Mr. D'Israeli, in his _Curiosities of Literature_, has an article entitled "The Pearl Bibles and Six Thousand Errata," in which he gives some notable specimens of the blunders perpetrated in the printing of Bibles in earlier times. The great demand for them prompted unscrupulous persons to supply it without much regard to carefulness or accuracy; and, besides, printers were not so expert as at the present day. "The learned Ussher," Mr. D'Israeli tells us, "one day hastening to preach at Paul's Cross, entered the shop of one of the stationers, as booksellers were then called, and inquiring for a Bible of the London edition, when he came to look for his text, to his astonishment and his horror he discovered that the verse was omitted in the Bible! This gave the first occasion of complaint to the king, of the insufferable negligence and incapacity of the London press; and first bred that great contest which followed between the University of Cambridge and the London stationers, about the right of printing Bibles." Even during the reign of Charles I., and in the time of the Commonwealth, the manufacture of spurious Bibles was carried on to an alarming extent. English Bibles were fabricated in Holland for cheapness, without any regard to accuracy. Twelve thousand of these (12mo.) Bibles, with notes, were seized by the King's printers as being contrary to the statute; and a large impression of these Dutch-English Bibles were burned, by order of the Assembly of Divines, for certain errors. The Pearl (24mo.) Bible, printed by Field, in 1653, contains some scandalous blunders;--for instance, Romans, vi. 13.: "Neither yield ye your members as instruments of _righteousness_ unto sin"--for _unrighteousness_. 1 Cor. vi. 9.: "Know ye not that {392} the unrighteous _shall inherit_ the kingdom of God?"--for _shall not inherit_. The printer of Miles Coverdale's Bible, which was finished in 1535, and of which only two perfect copies, I believe, are known to exist--one in the British Museum, the other in the library of the Earl of Jersey--deserves some commendation for his accuracy. At the end of the New Testament is the following solitary erratum: "A faute escaped in pryntyng the New Testament. Upon the fourth leafe, the first syde in the sixth chapter of S. Mathew, 'Seke ye first the kingdome of heaven,' read, 'Seke ye first the kingdome of God.'" ABHBA. * * * * * IMPOSSIBILITIES OF HISTORY. "That unworthy hand." I am not aware that the fact of Cranmer's holding his right hand in the flames till it was consumed has been questioned. Fox says: "He stretched forth his right hand into the flames, and there held it so stedfast that all the people might see it burnt to a coal before his body was touched."--P. 927. ed. Milner, London, 1837, 8vo. Or, as the passage is given in the last edition,--