Ignorant Essays. Dowling Richard
s. A machine which is raised to a given height by pulleys, and then allowed suddenly to fall on the head of a pile; a monkey (L. a rammer).” Henceforth there is, in my mind, no need of a picture for the machine. So to speak, the abstract has become concrete. I would not, of course, dream of using the word fistuca, but it is a great source of internal consolation to me. Besides, I attain with it to other eminences of curiosity, which show me fields of inquiry I never dreamed of before.
I have not met the word monkey in this sense until now. I look out monkey in my book, and find one of the meanings “a pile-driver,” and that the word is derived from the Italian “monna, contraction for madonna.” Up to this moment I did not know from what monkey was derived, although I had heard that from monkey man was derived. All this sets one off into a delicious doze of thought and keeps one carefully apart from his work. For “who would fardels bear to groan and sweat under a weary” load of even pens, when he might lie back and close his eyes, and drift off to the Rome of Augustus or the Venice of to-day? Philology as mere philology is colourless, but if one uses the records of verbal changes as glasses to the past and present, what panchromatic hues sweep into the pale field of the dictionary! What myriads of dead men stand up out of their graves, and move once more through scenes of their former activities! What reimpositions of old times on old earth take place! What bravery of arms and beauty of women are renewed; what glowing argosies, long mouldered, sparkle once more in the sun! What brazen trumpets blare of conquest, and dust of battle roll along the plain! What plenitude of life, of movement, of man is revealed! A dictionary is to me the key-note in the orchestra where mankind sit tuning their reeds for the overture to the final cataclysm of the world.
My second book would be Whitaker’s Almanack. Owing to miserable ill-luck I have not been able to get a copy of the almanac for this year. I offered fair round coin of the realm for it before the Jubilee plague of ugliness fell upon the broad pieces of her most gracious Majesty. But, alas! no copy was to be had. I was too late in the race. All the issue had been sold. The last edition of which I have a copy is that for 1886. I have one for each year of the ten preceding, and I cannot tell how crippled and humiliated I feel in being without one for 1887.
This is another of the books that Charles Lamb classes among the no-books. As in the case of Nuttall, there was no Whitaker in his day, and certainly no almanac at all as good. At first glance this book may seem dry and sapless as the elm ready sawn for conversion into parish coffins. But how can anything be considered dry or dead when two hundred thousand of its own brothers are at this moment dwelling in useful amity among our fellowmen? It in one way contrasts unfavourably with almanacs which can claim a longer life, there are no vaticinations in it. But if the gift of prophecy were possessed by other almanacs, why did they not foretell that they would be in the end known as humbugs, and cut their conceited throats? I freely own I am a bigot in this matter; I have never given any other almanac a fair chance, and, what is worse, I have firmly made up my mind not to give any other one any chance at all. What is the good of being loyal to one’s friends if one’s loyalty is at the beck of every upstart acquaintance, no matter how great his merits or how long his purse? I place my faith in Whitaker, and am ready to go to the stake (provided it is understood that nothing unpleasant takes place there) chaunting my belief and glorying in my doom.
If you took away Whitaker’s Almanack from me I do not know how I should get on. It is a book for diurnal use and permanent reference. One edition of it ought to be printed on bank note paper for the pocket, and another on bronze for friezes for the temple of history. It is worth all the Livys and Tacituses that ever breathed and lied. It is more truthful than the sun, for that luminary is always eight minutes in advance of where it seems to be. It is as impartial and veracious as fossilising mud. It contains infinitely more figures than Madame Tussaud’s, and teaches of everything above and under the sun, from stellar influences to sewage.
How is the daily paper to be understood lacking the aid of Whitaker? Who is the honourable member for Berborough, of whom the Chanceller of the Exchequer spoke in such sarcastic terms last night? For what place sits Mr. Snivel, who made that most edifying speech yesterday? How old is the Earl of Champagne, who has been appointed Governor of Labuan? Where is Labuan? What is the value in English money of £T97,000, and 2,784,000 roubles? What are the chances of a man of forty (yourself) living to be a hundred? and what is the chance of a woman of sixty-four (your mother-in-law) dying next year? How much may one deduct from one’s income with a view to income tax before one needs begin to lie? What annuity ought a man of your age be able to get for the five thousand pounds you expect on the death of your mother-in-law? How much will you have to pay to the state if you article your son to a solicitor or give him a little capital and start him in an honest business as a pawnbroker? How old is the judge that charged dead against the prisoner whom the jury acquitted without leaving the box? What railway company spends the most money in coal? legal charges? palm oil? Is there anything now worth a gentleman’s while to smuggle on his return from the Continent? What is the tonnage of the ironclad rammed yesterday morning by another ironclad of the Channel squadron? When may one begin to eat oysters? What was the most remarkable event last year? How much longer is it likely to pay to breed farmers in England?
These are only a few, very few, of the queries Whitaker will answer cheerfully for you. Indeed, you can scarcely frame any questions to which it will not make a reply of some kind or other. It contains, moreover, either direct or indirect reference to every man in the United Kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland. If you occupy a prominent official position in any walk in life, you will find yourself herein mentioned by name. If you are a simple and prudent trader, you will have your name and your goods described elaborately among the advertisements. If you come under neither of these heads you are sure to be included, not distinguished perhaps personally, under the statistics of the Insane or Criminal classes.
All the information on the points indicated may be said to lie within the parochial domain of the book. But it has a larger, a universal scope, and takes into view all the civilized and half civilized nations of all the earth. It contains multitudinous facts and figures about Abyssinia, Afghanistan, Annam, Argentine Republic, Austro-Hungary, Baluchistan, Belgium, Bokhara, Bolivia, Borneo, Brazil, Bulgaria, Eastern Roumelia, Burmah, Corea, Central America, Chili, China, Cochin China, Colombia, Congo State, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, France, Germany, Greece, Hawaiian Islands, Hayti, Italy, Japan, Liberia, Madagascar, Mexico, Montenegro, Morocco, Nepal, Netherlands, Oman, Orange Free State, Paraguay, Persia, Peru, Portugal, Roumania, Russia, Sarawak, Servia, Siam, Sokoto, Spain, Sweden and Norway, Switzerland, Tibet, Transvaal, Tripoli, Tunis, Turkey, United States, Uruguay, Venezuela, and Zanzibar!
The list takes away one’s breath. The mere recital of it leaves one faint and exhausted. Passing the most elementary knowledge of these nations and countries through the mind is like looking at a varying rainbow while the ears are solicited by a thousand tunes. The names, the mere names, of Mexico and Brazil stop my heart with amazement. The Aztecs and the Amazon call up such visions of man in decay and nature in naked strength that I pause like one in a gorgeous wood held in fear by its unfamiliarity. What has the Amazon done in the ages of its unlettered history? What did the Aztecs know before they began to revert to birds? Then Morocco and Tripoli, what memories and mysteries of man! And Sokoto – of which little is known but the name; and that man was here before England was dissevered from the mainland of Europe. Turkey, as it even now lies crippled and shorn, embraces within its stupendous arms the tombs of the greatest empire of antiquity. Only to think of China is to grow old beyond the reach of chroniclers. Compared with China, Turkey, India, and Russia, even Greece and Rome are mushroom states, and Germany and France virgin soil.
But when I am in no humour for contemplation and alarms of eld I take up my Whitaker for 1886, and open it at page 285. There begins the most incredible romance ever written by man, and what increases its incredibility is that it happens to be all true.
At page 285 opens an account of the British Empire. The first article is on India, and as one reads, taking in history and statistics with alternate breaths, the heart grows afraid to beat in the breast lest its motion and sound might dispel the enchantment and bring this “miracle of rare device” down about one’s head. The opening statement forbids further progress for a time. When one hears that “the British Empire in India extends over a territory as large as the continent of Europe without Russia,” it is