BENEDETTO VARCHI.
Whether the secret of the Freemasons be comprized in the mystic word above is more than I think proper to reveal at present. But I have broken no vow in uttering it.
And I am the better for having uttered it.
Mahomet begins some of the chapters of the Koran with certain letters of unknown signification, and the commentators say that the meaning of these initials ought not to be enquired. So Gelaleddin says, so sayeth Taleb. And they say truly. Some begin with A. L. M. Some with K. H. I. A. S.: some with T. H.;—T. S. M.;—T. S. or I. S. others with K. M.;—H. M. A. S. K.;—N. M.;—a single Kaf, a single Nun or a single Sad, and sad work would it be either for Kaffer or Mussulman to search for meaning where none is. Gelaleddin piously remarks that there is only One who knoweth the import of these letters—I reverence the name which he uses too much to employ it upon this occasion. Mahomet himself tells us that they are the signs of the Book which teacheth the true doctrine,—the Book of the Wise,—the Book of Evidence, the Book of Instruction. When he speaketh thus of the Koran he lieth like an impostor as he is: but what he has said falsely of that false book may be applied truly to this. It is the Book of Instruction inasmuch as every individual reader among the thousands and tens of thousands who peruse it will find something in it which he did not know before. It is the Book of Evidence because of its internal truth. It is the Book of the Wise, because the wiser a man is the more he will delight therein; yea, the delight which he shall take in it will be the measure of his intellectual capacity. And that it teacheth the true doctrine is plain from this circumstance, that I defy the British Critic, the Antijacobin, the Quarterly and the Eclectic Reviews,—aye, and the Evangelical, the Methodist, the Baptist and the Orthodox Churchman's Magazine, with the Christian Observer to boot, to detect any one heresy in it. Therefore I say again
Aballiboozobanganorribo,
and like Mahomet I say that it is the Sign of the Book; and therefore it is that I have said it;
| Nondimen nè la lingua degli Hebrei Nè la Latina, nè la Greca antica, Nè quella forse ancor degli Aramei.1 |
1 MOLZA.
Happen it may,—for things not less strange have happened, and what has been may be again;—for may be and has been are only tenses of the same verb, and that verb is eternally being declined:——Happen I say it may; and peradventure if it may it must; and certainly if it must it will:—but what with indicatives and subjunctives, presents, præterperfects and paulo-post-futura, the parenthesis is becoming too long for the sentence, and I must begin it again. A prudent author should never exact too much from the breath or the attention of his reader,—to say nothing of the brains.