TIDESWELL AND TIDESLOW. 73 



It is no excuse to say that a weak case may require bolstering 

 with strong language, for if manners make the man, how much 

 more do they make the argument. Of late years there seems 

 to have arisen in the minds of some writers to our scientific 

 journals a dominant idea that the public will welcome as clever, 

 language which they and their friends would not tolerate in 

 their private and social life. They do not flatter their readers. 

 Horace Walpole used to say : " When people wade beyond 

 their sphere, they make egregious blunders " ; when, therefore, 

 Professor Skeat points his philological argument against the 

 generally accepted belief of archaeologists, in such contumelious 

 terms as the above, one is tempted to reply in the words of 

 the great Milton : — 



" Though a linguist should pride himself to have all the 



tongues that Babel cleft the world into, yet if he have not 



studied the solid things in them as well as his words and 



lexicons, he were nothing so much to be esteemed a learned 



man as any yeoman competently wise in his mother dialect 



only." 



W. J. Andrew. 



