JOHN MURRAY III

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 35, 11 February 1933, Page 17

JOHN MURRAY 111

A PUBLISHEE'S MIENDS

"NAVIGATION" AND

POLITICS-

(•By^'Ajax.") ,

At John,^Murray's! Kecords of a y literary ■■ Circle, 1843-1892. ;■ ByGeorge Pastbn." Preface by Lord : Ernie. London: John Murray, Pp." xyi and 320. Published price, 15s n,|t-, -.i. .'. .'!■:> ■ ■ [sth Notice.]:' -^ v<;?/;V Hf' is a interesting to learn 'v f roni' "George"^astcji''''that in/ 1857'John1 Mtiiia.^'ljj:,^ witli whom -slie" is iprincifpalljTivCoicgrned, was in negotiation; •with Dr. Furnivall and the Philological Society for the publication of "a new English dictionary;" .As-it is 'from the resplntion passed by the soeie^y'on :7th Ja^uat^an^e^f opjming year .thafc;the book ; unfortunately ' still callsitself "A ■;New;^English Dictionary," but is newrbetter known as- the.Oxford Englisli.ipj.ctionary, is considered, .''to date, ,thfsse\"negotiations, may seem to' hayo. ;been-. ( a little '"previous.'?' The project^ haa, howeverj been' -nnaer dis:cussiojifr.in -oaeilform.. ot'. another^ fdr : seTeraj!;nioj!!ths, and it was natural that' the soeiety;;«houldj liko'^tp have at loast a general idea of the cost. : Murray was at first willing to take the whole;/'risque?'■ upon, himself and to pay the society half the profits, in pursifarice of what seems to have been a normal''arrangement.

But -when" he found that the prospectus was drawn up on such extravagant lines that the book would cost £10,000 to produce and could not be -sold under' '10 guineas', a-copy,,he took: fright, and Bug*, gested .that, the work should- be -carried• out on more practical lines—as a "tool'for the learned:. and ~ the 1 "unlearned1. 'Hb thought that all obsolete words should be, omitted, and cautioned- the. editors against excluding scientific words and those .now.-;bf common occurrence in conversation r.and -newspapers." '

If Murray had known, that, instead of £10,000, the book was to cost the. Oxford University,.-Press £300,000, and that instead of 10 guineas the price ■would be 50 guineas,'- he would'have been, scared' stiffer still. ' -■-.".■•:■■'..'■

ciples" to rexelude obsolete words; but ' "It was, of course, impossible: for a dictionary ; based ' • on. historical prinMurray was ;better advised when he arguedYagairist the exclusion of scientific and •.colloquial terms.

.. I-doubt jiiot, he wrote, that you-have your eye ; on newly invented words—the product , of. modern industry—such as Buffers, Sleepers, Navvy, to Shunt, etc. 'ATI these words bear on their faces: the impress"of the railway era,:and for' iiqne at them is the Oxford Dictionary able to supply a.quotation earlier than 1835t—?the-: ye.ar.. in ' .which Murr'ay's "Quarterly KevieW," as summarised' byj.'George Paston," hoped tnat.sarliametit rwould limit the speed «f trains--to Bor 9 miles 'an hour, and Postpone all-thoughts of passenger-traffic until the steam engines had beetf" perfected and--were not likely to murder the' public. •■.■•-■■ - ■:■-.■.

s "The;iriost interesting word in MiirW's list is" navvy.' > Its resemblance W "navyM 1S patentto everybody, but how ; many have taken the trouble to inquire what bearing this resemblance has^on. the .meaning? Not I for one until John Mnrray and "George Paston" forced it on. me. One of the; meanißgs given to "navigation" in the .Oxford-Dictionary, but now only contfpif?o, dialect, j s "a canal or other .axtifloial waterway." From this use ;a, secondary meaning of "navigator" ■j^ derived:—- •■.,-..

_;A employed in the work of eicaxhtiug acd constructing a canal-;or id latier use, in any similar kind of earth;work. Now. usually contracted to /fNavVy. '

'In'th'e northern dialects the same abbreviation' is also used to represent ';navigation", in the. sense of canal. ,sC[he literary use of "navvy" for labourer-is just a hundred years old, tilo first quotation being from De $uineey; in 1832-34. ■

ilt, is in her' account of Disraeli's Budget of December, 1852, "generally •Tegarded.as. one of the worst in the ;history of^Budgets," that '^George Paston" | quotes one of the words in evidently borrowing it from •iis speee^ The passage is worth quoting for;its"general interest.

; ;There were,-she says, 200,000 navigators employed on the railways, .and as each navigator sspent his wages (often 15s "a day) on meat and beer, the farmers' stumbles Tvere less strident than usual, cprtini'that' particular Dizzy left well •lone. -But he proposed to halve the malfctax, double the house-tax, and catch, the

little people,-with £50 or £100 a year in the net of the income-tax. . '

_ The conclusion, of the debate as told by "George .Paston',' is remarkableboth because it describes one of the most memorable combats between as fine a pair of gladiators as ever crossed swords in the British arena, and because, it depends, at any rate for some essentials, upon the record of a schoolboy. At the age of fourteen Sir George Otto. Trevelyan, was taken to the House of Commons by his father to hear the debate, and though Disraeli did not sit down, according to one account, till 1 a.m., or according to another ti11.3 a.m., and Gladstone, who followed, was always a long speaker, and had a speech |of four or five hours to reply to, it was no small feat-for a boy of that age to jsit the debate!out. But the boy's.feat was somethings more than one of phyjSical endurance, for he kept' his I faculties about him, and proved them to have been worth keeping by -writing an; excellent description of the scene. Though I have ! not read his ■ description, 1 call it exicellent because both "George Paston" and Mr. Buckle, Disraeli's biographer, acknowledge their obligations to it. It is unfortunate .that they also agree in omitting to say where the full text can be seen.

The account which "George Paston" bases upon that.of young Trevelyan is as follows:—

In defence of his Budget, after it had been attacked in Committee, he (Disraeli) spoke foci four '-hours,', and his speech has been described 'as such an inimitable masterpiece, Wazing with outbursts of rhetoric and all alive with an inexhaustible profusion of*epigrams and sarcasms, that; when he. sat down at 3 a.m. a sigh of regret went up from his audience, But then Gladstone, bounded on to the floor and plunged straight into the heart of an. oration which' riddled the Budget and doubled his influence in. the House and his popularity in the country. - The speech killed the'Government1 and ruined Dizzy's reputation as a financier.