I only treat misquotation as an _offence_ in the old sense of the word; and
courteously, but most positively, I deny the right of any one who quotes to
omit, or to alter emphasis, without stating what he has done. That A. E. B.
did misunderstand me, I was justified in inferring from his implication (p.
198. col. 2) that I made the day begin "a minute after midnight."
Arthur Hopton, whom A. E. B. quotes against me (but the quotation is from
chapter xiv., not xiii.), is wrong in his law. The lawyers, from Coke down
to our own time, give both days, the natural and artificial, as legal days.
See Coke Littleton (Index, _Day_), the current commentators on Blackstone,
and the usual law dictionaries.
Nevertheless, this discussion will serve the purpose. No one denies that
the day of majority now begins at midnight: no one pretends to prove, by
evidence of decisions, or opinion of writers on law, that it began
otherwise in 1600. How then did Ben Jonson make it begin, as clearly
A. E. B. shows he does, at six o'clock (meaning probably a certain
sunrise)? Hopton throws out the natural day altogether in a work on
chronology, and lays down the artificial day as the only one known to
lawyers: it is not wonderful that Jonson should have fallen into the same
mistake.