A new theory of the tides: in which the errors of the usual theory are
demonstrated; and proof shewn that the full moon is not the cause of a
concomitant spring tide, but actually the cause of the neaps.... By
Comm^r. Debenham,[806] R.N. London, 1846, 8vo.
The author replied to a criticism in the _Athenaeum_, and I remember how, in
a very few words, he showed that he had read nothing on the subject. The
reviewer spoke of the forces of the planets (i.e., the Sun and Moon) on the
ocean, on which the author remarks, "But N.B. the Sun is no planet, Mr.
Critic." Had he read any of the actual investigations on the usual theory,
he would have known that to this day the sun and moon continue to be called
_planets_--though the phrase is disappearing--in speaking of the tides; the
sense, of course, being the old one, wandering bodies.
A large class of the paradoxers, when they meet with something which taken
in their sense is absurd, do not take the trouble to find out the intended
meaning, but walk off with the words laden with their own first
construction. Such men are hardly fit to walk the streets without an
interpreter. I was startled for a moment, at the time when a recent
happy--and more recently happier--marriage occupied the public thoughts, by
seeing in a haberdasher's window, in staring large letters, an unpunctuated
sentence which read itself to me as "Princess Alexandra! collar and cuff!"
It immediately occurred to me that had I been any one of some scores of my
paradoxers, I should, no doubt, have proceeded to raise the mob against the
unscrupulous person who dared to hint to a young bride such maleficent--or
at least immellificent--conduct towards her new lord. But, as it was,
certain material contexts in the shop window suggested a less {394} savage
explanation. A paradoxer should not stop at reading the advertisements of
Newton or Laplace; he should learn to look at the stock of goods.
I think I must have an eye for double readings, when presented: though I
never guess riddles. On the day on which I first walked into the _Panizzi_
reading room[807]--as it ought to be called--at the Museum, I began my
circuit of the wall-shelves at the ladies' end: and perfectly coincided in
the propriety of the Bibles and theological works being placed there. But
the very first book I looked on the back of had, in flaming gold letters,
the following inscription--"Blast the Antinomians!"[808] If a line had been
drawn below the first word, Dr. Blast's history of the Antinomians would
not have been so fearfully misinterpreted. It seems that neither the binder
nor the arranger of the room had caught my reading. The book was removed
before the catalogue of books of reference was printed.