The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 2

XIV. PRONUNCIATION

To write his own language with propriety is the ambition of here and there an individual; to speak it with propriety is the ambition of multitudes. Amongst the qualifications for a public writer—the preliminary one of leisure is granted to about one man in three thousand; and, this being indispensable, there at once, for most men, mercifully dies in the very instant of birth the most uneasy and bewildering of temptations. But speak a man must. Leisure or no leisure, to talk he is obliged by the necessities of life, or at least he thinks so; though my own private belief is, that the wisest rule upon which a man could act in this world (alas! I did not myself act upon it) would be to seal up his mouth from earliest youth, to simulate the infirmity of dumbness, and to answer only by signs. This would soon put an end to the impertinence of questions, to the intolerable labour of framing and uttering replies through a whole life, and, above all (oh, foretaste of Paradise!), to the hideous affliction of sustaining these replies and undertaking for all their possible consequences. That notion of the negroes in Senegal about monkeys, viz., that they can talk if they choose, and perhaps with classical elegance, but wisely dissemble their talent under the fear that the unjust whites would else make them work in Printing Houses, for instance, as 'readers' and correctors of the press, this idea, which I dare say is true, shows how much wiser, in his generation, is a monkey than a man. For, besides the wear and tear to a man's temper by the irritation of talking, and the corrosion of one's happiness by the disputes which talking entails, it is really frightful to think of the mischief caused, if one measures it only by the fruitless expense of words. Eleven hundred days make up about three years; consequently, eleven thousand days make up thirty years. But that day must be a very sulky one, and probably raining cats and dogs, on which a man throws away so few as two thousand words, not reckoning what he loses in sleep. A hundred and twenty-five words for every one of sixteen hours cannot be thought excessive. The result, therefore, is, that, in one generation of thirty years, he wastes irretrievably upon the impertinence of answering—of wrangling, and of prosing, not less than twice eleven thousand times a thousand words; the upshot of which comes to a matter of twenty-two million words. So that, if the English language contains (as some curious people say it does) forty thousand words, he will have used it up not less than five hundred and fifty times. Poor old battered language! One really pities it. Think of any language in its old age being forced to work at that rate; kneaded, as if it were so much dough, every hour of the day into millions of fantastic shapes by millions of capricious bakers! Being old, however, and superannuated, you will say that our English language must have got used to it: as the sea, that once (according to Camoens) was indignant at having his surface scratched, and his feelings harrowed, by keels, is now wrinkled and smiling.

Blessed is the man that is dumb, when speech would have betrayed his ignorance; and the man that has neither pens nor ink nor crayons, when a record of his thought would have delivered him over to the derision of posterity. This, however, the reader will say, is to embroider a large moral upon a trivial occasion. Possibly the moral may be disproportionately large; and yet, after all, the occasion may not be so trivial as it seems. One of the many revolutions worked by the railway system is, to force men into a much ampler publicity; to throw them at a distance from home amongst strangers; and at their own homes to throw strangers amongst them. Now, exactly in such situations it is, where all other gauges of appreciation are wanting, that the two great external indications of a man's rank, viz., the quality of his manners and the quality of his pronunciation, come into play for assigning his place and rating amongst strangers. Not merely pride, but a just and reasonable self-respect, irritates a man's aspiring sensibilities in such a case: not only he is, but always he ought to be, jealous of suffering in the estimation of strangers by defects which it is in his own choice to supply, or by mistakes which a little trouble might correct. And by the way we British act in this spirit, whether we ought to do or not, it is noticed as a broad characteristic of us Islanders, viz., both of the English and the Scotch, that we are morbidly alive to jealousy under such circumstances, and in a degree to which there is nothing amongst the two leading peoples of the Continent at all corresponding.⁵² A Scotchman or an Englishman of low rank is anxious on a Sunday to dress in a style which may mislead the casual observer into the belief that perhaps he is a gentleman: whereas it is notorious that the Parisian artisan or labourer of the lower class is proud of connecting himself conspicuously with his own order, and ostentatiously acknowledging it, by adopting its usual costume. It is his way of expressing an esprit de corps. The same thing is true very extensively of Germans. And it sounds pretty, and reads into a sentimental expression of cheerful contentedness, that such customs should prevail on a great scale. Meantime I am not quite sure that the worthy Parisian is not an ass, and the amiable German another, for thus meekly resigning himself to the tyranny of his accidental situation. What they call the allotment of Providence is, often enough, the allotment of their own laziness or defective energy. At any rate, I feel much more inclined to respect the aspiring Englishman or Scotchman that kicks against these self-imposed restraints; that rebels in heart against whatever there may be of degradation in his own particular employment; and, therefore, though submitting to this degradation as the sine quâ non for earning his daily bread, and submitting also to the external badges and dress of his trade as frequently a matter of real convenience, yet doggedly refuses to abet or countersign any such arrangements as tend to lower him in other men's opinion. And exactly this is what he would be doing by assuming his professional costume on Sundays; the costume would then become an exponent of his choice, not of his convenience or his necessity; and he would thus be proclaiming that he glories in what he detests. To found a meek and docile nation, the German is the very architect wanted; but to found a go-ahead nation quite another race is called for, other blood and other training. And, again, when I hear a notable housewife exclaiming, 'Many are the poor servant girls that have been led into temptation and ruin by dressing above their station,' I feel that she says no more than the truth; and I grieve that it should be so. Out of tenderness, therefore, and pity towards the poor girls, if I personally had any power to bias their choice, my influence should be used in counteraction to their natural propensities. But this has nothing to do with the philosophic estimate of those propensities. Perilous they are; but that does not prevent their arising in fountains that contain elements of possible grandeur, such as would never be developed by a German Audrey (see 'As You Like It') content to be treated as a doll by her lover, and viewing it as profane to wear petticoats less voluminous, or a headdress less frightful than those inherited from her grandmother.

Excuse this digression, reader. What I wished to explain was that, if a man in a humble situation seeks to refine his pronunciation of English, and finds himself in consequence taxed with pride that will not brook the necessities of his rank, at all events, he is but integrating his manifestations of pride. Already in his Sunday's costume he has begun this manifestation, and, as I contend, rightfully. If a carpenter or a stonemason goes abroad on a railway excursion, there is no moral obligation upon him—great or small—to carry about any memento whatsoever of his calling. I contend that his right to pass himself off for a gentleman is co-extensive with his power to do so: the right is limited by the power, and by that only. The man may say justly: "What I am seeking is a holiday. This is what I pay for; and I pay for it with money earned painfully enough. I have a right therefore to expect that the article shall be genuine and complete. Now, a holiday means freedom from the pains of labour—not from some of those pains, but from all. Even from the memory of these pains, if that could be bought, and from the anticipation of their recurrence. Amongst the pains of labour, a leading one next after the necessity of unintermitting muscular effort, is the oppression of people's superciliousness or of their affected condescension in conversing with one whom they know to be a working mechanic. From this oppression it is, from this oppression whether open or poorly disguised, that I seek to be delivered. It taints my pleasure: it spoils my holiday. And if by being dressed handsomely, by courtesy in manners, and by accuracy in speaking English, I can succeed in obtaining this deliverance for myself, I have a right to it." Undoubtedly he has. His real object is not to disconnect himself from an honest calling, but from that burthen of contempt or of slight consideration which the world has affixed to his calling. He takes measures for gratifying his pride—not with a direct or primary view to that pride, but indirectly as the only means open to him for evading and defeating the unjust conventional scorn that would settle upon himself through his trade, if that should happen to become known or suspected. This is what I should be glad to assist him in; and amongst other points connected with his object, towards which my experience might furnish him with some hints, I shall here offer him the very shortest of lessons for his guidance in the matter of English pronunciation.

What can be attempted on so wide a field in a paper limited so severely in dimensions as all papers published by this journal must be limited in obedience to the transcendent law of variety? To make it possible that subjects enough should be treated, the Proprietor wisely insists on a treatment vigorously succinct for each in particular. I myself, it suddenly strikes me, must have been the chief offender against this reasonable law: but my offences were committed in pure ignorance and inattention, faults which henceforth I shall guard against with a penitential earnestness. Reformation meanwhile must begin, I fear, simultaneously with this confession of guilt. It would not be possible (would it?) that, beginning the penitence this month of November, I should postpone the amendment till the next? No, that would look too brazen. I must confine myself to the two and a half pages prescribed as the maximum extent—and of that allowance already perhaps have used up one half at the least. Shocking! is it not? So much the sterner is the demand through the remaining ground for exquisite brevity.

Rushing therefore at once in medias res, I observe to the reader that, although it is thoroughly impossible to give him a guide upon so vast a wilderness as the total area of our English language, for, if I must teach him how to pronounce, and upon what learned grounds to pronounce, 40,000 words, and if polemically I must teach him how to dispose of 40,000 objections that have been raised (or that may be raised) against these pronunciations, then I should require at the least 40,000 lives (which is quite out of the question, for a cat has but nine)—seeing and allowing for all this, I may yet offer him some guidance as to his guide. One sole rule, if he will attend to it, governs in a paramount sense the total possibilities and compass of pronunciation. A very famous line of Horace states it. What line? What is the supreme law in every language for correct pronunciation no less than for idiomatic propriety?

 
'Usus, quem penes arbitrium est et jus et norma loquendi:'
 

usage, the established practice, subject to which is all law and normal standard of correct speaking. Now, in what way does such a rule interfere with the ordinary prejudice on this subject? The popular error is that, in pronunciation, as in other things, there is an abstract right and a wrong. The difficulty, it is supposed, lies in ascertaining this right and wrong. But by collation of arguments, by learned investigation, and interchange of pros and cons, it is fancied that ultimately the exact truth of each separate case might be extracted. Now, in that preconception lies the capital blunder incident to the question. There is no right, there is no wrong, except what the prevailing usage creates. The usage, the existing custom, that is the law: and from that law there is no appeal whatever, nor demur that is sustainable for a moment.

XV. THE JEWISH SCRIPTURES COULD HAVE BEEN WRITTEN IN NO MODERN ERA

Now, observe what I am going to prove. First A, and as a stepping-stone to something (B) which is to follow: It is, that the Jewish Scriptures could not have been composed in any modern æra. I am earnest in drawing your attention to the particular point which I have before me, because one of the enormous faults pervading all argumentative books, so that rarely indeed do you find an exception, is that, in all the dust and cloud of contest and of objects, the reader never knows what is the immediate object before the writer and himself, nor if he were told would he understand in what relation it stood to the main object of contest—the main question at stake. Recollect, therefore, that what I want is to show that these elder Jewish Scriptures must have existed in very ancient days—how ancient? for ancient is an ambiguous word—could not have been written as a memorial of tradition within a century or two of our æra. To suppose, even for the sake of answering, the case of a forgery, is too gross and shocking: though a very common practice amongst writers miscalled religious, but in fact radically, incurably unspiritual. This might be shown to be abominable even in an intellectual sense; because no adequate, no rational purpose could be answered by such a labour. The sole conceivable case would be, that from the eldest days the Jews had been governed by all the Mosaic institutions as we now have them, but that the mere copying, the mere registration on tablets of parchment, wood, leather, brass, had not occurred till some more modern period. As to this the answer is at once: Why should they not have been written down? What answer could be given? Only this: For the same reason that other nations did not commit to writing their elder institutions. And why did they not? Was it to save trouble? So far from that, this one privation imposed infinite trouble that would have been evaded by written copies. For because they did not write down, therefore, as the sole mode of providing for accurate remembrance, they were obliged to compose in a very elaborate metre; in which the mere pattern as it were of the verse, so intricate and so closely interlocked, always performed thus two services: first, it assisted the memory in mastering the tenor; but, secondly, it checked and counterpleaded to the lapses of memory or to the artifices of fraud. This explanation is well illustrated in the 'Iliad'—a poem elder by a century, it is rightly argued, than the 'Odyssey,' ergo the eldest of Pagan literature. Now, when the 'Iliad' had once come down safe to Pisistratus 555 years b.c., imagine this great man holding out his hands over the gulf of time to Homer, 1,000 years before, who is chucking or shying his poems across the gulf. Once landed in those conservative hands, never trouble yourself more about the safety of the 'Iliad.' After that it was as safe as the eyes in any Athenian's head. But before that time there was a great danger; and this danger was at all surmounted (scholars differ greatly and have sometimes cudgelled one another with real unfigurative cudgels as to the degree in which it did surmount the danger) only by the metre and a regular orchestra in every great city dedicated to this peculiar service of chanting the 'Iliad'; insomuch that a special costume was assigned to the chanters of the 'Iliad,' viz., scarlet or crimson, and also another special costume to the chanters of the 'Odyssey,' viz., violet-coloured. Now, this division of orchestras had one great evil and one great benefit. The benefit was, that if locally one orchestra went wrong (as it might do upon local temptations) yet surely all the orchestras would not go wrong: ninety-nine out of every hundred would check and expose the fraudulent hundredth. There was the good. But the evil was concurrent. For by this dispersion of orchestras, and this multiplication, not only were the ordinary chances of error according to the doctrine of chances multiplied a hundred or a thousand fold, but also, which was worse, each separate orchestra was brought by local position under a separate and peculiar action of some temptation, some horrible temptation, some bribe that could not be withstood, for falsifying the copy by compliments to local families; that is, to such as were or such as were not descendants from the Paladius of Troy. For that, let me say, was for Greece, nay, for all the Mediterranean world, what for us of Christian ages have been the Crusades. It was the pinnacle from which hung as a dependency all the eldest of families. So that they who were of such families thirsted after what they held aright to be asserted, viz., a Homeric commemoration; and they who were not thirsted after what had begun to seem a feasible ambition to be accomplished. It was feasible: for various attempts are still on record very much like our interpolations of Church books as to records of birth or marriage. Athens, for instance, was discontented with Homer's praise; and the case is interesting, because, though it argues such an attempt to be very difficult, since even a great city could not fully succeed, yet, at the same time, it argues that it was not quite hopeless, or else it would hardly have been attempted. So that here arises one argument for the main genuineness of the Homeric text. Yet you will say: Perhaps when Athens tried the trick it was too late in the day: it was too late after full daylight to be essaying burglaries. But it would have been easy in elder days. This is true; but remark the restraint which that very state of the case supposes. Precisely when this difficulty became great, became enormous, did the desire chiefly become great, become enormous, for mastering it. And when the difficulty was light, when the forgery was most a matter of ease, the ambition was least. For you cannot suppose that families standing near to the Crusades would have cared much for the reputation. As an act of piety they would prize it; as an exponent of antiquity they would not prize it at all. For, in fact, it would argue no such thing, until many centuries had passed. You see, however, by this sketch the pros and the cons respecting the difficulty of transmitting the 'Iliad' free from corruption, if at once it was resigned to mere oral tradition. The alterations were more and more tempting; but in that ratio were less and less possible. And then, secondly, there were the changes from chance or from changing language. Apply all these considerations to the case of the Hebrew Scriptures, and their great antiquity is demonstrated.

XVI. DISPERSION OF THE JEWS, AND JOSEPHUS'S ENMITY TO CHRISTIANITY

Look into the Acts of the Apostles, you see the wide dispersion of the Jews which had then been accomplished; a dispersion long antecedent to that penal dispersion which occurred subsequently to the Christian era. But search the pages of the wicked Jew, Josephus,⁵³ who notices expressly this universal dispersion of the Jews, and gives up and down his works the means of tracing them through every country in the southern belt of the Mediterranean, through every country of the northern belt, through every country of the connecting belt, in Asia Minor and Syria—through every island of the Mediterranean. Search Philo-Judæus, the same result is found. But why? Upon what theory? What great purpose is working, is fermenting underneath? What principle, what law can be abstracted from this antagonist or centrifugal motion outwards now violently beating back as with a conflict of tides the original centripetal motion inwards? Manifestly this: the incubating process had been completed: the ideas of God as an ideal of Holiness, the idea of Sin as the antagonist force—had been perfected; they were now so inextricably worked into the texture of Jewish minds, or the Jewish minds were now arrived at their maximum of adhesiveness, or at their minimum of repulsiveness, in manners and social character, that this stage was perfect; and now came the five hundred years during which they were to manure all nations with these preparations for Christianity. Hence it was that the great globe of Hebraism was now shivered into fragments; projected 'by one sling of that victorious arm'—which had brought them up from Egypt. Make ready for Christianity! Lay the structure, in which everywhere Christianity will strike root. You, that for yourselves even will reject, will persecute Christianity, become the pioneers, the bridge-layers, the reception-preparers, by means of those two inconceivable ideas, for natural man—sin and its antagonist, holiness.

In this way a preparation was made. But if Christianity was to benefit by it, if Christianity was to move with ease, she must have a language. Accordingly, from the time of Alexander, the strong he-goat, you see a tendency—sudden, abrupt, beyond all example, swift, perfect—for uniting all nations by the bond of a single language. You see kings and nations taking up their positions as regularly, faithfully, solemnly as a great fleet on going into action, for supporting this chain of language.

Yet even that will be insufficient; for fluent motion out of nation into nation it will be requisite that all nations should be provinces of one supreme people; so that no hindrances from adverse laws, or from jealousies of enmity, can possibly impede the fluent passage of the apostle and the apostle's delegates—inasmuch as the laws are swallowed up into one single code, and enmity disappears with its consequent jealousies, where all nationalities are absorbed into unity.

This last change being made, a signal, it may be supposed, was given as with a trumpet; now then, move forward, Christianity; the ground is ready, the obstacles are withdrawn. Enter upon the field which is manured; try the roads which are cleared; use the language which is prepared; benefit by the laws which protect and favour your motion; apply the germinating principles which are beginning to swell in this great vernal season of Christianity. New heavens and new earth are forming: do you promote it.

Such a complexus of favourable tendencies, such a meeting in one centre of plans—commencing in far different climates and far different centres, all coming up at the same æra face to face, and by direct lines of connection meeting in one centre—the world had never seen before.