AUTHORS' ERRORS.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1515, 10 August 1912, Page 9

AUTHORS' ERRORS.

: Guy.de Maupassant has described, and quoted at length, from the "dossier- de-la betiso huruaiue" of Gustave Flaubert, a collection rf errors of fact and taste, unconscious jests, bulls, and ordinary stupidities which the author of , "Madame Bovary" took' pleasure in garnering from all sources in order to ilhistrato the fallibility of the human intellect. But Flaubert himself (an American paper notes) was not immune against error, as the writer of an amusing article in "La Revue" points out. Tho author confines himself to .French literature, but one could undoubtedly find plenty of material of the kind in English. No source is given, for such felicities of phrasing as"Ho was seventy years old and looked twice his age," or "The two adversaries were placed at. on equal distance from each other," or ''With one. hand he caressed' lier hair, and with the other he said to hor." But no less a man than Corneille wrote, "This shall cost I'onipey his life and his head." ■' ~ •

• Members of the French Academy have not escaped error.' Eugene Scribe, in his inaugural speech before the Academy, reproached Jloliere for bavin),' made men-, tion in none ofhis works oi so remarkable an event as the Revw&tion of the Edict of-Nantes, which occurred in 1685 j Jloliere died in 1G73. Victor Huso, in the"Legende da Siecles," makes. Charlemagne siy, "You dream, like a clerk in the' Sorbonne." Charlemagne died in BM, and tho Sorbonne was founded, in 1253. In the same work, Victor Hugo, dealing with Itiho legend of Euth and Boaz,' speaks of the earth., as .being:"still, moist and softened from tho Flood." Since.the Flood, at tlie latest, occurred about 2450 B.C., 1 and Boa/, lived about 1200 8.C., the .writer in. "La Eevue" conjectures that the earth must have taken a long thhe'in drying. Of Jules Janin the eminent critic, it w\s said that he had a "horror of exactitude." Janin ma<le the river Rhone pass tliroußh Marseilles, wHiich is fifty miles away; Smyrna was an island; the Atlantic a French lake; Cannes on the Riviera is confused with C'annao in central Italy, where Hannibal won his victory over' the Romans, and Louii XI, who was torn in 1423, is denounced .is a persecutor of Abelard, who died in 1142.