(Vol. viii., pp. 198. 250.)
I greatly regret that there should be anything in the matter or manner of
my Query on this subject to induce MR. DE MORGAN to reply to it more as if
repelling an offence, than assisting in the investigation of an interesting
question on a subject with which he is supposed to be especially
conversant. I can assure him that I had no other object in writing _ninth_
numerically instead of literally, or in omitting the words he has restored
in brackets, or in italicising two words to which I wished my question more
particularly to refer, than that of economising space and avoiding needless
repetition; and in the use of the word "usage" rather than "law," of which
he also complains, I was perhaps unduly influenced by the title of his own
treatise, from which I was quoting. But however I may have erred from exact
quotation, it is manifest I did not misunderstand the sense of the passage,
since MR. DE MORGAN now repeats its substance in these words,--
"I cannot make out that the law ever recognised a day of twenty-four
hours, beginning at any hour except midnight."
This is clearly at direct issue with Ben Jonson, whose introduced phrases,
"pleaded nonage," "wardship," "pupillage," &c., seem to smack too much of
legal technology to countenance the supposition of poetic license.
But had I not accidentally met with an interesting confirmation of Ben
Jonson's law of usage, or usage of law, I should not have put forth my
Query at all, nor presumed to address it to PROFESSOR DE MORGAN; my
principal reason for so doing being that the interest attaching to
discovered evidence of a forgotten usage in legal reckoning, must of course
be increased tenfold if it should appear to have been unknown to a
gentleman of such deep and acknowledged research into that and kindred
subjects.
In a black-letter octavo entitled _A Concordancie of Yeares_, published in
and for the year 1615, and therefore about the very time when Ben Jonson
was writing, I find the following in chap. xiii.:
"The day is of two sorts, natural and artificiall: the natural day is
the space of 24 hours, in which time the sunne is carried by the first
Mover, from the east into the west, and so round about the world into
the east againe."
"The artificiall day continues from sunne-rising to sunne-setting: and
the artificiall night is from the sunne's setting to his rising. And
you must note that this natural day, according to divers, hath divers
beginnings: As the Romanes count it from mid-night to mid-night,
because at that time our Lorde was borne, being Sunday; and so do we
account it for fasting dayes. The Arabians begin their day at noone,
and end at noone the next day; for because they say the sunne was made
in the meridian; and so do all astronomers account the day, because it
alwayes falleth at one certaine time. The Umbrians, the Tuscans, the
Jewes, the Athenians, Italians, and Egyptians, do begin their day at
sunne-set, and so do we celebrate festivall dayes. The Babylonians,
Persians, and Bohemians begin their day at sunne-rising, holding till
sunne-setting; _and so do our lawyers count it in England_."
Here, at least, there can be no supposition of dramatic fiction; the book
from which I have made this extract was written by Arthur Hopton, a
distinguished mathematician, a scholar of Oxford, a student in the Temple;
and the volume itself is dedicated to "The Right Honourable Sir Edward
Coke, Knight, Lord Chiefe Justice of England," &c.