The old English has fote, fode, loke, coke, roke, etc., for foot, etc. And above rhymes in Chaucer to remove. Suspecting that the broader sounds are the older, we may surmise that remove and food have retained their old sounds, and that cook, once coke, would have rhymed to our Luke, the vowel being brought a little nearer, perhaps, to the o in our present coke, the fuel, probably so called as used by cooks. If this be so, the Chief Justice Cook[[614]] of our lawyers, and the Coke (pronounced like the fuel) of the greater part of the world, are equally wrong. The lawyer has no right whatever to fasten his pronunciation upon us: even leaving aside the general custom, he cannot prove himself right, and is probably wrong. Those who
know the village of Rokeby (pronounced Rookby) despise the world for not knowing how to name Walter Scott's poem: that same world never asked a question about the matter, and the reception of the parody of Jokeby, which soon appeared, was a sufficient indication of their notion. Those who would fasten the hodiernal sound upon us may be reminded that the question is, not what they call it now, but what it was called in Cromwell's time. Throw away general usage as a lawgiver, and this is the point which emerges. Probably Rūke-by would be right, with a little turning of the Italian ū towards ō of modern English.
[Some of the above is from an old review. I do not always notice such insertions: I take nothing but my own writings. A friend once said to me, "Ah! you got that out of the Athenæum!" "Excuse me," said I. "the Athenæum got that out of me!">[
APOLOGIES TO CLUVIER.
It is part of my function to do justice to any cyclometers whose methods have been wrongly described by any orthodox sneerers (myself included). In this character I must notice Dethlevus Cluverius,[[615]] as the Leipzig Acts call him (probably Dethleu Cluvier), grandson of the celebrated geographer, Philip Cluvier. The grandson was a Fellow of the Royal Society, elected on the same day as Halley,[[616]] November 30, 1678: I suppose he lived in England. This
man is quizzed in the Leipzig Acts for 1686; and, if Montucla insinuate rightly, by Leibnitz, who is further suspected of wanting to embroil Cluvier with his own opponent Nieuwentiit,[[617]] on the matter of infinitesimals. So far good: I have nothing against Leibnitz, who though he was ironical, told us what he laughed at. But Montucla has behaved very unfairly: he represents Cluvier as placing the essence of his method in the solution of the problem construere mundum divinæ menti analogum, to construct a world corresponding to the divine mind. Nothing to begin with: no way of proceeding. Now, it ought to have been ex data linea construere,[[618]] etc.: there is a given line, which is something to go on. Further, there is a way of proceeding: it is to find the product of 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. for ever. Moreover, Montucla charges Cluvier with unsquaring the parabola, which Archimedes had squared as tight as a glove. But he never mentions how very nearly Cluvier agrees with the Greek: they only differ by 1 divided by 3n2, where n is the infinite number of parts of which a parabola is composed. This must have been the conceit that tickled Leibnitz, and made him wish that Cluvier and Nieuwentiit should fight it out. Cluvier, was admitted, on terms of irony, into the Leipzig Acts: he appeared on a more serious footing in London. It is very rare for one cyclometer to refute another: les corsaires ne se battent pas.[[619]] The only instance I recall is that of M. Cluvier, who (Phil. Trans., 1686, No. 185) refuted M. Mallemont de Messange,[[620]] who
published at Paris in 1686. He does it in a very serious style, and shows himself a mathematician. And yet in the year in which, in the Phil. Trans., he was a geometer, and one who rebukes his squarer for quoting Matthew xi. 25, in that very year he was the visionary who, in the Leipzig Acts, professed to build a world resembling the divine mind by multiplying together 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. up to infinity.
THE RAINBOW PARADOX.
There is a very pretty opening for a paradox which has never found its paradoxer in print. The philosophers teach that the rainbow is not material: it comes from rain-drops, but those rain-drops do not take color. They only give it, as lenses and mirrors; and each one drop gives all the colors, but throws them in different directions. Accordingly, the same drop which furnishes red light to one spectator will furnish violet to another, properly placed. Enter the paradoxer whom I have to invent. The philosopher has gulled you nicely. Look into the water, and you will see the reflected rainbow: take a looking-glass held sideways, and you see another reflection. How could this be, if there were nothing colored to reflect? The paradoxer's facts are true: and what are called the reflected rainbows are other rainbows, caused by those other drops which are placed so as to give the colors to the eye after reflection, at the water or the looking-glass. A few years ago an artist exhibited a picture with a rainbow and its apparent reflection: he simply copied what he had seen. When his picture was examined, some started the idea that there could be no reflection of a rainbow; they were right: they inferred that the artist had made a mistake; they were wrong. When it was explained, some agreed and some dissented. Wanted,
immediately, an able paradoxer: testimonials to be forwarded to either end of the rainbow, No. 1. No circle-squarer need apply, His Variegatedness having been pleased to adopt 3.14159... from Noah downwards.