The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey Volume I Part 11

There are a number of words which, unlocked from their absurd imprisonment, would become extensively useful. We should say, for instance, 'condign honours,' 'condign treatment' (treatment appropriate to the merits), thus at once realizing two rational purposes, viz., giving a useful function to a word, which at present has none, and also providing an intelligible expression for an idea which otherwise is left without means of uttering itself except through a ponderous circ.u.mlocution. Precisely in the same circ.u.mstances of idle and absurd sequestration stands the term _polemic_. At present, according to the popular usage, this word has some fantastic inalienable connection with controversial theology. There cannot be a more childish chimera. No doubt there is a polemic side or aspect of theology; but so there is of _all_ knowledge; so there is of _every_ science. The radical and characteristic idea concerned in this term _polemic_ is found in our own Parliamentary distinction of _the good speaker_, as contrasted with _the good debater_. The good speaker is he who unfolds the whole of a question in its affirmative aspects, who presents these aspects in their just proportions, and according to their orderly and symmetrical deductions from each other. But the good debater is he who faces the negative aspects of the question, who meets sudden objections, has an answer for any momentary summons of doubt or difficulty, dissipates seeming inconsistencies, and reconciles the geometrical smoothness of _a priori_ abstractions with the coa.r.s.e angularities of practical experience. The great work of Ricardo is of necessity, and almost in every page, polemic; whilst very often the particular objections or difficulties, to which it replies, are not indicated at all, being spread through entire systems, and a.s.sumed as _precognita_ that are familiar to the learned student.

Writing to scholastic persons, I should be ashamed to explain, but hoping that I write to many also of the non-scholastic, and even of the unlearned, I rejoice to explain the proper sense of the word _implicit_.

As the word _condign_, so capable of an extended sense, is yet constantly restricted to one miserable a.s.sociation, viz., that with the word _punishment_ (for we never say, as we might say, 'condign rewards'), so also the word _implicit_ is in English always a.s.sociated with the word _faith_. People say that Papists have an _implicit_ faith in their priests. What they mean is this: If a piece of arras, or a carpet, is folded up, then it is _implicit_ according to the original Latin word; if it is unfolded and displayed, then it is _explicit_.

Therefore, when a poor illiterate man (suppose a bog-trotter of Mayo or Galway) says to his priest (as in effect always he _does_ say), 'Sir, I cannot comprehend all this doctrine; bless you, I have not the thousandth part of the learning for it, so it is impossible that I should directly believe it. But your reverence believes it, the thing is _wrapt up_ (implicit) in you, and I believe it on that account.' Here the priest believes explicitly: _he_ believes implicitly.

_Modern._--Is it not shameful that to this hour even literary men of credit and repute cannot for the life of them interpret this line from 'As You Like It'--

'Full of wise saws and modern instances'?

A man as well read as Mr. Theodore Hook, and many a hundred beside, have seriously understood it to mean 'Full of old proverbs, the traditionary wisdom of nations, and of ill.u.s.trative examples drawn from modern experience.' Nonsense! The meaning is, 'Full of old maxims and proverbs, and of trivial attempts at argument.' That is, tediously redundant in rules derived from the treasury of popular proverbs,' and in feeble attempts at connecting these general rules with the special case before him. The superannuated old magistrate sets out with a proverb, as for instance this, that _the mother of mischief is no bigger than a midge's wing_. That proverb forms his major proposition. In his minor proposition he goes on to argue that the trespa.s.s charged upon the particular prisoner before him was very little bigger than a midge's wing. And then in his conclusion triumphantly he infers, Ergo, the prisoner at the bar is the mother of mischief. But says the constable, 'Please, your wors.h.i.+p, the prisoner is a man, a hulking clodhopper, some six or seven feet high, with a strong black beard.' 'Well, that makes no odds,' rejoins his wors.h.i.+p; 'then he's the father of mischief. Clerk, make out his mittimus.'

The word 'instance' (from the scholastic _instantia_) never meant _example_ in Shakespeare's age. The word 'modern' never once in Shakespeare means what it means to _us_ in these days. Even the monkish Latin word 'modernus' fluctuated in meaning, and did not always imply _recens_, _neotericus_; but in Shakespeare never. What _does_ it mean in Shakespeare? Once and for ever it means _trivial_, _inconsiderable_. Dr.

Johnson had too much feeling not to perceive that the word 'modern' had this value in Shakespeare's acceptation; practically, he felt that it _availed_ for that sense, but theoretically he could not make out the _why_. It means that, said the Doctor; but feebly and querulously, like one sick of the pip, he added, 'Yet I don't know why.' Don't you? Now, we _do_. The fact is, Dr. Johnson was in a fit of the dismals at that time; he had recently committed a debauch of tea, having exceeded his usual allowance by seventy-five cups, so that naturally he had a 'curmurring' in the stomach. Else he could not have failed to see what we are now going to explain with a wet finger. Everybody is aware that to be _material_ is the very opposite of being trivial. What is 'material' in a chain of evidence, or in an argument, can never be trifling. Now, therefore, if you can find a word that will flatly contradict this word _material_, then you have a capital term for expressing what is trivial. Well, you find in the word _immaterial_ all that you are seeking. 'It is quite immaterial' will suit Mr. Touts's purpose just as well as 'It is really of no consequence, of no consequence in the world.' To say in a law court that the objection is immaterial is otherwise to say that it is trivial. Here, then, is the first step: to contradict the idea of _material_ is effectually to express the idea of _trivial_. Let us now see if we can find any other contradiction to the idea of _material_, for one ant.i.thesis to that idea will express as well as any other ant.i.thesis the counterpole of the trivial. Now, clearly the substance of a thing, the material out of which it is made, is oftentimes of great importance by comparison with its shape, fas.h.i.+on, or mode. It is of value in your eyes to know whether your family plate is in substance of gold or of silver; but whether such a vessel is round or square, ornamented with a wreath of acanthus or ivy, supported by tigers or by fawns, may be a trivial consideration, or even worse; for the fas.h.i.+on of your plate, after it has once become obsolete, may count against you for so much loss as something that will cost a good deal of money to alter. Here, then, is another contradiction to the material, and therefore another expression for the trivial: matter, as against vacancy or the privation of matter, yields the ant.i.thesis of material or immaterial, substantial and unsubstantial; matter, as against form, yields the ant.i.thesis of substance and shape, or otherwise of material and modal--what is matter and what is the mere modification of matter, its variation by means of ornament or shape.

The word 'modern' is therefore in Shakespeare uniformly to be p.r.o.nounced with the long _o_, as in the words m_o_dal, m_o_dish, and never with the short _o_ of m[)o]derate, m[)o]dest, or our present word m[)o]dern. And the law under which Shakespeare uses the word is this: whatsoever is so trivial as to fall into the relation of a mere shape or fleeting mode to a permanent substance, _that_ with Shakespeare is modish, or (according to his form) modern.[29] Thus, a weak, trivial argument (or _instantia_, the scholastic term for an argument not latent merely, or merely having the office of sustaining a truth, but urged as an objection, having the polemic office of contradicting an opponent) is in Shakespeare's idiom, when viewed as against a substantial argument, a _modern_ argument.

Again, when Cleopatra, defending herself against the perfidy of her steward, wishes to impress upon Octavius that any articles which she may have kept back from the inventory of her personal chattels are but trifles, she expresses this by saying that they are but

'Such as we greet modern friends withal;'

_i.e._, such as we bestow, at welcoming or at parting, upon the slightest acquaintances. The whole stress of the logic lies upon the epithet _modern_--for simply as friends, had they been substantial friends, they might have levied any amount from the royal lady's bounty; kingdoms would have been slight gifts in her eyes, and _that_ would soon have been objected to by her conqueror. But her argument is, that the people to whom such gifts would be commensurate are mere _modish_ friends, persons known to us on terms of bare civility, people with whom we exchange salutations in the street, or occasional calls, what now we call acquaintances, for whom in Shakespeare's time there was no distinguis.h.i.+ng expression.

Another case we remember at this moment in 'All's Well that Ends Well.'

It occurs in Act II., at the very opening of scene iii.; the particular edition, the only one we can command at the moment, is an obscure one published by Scott, Webster and Geary, Charterhouse Square, 1840, and we mention it thus circ.u.mstantially because the pa.s.sage is falsely punctuated; and we have little doubt that in all other editions, whether with or without the false punctuation, the syntax is generally misapprehended. In reality, the false punctuation has itself grown out of the false apprehension of the syntax, and not _vice versa_. Thus the words stand _literatim et punctuatim_: 'They say, miracles are past: and we have our philosophical persons to make modern and familiar things, supernatural and causeless.' The comma ought to have been placed after 'familiar,' the sense being this--and we have amongst us sceptical and irreligious people to represent as trivial and of daily occurrence things which in reality are supernatural and causeless (that is, not lying amongst the succession of physical causes and effects, but sent as miracles by the immediate agency of G.o.d). According to the true sense, _things supernatural and causeless_ must be understood as the subject, of which _modern and familiar_ is the predicate.

Mr. Grindon fancies that _frog_ is derived from the syllable [Greek: trach (k)] of [Greek: batrachos]. This will cause some people to smile, and recall Menage's pleasantry about Alfana, the man of Orlando; It is true that _frog_ at first sight seems to have no letter in common except the snarling letter (_litera canina_). But this is not so; the _a_ and the _o_, the _s_ and the _k_, are perhaps essentially the same. And even in the case where, positively and literally, not a single letter is identical, it is odd, but undeniable, that the two words may be nearly allied as mother and child. One instance is notorious, but it is worth citing for a purpose of instructive inference. 'Journal,' as a French word, or, if you please, as an English word--whence came that?

Unquestionably and demonstrably from the Latin word _dies_, in which, however, visibly there is not one letter the same as any one of the seven that are in journal. Yet mark the rapidity of the transition.

_Dies_ (a day) has for its derivative adjective _daily_ the word _diurnus_. Now, the old Roman p.r.o.nunciation of _diu_ was exactly the same as _gio_, both being p.r.o.nounced as our English _jorn_. Here, in a moment, we see the whole--_giorno_, a day, was not derived directly from _dies_, but secondarily through _diurnus_. Then followed _giornal_, for a diary, or register of a day, and from that to French, as also, of course, the English _journal_. But the _moral_ is, that when to the eye no letter is the same, may it not be so to the ear? Already the _di_ of _dies_ antic.i.p.ates and enfolds the _giorno_.

Mr. Grindon justly remarks upon the tendency, in many instances, of the German _ss_ to reappear in English forms as _t_. Thus _heiss_ (hot), _fuss_ (foot), etc. These are Mr. Grindon's own examples, and a striking confirmation occurs in the old English _hight_, used for _he was called_, and again for the participle _called_, and again, in the 'Met.

Roma.n.u.s,' for _I was called_: 'Lorde, he saide, I highth Segramour.'

Now, the German is _heissen_ (to be called). And this is a tendency hidden in many long ages: as, for instance, in Greek, every person must remember the transition of [Greek: tt] and [Greek: ss] as in [Greek: thatto], [Greek: tha.s.so].

_On p.r.o.nunciation and Spelling._--If we are to surrender the old vernacular sound of the _e_ in certain situations to a ridiculous criticism of the _eye_, and in defiance of the protests rising up clamorously from every quarter of old English scholars.h.i.+p, let us at least know to _what_ we surrender. What letter is to usurp the vacant seat? What letter? retorts the purist--why, an _e_, to be sure. An _e_?

And do you call _that_ an _e_? Do you p.r.o.nounce 'ten' as if it were written 'tun', or 'men' as if written 'mun'? The 'Der' in Derby, supposing it tolerable at all to alter its present legitimate sound, ought, then, to be p.r.o.nounced as the 'Der' in the Irish name Derry, not as 'Dur'; and the 'Ber' in Berkeley not as 'Bur,' but as the 'Ber' in Beryl. But the whole conceit has its origin in pure ignorance of English archaeology, and in the windiest of all vanities, viz., the attempt to harmonize the spelling and the p.r.o.nunciation of languages.

Naturally, it fills one with contempt for these 'Derby' purists to find that their own object, the very purpose they are blindly and unconsciously aiming at, has been so little studied or steadily contemplated by them in anything approaching to its whole extent. Why, upon the principle which they silently and virtually set up, though carrying it out so contradictorily (driving out an _a_ on the plea that it is not an _e_, only to end by subst.i.tuting, _and without being aware_, the still remoter letter _u_), the consequence must be that the whole language would go to wreck. Nine names out of every ten would need tinkering. 'London,' for instance, no more receives the normal sound of the _o_ in either of its syllables than does the _e_ in 'Derby.' The normal sound of the _o_ is that heard in 'song,' 'romp,' 'homage,'

'drop.' Nevertheless, the sound given to the _o_ in 'London,'

'Cromwell,' etc., which strictly is the short sound of _u_ in 'lubber,'

'b.u.t.ter,' etc., is a secondary sound of _o_ in particular combinations, though not emphatically its proper sound. The very same defence applies to the _e_ in 'Berkeley,' etc. It is the legitimate sound of the English _e_ in that particular combination, viz., when preceding an _r_, though not its normal sound. But think of the wild havoc that would be made of other more complex anomalies, if these purists looked an inch in advance. Glocester or Gloucester, Worcester, Cirencester, Pontefract, etc. What elaborate and monstrous p.r.o.nunciations would they affix to these names? The whole land would cease to recognise itself. And that the purists should never have contemplated these veritable results, this it is which seals and rivets one's contempt for them.

Now, if such harmony were at all desirable (whereas, on the contrary, we should thus be carrying ruin into the traditions and obliteration into the ethnological links of languages, industriously, in fact, throwing up insuperable obstacles in the path of historical researches), it would be far better, instead of adjusting the p.r.o.nunciation to the imaginary value of the spelling, inversely to adjust the spelling to the known and established p.r.o.nunciation, as a certain cla.s.s of lunatics amongst ourselves, viz., the _phonetic gang_, have for some time been doing systematically.

Here, therefore, I hope is one fixed point. Here there is anchorage. The usage is the rule, at any rate; and the law of a.n.a.logy takes effect only where _that_ cannot be decisively ascertained.

_The Latin Word 'Felix.'_--The Romans appear to me to have had no term for _happy_, which argues that they had not the idea. _Felix_ is tainted with the idea of success, and is thus palpably referred to life as a compet.i.tion, which for Romans every distinguished life was. In fact, apart from his city the Roman was nothing. Too poor to have a villa or any mode of retirement, it is clear that the very idea of Roman life supposes for the vast majority a necessity of thick crowded intercourse, without the possibility of solitude. I, for my peculiar const.i.tution of mind, to whom solitude has in all periods of life been more of a necessity almost than air, view with special horror the life of a Roman or Athenian. All the morning he had to attend a factious hustings or a court--a.s.semblies deliberative or judicial. Here only he was somebody, and yet, however, somebody through others. Combining with one leader and many underlings like himself, he also became a power; but in himself and for himself, after all, he was consciously nothing. When Cicero speaks of his _nunquam minus Solus quam c.u.m solus_, he is announcing what he feels to be, and knows will be, accepted as a very extraordinary fact.

For even _in rure_ it is evident that friends made it a duty of friends.h.i.+p to seek out and relieve their rusticating friends.

_On the Distinction between 'Rhetorica utens' and 'Rhetorica docens'._--It was a perplexity, familiar to the experience of the Schoolmen, that oftentimes one does not know whether to understand by the term _logic_ the act and process of reasoning involved and latent in any series of connected propositions, or this same act and process formally abstracting itself as an art and system of reasoning. For instance, if you should happen to say, 'Dr. Isaac Watts, the English Nonconformist, was a good man, and a clever man; but alas! for his logic, what can his best friend say for it? The most charitable opinion must p.r.o.nounce it at the best so, so'--in such a case, what is it that you would be understood to speak of? Would it be the general quality of the Doctor's reasoning, the style and character of his philosophical method, or would it be the particular little book known as 'The Doctor: his _Logic_,' price 5s., bound in calf, and which you might be very shy of touching with a pair of tongs, for fear of dimming their steel polish, so long as your wife's eye was upon your motions? The same ambiguity affects many other cases. For instance, if you heard a man say, 'The _rhetoric_ of Cicero is not fitted to challenge much interest,' you might naturally understand it of the particular style and rhetorical colouring--which was taxed with being florid; nay, Rhodian; nay, even Asiatic--that characterizes that great orator's compositions; or, again, the context might so restrain the word as to _force_ it into meaning the particular system or theory of rhetoric addressed to Herennius, a system which (being traditionally ascribed to Cicero) is usually printed amongst his works. Here, and in scores of similar cases, lies often a trap for the understanding; but the Schoolmen evaded this trap by distinguis.h.i.+ng between 'Rhetorica _utens_,' and 'Rhetorica _docens_,' between the rhetoric that laid down or delivered didactically the elements of oratorical persuasion as an art to be learned, and rhetoric, on the other hand, as a creative energy that _wielded_ these elements by the mouth of Pericles in the year 440 B. C., or by the mouth of Demosthenes, 340 B. C.; between rhetoric the scholastic art and rhetoric the heaven-born _power;_ between the rhetoric of Aristotle that illuminated the solitary student, and the rhetoric of Demosthenes that ran along in rolling thunders to the footstool of Artaxerxes' throne.

Oh, these dear spindle-shanked Schoolmen! they were people, respected reader, not to be sneezed at. What signifies having spindle-shanks?

_Synonyms._--A representative and a delegate, according to Burke, are identical; but there is the same difference as between a person who on his own results of judgment manages the interests of X, and a person merely reporting the voice of X. Probably there never was a case which so sharply ill.u.s.trated the liability of goodish practical understanding to miss, to fail in seeing, an object lying right before the eyes; and that is more wonderful in cases where the object is not one of mult.i.tude, but exists almost in a state of insulation. At the coroner's inquest on a young woman who died from tight-lacing, acting, it was said, in combination with a very full meal of animal food, to throw the heart out of position, Mr. Wakely p.r.o.nounced English or British people all distorted in the spine, whereas _Continental_ people were all right.

Continental! How unlimited an idea! Why, it meant nothing; it defines nothing, limits nothing, excludes nothing. Who or what is Continental?

Apparently it means anyone out of 240 millions not being one of the 27 millions in the Britannides. Every man escapes an insane folly who happens to breathe an air E. (N. E., S. E., N. N. E., S. S. E., etc.) of the Britannides. Vanity, the inevitable wish to improve, or rather to avail, one's self of a natural means offered for deepening and marking out the natural outline of the shape, _i.e._, of the s.e.xual characteristics, has no effect, dies out, the instant that a family is one of those who have the privilege of basking anywhere 2,000 miles E.

or 2,000 miles N. and S.!

A whistling to a horse: Poppysme (_vide_ Whistling, Lat. Dict.); but poppysme is a patting, a clapping, on the back, neck, or, doubtless, wherever the animal is sensible of praise.

'Takest away.' This beautiful expression, though exquisitely treated by position--

'That all evil thoughts and aims Takest away,'

is yet originally borrowed by Mr. W. from the Litany: 'O Lamb of G.o.d, that takest away the sins of the world.'

In style to explain the true character of note-writing--how compressed and unrambling and direct it ought to be, and _ill.u.s.trate_ by the villainous twaddle of many Shakespearian notes.

_Syllogism._--In the _Edin. Advertiser_ for Friday, January 25, 1856, a pa.s.sage occurs taken from _Le Nord_ (or _Journal du Nord_), or some paper whose accurate t.i.tle I do not know, understood to be Russian in its leanings, which makes a most absurd and ignorant use of this word.

The Allies are represented as addressing an argument to Russia, amounting, I think, to this, viz.: that, in order to test her sincerity, would it not be well for Russia at once to cede such insulated points of territory as were valuable to Russia or suspicious to the Allies simply as furnis.h.i.+ng means for invasion of Turkey? And this argument is called a _syllogism_.

'_Laid in wait_ for him.'--This false phrase occurs in some article (a Crimea article, I suppose) in the same _Advertiser_ of January 25. And I much doubt whether any ordinary ear would reconcile itself to _lay in wait_ (as a _past_ tense) even when instructed in its propriety.

Those Scotticisms are worst which are nonsensical, as _e.g._:

'Whenever he died Fully more.'

_Timeous_ and _dubiety_ are bad, simply as not authorized by any but local usage. A word used only in Provence or amongst the Pyrenees could not be employed by a cla.s.sical French writer, except under a _caveat_ and for a special purpose.

Plent_y_, used under the absurd misleading of its terminal 'y' as an adjective. _Alongst_, remember _of_; able _for_, the worse _of_ liquor, to call _for, to go the length_ of, as applied to a distance; 'I don't think _it_,' instead of 'I don't think _so_.'

In the _Lady's Newspaper_ for Sat.u.r.day, May 8, 1852 (No. 280), occurs the very worst case of exaggerated and incredible mixed silliness and vulgarity connected with the use of _a.s.sist_ for _help_ at the dinner-table that I have met with. It occurs in the review of a book ent.i.tled 'The Ill.u.s.trated London Cookery Book,' by Frederick Bishop. Mr.

Bishop, it seems, had 'enjoyed the office of cuisinier at the Palace, and among some of our first n.o.bility.' He has, by the way, an introductory 'Philosophy of Cookery.' Two cases occur of this matchless absurdity:

1. An ideal carver is described: he, after carving, 'is as cool and collected as ever, and _a.s.sists_ the portions he has carved with as much grace as he displayed in carving the fowl.'