A Budget of Paradoxes Volume II Part 27

A PLEA FOR KING CUSTOM.

I stand up for King Custom, or _Usus_, as Horace called him, with whom is _arbitrium_ the decision, and _jus_ the right, and _norma_ the way of deciding, simply because he has _potestas_ the power. He may admit one and another principle to advise: but Custom is not a const.i.tutional king; he may listen to his cabinet, but he decides for himself: and if the ministry should resign, he blesses his stars and does without them. We have a glorious liberty in England of owning neither dictionary, grammar, nor spelling-book: as many as choose write by either of the three, and decide all disputed points their own way, those following them who please.

Throughout this book I have called people by the names which denote them in their books, or by our vernacular names. This is the intelligible way of proceeding. I might, for instance (Vol. I, p. 44), have spoken of Charles de Bovelles,[604] of Lefevre d'etaples,[605] of Pelerin,[606] and of Etienne.[607] But I prefer the old plan. Those who like another plan better, are welcome to subst.i.tute with a pen, when they know what to write; when they do not, it is clear that they would not have understood me if I had given modern names.

The princ.i.p.al advisers of King Custom are as follows. First, there is Etymology, the _chiffonnier_, or general rag-merchant, who has made such a fortune of late years in his own business that he begins to be considered highly respectable. He gives advice which is more thought of than followed, partly on account of the fearful extremes into which he runs. He lately asked some boys of sixteen, at a matriculation examination in _English_, to what branch of {325} the Indo-Germanic family they felt inclined to refer the Pushto language, and what changes in the force of the letters took place in pa.s.sing from Greek into Moeso-Gothic. Because all syllables were once words, he is a little inclined to insist that they shall be so still.

He would gladly rule English with a Saxon rod, which might be permitted with a certain discretion which he has never attained: and when opposed, he defends himself with a.n.a.logies of the Aryan family until those who hear him long for the discovery of an Athanasyus. He will transport a word beyond seas--he is recorder of Rhematopolis--on circ.u.mstantial evidence which looks like mystery gone mad; but, strange to say, something very often comes to light after sentence is pa.s.sed which proves the soundness of the conviction.

The next adviser is Logic, a swearing old justice of peace, quorum, and rotulorum, whose excesses brought on such a fit of the gout that for many years he was unable to move. He is now mending, and his friends say he has sown his wild oats. He has some influence with the educated subjects of Custom, and will have more, if he can learn the line at which interference ought to stop: with them he has succeeded in making an affirmative of two negatives; but the vulgar won't never have nothing to say to him. He has always railed at Milton for writing that Eve was the fairest of her daughters; but has never satisfactorily shown what Milton ought to have said instead.

The third adviser has more influence with the ma.s.s of the subjects of King Custom than the other two put together; his name is Fiddlefaddle, the toy-shop keeper; and the other two put him forward to do their worst work.

In return, he often uses their names without authority. He took Etymology to witness that _means_ to an end must be plural: and he would have any one method to be a _mean_. But Etymology proved him wrong, King Custom referred him to his Catechism, in which is "a means whereby we receive the same,"

and a.n.a.logy--a subordinate of {326} Etymology--asked whether he thought it a great _new_ to hear that he was wrong. It was either this Fiddlefaddle, or Lindley Murray[608] his traveler, who persuaded the Miss Slipslops, of the Ladies Seminary, to put "The Misses Slipslop" over the gate. Sixty years ago, this bagman called at all the girls' schools, and got many of the teachers to insist on the pupils saying "Is it not" and "Can I not" for "Isn't it" and "Can't I": of which it came that the poor girls were dreadfully laughed at by their irreverent brothers when they went home for the holidays. Had this bad adviser not been severely checked, he might by this time have proposed our saying "The Queen's of England son," declaring, in the name of Logic, that the prince was the Queen's son, not England's.

Lastly, there is Typography the metallurgist, an executive officer who is always at work in secret, and whose lawless mode of advising is often done by carrying his notions into effect without leave given. He it is who never ceases suggesting that the same word is not to occur in a second place within sight of the first. When the Authorized Version was first printed, he began this trick at the pa.s.sage, "Let there be light, and there was light;" he drew a line on the proof under the second _light_, and wrote "_luminosity?_" opposite. He is strongest in the punctuations and other signs; he has a pepper-box full of commas always by his side. He puts everything under marks of quotation which he has ever heard before. An earnest preacher, in a very moving sermon, used the phrase Alas! and alack a day! Typography stuck up the inverted commas because he had read the old Anglo-Indian toast, "A la.s.s and a lac a day!" If any one should have the sense to leave out of his Greek {327} the unmeaning scratches which they call accents, he goes to a lexicon and puts them in. He is powerful in routine; but when two routines interlace or overlap, he frequently takes the wrong one.

Subject to bad advice, and sometimes misled for a season, King Custom goes on his quiet way and is sure to be right at last.

"Treason does never prosper: what's the reason?

Why, when it prospers, none dare call it treason."

Language is in constant fermentation, and all that is thrown in, so far as it is not fit to a.s.similate, is thrown off; and this without any obvious struggle. In the meanwhile every one who has read good authors, from Shakspeare downward, knows what is and what is not English; and knows, also, that our language is not one and indivisible. Two very different turns of phrase may both be equally good, and as good as can be: we may be relieved of the consequences of contempt of one court by _habeas corpus_ issuing out of another.

TEST OF LANGUAGE.

Hallam remarks that the Authorized Version of the Bible is not in the language of the time of James the First: that it is not the English of Raleigh or of Bacon. Here arises the question whether Raleigh and Bacon are the true expositors of the language of their time; and whether they were not rather the incipient promoters of a change which was successfully resisted by--among other things--the Authorized Version of the Testaments.

I am not prepared to concede that I should have given to the English which would have been fashioned upon that of Bacon by imitators, such as they usually are, the admiration which is forced from me by Bacon's English from Bacon's pen. On this point we have a notable parallel. Samuel Johnson {328} commands our admiration, at least in his matured style: but we nauseate his followers. It is an opinion of mine that the works of the leading writers of an age are seldom the proper specimens of the language of their day, when that language is in its state of progression. I judge of a language by the colloquial idiom of educated men: that is, I take this to be the best medium between the extreme cases of one who is ignorant of grammar and one who is perched upon a style. Dialogue is what I want to judge by, and plain dialogue: so I choose Robert Recorde[609] and his pupil in the _Castle of Knowledge_, written before 1556. When Dr. Robert gets into his alt.i.tudes of instruction, he differs from his own common phraseology as much as probably did Bacon when he wrote morals and philosophy. But every now and then I come to a little plain talk about a common thing, of which I propose to show a specimen. Anything can be made to look old by such changes as _makes_ into _maketh_, with a little old spelling. I shall invert these changes, using the newer form of inflexion, and the modern spelling: with no other variation whatever.

"_Scholar._ Yet the reason of that is easy enough to be conceived, for when the day is at the longest the Sun must needs shine the more time, and so must it needs shine the less time when the day is at the shortest: this reason I have heard many men declare.

_Master._ That may be called a crabbed reason, for it {329} goes backward like a crab. The day makes not the Sun to shine, but the Sun shining makes the day. And so the length of the day makes not the Sun to shine long, neither the shortness of the day causes not [_sic_] the Sun to shine the lesser time, but contrariwise the long shining of the Sun makes the long day, and the short shining of the Sun makes the lesser day: else answer me what makes the days long or short?

_Scholar._ I have heard wise men say that Summer makes the long days, and Winter makes the long nights.

_Master._ They might have said more wisely, that long days make summer and short days make winter.

_Scholar._ Why, all that seems one thing to me.

_Master._ Is it all one to say, G.o.d made the earth, and the earth made G.o.d?

Covetousness overcomes all men, and all men overcome covetousness?

_Scholar._ No, not so; for here the effect is turned to be the cause, and the agent is made the patient.

_Master._ So is it to say Summer makes long days, when you should say: Long days make summer.

_Scholar._ I perceive it now: but I was so blinded with the vulgar error, that if you had demanded of me further what did make the summer, I had been like to have answered that green leaves do make summer; and the sooner by remembrance of an old saying that a year should come in which the summer should not be known but by the green leaves.

_Master._ Yet this saying does not import that green leaves do make summer, but that they betoken summer; so are they the sign and not the cause of summer."

I have taken a whole page of our author, without omission, that the reader may see that I do not pick out sentences convenient for my purpose. I have done nothing but alter the third person of the verb and the spelling: but great is the effect thereof. We say "the Sun shining makes the day"; Recorde, "the Sonne shynynge maketh the daye." {330} These points apart, we see a resemblance between our English and that of three hundred years ago, in the common talk of educated persons, which will allow us to affirm that the language of the authorized Bible must have been very close to that of its time. For I cannot admit that much change can have taken place in fifty years: and the language of the version represents both our common English and that of Recorde with very close approximation. Take sentences from Bacon and Raleigh, and it will be apparent that these writers will be held to differ from all three, Recorde, the version, and ourselves, by differences of the same character. But we speak of Recorde's conversation, and of our own. We conclude that it is the plain and almost colloquial character of the Authorized Version which distinguishes it from the English of Bacon and Raleigh, by approximating it to the common idiom of the time.

If any one will cast an eye upon the letters of instruction written by Cecil[610] and the Bishop of London to the translators themselves, or to the general directions sent to them in the King's name, he will find that these plain business compositions differ from the English of Bacon and Raleigh by the same sort of differences which distinguish the version itself.

p.r.o.nUNCIATION.

The foreign word, or the word of a district, or cla.s.s of people, pa.s.ses into the general vernacular; but it is long before the specially learned will acknowledge the right of those with whom they come in contact to follow general usage. The rule is simple: so long as a word is technical or local, those who know its technical or local p.r.o.nunciation may reasonably employ it. But when the word has become general, the specialist is not very wise if he refuse to follow {331} the ma.s.s, and perfectly foolish if he insist on others following him. There have been a few who demanded that Euler should be p.r.o.nounced in the German fashion:[611] Euler has long been the property of the world at large; what does it matter how his own countrymen p.r.o.nounce the letters? Shall we insist on the French p.r.o.nouncing _Newton_ without that final _tong_ which they never fail to give him? They would be wise enough to laugh at us if we did. We remember that a pedant who was insisting on all the p.r.o.nunciations being retained, was met by a maxim in contradiction, invented at the moment, and fathered upon Kaen-foo-tzee,[612] an authority which he was challenged to dispute. Whom did you speak of? said the bewildered man of accuracy. Learn your own system, was the answer, before you impose it on others; Confucius says that too.[613]

The old English has _fote_, _fode_, _loke_, _c.o.ke_, _roke_, etc., for _foot_, etc. And _above_ rhymes in Chaucer to _remove_. Suspecting that the broader sounds are the older, we may surmise that _remove_ and _food_ have retained their old sounds, and that _cook_, once _c.o.ke_, would have rhymed to our _Luke_, the vowel being brought a little nearer, perhaps, to the _o_ in our present _c.o.ke_, the fuel, probably so called as used by cooks. If this be so, the Chief Justice _Cook_[614] of our lawyers, and the _c.o.ke_ (p.r.o.nounced like the fuel) of the greater part of the world, are equally wrong. The lawyer has no right whatever to fasten his p.r.o.nunciation upon us: even leaving aside the general custom, he cannot prove himself right, and is probably wrong. Those who {332} know the village of Rokeby (p.r.o.nounced Rookby) despise the world for not knowing how to name Walter Scott's poem: that same world never asked a question about the matter, and the reception of the parody of _Jokeby_, which soon appeared, was a sufficient indication of their notion. Those who would fasten the hodiernal sound upon us may be reminded that the question is, not what they call it now, but what it was called in Cromwell's time. Throw away general usage as a lawgiver, and this is the point which emerges. Probably _R[=u]ke-by_ would be right, with a little turning of the Italian [=u] towards [=o] of modern English.

[Some of the above is from an old review. I do not always notice such insertions: I take nothing but my own writings. A friend once said to me, "Ah! you got that out of the _Athenaeum_!" "Excuse me," said I. "the _Athenaeum_ got that out of me!"]

APOLOGIES TO CLUVIER.

It is part of my function to do justice to any cyclometers whose methods have been wrongly described by any orthodox sneerers (myself included). In this character I must notice _Dethlevus Cluverius_,[615] as the Leipzig Acts call him (probably Dethleu Cluvier), grandson of the celebrated geographer, Philip Cluvier. The grandson was a Fellow of the Royal Society, elected on the same day as Halley,[616] November 30, 1678: I suppose he lived in England. This {333} man is quizzed in the Leipzig Acts for 1686; and, if Montucla insinuate rightly, by Leibnitz, who is further suspected of wanting to embroil Cluvier with his own opponent Nieuwentiit,[617] on the matter of infinitesimals. So far good: I have nothing against Leibnitz, who though he was ironical, told us what he laughed at. But Montucla has behaved very unfairly: he represents Cluvier as placing the essence of his method in the solution of the problem _construere mundum divinae menti a.n.a.logum_, to construct a world corresponding to the divine mind. Nothing to begin with: no way of proceeding. Now, it ought to have been _ex data linea construere_,[618] etc.: there is a given line, which is something to go on. Further, there is a way of proceeding: it is to find the product of 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. for ever. Moreover, Montucla charges Cluvier with _unsquaring_ the parabola, which Archimedes had squared as tight as a glove. But he never mentions how very nearly Cluvier agrees with the Greek: they only differ by 1 divided by 3n^2, where n is the infinite number of parts of which a parabola is composed. This must have been the conceit that tickled Leibnitz, and made him wish that Cluvier and Nieuwentiit should fight it out. Cluvier, was admitted, on terms of irony, into the Leipzig Acts: he appeared on a more serious footing in London. It is very rare for one cyclometer to refute another: _les corsaires ne se battent pas_.[619]

The only instance I recall is that of M. Cluvier, who (_Phil. Trans._, 1686, No. 185) refuted M. Mallemont de Messange,[620] who {334} published at Paris in 1686. He does it in a very serious style, and shows himself a mathematician. And yet in the year in which, in the _Phil. Trans._, he was a geometer, and one who rebukes his squarer for quoting Matthew xi. 25, in that very year he was the visionary who, in the Leipzig Acts, professed to build a world resembling the divine mind by multiplying together 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. up to infinity.

THE RAINBOW PARADOX.

There is a very pretty opening for a paradox which has never found its paradoxer in print. The philosophers teach that the rainbow is not material: it comes from rain-drops, but those rain-drops do not _take_ color. They only _give_ it, as lenses and mirrors; and each one drop gives _all_ the colors, but throws them in different directions. Accordingly, the same drop which furnishes red light to one spectator will furnish violet to another, properly placed. Enter the paradoxer whom I have to invent. The philosopher has gulled you nicely. Look into the water, and you will see the reflected rainbow: take a looking-gla.s.s held sideways, and you see another reflection. How could this be, if there were nothing colored to reflect? The paradoxer's facts are true: and what are called the reflected rainbows are _other_ rainbows, caused by those _other_ drops which are placed so as to give the colors to the eye after reflection, at the water or the looking-gla.s.s. A few years ago an artist exhibited a picture with a rainbow and its apparent reflection: he simply copied what he had seen.

When his picture was examined, some started the idea that there could be no reflection of a rainbow; they were right: they inferred that the artist had made a mistake; they were wrong. When it was explained, some agreed and some dissented. Wanted, {335} immediately, an able paradoxer: testimonials to be forwarded to either end of the rainbow, No. 1. No circle-squarer need apply, His Variegatedness having been pleased to adopt 3.14159... from Noah downwards.

TYCHO BRAHE REVIVED.

The system of Tycho Brahe,[621] with some alteration and addition, has been revived and contended for in our own day by a Dane, W. Zytphen,[622] who has published _The Motion of the Sun in the Universe_, (second edition) Copenhagen, 1865, 8vo, and _Le Mouvement Sideral_, 1865, 8vo. I make an extract.

"How can one explain Copernically that the velocity of the Moon must be added to the velocity of the Earth on the one place in the Earth's...o...b..t, to learn how far the Moon has advanced from one fixed star to another; but in another place in the orbit these velocities must be subtracted (the movements taking place in opposite directions) to attain the same result?

In the Copernican and other systems, it is well known that the Moon, abstracting from the insignificant excentricity of the orbit, always in twenty-four hours performs an equally long distance. Why has Copernicus never been denominated Fundamentus or Fundator? Because he has never convinced anybody so thoroughly that this otherwise so natural epithet has occurred to the mind."

Really the second question is more effective against Newton than against Copernicus; for it upsets gravity: the first is of great depth.

{336}

JAMES SMITH WILL NOT DOWN.

The _Correspondent_ journal makes a little episode in the history of my Budget (born May, 1865, died April, 1866). It consisted entirely of letters written by correspondents. In August, a correspondent who signed "Fair Play"--and who I was afterwards told was a lady--thought it would be a good joke to bring in the Cyclometers. Accordingly a letter was written, complaining that though Mr. Sylvester's[623] demonstration of Newton's theorem--then attracting public attention--was duly lauded, the possibly greater discovery of the quadrature seemed to be blushing unseen, and wasting etc. It went on as follows: