of English. Without a Greek Lexicon at his elbow, the "general" reader could never have got through the tracts of Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromarty, knight. In every page one is crossed by such "Words, no stone Is hard enough to try them on," e. g. monomachy, epassyterotically, entelechy, antiphrasis, acronick, periphery, kardagas, horizontality, asteristick, daedalian, calefie, metamazion, synecdochically, logopandocie, archaeomanetick, redual, syncategorematical, phyargyric, autochtony, tropologetically, logofascinated, schematologetically. LI. VOX POPULI. "The people's voice is odd, It is, and it is not, the voice of God."-POPE. PERHAPS there is no adage to which there is not a counter-proverb: and certainly a hundred might be cited in denial of the one which affirms the Vox Populi to be the Vox Dei. What Erasmus has collected on the matter should satiate the haughtiest aristocrat. Even the great apostle of utilitarianism has been forced to confess, that "He that has resolved to persevere without deviation in the line of 1 Adagiorum Chiliades, p. 914. Aureliae Allobrog. 1606. truth and utility, must have learnt to prefer the still whisper of enduring approbation to the short-lived bustle of tumultuous applause." "I never said that the vox populi was of course the vox Dei," said Coleridge. "It may be; but it may be, and with equal probability a priori, vox Diaboli. That the voice of ten millions of men calling for the same thing is a spirit I believe; but whether that be a spirit of heaven or hell, I can only know by trying the thing called for by the prescript of reason and God's will.”2 "Wise men," says Sir Thomas Browne, "have alwayes applauded their owne judgement, in the contradiction of that of the people; and their soberest adversaries have ever afforded them the stile of fooles and mad men ; and to speak impartially, their actions have often made good these epithites." He then gathers from the Scriptures the chief instances of popular folly in Israel, and concludes, "certainely hee that considereth these things in God's peculiar people will easily discerne how little of truth there is in the wayes of the multitude; and though sometimes they are flattered with that aphorisme, will hardly believe the voyce of the people to bee the voyce of God."3 Such words flow naturally from the pen of one who sat down to combat Vulgar 1 Bentham's Works, vol. i. p. 329. 2 Coleridge's Table-Talk, second edit. p. 163. 3 Vulgar Errors, book i. chap. 3. p. 10. Errors; but they cut neither so deeply nor so unkindly as the lines of the republican Milton: "And what the people but a herd confus'd, A miscellaneous rabble, who extol Things vulgar, and well weigh'd, scarce worth their praise! They praise and they admire they know not what, To live upon their tongues and be their talk, When the secretary of Cromwell wrote thus, the popular acclaim with which all London rang as the restored Charles entered it must have been lingering in his ears! But where is the poet, in any age, or 1 Paradise Regained, book iii. 1. 49-57. The penultimate line may have been borrowed from Ben Jonson, who in his Cynthia's Revels (act iii. sc. ii.) has Men speak ill of thee. So they be ill men, If they spake worse 'twere better: for of such Milton's last line has in its turn been appropriated by a modern poet. Mr Rogers, in his lines on the death of Fox, writes, "Of those the few that for their country stood Round him who dared be singularly good." in any land, who has not his complaint of the inconstancy of crowds? The invective of the Roman satirist, in the days of Domitian, tallies almost in words with that of the Scotish "poet of princes" in the reign of our third George. “ Pone domi lauros, duc in Capitolia magnum Cretatumque bovem : Sejanus ducitur unco Spectandus: gaudent omnes: quae labra? quis illi Vultus erat? Numquam, si quid mihi credis, amavi Hunc hominem Sed quid Turba Remi? Sequitur Fortunam, ut semper, et odit "O Lennox, who would wish to rule 1 Juven. sat. x. 1. 65-77. And like acclaim would Douglas greet, The editor of Scott seems to see a parallel between these lines and the speech which Shakspere has placed in the mouth of Coriolanus; but not Coriolanus even has expressed his contempt for the popular voice half so heartily as a Frenchman of the eleventh century, Geoffrey, abbot of la Trinite de Vendôme, who addressed to his monks this pithy admonition, "Populus est asellus quem vos praecedere et ducere debetis, non sequi eum." THE PEOPLE IS AN ASS WHOM 2 YOU OUGHT TO LEAD, NOT FOLLOW. LII. JACK KETCH. If we can trust rumour, the rest of more than one Scotish magistrate hath been broken by a tradition which yet lingers in some of our burghs, that if no professional hangman can be found, the youngest bailie must discharge the loathsome office. Perhaps we may trace in the belief a vestige of ancient prac Lady of the Lake, cant. v. st. xxx. 2 Goff. a Vind. Ep. 46, lib. iv. ed. J. Sirmondis, 1610, cited in Mém. de la Soc. Roy. des Antiq. de France, t. vii. p. cxli. |