crown— not the monarch—is demitted. Mr Justice Richmond lately found the term « demise of her Majesty » in a New Zealand Act of Parliament, and denounced the expression as a gross vulgarism. A day or two afterwards his Honor was obliged to admit that he had forgotten his Blackstone, adding that it gave him some consolation to find that he knew better thirty years ago, when he had charge in Parliament of the Act he had just condemned. This is what Blackstone says:— « So tender is the law of supposing even a possibility of his (the King's) death, that his natural dissolution is generally called demise —'demisso regis vel coronæ,'—an expression which signifies merely a transfer of property. » To which it may be added that the antiquated legal fiction—as old as the era of Nebuchadnezzar—that the King lives for ever, is no reason why a reporter should write of « the demise of our respected townsman, Mr Brown, » or—as he sometimes does, of « the demise » of Mr Brown's cow.