THE "EISELL" CONTROVERSY.
When Polonius proposed to use the players according to their desert, Hamlet rebuked him with "Much better man! use every man after his desert, and who shall 'scape whipping? Use them after your own honour and dignity!" I do not think it necessary to notice that what is merely coarse and vulgar in an unprovoked attack upon myself, feeling that I have no right to expect the man who has no consideration for his own dignity to think of mine. But when an attempt is made to sow dissension between me and those whose opinions I value, and whose characters I esteem, I feel that in justice to myself and in satisfaction to them, a few words are not out of place.
Some few of your readers may have seen a pamphlet in reply to MR. SINGER, on the meaning of eisell and from certain insinuations about "pegs and wires," and a "literary coterie," it might be supposed that there existed some other bond for the support of "NOTES AND QUERIES" than a common object affords. I wish then to inform such of them as may not happen to belong to the "coterie" in question (which I suppose exists somewhere—perhaps holds a sort of witch's-sabbath on some inaccessible peak in the pamphleteer's imagination), that I have never, to my knowledge, even seen either MR. SINGER or the editor of "NOTES AND QUERIES;" and that, so far from meaning offence to the angry gentleman who seems disposed to run-a-muck against all who come in his way, I actually supposed all meant in good part, and characterised his remarks as "pleasant criticism."
From an apparent inability, however, of this pamphleteer to distinguish between pleasantry and acrimony, he has attempted to fix on me offences against others when I have ventured to dissent from their conclusions. All I can say is, that I have never written anything inconsistent with the very high respect I feel for the abilities and the great services rendered by the gentlemen I have had occasion to allude to.
Dire is the wrath of the pamphleteer that he should have been charged by MR. SINGER with "want of truth." That gentleman doubtless saw what I did not, the implied insinuation—since burst into full flower—about a "coterie." Yet the candid controversialist, now, after due deliberation, insinuates that a "canon of criticism," which I ventured to suggest, and at which he now finds it convenient to sneer, was remembered for the purpose of "bolstering up" MR. SINGER'S "bad argument." So far from this being the case, he knows that I used MR. SINGER'S argument—at the close of, and apart from the main purpose of my letter, to illustrate mine. So, in another place, in the attempt to show up my "charming and off-hand modesty," he quotes my opinion that the meaning of "rack" might be "settled at once and for ever," suppressing the fact that I made the assertion with a view of "testing the correctness of my opinion that the question was not one of etymology, but of construction. In short, an adept in the use of those weapons which are of value only where victory seems a higher aim than truth, his honesty would appear to be upon a level with his taste.
I have now done with this gentleman. Of the importance of inquiries into nice verbal distinctions there might be a question, but that they sometimes furnish a clue to more valuable discoveries but for this fact I should little regard them. At all events, the remark about the difference "'twixt tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee," comes with strange inconsistency from one who has written fifty-two pages with no other result than raising the question whether "bitter" was not "sour," and proving how both qualities may be combined in a truly "nauseous medicament."
SAMUEL HICKSON.
St. John's Wood.
[Our attention having, been directed by the preceding letter to Mr. Causton's pamphlet, we procured and read it, with feelings of deep pain, not for ourselves but for the writer. We are content to rest the justification of our conduct in abridging, or, as Mr. Causton terms it, "mutilating," that gentleman's communication, on the very passages which we omitted, and he has reprinted. Mr. Causton's pamphlet, written in defence of his literary reputation, proves that that reputation has no enemy so dangerous as himself. We may add that we propose next week publishing a summary of the evidence on both sides of this disputed question, written not by Mr. Causton nor Mr. Hickson, but by a correspondent who, like those gentlemen, is personally unknown to us.]