That here, by mistake, three rests for the first violins have been inserted by the engraver, instead of three simile-signs, [simile marks], is evident from the sudden interruption of the flow of the triplet accompaniment, as well as from the fact that immediately afterwards, in the inversion of the same passage, the violas have the same accompaniment without any interruption. Otto Jahn, in his 'Gesammelte Aufs‰tze ¸ber Musik,' notices a misprint in the score of Beethoven's last Quartet, Op. 135, which is very extraordinary. He says: "In the last movement the copyist has omitted two bars in the first violin part, so that during twelve bars it is two bars in advance of the other instruments. After the twelve bars, the corrector perceiving that two bars were wanting to restore the equilibrium, has inserted two there according to his own fancy." Jahn gives side by side the genuine reading and the interpolated one. The wonder is that the latter is playable at all,--or rather, that the musicians, in playing it, should not have discovered at once that there must be something radically wrong. However, as Jahn justly remarks, the respect for the eccentricities of Beethoven's last quartets was so great, that no one ventured to think there could be a mistake here which required rectifying. A carefully-compiled manual, containing reliable corrections of the most important misprints occurring in our classical compositions, would be a boon to the musical student. There are many in Bach's fugues, and even in Beethoven's sonatas, which are not easily detected, but which are on this account all the more noteworthy. The following beautiful conception, which occurs in the first movement of Beethoven's Sinfonia Eroica, was regarded by many, on the first publication of the symphony, as a misprint:-- [Music] Ferdinand Ries, the pupil of Beethoven, was unable to appreciate the charm of this soft and timid indication of the theme on a dissonance immediately before it gloriously breaks out on the harmonious triad. In his biographical notices of Beethoven he thus speaks of it: "In the first Allegro of the Symphony there occurs a bad whim of Beethoven for the horn. Some bars before the theme enters again, in the second part of the Allegro, Beethoven indicates it by the horn, while the violins continue to sound the second-chord. This must always convey to those who are unacquainted with the score, the impression that the horn-player has counted incorrectly, and that he falls in at a wrong bar. At the first rehearsal of the symphony, which was very unsatisfactory, but in which the horn-player kept proper time, I was standing near Beethoven, and, in the belief that it was wrong, I cried: 'That confounded hornist! Can he not count! It sounds so infamously wrong!' Beethoven was near to giving me a box on the ear. It took him a long time to forgive me."