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Bentham to Dr Parr. - Jeremy Bentham, The Works of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 10 (Memoirs Part I and Correspondence) [1843]

Edition used:

The Works of Jeremy Bentham, published under the Superintendence of his Executor, John Bowring (Edinburgh: William Tait, 1838-1843). 11 vols. Vol. 10.

Part of: The Works of Jeremy Bentham, 11 vols.

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Bentham to Dr Parr.

“17th October, 1803.

“Marche route of the Queen Square Place Volunteers.—Set off on Tuesday—reach Birmingham on Wednesday evening.—On Thursday evening or Friday morning, retreat to Hatton. There storm the vicarage, giving no quarter—after committing ravages indescribable, evacuate the place on Sunday morning early—continuing the treat to Oxford. Take up quarters there, Monday, and possibly Tuesday.

“None of your Alcandrumque Haliumque, Noëmonaque Prytanimque, under the notion of helping to désennuyer the travellers; for what is it that we go forth for to see? Answer.—Parr, and Parr only; a reed lately shaken by the wind, but now, we hope, stout and strong again. Time, according to my estimation, not by a great deal enough for that; but more at present cannot be found.

“Stay the hand of the Vicar’s wife, and say unto her—Slay no fatted claves—the elder hath outlived that branch of the lusts of the flesh, not to speak of others. The younger? he hath never known it—Step not, even although it be but a span’s length, out of the path to which thou art accustomed; and remember we are Rechabites. Is it not written,

Ουαι τϱυφης παϱα ςοι χϱηϛομαι αλλα μονης.

Not improbably, a boy sent to me by Mr Strutt at Derby, from a place of his brother’s called Belper, six miles from thence—boy’s name unknown—age about twelve—may inquire for me at the Parsonage, either Friday or Saturday.

“Should death have disposed of me in the meantime, pay the boy his expenses thither and back again, I pray thee, opening the letter he will possibly have for me, and bring your action against my executors and administrators.”

Again:—

“Δυσπαϱι!!!

“Your friend Homer, in his quality of vates sacer, added to his gift of poetry, a spice of the gift of prophecy. One proof of it is, that, foreseeing the provocation you would one day give me, he provided me with so apposite a nom de guerre to belabour you with. As for my name, if it be not in the Iliad, like yours, totidem verbis, it will be found there totidem literis, which, in these cases, (you know,) is quite sufficient. Have at you, then, once more, Ω Δυσπαϱι!!! There you have it again, up to your very gizzard!

“When as the prophecied, by the prophecied—Oh, thou false prophet! by thee prophecied—5th of January approached, Herbert [Koe] and I began counting the hours. Phœbus’s horns had scarce reached their first bating place, when I detached him (not Phœbus, but Herbert) in quest of you to the fatal place, the Carian Street,—to the campos ubi Troja fuit,—from whence he brought me, alas!—(the alas! should have come earlier: pray, put it in the proper place)—the beggarly account of empty boxes! When a disappointment falls on me,—to spite it, in return for its spiting me,—I endeavour to laugh it off as well as I can. So accordingly I did, and by these presents do, by this: but, in serious and sober sadness, it was a grievous one. Ask Herbert else, when the next fatalisdies comes (the 5th of May, is it not?)—ask him, who, being the younger, should, according to the old rule, be the honester of the two—or rather, clap your own sacerdotal hand to your own sacerdotal gizzard, and ask that.

“Nor yet art thou the only slippery card, on which it has pleased the vates to exercise his prophetic talent. In a cover, franked by my old friend Phil. Metcalf, (one of Sam Johnson’s executors,) I sent to Hatton, as per order of your reverence, in usum του Φοξου. two months ago, Citizen Dumont’s letters. In all this time, Romilly has neither received nor heard of them: a fortnight, I think, or thereabouts, was the time indicated. He has sent Mercury to me express upon this single subject; and it is under the spur of the god that I write this to you. C. Fox, if Fame is to be believed, has a turn, or head as men say, for forgetting things,—at least such little things; and this is what his friend Homer made known to the world, though it has never been found out till now, (for the best prophet, I need not tell you, is nothing without a good interpreter,) in the line which beginneth, Φοξος [Editor: illegible character] εφαλην, which was what the old man in the Spectator had in view, when, shaking his own head, he cried out to his son, ‘Ah, Jack, Jack, thou hast a head, and so has a pin.’ How clear an insight must the bard have had into futurity, when the two most illustrious characters of the present age could thus be designated even by their very names! No contortions, no translations necessary:—not Ισος, but Παϱις; and in the case of a spot in the sun, Δυσπαϱις:—not Αλωπηξ, but Φοξος. The name of Φοξος, in particular, is become so familiar to him, as to have passed already, you see, into a proverb. How deplorable the hallucinations of the scholiasts and lexicographers, who have mistaken the proper name for an adjective, and imagined a physical noun to affix to it. If the case were among those in which error finds an excuse in invincibility, they might perhaps take the benefit of it,—such of them, I mean, whose respective flourishing times have been anterior to the present age,—for nothing less than a prophetic view of the subject could have set them right; and well they might plead, that the spirit of prophecy never descended upon them. But I am in your reverence’s judgment, whether in a case of prophecy, and errors thereupon assigned, invincibility be a plea pleadable.

“This puts me in mind of a system, which, like the Alliance and the Divine Legation, had a considerable run when it first came out; but which, notwithstanding the ingenuity of it, and the high reputation of the author, was never made out in such a manner as to exhibit itself clear of all objections to my weak eyes. I mean Dean Swift’s hypothesis about the derivation of the Greek from the English language: a proposition which, after all the proofs that were collected in support of it, did not appear to me to be established upon any more solid grounds, than Dr Vincent’s hypothesis about the Greek verb—‘Alexander the Great’ not being deducible from ‘All eggs under the Grate,’ or even ‘Archimedes’ from ‘Hark ye maids,’ (and so of the rest,) without considerable violence to language; not to speak of the chronological difficulties, which, to my satisfaction, were never thoroughly cleared up.

“Compare that hypothesis with—I will not say the hypothesis, for it is a matter of simple observation; I claim no merit in it—the Homeric prophecy. Look at it, you find it all broad daylight: not mere etymology, but actual orthoëpy;—and as for chronological difficulties, here, ex natura rei, they have no place.

“Dispel your fears, my friend: my inspiration has at length run itself out of breath. Should it find you incredulous, (we are neither of us intolerant,) fear not from me either excommunication or prœmunire. The worst punishment I would inflict upon you, had I Pandora’s box, with its whole contents, under my arm, would be, imprisonment from the hour of five to eleven in Queen Square Place.”

In a letter from General Sabloukoff to General Bentham, he says:—

(Translation.)

“February 5, 1804.

“I can hardly wean myself away from Dumont’s Principes, even to write to you. Your brother’s book satisfies alike the soul, the heart, and the mind. It fills the soul with peace, the heart with virtue, and dissipates the mists of the mind. I am so strange a fellow, that I must have an element of my own, and I have found it in Bentham’s writings. Russian as I am, my instinct will not let me rest; and I desire for my country the possession of those truths which the beneficent genius of Bentham has created for the whole human race.

“Russia wants laws. It is not only Alexander the First who desires to give her a Code—Russia herself demands one. We Russians have seen the growth of the French Revolution—the despotism to which it led, and from which they have lately been delivered; but we must have a Code—a Code which will preserve to government the necessary energy for governing in justice this vast country, composed of varied nations—all of them conquered—but which paralyze it for injustice too. Let Jeremy Bentham prepare it!

“I do not know him—but I say to myself, ‘If he die without having dictated a Code, he will be ungrateful to that Creator who gave him his intellectual powers.’ And then I ask, ‘May not my country possess it?’ But how? It must come from the throne to the subject, or be presented by subjects to the throne. But as the sovereign is as much interested in giving, as the people are anxious to receive it, whenever that Code shall be ready, there will be little difficulty in deciding who shall be the giver, and who the receiver. Let it only be ready. Let it be translated into Russian. All that I can do shall be done.”