Replies.
ATTAINMENT OF MAJORITY.
(Vol. viii., pp. 198. 250.)
In replying to Professor De Morgan's last communication on this subject, it may be as well, in order to avoid future misunderstanding, to revert briefly to my original question. I pointed out Ben Jonson's assertion, through a character in one of his plays, that about the beginning of the seventeenth century, it was the custom to regard the legal rights of majority as commencing with six o'clock A.M., and I asked to have that assertion reconciled with our present commencement at midnight, and with the statement that the latter is in accordance with the old reckoning.
Thus I started with the production of affirmative evidence, to rebut which I cannot find, in the replies of Professor De Morgan, any negative evidence stronger than his individual opinion, which, however eminent in other respects, has undoubtedly the disadvantage of being two hundred years later than the contemporary evidence produced by me. I afterwards cited Arthur Hopton as authority that lawyers in England, in his time, did make use of a day which he classifies as that of the Babylonians; but inasmuch as he apparently restricts its duration to twelve hours, whereas all ancient writers concur in assigning to the Babylonians a day of twenty-four hours, there is evidently a mistake somewhere, attributable either to Hopton or his printers.
This mistake may have arisen either from a misprint, or from a transposition of a portion of the sentence.
The supposition of a misprint is favoured by the circumstance that Hopton was, at the time, professing to describe natural days of twenty-four hours; of these there are four great classes of commencement, from the four principal quarters of the day; viz. from midnight, from mid-day, from sun-setting and from sun-rising. Hopton had already assigned three of them to different nations, and the fourth he had properly assigned, so far as its commencement at sunrise was concerned, to the Babylonians. What, then, can be more probable than that he intended this day also, like the rest, to be of twenty-four hours' duration; and that the words "holding till sun-setting" ought, perhaps, to have been printed "holding till sun-rising?"
This way of reconciling seeming anomalies, by the supposition of probable misprints, receives great encouragement in the occasional occurrence of similar mistakes in the most carefully printed modern books. I lately noticed, while reading Sir James Ross's Southern Voyage of Discovery, a work printed by the Admiralty, and on which extraordinary typographical care had been bestowed, the following, at page 121. of vol. ii.:
"It was full moon on the 15th of September, at 5·38 A.M."
But the context shows that "full moon" ought to have been printed new moon, and that "5·38 A.M." outlet to be 5·38 P.M.: and what renders these two mistakes the more remarkable is, that they have no sort of connexion, nor is the occurrence of the one in any way explanatory of the other.