CHAPTER CCII.
A LAW OF ALFRED'S AGAINST LYING TONGUES. OBSERVATIONS ON LAX ONES.
As I have gained no small satisfaction to myself,—so I am desirous that nothing that occurs here may occasion the least dissatisfaction to others. And I think it will be impossible any thing should, if they will be but pleased to take notice of my design.
HENRY MORE.
If the laws of our great Alfred, whose memory is held in such veneration by all who are well acquainted with his history, and his extraordinary virtues, and whose name has been so often taken in vain by speculative reformers who were ignorant of the one, and incapable of estimating the other;—if the laws of Alfred, I say, had continued in use, everything relating to the reproduction of human tongues would long before this time have been thoroughly understood; for by those laws any one who broached a public falsehood, and persisted in it, was to have his tongue cut out; and this punishment might not be commuted for any smaller fine than that at which the life of the criminal would have been rated.
The words of the law are these:
DE RUMORIBUS FICTITIIS.
_Si quis publicum mendacium confingat, et ille in eo firmetur, nullâ levi re hoc emendet, sed lingua ei excidatur; nec minori precio redimi liceat, quam juxta capitis æstimationem censebatur._
What a wholesome effect might such a law have produced upon orators at public meetings, upon the periodical press, and upon the debates in Parliament.
“I am charmed,” says Lady M. W. Montague, “with many points of the Turkish law, to our shame be it spoken, better designed and better executed than ours; particularly the punishment of convicted liars (triumphant criminals in our country, God knows!): they are burnt in the forehead with a hot iron, when they are proved the authors of any notorious falsehoods. How many white foreheads should we see disfigured, how many fine gentlemen would be forced to wear their wigs as low as their eyebrows, were this law in practice with us!”
But who can expect that human laws should correct that propensity in the wicked tongue! They who have “the poison of asps under their lips,” and “which have said with our tongues will we prevail; we are they that ought to speak: who is lord over us?”—they who “love to speak all words that may do hurt, and who cut with lies like a sharp razor”—what would they care for enactments which they would think either to evade by their subtlety, or to defy in the confidence of their numbers and their strength? Is it to be expected that those men should regard the laws of their country, who set at nought the denunciations of scripture, and will not “keep their tongues from evil, and their lips that they speak no guile,” though they have been told that it is “he who hath used no deceit in his tongue and hath not slandered his neighbour, who shall dwell in the tabernacle of the Lord, and rest upon his holy hill!”
Leave we them to their reward, which is as certain as that men shall be judged according to their deeds. Our business is with the follies of the unruly member, not with its sins: with loquacious speakers and verbose writers, those whose “tongues are gentlemen-ushers to their wit, and still go before it,”[1] who never having studied the _exponibilia_, practice the art of battology by intuition; and in a discourse which might make the woeful hearer begin to fear that he had entered unawares upon eternity, bring forth, “as a man would say in a word of two syllables, nothing.”[1] The West Britons had in their own Cornish language this good proverbial rhyme, (the—graphy whereof, be it ortho or not is Mr. Polwhele's),
_An lavor goth ewe lavar gwir, Ne vedn nevera doaz vas a tavaz re hir._
The old saying is a true saying, Never will come good from a tongue too long.
Oh it is a grievous thing to listen, or seem to listen, as one is constrained to do, sometimes by the courtesy of society, and sometimes by “the law of sermon,” to an unmerciful manufacturer of speech, who before he ever arrives at the empty matter of his discourse,
_no puede—dexar—de decir —antes,—siguiera quatro, o cinco mil palabras!_[2]
[Footnote 1: BEN JONSON.]
[Footnote 2: CALDERON.]
Vossius mentions three authors, who, to use Bayle's language,—for in Bayle the extract is found, _enfermaient de grands riens dans une grande multitude de paroles_. Anaximenes the orator was one; when he was about to speak, Theocritus of Chios said, “here begins a river of words and a drop of sense,”—_Ἄρχεται λέξεων μὲν ποταμὸς, νοῦ δὲ σταλαγμός._ Longolius, an orator of the lower Empire was the second. The third was Faustus Andrelinus, Professor of Poetry at Paris, and _Poeta Laureatus_: of him Erasmus _dicitur dixisse_,—is said to have said, that there was but one thing wanting in all his poems and that thing was comprised in one word of one syllable, _Νοῦς_.
It were better to be remembered as Bayle has remembered Petrus Carmilianus, because of the profound obscurity in which this pitiful poet was buried, than thus to be thought worthy of remembrance only for having produced a great deal that deserved to be forgotten. There is, or was, an officer of the Exchequer called Clericus Nihilorum, or Clerk of the Nihils. If there were a High Court of Literature with such an officer on its establishment, it would be no sinecure office for him in these, or in any days, to register the names of those authors who have written to no purpose, and the titles of those books from which nothing is to be learnt.
_On ne vid jamais,_ says the Sieur de Brocourt, _homme qui ne die plustost trop, que moins qu'il ne doit; et jamais parole proferée ne servit tant, comme plusieurs teuës ont profite; car tousjours pouvons-nous bien dire ce qu'avons teu, et non pas taire ce qu'avons publié._ The latter part of this remark is true; the former is far too general. For more harm is done in public life by the reticence of well informed men, than by the loquacity of sciolists; more by the timidity and caution of those who desire at heart the good of their country, than by the audacity of those who labour to overthrow its constitutions. It was said in the days of old, that “a man full of words shall not prosper upon the earth.” _Mais nous avons changé tout cela._
Even in literature a leafy style, if there be any fruit under the foliage, is preferable to a knotty one, however fine the grain. Whipt cream is a good thing; and better still when it covers and adorns that amiable combination of sweetmeats and ratafia cakes soaked in wine, to which Cowper likened his delightful poem, when he thus described the “Task.” “It is a medley of many things, some that may be useful, and some that, for aught I know, may be very diverting. I am merry that I may decoy people into my company, and grave that they may be the better for it. Now and then I put on the garb of a philosopher, and take the opportunity that disguise procures me, to drop a word in favour of religion. In short there is some froth, and here and there a bit of sweetmeat, which seems to entitle it justly to the name of a certain dish the ladies call a Trifle.” But in Task or Trifle unless the ingredients were good, the whole were nought. They who should present to their deceived guests whipt white of egg, would deserve to be whipt themselves.
If there be any one who begins to suspect that in tasking myself, and trifling with my reader, my intent is not unlike Cowper's, he will allow me to say to him, “by your leave Master Critic, you must give me license to flourish my phrases, to embellish my lines, to adorn my oratory, to embroider my speeches, to interlace my words, to draw out my sayings, and to bombard the whole suit of the business for the time of your wearing.”[3]
[Footnote 3: TAYLOR, the Water Poet.]