On p. 71 of the same vol.  Odo is made, in 1298, to swear “in no wise to confederate with Richard I.”; whereas Richard I. died in 1199.

SABINE MAID (The).  G. Gilfillan, in his introductory essay to Longfellow, says:  “His ornaments, unlike those of the Sabine maid, have not crushed him.”  Tarpeia, who opened the gates of Rome to the Sabines, and was crushed to death by their shields, was not a Sabine maid, but a Roman.

SCOTT (Sir Walter).  In the Heart of Midlothian we read;: 

She [Effie Deans] amused herself with visiting the dairy ... and was so near discovering herself to Mary Hetly by betraying her aquaintance with the celebrated receipt for Dunlop cheese, that she compared herself to Bedredeen Hassan, whom the vizier his father in-law discovered by his superlative skill in composing cream-tarts with pepper in them.

In these few lines are several gross errors:  (1) cream-tarts should be cheese-cakes; (2) the charge was “that he made cheese-cakes without putting pepper in them,” and not that he made “cream-tarts with pepper;” (3) it was not the vizier, his father-in-law and uncle, but his mother, the widow of Nouredeen, who made the discovery, and why? for the best of all reasons—­because she herself had taught her son the receipt.  The party were at Damascus at the time.—­Arabian Nights ("Nouredeen Ali,” etc.). (See page 389, “Thackeray.”)

  “What!” said Bedredeen, “was everything in
  my house to be broken and destroyed ... only
  because I did not put pepper in a cheese-cake!”

Arabian Nights ("Nouredeen Ali,” etc.).

Again, Sir Walter Scott speaks of “the philosopher who appealed from Philip inflamed with wine to Philip in his hours of sobriety” (Antiquary, x.).  This “philosopher” was a poor old woman.

SHAKESPEARE. Althaea and the Fire-brand.  Shakespeare says, (Henry IV. act ii. sc. 2) that “Althaea dreamt that she was delivered of a fire-brand.”  It was not Althaea, but Hecuba, who dreamed, a little before Paris was born, that her offspring was a brand that consumed the kingdom.  The tale of Althaea is, that the Fates laid a log of wood on a fire, and told her that her son would live till that log was consumed; whereupon she snatched up the log and kept it from the fire, till one day her son Melea’ger offended her, when she flung the log on the fire, and her son died, as the Fates predicted.

Bohemia’s Coast.  In the Winter’s Tale the vessel bearing the infant Perdita is “driven by storm on the coast of Bohemia;” but Bohemia has no seaboard at all.

In Coriolanus, Shakespeare makes Volumnia the mother, and Virgilia the wife, of Coriolanus; but his wife was Volumnia, and his mother Veturia.

Delphi an Island.  In the same drama (act iii. sc. 1) Delphi is spoken of as an island; but Delphi is a city of Phocis, containing a temple to Apollo.  It is no island at all.