Quære—whether we may not, nay ought not, to use a neutral pronoun relative, or representative, to the word "Person," where it hath been used in the sense of homo, mensch, or noun of the common gender, in order to avoid particularising man or woman, or in order to express either sex indifferently? If this be incorrect in syntax, the whole use of the word Person is lost in a number of instances, or only retained by some stiff and strange position of words, as—"not letting the person be aware, wherein offence has been given"—instead of—"wherein he or she has offended." In my [judgment] both the specific intention and general etymon of "Person" in such sentences, fully authorise the use of it and which instead of he, she, him, her, who, whom.
THE HUMBLE COMPLAINT OF THE LOVER
If love be the genial sun of human nature, unkindly has he divided his rays [in acting] on me and my beloved! On her hath he poured all his light and splendour, and my being doth he permeate with his invisible rays of heat alone. She shines and is cold like the tropic fire-fly—I, dark and uncomely, would better resemble the cricket in hot ashes. My soul, at least, might be considered as a cricket eradiating the heat which gradually cinerising the heart produces the embers and ashes from among which it chirps out of its hiding-place.
N.B.—This put in simple and elegant verse, [would pass] as an imitation of Marini, and of too large a part of the madrigals of Guarini himself.
TRUTH
Truth per se is like unto quicksilver, bright, agile, harmless. Swallow a pound and it will run through unaltered and only, perhaps, by its weight force down impurities from out the system. But mix and comminute it by the mineral acid of spite and bigotry, and even truth becomes a deadly poison—medicinal only when some other, yet deadlier, lurks in the bones.
LOVE THE INEFFABLE