Published under Supervision of the Professor of English.
Trinity College, April, 1888.
THE WORLD IS ROUND.
The following is an extract from a modernized version of "The Voyages and Travels of Sir John Mandeville, Kt." He set out in 1322 and was thirty years in making his "Voyages and Travels," an account of which he wrote in French, and this was afterwards Englished, probably by some one else.
"And men may prove by experience and their understanding, that if a man found passages by ships, he might go by ships all round the world, above and beneath; which I prove thus, after what I have seen. For I have been towards the parts of Brabant, and found by the astrolabe that the polar star is fifty-three degrees high; and further, in Germany and Bohemia, it has fifty-eight degrees; and still further towards the north it is sixty-two degrees and some minutes; for I myself have measured it by the astrolabe. Now you shall know that opposite the polar star is the other star, called antarctic, as I have said before. These two stars are fixed; and about them all the firmament turns as a wheel that turns on its axle-tree; so that those stars bear the firmament in two equal parts; so that it has as much above as it has beneath.... And if I had company and shipping to go further, I believe certainly that we should have seen all the roundness of the firmament all about. For, as I have told you before, the half of the firmament is between the two stars, which half I have seen. And the other half I have seen towards the north, under the polar star, sixty-two degrees and ten minutes; and towards the south, I have seen under the antarctic thirty-three degrees and sixteen minutes; and the half of the firmament in all contains but one hundred and eighty degrees, of which I have seen sixty-two on the one part, and thirty-three on the other, which makes ninety-five degrees, and nearly the half of a degree; so that I have seen all the firmament except eighty-four degrees and the half of a degree; and that is not the fourth part of the firmament. By which I tell you, certainly, that men may go all round the world, as well under as above, and return to their country, if they had company, and shipping, and guides; and always they would find men, lands, and isles, as well as in our part of the world. For they who are towards the antarctic are directly feet opposite feet of them who dwell under the polar star; as well as we and they that dwell under us are feet opposite feet. For all parts of sea and land have their opposites, habitable or passable....
"They, therefore, that start from the west to go towards Jerusalem, as many days as they go upward to go thither, in so many days may they go from Jerusalem to other confines of the superficialities of the earth beyond. And when men go beyond that distance, towards India and to the foreign isles, they are proceeding on the roundness of the earth and the sea, under our country. And therefore hath it befallen many times of a thing that I have heard told when I was young, how a worthy man departed once from our country to go and discover the world; and so he passed India, and the isles beyond India, where are more than five thousand isles; and so long he went by sea and land, and so environed the world by many seasons, that he found an isle where he heard people speak his own language, calling an oxen in the plough such words as men speak to beasts in his own country, whereof he had great wonder, for he knew not how it might be. But I say that he had gone so long, by land and sea, that he had gone all round the earth; that he was come again to his own borders, if he would have passed forth till he had found his native country. But he turned again from thence, from whence he was come, and so he lost much painful labor, as himself said, a great while after, when he was coming home; for it befell after, that he went into Norway, and the tempest of the sea carried him to an isle; and when he was in that isle, he knew well that it was the isle where he had heard his own language spoken before, and the calling of the oxen at the plough. But it seems to simple and unlearned men that men may not go under the earth, but that they would fall from under towards the heaven. But that may not be any more than we fall towards heaven from the earth where we are; for from what part of the earth that men dwell, either above or beneath, it seems always to them that they go more right than any other people. And right as it seems to us that they be under us, so it seems to them that we are under them; for if a man might fall from the earth unto the firmament, by greater reason the earth and the sea, that are so great and so heavy, should fall to the firmament; but that may not be, and therefore saith our Lord God, 'He hangeth the earth upon nothing.'
"Although it be possible so to go all round the world, yet of a thousand persons not one might happen to return to his country; for, from the greatness of the earth and sea, men may go by a thousand different ways, that no one could be sure of returning exactly to the parts he came from, unless by chance or by the grace of God; for the earth is very large, and contains in roundness and circuit, above and beneath, 20,425 miles, after the opinion of the old wise astronomers; and, after my little wit, it seems to me, saving their reverence, that it is more; for I say thus: let there be imagined a figure that has a great compass; and about the point of the great compass, which is called the centre, let there be made another little compass; then, afterwards, let the great compass be divided by lines in many parts, and all the lines meet at the centre; so that in as many parts as the great compass shall be divided, in so many shall the little one that is about the centre be divided, although the spaces be less. Let the great compass be represented for the firmament, and the little compass for the earth; now the firmament is divided by astronomers into twelve signs, and every sign is divided into thirty degrees. Also let the earth be divided into as many parts as the firmament, and let every part answer to a degree of the firmament; and I know well that, after the authorities in astronomy, seven hundred furlongs of earth answer to a degree of the firmament, that is eighty-seven miles and four furlongs. Now, multiplied by three hundred and sixty times, it makes 31,500 miles, each of eight furlongs, according to miles of our country. So much hath the earth in circuit after my opinion and understanding."
THE SUBJUNCTIVE MOOD.
There is in this fast age a fast-growing tendency, on the part of many so-called English grammarians, to set aside the uses of the subjunctive mood and to attempt to make the indicative perform the functions of both. In the first place, they are striving to do that which is impossible; in the second place, by their efforts to make the indicative do the work of both and by their lack of effort to see and understand and explain the "subtle distinctions involved in the use of the subjunctive mood," they have entangled the mind of the student of English grammar in a net-work of obscurity and have cast the dust of falsehood into his eyes and have thrown the whole subject of the uses of moods into a fog of ambiguity. Many say but little on the subject of moods, and it would have been a great deal better for the student if many of them had said nothing, unless they had approached nearer to the truth. Some in their definitions for the term 'mood,' imply, if they do not say positively, that mood is a certain manner of using verbs. No definition could be more misleading, and none at all would have been far better. "Most English grammars say that the subjunctive mood is used to express uncertainty or to state an action conditionally." This shows again that they are stepping in the dark and that it would be best for them to stand still until their eyes opened, for nothing can be farther from the truth. When an uncertainty or a conditionality has reference to actual fact, it not only may be but must be expressed by a statement in which the indicative mood is used; as, 'If the man is guilty, he ought to be hanged.' Here we have a sentence in which the speaker is dealing with a fact, a reality, and one about which he is uncertain and for that reason puts a condition in his statement. This gives us a sentence in which both uncertainty and conditionality are expressed, and at the same time one in which the indicative mood is employed; and, if space permitted, we could give numberless examples from good authors. "Of course everybody knows that the subjunctive mood is employed in some sorts of conditional statements;" but this certainly fails to prove that the subjunctive mood is necessary to the expression of a condition. In most conditional statements, there is generally some such conjunction as 'if,' 'lest,' 'unless,' 'though' or 'although' preceding the verb, or else the inverted position of parts of the sentence is such as to show the condition without conjunction. 'If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat.'—Prov. XV., 21; 'Cursed be my tribe, if I forgive him.'—Sh. Merch. Ven. I., 1; 'Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.'—Job XIII., 15; 'My son, if thine heart be wise, my heart shall rejoice.'-Prov. XXIII., 15; 'If this be treason, make the most of it.'—Patrick Henry; 'Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit.'—Colos. III., 18; and, 'If a man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work.'—I Tim. III., 1;—these are a few examples in which conditions are expressed by conjunctions; and we find that condition is expressed by something else than verbs or the moods of verbs. Therefore, if the subjunctive mood is not necessary to express a condition, we are forced to the conclusion that its function is something far different from that of expressing mere conditionality, even when it is used in a conditional statement. And, when we find both a conditional conjunction and a subjunctive mood in the same statement, we are forced to believe that the subjunctive mood adds some new force. 'If he be taken, he shall never more be feared.'—Sh. King Lear II. I., 8; 'If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar.'—I John IV, 20; 'Tell me ... if he appeal the duke on ancient malice.'—Rich. II. I., i, 9, are examples in which the subjunctive mood does not express condition, but something more important.
Others of these so-called grammarians speak of moods as being certain "verb-forms," and thus far they are correct; but they err when they say that, because in the course of time the distinctive marks have been worn away and the indicative and subjunctive forms have become alike in appearance, they are identical, and speak of them as "indicative-subjunctive forms." Though two verbs may be spelled alike and look and sound alike, yet that is no reason for saying that they are alike in grammatical function or in the same mood. 'Depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity.'—Luke XIII., 27; 'When ye depart thence, shake off the dust under your feet ...'—Mark VI., 11. Here we have two verbs alike in appearance; but who would say that they are alike in function? or who would dare call them "indicative-imperative forms"? It is no more unreasonable to talk of "indicative-imperative forms" than to talk of "indicative-subjunctive forms." "To talk of 'indicative-subjunctive forms' is like talking of a 'round-square hole.'" May the Goddess of Grammar look with compassion upon such mistakes, and, if the offenders ever repent, by her grace grant them full pardon, for the school-boy never can!