July 1, 1886.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE 



269 



essay in land locomotion. There is a distinct nervous 

 system, the fibres of which in the starfish run along each 

 ray, at the tip of which is an eye, ha\-ing about two hundred 

 crystal lense.«, and a primitive eyelid iu the form of a filmy 

 covering. 



Thus far an intimate relation may be noted between 

 the life forms of the invertebrates. The diflerences between 

 the secretions of limy matter by the amo?ba and by the 

 sea-urchin, between the contractile action of the moneron 

 in every part and the localis;ition of nerve-function in 

 the medusa and the starfi-h, between the vacuole of the 

 amojba and the digestive canal of the sea-cucumber, are 

 diflerences of degree and not of kind. They are one and all 

 due to cell modification arising out of advance from the 

 like to the unlike, fi-om the simple and general to the 

 complex and special, from the organless to the organised, 

 and any addition to the bare details given above would only 

 bring the more prominently into relief the fact of an in- 

 dissoluble, underlying unity. 



Note. — The word " certainly " on which Mr. Dawson animadverts 

 was a slip of the pen omitted in proof, but overlooked in reWse. 

 My agreement v\ith Mr. Dawson is shown in the note appended to 

 table in the April number, p. 1 74, and which has probably escaped 

 his eye ; but my regret that the error in the March number wa.s not 

 referred to by me is lessened by the fact that it has called forth 

 Mr. Dawson's interesting paper. 



THE WELL OF ENGLISH UNDEFILED. 



JIR. HARRISON AND MK. FREEMAN. 



. HAERISOiSr has all the best of the 

 argument with Mr. Freeman about the 

 corruption of good old English into good 

 old Saxon, and other forms of literary 

 afiectation. In fact, as to the general posi- 

 tion maintained by Mr. Harrison there 

 could be no two opinions among men whose 

 common sense has not been overgrown and 

 choked by pedantry. Not history alone, but literature 

 generally, not even literature alone, but liteiature, art and 

 science, are exposed to tlie aflectations of those who are not 

 satisfied to under.^tand, but insist that they shall not be 

 understood. Mr. Freeman is a type of a class — men who 

 acquire a very full knowledge about a department of veiT 

 moderate extent, and imagine themselves thenceforth 

 supreme over that department, not only as dealt with by 

 them but in all its relations with outside matters. Mr. 

 Harrison compares his opponent with a brickmaker who 

 should tumble a lot of bricks on the people's highwaj', and 

 who, when remonstrated with by some one more careful of 

 the people's rights, should say that the man who thus 

 interfered with him was not a builder, knew nothing about 

 bricks, nay, probably had never been in a brickfield in his 

 life. It is a way all men have who too long and too 

 rigidly confine themselves to one line of research. Sir. 

 Harrison Ls quite right in ins'sting that it is wrong. As 

 no private person has a right to hamper the people's high- 

 way, so no special student can be allowed to cumber our 

 nation's language, the people's English, with words of 

 his own making. Observe, we s;iy "cumber"; "every 

 builder in the Temple of Research " is free to leave " bricks 

 of his own making" in the highway of the people's lan- 

 guage occasionally and in moderation. But among pedants 

 there is -^-ery little moderation. 



In his reply to Jlr. Freeman Mr. Harrison uses, as in his 

 original remarks, the best possible weapon for his purpose — 



ridicule. Your pedant cannot bear ridicule. He cannot 

 understand it. He has aimed to be 8Lr Oracle, and when 

 some one sets all the dogs barking at him he is perplexed 

 in the extreme. It is the best proof that there is no better 

 implement for castigating his particular oftence than well- 

 directed ridicule. Sidney Smith once used a somewhat 

 unsavoury comparison in regard to the use of ridicule in 

 such cases. We shall not follow him in that, but his 

 opinion was right in itself. There are off'ences which can 

 only be effectively treated in one particular way, and when 

 under that treatment the ofl'enders squirm, we know that 

 the right method has been employed. 



Thus does Mr. Harrison put this point : — 

 " Mr. Freeman is much scandalised with me for beguiling 

 the tedium of discu.ssion with a jest or two ; and he says my 

 style of controversy is not that of ' a serious scholar.' I 

 cannot undertake to be always in full academicals; and I 

 think that, if an argument is sound, it is none the worse for 

 being presented in a pleasant waj\ A great master told us 

 it was best always to mix the dulce with the utile. I can 

 remember how poor Robson used to preface his immortal 

 ' Tillikins ' with the warning : ' This is not a comic song ! ' 

 but the warning was always lost on me. Why is it to be 

 assumed that, if we are merry, we cannot be wise? I know 

 that in this age of Teutonic Griindlichkeit, unless a man will 

 school himself to be as dull as Professor Gneist, he is sup- 

 posed not to have an ounce of Research in him. It used not 

 to be so in the glorious eighteenth century. Hume and 

 Gibbon, Diderot and Turgot, did not find learning incom- 

 patible with a lively manner or with good English and good 

 French. 



" The line which Mr. Freeman adopts is the one with 

 which his readers are quite familiar. He behaves like a 

 tutor coiTecting a pupil's exercise, and giving him what 

 schoolboys call a ' ballaragging ' for false concords and 

 quantities. He cries out, ' Read what I have written Ln 

 So-andso ! I suppose you think this ? and. Why do you 

 not read the othei' t ' Every one knows that to cross Sir. 

 Freeman in one of his linguistic fads is to risk being treated 

 as mv little boy was treated in the Zoological Gardens when 

 he offered a bun to the porcupine. But I have had some 

 exjierience with the fera naturtr : and I have been conversant 

 with the English language for a good many years. Of his work 

 as an historian I have spoken witli the great respect I un- 

 feignedly feel ; but in the matter of the best mode of WTiting 

 our native tongue I cannot accept the authority of the most 

 serious of scholars. Were I to ])ut on my cap and gown, and 

 had I the Professor before me to examine in the historj- of 

 law, or of modern pliilosophy, or of the industrial movement, 

 or the like, I should do my bast to give him his ' Testamur ' 

 politely, and I certainly should try not to look as if I were 

 about to give him a caning." 



Mr. Harrison very justifiably remarks further on Mr. 

 Freeman's pedagogic st3de : — 



" To employ such a tone to me is surely a little out of 

 place. I have been occupied all my life, just as Mr. Free 

 man has, in learning, teaching, and studying ; and, if my 

 special periods or subjects are not quite the same as his, we 

 •are on fair terms in a question of general literature. More- 

 over, it so happens that, in my professional duty as professor 

 of Constitutional History, these books which he tells me to go 

 and look into are the ordinary text-books of my daily work." 

 The best of the fun is that after showing thus neiitly how 

 Mr. Freeman had forgotten himself, Mr. Harrison shows 

 how, in cjuite another sense, Mr. Freeman has not remem- 

 bered himself : — 



" I mention a few points whereon he declares me to have 

 blundered : but where the blunders are not mine, but his. 

 Where, he asks, did I get the foim Kmul, for Cnut > 



