Cottle, in his _Life of Coleridge_, relates an essay at grooming on the part of that poet and Wordsworth. The servants being absent, the poets had attempted to stable their horse, and were almost successful. With the collar, however, a difficulty arose. After Wordsworth had relinquished as impracticable the effort to get it over the animal’s head, Coleridge tried his hand, but showed no more grooming skill than his predecessor; for, after twisting the poor horse’s neck almost to strangulation, and to the great danger of his eyes, he gave up the useless task, pronouncing that the horse’s head must have grown (gout or dropsy) since the collar was put on, for he said it was downright impossibility for such a huge _os frontis_ to pass through so narrow a collar! Just at this moment a servant girl came up, and turning the collar upside down, slipped it off without trouble, to the great humility and wonderment of the poets, who were each satisfied afresh that there were heights of knowledge to which they had not attained. BLUNDERS OF TRANSLATORS. A most entertaining volume might be made from the amusing and often absurd blunders perpetrated by translators. For instance, Miss Cooper tells us that the person who first rendered her father’s novel, “The Spy,” into the French tongue, among other mistakes, made the following:—Readers of the Revolutionary romance will remember that the residence of the Wharton family was called “The Locusts.” The translator referred to his dictionary, and found the rendering of the word to be _Les Sauterelles_, “The Grasshoppers.” But when he found one of the dragoons represented as tying his horse to one of the locusts on the lawn, it would appear as if he might have been at fault. Nothing daunted, however, but taking it for granted that American grasshoppers must be of gigantic dimensions, he gravely informs his readers that the cavalryman secured his charger by fastening the bridle to one of the grasshoppers before the door, apparently standing there for that purpose. Much laughter has deservedly been raised at French _littérateurs_ who professed to be “_doctus utriusque linguæ_.” Cibber’s play of “Love’s Last Shift” was translated by a Frenchman who spoke “Inglees” as “_Le Dernière Chemise de l’Amour_;” Congreve’s “Mourning Bride,” by another, as “_L’Epouse du Matin_;” and a French scholar recently included among his catalogue of works on natural history the essay on “Irish Bulls,” by the Edgeworths. Jules Janin, the great critic, in his translation of “Macbeth,” renders “Out, out, brief candle!” as “_Sortez, chandelle_.” And another, who _traduced_ Shakspeare, commits an equally amusing blunder in rendering Northumberland’s famous speech in “Henry IV.” In the passage “Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless, So dull, so dead in look, _so woe-begone_.”