Readers of Mr. Beffoc's delightful Essays will appreciate a whim sical, piquant contribution he makes to the "New Statesman," on the subject of "Inaccuracy." An error in quotation set his muse at work upon the matter, and—assuming an amusing air of grieved perplexity, ~-he asks:—"'What is inaccuracy? What are its sources? Whence does it spring? What makes one man more inaccurate than another, and why is one inaccurate in some things and not in others? What the devil is it all, anyhow know very well why accuracy la such an anxious matter with men. It is because, alone of all ihe factors of learning, it is easily and mechanically attainable. It is no good a man trying to be just in judgement about a thing which he does not really know! It would be no good, for instance, by. trying to look learned through'
just judgement of Russian poetry, because I cannot read Russian.
Lo the first to spot in others; for instance, calling Nottingham Nor-hampton, and the other way about, All one can say is that it happens us variations happen in the generation of animals, or as any other fluke happens. Some God guides and powerful creator of things. it. Inaceuracy is a very fruitful
Tt not only creates legends, it creates words. There are hosts and crowds of words which have come in through the talent of men for inaccuracy and through the inspiration of inaccuracy, which is blown into men by this God of whom I speak. Hence what is callled metathesis, the very fruitful {parent of many admirable words from Turmut to Hercules. Hence also the naturalization of French and other foreign words. It is a pity, I think, that so much printing,' and the foolish pride of those vho can read, checks the process nowadays. I live in hopes that it will not check the process for long, and that our coming barbarism will return to these popular words. "Chauffeur" should be "shover," and "asparagus"—which I like to hear called "grass"—has, I hope, taken root for ever as "sparrow-
No man can mechanically, and as and as crocs" avery good name for it; matter of course, set himself foy it is a grass and sparrows have right in al: the major factors of 1,5 particular bond with it. They learning. But both he and others can get references right, now that there are so. many printed books of reference. And therefore men study accuracy because they say to themselves: ''Fool I may be, and ignorant I may be, but anyhow, 1 can be accurate—with the help of a public library." And at the same time they say to themselves: "If I am inaccurate, the biggest fool born can find me out." So far so goal I know well enough why one bothers so absurd about accuracy in such details; or, to put it otherwise, why mere slips of the pen and misspellings frighten us so much. But what I do not understand is how and why they take place. I remember once writing a long book about Paris; a long, long book, to pay my first quarter's rent as' a young man. And in that book I found myself perpetually saying "North" when I meant "South" in the matter of the immortal hill—in the matter of the hill of the University. I always talked of going" up that hill as going "North," whereas if you go up that hill you walk due "South." And I knew man once who whenever he went into a shop to buy razor blades for his patent razor always said "railway blades." Yet in other respects he was an ordinary man,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.