December 1, 1886.] 



♦ KNO>A^LEDGE ♦ 



41 



fi-om the arrangement belonging to the 1st clay. (We 

 may either do this independently, or, in the arrange- 

 ments just obtained for five days, we may write throughout 

 E for A, F for B, G for c, h for d, i remains I, J for K, and so 

 on ; that is, for each letter in the 1st day's arrangement, 

 write the letter in the corresponding part of the portion of 

 Table I. lined off.) We thus get four arrangements to be 

 taken with u (those corresponding to the 2nd day's arrange- 

 ment in the former problem, giving Table II. ; four to be 

 taken with c (those corresponding to the 3rd day's arrange- 

 ment), giving Table III. ; and four to be taken witho (those 

 corresponding to the -ith day's arrangement), giving 

 Table IV. ; while there remain three sets of four which 

 form Table V., and complete the required 20 combinations 

 of four letters in which no two letters appear twice 

 together. 



We now have to work these 20 combinations together to 

 give us the arrangements for our five days' jjlay. We have 

 very little trouble in obtaining the following result : — 



# Si Si I p* 



By Richard A. Proctor. 



I SHOULD have thought that if anything could be clear 

 from my reniaiks on the Satunlay Reviev) critique of my 

 " Notes on Americanisms," it would be that I remained in 

 doubt as to its authorship. But as I find from letters 

 which have been addressed to me on the subject, that I 

 quite obviously suppose A wrote it, as obviously suppose 13 

 wrote it, and not less obviously attribute it to c, it is 

 evident I must be mistaken. At the outset I stated in so 

 mnny words that my critic might be one I had condemned 

 with deserved severity for some offence of his, yet a and n, 

 whom I never have condemned severely or mildly, deservedly 

 or otherwise, believe that I certainly considered each of 

 them (severally) to be the author. I stated with equal 

 distinctness that my critic might be one who had received 

 at my hands nothing but kindness, and a and c, to whom I 

 am under personal obligation for kindness received, consider 

 I iimst mean them, severally and individually. I .spoke of 

 envy as having possibly moved the author ; j-et b and c, 

 who have assuredly no reason to envy me, and whose work 

 I admire with a feeling not indeed envious, but implying a 

 clear perception that they severally are able to do well what 

 I wi.sh vainly I were able to do at all,* take my remarks to 

 themselves. 



* * * 



Then again, I collect more meo (or rather in the usual 

 .scientific way) all the points of evidence I can recognise, 

 noting them en passant as points to be considered when — • 

 hereafter — I endeavour to form an opinion as to the author- 

 ship of the critique ; and A, b, and c, to each of whom some 

 of those iioints seem to correspond, consider that I must 

 have already formed my opinion and that it must point to 

 them individually and severally ! I express a certain 

 degree of confidence as to who baa certainly not written the 

 article, or as to circumstances which must probably not be 



* Qui invidet minor est, says the Cadogan motto, justly ; but it 

 does not necessarily follow that Qui minor est invideat. 



understood precisely as they seem ; and it is incontinently 

 assumed, equally by A, by n, and by c, that such negative 

 inferences imply positive conclusions : 



*- * * 



I WRITE these lines at a fortnight's postal distance from 

 London, and therefore it will be understood that I have not 

 seen the November number of Knowledge. I am told, 

 however, that one of the most esteemed of all those con- 

 tributors who have put me under obligation by writing 

 articles for Knowledge, one in whom I have such full 

 confidence that the printers have standing instructions to 

 put whatever he may write for us in type forthwith, has 

 thought it necessary to explain in Knowledge that he is 

 not the .author of the critique. I hope this is not so, or 

 that he has changed his mind in the interim. Being in 

 doubt on this point, I write necessarily under somewhat 

 inconvenient conditions. But I can do no harm by saying 

 that though some of the points of evidence noted in my 

 remaiks may correspond with him, nay with him alone, 

 they are not such points as would determine the authorship, 

 and are flatly contradicted by points far more directly and 

 obviously decisive. A man might communicate from some 

 distant place casual notes on errors I may have made (or 

 which I seem to have made) without any unfriendly feeling, 

 and without any idea that such notes were to be used in a 

 spiteful or unfair manner ; yet evidence suggesting that the 

 idea of certain criticisms had come from such a place, would 

 have to be considered in arriving at a conclusion. The 

 same man might have started the first idea of a ijuaint jest 

 without being at all responsible for its spiteful application 

 by someone else nearer headquarters. The evidence appa- 

 rently referred to as pointing to him, may — and in this ca.se 

 must — point to someone else, and yet might be of use as 

 indicating some one likely to have come aci'oss ideas which 

 had been thus quite innocently advanced. 



* * * 

 There should, however, in this case have been enough to 

 show that, whatever indirect influence I might rightly or, 

 perhaps, quite wrongly have attributed to that friend at a 

 distance, 1 could not have attributed the critique to his pen. 

 His style is unmistakable; I believe no one living could 

 imitate it effectively ; the style of the critique is altogether 

 dift'erent as well as altogether inferior. His tone is uniformly 

 and emphatically manly ; the tone of the critique is not even 

 mannish, but, as I definitel}' pointed out, womanish. He 

 certainly could not have fallen into one out of ten of the 

 mistakes which crowd the Saturday Review "Notes on 

 Americanisms." Moreover, it is cle.ar that if my remarks 

 were all intended to apply to one person, instead of being 

 conditionally applied to at least four (to this one under such 

 aud such conditions, to another under others, and so forth), 

 then I must regard that one person as a false friend, who 

 has repaid kindness with, injuries. Now I have spoken 

 above of my friend at a distance, and he will, I trust, 

 l)ermit me to speak of him as a friend in that sense ; but 

 the esteem and admiration one may feel for a man whom 

 one has met but four or five times, would certainly not 

 justify the suggestion of long and intimate antecedent friend- 

 ship implied when such an expression as " false friend " is 

 employed. Only one who has been a close friend for years 

 can show himself a false friend. Adding to this, the con- 

 sideration that he has never been in the slightest degi'ee 

 under obligation to me — but I, on the contrary, to him — 

 my friend ought not to have considered that I imagined 

 him to be the writer of the critique, though I may have 

 imagined (quite erroneously, I now know) that the reviewer 

 had tipped some of his arrows with metal from my friend's 

 mind, while I fully recognised that the bow and the arrow, 



