Notices respecting JYetv Books. 143 



plainly unnecessary. A credulous man does not believe without 

 evidence, i. e. without testimony ; but his disposition inclines him 

 to accept evidence, be it good or bad, without sifting it. Credulity, 

 at all events in modern English, is lightness or easiness of belief. 

 Again, the sentence in brackets setting forth the meaning of obligation 

 is open to several adverse remarks. It stands thus : — " [Personal sub- 

 jection to the authority of law — oughtness — duty. ' Bounden duty 'is 

 tautological. — Ed.] " This definition is far inferior to Dr. Johnson's, 

 viz. Obligation is the binding power of an oath, vow, duty, or con- 

 tract*. Then the attempt to throw light on the meaning of the 

 word by saying that obligation is oughtness, is simply grotesque. 

 Goodness we know, and badness we know, but what is oughtness ? 

 It seems (p. 142) that Price has used oughtness as synonymous 

 with Tightness. But something more than Price's authority is 

 needed for proving a word from his mint to be English, and the 

 more when it has every appearance of being wrongly formed, and 

 is quite useless if rightly formed. Again, it is hard to see what 

 could have induced Dr. Calderwood to insert the words " ' Bounden 

 duty' is tautological." Supposing it to be so, there was no sort of 

 need for saying it in what purports to be "a definition of the 

 vocable " Obligation. Besides, tautology not only means repetition 

 of the same sense in the same or different words, it also implies 

 needless or inelegant repetition, and as such it is a fault of style. 

 Of course in some contexts "bounden dut}^" might be a needless 

 or inelegant repetition, but it is not so under all circumstances. In 

 the language of passion or emotion repetition is often a most effec- 

 tive means of giving emphasis to a word or phrase. E. g. where 

 Hamlet says 



"0, that this too, too solid flesh would melt," 

 there is repetition but not tautology ; and the same is true when 

 Macbeth says — 



" That but this blow 

 Might be the be-all and the end-all here, 

 But here, upon this bank and shoal of time, 

 We'd jump the life to come." 



And so the phrase " bounden duty," when used as it occasionally 

 is in daily life, contains an emphasizing repetition, which cannot 

 fairly be called tautological. At least this is certainly the case in the 

 passage of the Communion service, from which, as we suppose, the 

 phrase is derived, where we speak of " Our bounden duty and ser- 

 vice." The fact is that very brief criticism is apt, as in the present 

 instance, to be wanting in discrimination. Probably the form of the 

 work exposed both author and editor to the temptation of settling 

 points with more brevity than the case fairly admitted ; and they 

 have sometimes fallen into it. Thus the author gives a refutation 

 of Manicheism in four lines and a half; the refutation could be 

 easily met by a specious argument, and so is incomplete ; while, in 



* Of course the word has a secondary meaning, viz. an act binding a 

 person to a certain performance. 



