Benjamin Franklin, when a young man, refused to give ‘garnish’ or ‘pay his footing,’ on being placed in a room of compositors; because he had already responded to a demand for similar blackmail in another department of the printing-office. They took a peculiar method of punishing him, by disarranging some of the types in his cells when he was out of the room. Very likely this technical tribulation may have led him inadvertently to the committal of numerous misprints. Several years ago Mr H. Martin, of Halifax, adverted to a typographical error in a former communication of his to one of the journals, and added: ‘Upwards of thirty years’ experience in connection with the press has taught me to be very lenient towards misprints. The difficulty of detecting typographical errors is much greater than the uninitiated are inclined to believe. I have often observed that, even if the spelling be correct, a wrong word is very apt to remain undetected.’ He notices an instance in an edition of Shakspeare’s _Merchant of Venice_, where Portia’s lines— Young Alcides when he did redeem The virgin tribute paid by howling Troy— were converted into nonsense by the simple change of Troy into _Tory_. ‘In a short biographical notice of Pope which I compiled for an edition of his poems, I briefly enumerated his prose works, among which I named his _Memoirs of a Parish Priest_; when the proof came before me, I found that the compositor had set it Memoirs of a _Paint Brush_.’ It is possible that this blunder may have arisen from a cause to which we shall presently advert, obscure writing in the author’s manuscript; but Mr Martin also took notice of the matter mentioned above, namely the partial disarrangement of some of the types in the cells, as a cause of typographical bewilderment.