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made much more free with them; so that they had the most choice muscat odour. It is to be hoped this useless custom is abolished: there was no necessity for it—it was filthy, and expensive too; for they were often broken, and not unfrequently dexter ously thrown, not without danger of breaking heads. It was said that we were not allowed trencher caps, on account of this danger of throwing; but we were left with wooden trenchers, much more dangerous weapons. "The porker's snout not nice in diet

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That line is taken from the inscription to the portrait of a "College Servant"-an ideal, still to be seen "vivis coloribus." Though not nice in diet, there was little fear that we should act the Trojan and eat our tables-it was as much as we could do to eat off them. Now, with regard to myself, I had, on the day of this public speaking, to provide some extra luxuries for our supper-I totally forget whether of my own accord, and for myself and friends, or by order. I suppose, from the quantity, it must have been for a banquet on a large scale, or for many; nor do I recollect how I provided myself with the mate rials-whether I sent out of college for them by a chorister, or stole out for them, or whether they were brought to the gates. But the fact is, I was most amply provided; and with what, do you think?-with onions! Never was such a supply; it was enough to victual a town. How I came to have so many, I cannot now conjecture; but I well recollect having them in possession just at the moment that there was a general rush to the school, and there was not a place where I could deposit them. What, then, do you think, Eusebius, I did with them?-put them into my sleeves-so that both sleeves were literally onion-bags. An ass I was certainly; and not unlike one loaded with my panniers of vegetables, and, like a veritable donkey, I cried because they were not thistles. But the speaking has begun. Panthea is just going to commit suicide over the body of her husband-the tragedy is deep-yet no one seems moved. Soon the heat becomes oppressive; I am squeezed on all sides, so are my onions. I begin to make a sensation-Panthea is defunct-alas,

unwept for? But the next piece gains universal applause; white handkerchiefs are out, scented too with choicest odours, and that circumstance served to disguise the smell of my crushed onions, but not in the least to mitigate their power. The boy speakers warmed under the impression they thought they were making, and I fear some of them exhibited extraordinary capers. Pressed as I was, for I was but small, I was nearly suffocated, when, by dint of exertion in insinuating myself, I contrived to effect a standing upon one of the cross benches, and there I stood above the others, rather conspicuous; but I breathed freer, and did not mind trifles. Tears indeed I shed with the best of them, and in this position might have been considered as the fugleman of pathetics. Thus standing rather elevated, the mass of onion pulp, by my outspreading my arms, became more loose, and so, in a tenfold degree, distributed its pungent powers; and as I stood higher, there was a complete field for action; so that in a very short space of time there was not a dry eye in the whole assembly. Those wept who never wept before. The warden wept-the hard-hearted masters wept-all the company-country squires and their wives and daughters

and town wives and their daughters

wept. The boys wept; there was an universal deluge. There was one boy who had to speak some clever ludicrous lines-a burlesque on the story of Phaton, wherein Phoebus was the driver of a mail, and his son requires the use of the ribands. The lines were by the present Warden of New College. This poor boy was in dismay, for they cried throughout the whole of that comic piece. The boy was near breaking down, and would undoubtedly have done so, had not the Doctor (Goddard) looked encouragement, and affected a laugh; but his mouth only was mirth. His lady took the hint, waved her hand by way of encouragement, and smiled graciously, like Andromache, "smiling through her tears.' "Laughter might have held both his sides, but whilst my sleeves were full of crushed onions, I would have defied him to help crying—

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"Quis, talia fando, Temperet a lachrymis!"

And now the choice speaker of the school is up-with Collins's Passions. I see him distinctly now in my mind's eye; more distinctly, Eusebius, than I did then, when my eyes were dimmed with tears. He was a fine, opencountenanced youth, with a clear complexion-the" lumen juventæ purpu reum," a bright clear blue eye, and light auburn hair. His name was Hobson. Off he set, crying himself he could not help it. It was "Hobson's choice;" but he really was a most capital actor, and went through the Passions wonderfully well. He was fully into his subject, and forgot he had himself been shedding tears, and was in raptures to see all moved as he described Pity; and there was I, that had caused all this emotion, and conscious that I had done so, reckoned by all about me as a boy of extraordinarily nice feelings; and at a moment I was seized with such a sense of the ridiculous, that it was with difficulty I could suppress my laughter. I could not but liken myself to Love, as I shook my sleeves-to laugh in them was impossible to Love, whom poor Hobson introduced with a remarkably sweet leer, thus

"And he, amidst his frolic play, As if he would the charming air repay, Shook thousand odours from his dewy wings,"

Hobson was a better speaker than critic. He did not, therefore, wait to analyse the why there was all this

crying-a very excusable vanity made him attribute it all to his own powers; and he in consequence redoubled his exertions, as the audience did their applause, and this they did most of them with a desperate effort, as much to conceal their weakness as for any other reason, and shutting their eyes, too, if possible to dam up their tears at the fountain-head. It was all in vain; for I well knew that any thing short of a downright stone Niobe must cry. In the mean while, there was poor Hobson making, enacting, most extraordinary antics-jumping in his excitement from side to side, throwing the very Passions off their balance, “tearing them to rags and tatters." I know not what became of this boy afterwards-I should be rather curious to know. The superlative praise heaped upon him in the Hampshire Telegraph may have made him an actor for life, and marred the fond schemes of his tender parents. If so-for the name of Hobson does not shine conspicuous in the theatrical world-what have I to answer for in that purchase of onions!-the onions were mine alone, but the leak was universal. Can we not, Eusebius, hang a corollary upon this incident, not to be quite certain that all tears proceed from sorrow, seeing that if any will prudently rub the eye with an onion, the same effect may be produced; and that thus those who cannot weep may be taught to cry? Yours ever, and as ever.

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THE DIVERSIONS OF PURLEY.*

WE remember perfectly our boyish disappointment in first making acquaintance with the well-known work of Horne Tooke. From the attractions of its title and frontispiece, we had selected it as a sure source of entertainment for a Christmas week; and dire was our dismay when we found that the Diversions of Purley consisted in discussions upon prepositions, pronouns, and past partieiples, even duller and drier than those to which our school studies condemned us. A resentment was thus engendered, which still lurked in our minds at a more advanced age, and struggled secretly with the influence of popular opinion and powerful authority at a time when the doctrines of this writer were in some quarters revered as important discoveries, and in almost all were admired as refined speculations. The recent publication of a new and neat edition of the work has again led us to peruse it; which we have done in many respects with altered feelings and extended views; but it gives us the greatest delight to "feed fat the ancient grudge" we bear it, and to declare, as we now deliberately take leave to do, that the Diversions of Purley is one of the most consummate compounds of ignorance and presumption that ever practised with success upon human credulity. It is probable that there were once persons who admired Horne Tooke as a great patriot; and it would seem that there are still some who regard him as a great philologer. It is time that the one delusion should be dispelled as thoroughly as the other. We affirm that the work on which his grammatical reputation rests, is fanciful and false in every thing that is peculiar in its pretensions or essential to its character; and is only accurate and judicious, if it ever be so, in those matters that every body already knew, or might have learned elsewhere.

We pro nounce our sentence upon it in the old formula, that "what is true in it

is not new, and what is new is not true;" and we now propose to borrow, for the demonstration of this proposition, a few pages of Maga, the invariable friend of truth and simplicity, and the implacable foe of quackery and pretension.

We make no high boast of the attainments of which we can avail ourselves in pursuit of this object. A very moderate familiarity with Gothic, a mere bowing acquaintance with Anglo-Saxon, and less than a schoolboy knowledge of the classic tongues, will be more than sufficient to show that nearly the whole details of Horne Tooke's discussions are gratuitous or incorrect, and that his whole theory is presumptuous and unsound.

In a work so extensive and so minute as the Diversions of Purley, it would be endless to review and correct the errors of all its propositions ; particularly when almost every proposition is an error. We shall confine ourselves to its chief points and most prominent principles.

It was

The attempt which Tooke has made to arrest in their career the επεα πτε. gosvra of rapid discourse, and to question them as to the places whence they come and whither they are going, is worthy at once of a philologer and a philosopher. But the general idea of his work cannot confer upon him the praise of originality. long ago maintained, what in individual cases is manifest at a glance, that many of the small particles of speech are abbreviations or adaptations of significant words of a fixed and more formal character; and in all languages it has been always seen that many adjectives and substantives are derivable more or less directly from the different parts of corresponding verbs. Hoogeveen, Wachter, and Ten Kate, on the Continent, and many of our own etymologists at home, had, with different degrees of ability, illustrated these doctrines,† and left no praise for their successors to earn, but that of carrying the same ideas into exe

* A new edition, revised and corrected, with additional notes, by Richard Taylor, F.S.A. Tegg: 1840.

† See Todd's note to Johnson's Grammar. Dictionary, 2d edit. p. 115.

cution with additional discrimination, ingenuity, and learning. If Tooke, therefore, has any merit in this department, it must lie in the details of his design, or in the mode of its exeeution but we deny that in these respects he is entitled to any praise at

all.

Let us examine some of the points on which he seems to have felt most self-complacency, and which may be taken as fair specimens of his powers and of his success.

The two chief particles of which he has professed to illustrate the history, are IF and THAT. These are the words on which he principally expatiates in his letter to Mr Dunning, which led to his larger work: they are the pillars of the porch which conducts us to the more ambitious edifice. Let us see if they are built on a stable foundation.

All English etymologists must have seen from the first that there was some connexion between the conjunction that and the pronoun of the same sound and aspect, a connexion which subsists in all or most of the Teutonic languages. The nature of that connexion, it is probable, many were unable to see. Was Tooke in any better situation than his neighbours or predecessors? That he saw there was a connexion is true: but did he see what the connexion was? He certainly thought he saw it; but this circumstance will be no advantage in his favour, nay, it will in fact be against him, if, thinking he saw it, he did not see it correctly. Here is the statement of his views.

"In my opinion, (he says, in support of a most sophistical legal argument,) the word THAT (call it as you please, either article, or pronoun, or conjunction) retains always one and the same significa tion."

66 Suppose," he continues, Ce we examine some instances, and, still keeping the same signification of the sentences, try whether we cannot, by a resolution of their construction, discover what we want.

"Example. I wish you to believe that I would not wilfully hurt a fly.' “Resolution.— I would not wilfully hurt a fly; I wish you to believe THAT [assertion].""-Diversions, Edition 1840,

p. 43-44.

We shall not stop to expose the absurdity of this theory, particularly in

reference to the writer's own object, in those cases where the verb preceding the conjunction is other than an affirmative, such as doubt, disbelieve, deny. But we ask, in an etymological sense,-Is this a just explanation of the phrase referred to? We affirm that it is not. It proceeds upon an entire ignorance on the writer's part of the actual history and character of the conjunction that; an ignorance which places Tooke on the same low level with the etymologists whom he denounces, with this additional stigma, that he is ignorant of his ignorance.

The first thing that occurs to us on considering this theory is, that while Tooke alleges this use of the word to pervade "ALL languages," and while he refers to the Greek and Latin conjunctions and quod as analogous cases, the examples thus given are materially at variance with the explanation which they are employed to illustrate. The conjunctions quod and or are not equivalent expressions to that, in the way in which Tooke explains the English word. Those conjunctions in the learned languages agree in form with the relative pronoun, not with the demonstrative, with which Tooke identifies our vernacular particle. They are thus truly conjunctions, interlacing one part of a sentence with another in a way difficult to be fully developed, but obviously much more subtle and refined than the abrupt and disjointed manner in which, according to Tooke's doctrine, the English idiom brings together two separate and independent propositions. According to the analogy of Tooke's view, the Latin language should not use quod for a conjunction, but id or istud, as corresponding to that. Take a sentence of Terence: "Scio jam filius quod amet meus hanc meretricem,"" I know that my son is in love with this girl." To make the Latin correspond to the English, it should be "Scio jam filius istud amet meus," &c., and should be resolvable into two independent propositions : "My son is in love; I know that,""Filius amet meus-scio jam istud." But here again the nicety of the Latin subjunctive would be wholly done We feel at once, from away with. the true Latin phrase, that it is not so easy to take to pieces the divine mechanism of human speech as Mr Tooke would teach us; and that there

are contrivances for dovetailing the finer combinations of thought that are not dreamed of in his carpentry.

The very analogies, therefore, to which Tooke refers should have led him to distrust his own clumsy analysis; and if he had really known, what he chiefly affects to know, the language of our Gothic ancestors, he would have been less dogmatical and more cor

rect.

The conjunction that is in truth in English precisely analogous to the Latin quod and the Greek . Whatever may be the exact relation of those words to the relative pronoun, that same relation subsists in our own tongue. The conjunction that is not a form or representation of the demonstrative pronoun, as Tooke asserts. It corresponds not with the demonstrative, but with the relative. A little explanation is here necessary to make this matter clear.

In the Gothic language there is a little particle EI,* of which the origin is obscure and the use peculiar. It is possibly some obsolete inflexion of the pronoun IS-he, which corresponds to the Latin is. But, without enquiring nicely how it came there, we shall take it as we find it, and consider its import or effect. It is by means of this little word that the Gothic language forms its relatives, whether in the class of pronouns or of particles. The relatives are formed from the simple or demonstrative forms, by the addition of this EI as a termination. Thus IS is he, 1Z-EI is who or he who, THATA is that, THAT-EI is which, THAR is there, THAR. EI is where, &c.

Now the Gothic conjunction corresponding to the English that, is never THATA, istud, but THAT EI, or THATA-EI, quod, or öri, -,. A Gothic phrase expressed by this conjunction could never be resolved, as Horne Tooke proposes, by separating it into independent positive affirmations. If the conjunction that is truly a pronoun, as its appearance indicates, it is the relative and not the demonstrative; and thus there are not two substantive sentences in every such phrase, but one sentence only, incapable of being taken to pieces after

Tooke's fashion, but indissolubly articulated together by means of a word, which, whatever be its name or nature otherwise, is truly a conjunctive, as being of a relative or secondary character, and pointing to some primary or antecedent.

The English conjunction that is historically the Gothic THAT-EI abridged. Its origin would be anomalous on any other footing; and we see that the English pronoun that has, in another case, undergone the same curtailment, and is used also as a relative, though properly a demonstrative. The use of the demonstrative pronoun that as a relative is traceable to the Gothic, which converted the one into the other, by the addition of the particle EI, THATA, istud, THAT-EI quod. The English retrenches the suffix and uses one form, that, for both of those Gothic words, and for the conjunction as well as for the two pronouns.

The phrase, therefore, "I wish you to believe THAT I would not hurt a fly," is truly the same as if it had been "I wish you to believe WHICH I would not hurt a fly." Harsh and obscure as this may appear, it is the certain history of every such phrase. It is probably explainable by the fol lowing, or some similar amplification: "I wish you to believe [some opinion according to] which I would not hurt a fly." But whatever is the explanation of the classical adverbs quod and 7, the same also is the explanation of the Teutonic that.

It thus appears, that while Horne Tooke saw the connexion which every body else saw, his speculations have not enlightened but misled us in our search as to the true nature and origin of that connexion.

Let us see if the philologer of Purley is more sound or successful in the other leading example which he has given. He thus promulgates his explanation in the letter to Mr Dunning:

"The truth of the matter is, that IF is merely a verb. It is merely the imperative mood of the Gothic and AngloSaxon verbs GIFAN, gifan; and in those languages, as well as in the English, formerly this supposed conjunction was pronounced and written as the common im

* We print the Gothic words in this article with Italic capital letters, and use the English Y to represent the Gothic letter which corresponds in sound, and which the Germans represent by J.

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