No More Learning

_ Oh, I am wide awake.

_Ly. _ Well, they are gone.

_Pur. _ Never!

_Ly. _ The fact is, your too much learning renders you unconscious to
solecisms; whatever case I take, it is always the same.

_Pur. _ What you mean by that I am sure I don't know; but I have often
caught people out in blunders.

_Ly. _ Well, you will catch me about the time that you are a sucking
child again. By the way, a babe laying in his cradle would hardly jar
on your notions of grammar, if you have not yet got me.

_Pur. _ Well, I am convinced.

_Ly. _ Now, if we cannot detect blunders like these, we are not likely
to know much about our own; you see, you have just missed another. Very
well now, never again call yourself competent either to detect blunders
or to avoid them.

This is my blunt way, you see. Socrates of Mopsus, with whom I was
acquainted in Egypt, used to put his corrections more delicately, so as
not to humiliate the offender. Here are some specimens:

What time do you set out on your travels? --What time? Oh, I see, you
thought I started to-day.

The patrimonial income supplies me well enough. --Patrimonial? But your
father is not dead?

So-and-so is a tribes-man of mine. --Oh, you are a savage, are you?

The fellow is a boozy. --Oh, Boozy was his mother's name, was it?

Worser luck I never knew. --Well, you need not make it worserer.

I always said he had a good 'eart. --Yes, quite an artist.

So glad to see you, old cock! --Come, allow me humanity.

Contemptuous fellow! I would not go near him. --If he were contemptible,
it would not matter, I suppose.

He is the most unique of friends. --Good; one likes degrees in
uniqueness.

How aggravating! --Indeed? what does it aggravate?

So I ascended up. --Ingenious man, doubling your speed like that.

I had to do it; I was in an engagement. --Like Xenophon's hoplites.

I got round him. --Comprehensive person.

They went to law, but were compounded. --You don't say they didn't get
apart again?

He would apply the same delicate treatment to people unsound in their
Attic.

'That's the truth of it,' said some one, 'between you and I. ' 'Ah no,
you will have to admit that you and me are wrong there. '

Another person giving a circumstantial account of a local legend said:
'So when she mingled with Heracles--' 'Without Heracles's mingling with
her? '

He asked a man who told him that he must have a close crop, what his
particular felony had been.

'There I quarrel,' said his opponent in an argument. 'It takes two to
make a quarrel. '

When some one described his sick servant as undergoing torture, he
asked, 'What for? what do they suppose they are going to get out of
him? '

Some one was said to be going ahead in his studies. 'Let me see,' he
said; 'it is Plato, I think, who calls that making progress. '

'Will we have a fine day? ' 'If God shall. '

'Archaist, curse not thy friend! ' he retorted, to a man who called him
curst instead of crusty.

A man once used the phrase, 'I was trying to save his face. ' 'But is he
in any danger of losing it? ' asked Socrates.

'Chided,' said one man, 'chode,' another. He disclaimed all
acquaintance with either form.

A person who volunteered 'but and if' was commended for his generosity.

Some one tried him with 'y-pleased'; 'no, no,' said he; 'that is too
much of a good thing. '

'I expect him momently,' some one announced. 'A good phrase,' he said;
'so is "minutely"; we have excellent authority for "daily. "'

'Look you! ' said a man, meaning 'look. ' 'Yes, what am I to look you at? '

He took up a man who said, 'Yes, I can grapple with that,' meaning that
he understood, with 'Oh, you are going to throw me, are you? how? '

'How shrill those fives are! ' said some one. 'Oh, come now,' said
Socrates; 'seditions and strives, but not drums and fives. '

'That man is heavily weighed,' one man observed. 'You are quite right;
there is no such word as weighted. '

'He has thrived on it,' some one assured him. 'The people among whom he
has thrived cannot be very particular. '

People were very fond of calling it at-one-ment. 'Yes, all right,' he
would say; 'I know what it means. '

Mention being made of a black-hen, he supposed that would be the female
of the grey-cock.

Some one said he had been eating sparrowgrass. 'You'll be trying
groundsel next,' was his comment.

But enough of Socrates. Shall we have another match on the old lines?
I will give you nothing but first-rate ones. Have your eyes open. You
will surely be able to do it now, after hearing such a list of them.

_Pur. _ I am by no means so sure of that. Proceed, however.

_Ly. _ Not sure? well, but here you have the door broad open.

_Pur. _ Say on.

_Ly. _ I have said.

_Pur. _ Nothing that I observed.

_Ly. _ What, not observed 'broad open'?

_Pur. _ No.

_Ly. _ Well, what is to happen, if you cannot follow now? Every man
can crow on his own hay-cock, and I thought this was yours. Did you
get that hay-cock? You don't seem to attend; look at the mutual help
Socrates and I have just given you.

_Pur. _ I am attending; but you are so sly with them.

_Ly. _ Monstrous sly, is it not, to say 'mutual' instead of 'joint'?
Well, that is settled up; but for your general ignorance, I defy any
God short of Apollo to cure it. He gives council to all who ask it; but
on you that council is thrown away.

_Pur. _ Yes, I declare, so it was!

_Ly. _ Perhaps one at a time are too few?

_Pur. _ I think that must be it.

_Ly. _ How did 'one are' get past you?

_Pur. _ Ah, I didn't see it, again.

_Ly. _ By the way, do you know of any one who is on the look in for a
wife?

_Pur. _ What _are_ you talking about?

_Ly. _ Show me the man who is on the look in, and I will show you a
solecist.

_Pur. _ But what have I to do with solecists on the look in for wives?

_Ly. _ Ah, if you knew that, you would be the man you pretend to be. So
much for that. Now, if a man came to you and said that he had left his
wife's home, would you stand that?

_Pur. _ Of course I should, if he had provocation.

_Ly. _ And if you caught him committing a solecism, would you stand it?

_Pur. _ Certainly not.

_Ly. _ Quite right too. We should never permit solecisms in a friend,
but teach him better. Now, what are your feelings when you hear a man
deprecating his own merits, and depreciating his friend's excessive
gratitude?

_Pur. _ Feelings? only that he shows a very proper feeling.

_Ly. _ Then, as you cannot feel the difference between 'deprecate' and
'depreciate,' shall we conclude that you are an ignoramus?

_Pur. _ Outrageous insolence!

_Ly. _ Outrageous? I shall be, ere much, if I go on talking to you. --Now
I should have said that 'ere much' was a blunder, but it does not
strike you so.

_Pur. _ Oh, stop, for goodness' sake! Look here, try this way; I want to
get _my_ profit out of it too.

_Ly. _ Well?

_Pur. _ Suppose you were to go through all the blunders you say I have
missed, and tell me what is the right thing for each.

_Ly. _ Good gracious, no; it would take us till midnight. No; you can
look those out for yourself. Meanwhile, we had better take fresh ones,
as we have only a quarter of an hour (by the way, never pronounce the
'h' in hour; that sounds dreadful). Then as to that outrage which
you say I have committed upon you; if I were to speak of an outrage
committed _against_ you, that would be another thing.

_Pur. _ Would it?

_Ly. _ Yes; an outrage _upon_ you must be committed upon you personally,
in the shape of blows, interference with your liberty, or the like.
An outrage _against_ you is upon something that belongs to you; he
who does an outrage upon your wife, child, friend, or slave, does it
against you. This distinction, however, does not apply to inanimate
things. An 'outrage against' is a legitimate phrase with them, as when
Plato talks in the _Symposium_ of an outrage against a proverb.

_Pur. _ Ah, I see now.

_Ly. _ Do you also see that the exchange of one for the other is a
solecism?

_Pur. _ Yes, I shall know that for the future.

_Ly. _ And if a person were to use 'interchange' there instead of
'exchange,' what would you take him to mean?

_Pur. _ Just the same.

_Ly. _ Why, how can they be equivalent? Exchange is merely the
substitution of one expression for another, the improper for the
proper; whereas interchange involves a false statement[27].

_Pur.
_ I see now; exchange is the use of a loose instead of a precise
expression, while interchange is the use of both expressions, each in
the other's place.

_Ly. _ These subtleties are not unpleasing. Similarly, when we are
concerned _with_ a person, it is in our own interest; but when we are
concerned _for_ him, it is in his. It is true the phrases are sometimes
confused, but there are those who observe the distinction; and it is as
well to be on the safe side.

_Pur. _ Quite true.

_Ly. _ Now, can you tell me the difference between 'setting' and
'sitting,' or between 'be seated' and 'sit'?

_Pur. _ No; but I have heard you say that 'sit yourself' is a barbarism.

_Ly. _ Yes, quite so; but now I tell you that 'be seated' is not the
same as 'sit. '

_Pur. _ Why, what may the difference be?

_Ly. _ When a man is on his legs, you can only tell him to be seated;
but if he is seated already, you can tell him to sit still.

Sit where thou art; we find us seats elsewhere. It means 'remain
sitting,' you see. Here again we have to say that it is a mistake to
reverse the expressions. And as to 'set' and 'sit,' surely it is the
whole difference between transitive and intransitive?

_Pur. _ That is clear enough; go on; this is the way to teach.

_Ly. _ Or the only way you can learn? Well, do you know what a historian
is?

(_The explanation of this point appears to have dropped out of the
MSS. --Translators. _)

_Pur. _ Oh, yes, I quite see, after your lucid explanation.

_Ly. _ Now I daresay you think servility and servitude are the same; but
I am aware of a considerable difference between them.

_Pur. _ Namely--?

_Ly. _ The first depends on yourself, the other on some one else.

_Pur. _ Quite right.

_Ly. _ Oh, you will pick up all sorts of information, if you give up
thinking you know more than you do.

_Pur. _ I give it up from this moment.

_Ly. _ Then we will break off for the present, and take the rest another
time.

H. & F.