i have long desired to make some protest against the attitude which the very learned take towards literary evidence. i know that the very learned chop and change. i know that they are in this country about fifty years behind the continent. i know that their devotion to the extraordinary unintelligent german methods will soon be shaken by their discovery that new methods are abroad—in both senses of the word "abroad": for new methods have been abroad, thank heaven, for a very long time.

but i also know that a mere appeal to reason will be of very little use, so i propose here to give a concrete instance, and i submit it to the judgment of the very learned.

the very learned when they desire to fix the date or the authenticity or both of a piece of literature, adopt among other postulates, these:

[pg 297]

(1) that tradition doesn't count.

(2) that common sense, one's general knowledge of the time, and all that multiplex integration which the same mind effects from a million tiny data to a general judgment, is too tiny to be worthy of their august consideration.

(3) that the title "very learned" (which gives them their authority) is tarnished by any form of general knowledge and can only be acquired by confining oneself to a narrow field in which any fool could become an absolute master in about two years.

these are their negative postulates in dealing with a document.

as to their positive methods, of one hundred insufficient tricks i choose in particular these:

(1) the establishment of the date of the document against tradition and general air, by allusion discovered within it.

(2) the conception that all unusual events recorded in it are mythical, and therefore necessarily anterior to the document.

[pg 298]

(3) the supposition that religious emotion, or indeed emotion of any kind, vitiates record.

(4) the admission of a single piece of correlative documentary evidence to destroy the reader's general judgment.

(5) the fixed dogma that most writers of the past have spent most of their time in forging.

now to test these nincompoops i will consider a contemporary document which i know a good deal about, called the path to rome. it professes to be the record of a journey by one h. belloc in the year 1901 from toul in lorraine to rome in italy. i will suppose that opus to have survived through some accident into a time which preserved few contemporary documents, but which had, through tradition and through a knowledge of surrounding circumstance, a popular idea of what the opening of the twentieth century was like, and a pathetic belief that belloc had taken this journey in the year 1901.

[pg 299]

this is how the very learned would proceed to teach the vulgar a lesson in scepticism.

"a critical examination of the document has confirmed me in the conclusion that the so-called path to rome is composed of three distinct elements, which i will call a, w, and [greek: theta]." (see my article e.h.r., september 3, 113, pp. 233 et seq. for [greek: theta]. for w, see furth in die quellen critik, 2nd semestre, 3117.)

of these three documents a is certainly much earlier than the rather loose criticism of polter in england and bergmann upon the continent decided some years ago in the monograph of the one, and the discursions which the other has incorporated in his neo-catholicism in the twenty-second century.

the english scholar advances a certain inferior limit of a.d. 2208, and a doubtful superior limit of a.d. 2236. the german is more precise and fixes the date of a in a year certainly lying between 2211 and 2217. i need not here recapitulate the well-known arguments with which this view is supported (see z.m. fs.[pg 300] (mk. 2) arch., and the very interesting article of my friend mr. gouch in the pursuits of the a.s.) i may say generally that their argument reposes upon two considerations:

(1) the centime, a coin which is mentioned several times in the book, went out of circulation before the middle of the twenty-first century, as we know from the only extant letter (undoubtedly genuine) of henri perro to the prefect of aude.

this gives them their superior limit. but it is the inferior limit which concerns us most, and here the argument reposes upon one phrase. (perkins' edition, p..) this phrase is printed in italics, and runs, "deleted by the censor."

it is advanced that we know that a censorship of books was first established in america (where, as i shall show, the path to rome was written) in the year 2208, and there is ample evidence of the fact that no such institution was in actual existence before the twenty-second century in the english-speaking countries,[pg 301] though there is mention of it elsewhere in the twenty-first, and a fragment of the twentieth appears to allude to something of the kind in russia at that time. (baker has confused the censorship of books with that of plays, and an unknown form of art called "morum"; probably a species of private recitation.)

now dr. blick has conclusively shown in his critical edition of the mass of ancient literature, commonly known as the statute book, that the use of italics is common to distinguish later interpolation.

this discovery is here of the first importance. not only does it destroy the case for the phrase, "deleted by the censor," as a proof of an inferior limit, 2208, but in this particular instance it is conclusive evidence that we have interpolation here, for it is obvious that after the establishment of a censorship the right would exist to delete a name in the text, and a contemporary editor would warn the reader in the fashion which he has, as a fact, employed.

so much for the negative argument. we[pg 302] can be certain after dr. blick's epoch-making discovery that even the year 2208 is not our inferior limit for a, but we have what is much better, conclusive evidence of a much earlier superior limit, to which i must claim the modest title of discoverer.

there is a passage in a (pp. 170-171) notoriously corrupt, in which a dramatic dialogue between three characters, the duchess, major charles and clara, is no longer readable. all attempts to reconstitute it have failed, and on that account scholars have too much tended to neglect it.

now i submit that though the passage is hopelessly corrupt its very corruption affords us a valuable indication.

the duchess, in a stage indication, is made to address "major charles." it is notorious that the term "major" applied to a certain functionary in a religious body probably affiliated to the jesuits, known to modern scholars under a title drawn from the only contemporary fragment concerning it, as "old booth's[pg 303] ramp." this society was suppressed in america in the year 2012, and the united states were the last country in which it survived.

no matter how correct, therefore, the text is in this passage, we may be certain that even the careless scribe took the contemporary existence of a "major" for granted. and we may be equally certain that even our existing version of a incorporated in the only text we possess, was not written later than the first years of the twenty-first century. we have here, therefore, a new superior limit of capital importance, but, what is even more important, we can fix with fair accuracy a new inferior limit as well.

in the preface (whose original attachment to a is undoubted) we have the title "captain monologue," p. xii (note again the word "captain," an allusion to "booth's ramp,") and in an anonymous fragment (b.m. m.s.s., 336 n., (60)), bearing the title, "club gossip," i have found the following conclusive sentence: "he used to bore us stiff, and old burton invented a brand new title for him, 'captain[pg 304] monologue,' about a year before he died, which the old chap did an hour or two after dinner on derby day."

now this phrase is decisive. we have several allusions to "dinner" (in all, eight, and a doubtful ninth, tabulated by ziethen in his corpus. ins. am.). they all refer to some great public function the exact nature of which is lost, but which undoubtedly held a great place in political life. at what intervals this function occurred we cannot tell, but the coincident allusion to derby day settles it.

the only lord derby canonized by the church died in 1960 and the promulgation of beatification (the earliest date that would permit the use of the word "day" for this saint) was issued by pope urban xv in may, 2003. it is, therefore, absolutely certain that a was written at some time between the years 2003 to 2012. nearer than that i do not profess to fix it; but i confess that the allusion (p. 226) to drinking coffee coupled with the corresponding allusion to drinking coffee in a license issued[pg 305] for a lockhart's restaurant in 2006 inclines me to that precise year as the year in which a appeared, or at any rate was written.

i think in the above i have established the date of a beyond dispute.

i have no case to bring forward of general conclusions, and i know that many scholars will find my argument, however irrefutable, disturbing, for it is universally admitted that excluding the manifestly miraculous episodes of the oracle, the ointment of epinal, the view of the alps over a hundred miles, etc., which are all of them properly referred to in w. and [greek: theta] respectively, a itself contains numerous passages too closely connected with the text to be regarded as additions, yet manifestly legendary—such as the perpetual allusions to spirits, and in particular to a spirit called "devil," the inordinate consumption of wine, the gift of tongues, etc. etc. but i submit that a whole century, especially in a time which pullulated with examples of credulity, such as the "flying men," "the telephone," "wireless [pg 306]telegraphy," etc., is ample to allow for the growth of these mythical features.

i take it, therefore, as now established, that a in its entirety is not later than 2012 and probably as early as 2006. upon w i cannot yet profess to have arrived at a decision, but i incline to put it at about forty years later, while [greek: theta] (which includes most of the doggerel and is manifestly in another style, and from another hand) is admitted to be at least a generation later than "w" itself.

in a further paper i shall discuss the much-disputed point of authorship, and i shall attempt to show that belloc, though the subject of numerous accretions, was a real historical figure, and that the author of a may even have worked upon fragments preserved by oral tradition from the actual conversation of that character.

that is how the damned fools write: and with brains of that standard germans ask me to deny my god.