[16] Επεα πτεροεντα (Epea pteroenta) literally winged words. To explain the use and origin of this phrase to non-classical readers, it must be understood that, originally, it was used by Homer to express the few, rapid, and significant words which conveyed some hasty order, counsel, or notice, suited to any sudden occasion or emergency: e.g. "To him flying from the field the hero addressed these winged words—'Stop, coward, or I will transfix thee with my spear.'" But by Horne Tooke the phrase was adopted on the title-page of his Diversions of Purley, as a pleasant symbolic expression for all the non-significant particles, the articuli or joints of language, which in his well-known theory are resolved into abbreviations or compendious forms (and therefore rapid, flying, winged forms), substituted for significant forms of greater length. Thus, if is a non-significant particle, but it is an abbreviated form of an imperative in the second person—substituted for gif, or give, or grant the case—put the case that. All other particles are shewn by Horne Tooke to be equally short-hand (or winged) substitutions.
[17] It has been rather too much forgotten that Africa, from the northern margin of Bilidulgerid and the Great Desert, southwards—everywhere, in short, beyond Egypt, Cyrene, and the modern Barbary States—belongs, as much as America, to the New World, the world unknown to the ancients.
[18] I might have mastered the philosophy of Kant without waiting for the German language, in which all his capital works are written; for there is a Latin version of the whole by Born, and a most admirable digest of the cardinal work (admirable for its fidelity and the skill by which that fidelity is attained) in the same language by Rhiseldek, a Danish professor. But this fact, such was the slight knowledge of all things connected with Kant in England, I did not learn for some years.
[19] De Quincey was so fastidious in the matter of grammatical correctness that he would have been shocked to find that he had let this sentence go forth in print.—M.
[20] Those who look back to the newspapers of 1799 and 1800 will see that considerable discussion went on at that time upon the question whether the year 1800 was entitled to open the 19th century or to close the 18th. Mr. Laureate Pye wrote a poem with a long and argumentative preface on the point.
[21] From Tait's Magazine for February 1837, where the title was "A Literary Novitiate."—M.
[22] As De Quincey has divulged the name of this clergyman in his Autobiography (see vol. i. pp. 136-138), there is no need for concealing it here. He was the Rev. John Clowes, Rector of St. John's Church, Manchester, and we shall substitute the full name for the blank in the sequel.—M.
[23] In a recent [1889] catalogue of a Manchester book-sale I find this entry:—"Clowes (John, of Manchester, the Church of England Swedenborgian). Sermons, Translations, etc., with a Life of him by Theo. Crompton, principally published in Manchester from 1799 to 1850. 17 vols."—M.
[24] For a similar passage, see ante, pp. 96, 97.—M.
[25] He was first editor of the London Magazine, and was killed in an unfortunate duel in February 1821.—M.