THAT'S NEAR ENOUGH! BY LAMAN BLANCHARD. "And teach the rustic moralist to lie." (Not GRAY, but near enough.) How many Leanders have been drowned in the numberless little Hellesponts of life, through a blind and persevering reliance upon the excellence of the doctrine which the words here written indicate-"That's near enough!" How have the strong been borne headlong away in mid-channel, when most secure that the opposite bank was within reach;-how have the confident sunk, when just touching the shore, for want of the small final effort, the extra stroke, the determination to make sure, that seemed superfluous! "That's near enough!" is nothing less than English for rocks and quicksands, cramps and exhaustion-spasms amidst hey-day merriment, foundering in sight of port, and defeat under the very nose of victory. In spite of hourly warnings to the contrary, people will insist upon interpreting "It's near enough," into something synonymous with "All's right." In one point of view the translation is near enough. We know what "All right" too often means upon a railroad; and on the moral highways of humanity" It's near enough" frequently means the same thing-crash, smash, just as Safety has taken her seat, and Precaution seems an impertinence. The awkward and frequently fatal mistakes into which people fall by recklessly putting trust in this doctrine, are seen as well in their sayings as in their doings. Both orders of mistake may be very well exemplified in the story which the philosopher relates of the countryman and the traveller, when the waters were out and the stream was to be crossed. "Bear to the left," advised the countryman; but being afterwards told that the traveller was drowned, "Ah!” said he," he mistook my direction; I meant my left." But the left seemed near enough to the traveller, who thought it meant his. People who are always satisfied with "that's near enough," may see their own image in the person of Cinderella's too confident sister, who was quite sure, for her part, that she could get her foot into the slipper, and did-all but the heel. They rest on their oars, trusting to the tide to carry them at full sweep through the bridge, satisfied with "that will do," just as their rivals shoot by them. They bet on the horse that is beaten within a neck of the winning-post, convinced that "that's near enough." But first of their sayings. Speech is scarcely more common to mankind, than is the loose habit of not speaking precisely as the intended meaning requires the practice of misusing words, a regular system of inexactness. But this is so notorious as to amount to about nothing. The mischief is, that not a few wear their ordinary loose habits on the most solemn occasions. They cannot get within an inch of a positive fact, even upon their oaths; they rush into the witnessbox only to discover that their evidence does not bear upon the question, or that it overthrows the very point they were called to establish. If by chance they happen to have stumbled on a definite idea, their language is so gross a misfit, that dress becomes a disguise, and renders it indefinite. As for diving after truth and fishing her up from the bottom, as Hotspur would have plucked up " drowned honour," they never so much as ventured to the edge of the well to look down. A mile off is quite near enough. They can't bear people who are too particular; and they have no patience with formal fellows who are always splitting hairs, calling for names and dates, and pinning men down to their statements. Yet they are apt to be excessively positive, and have always something particularly important to communicate. They are ready to swear that they are right, in at least one particular. Say, for example, that they possess the organ of locality in strong prominence, and have testimony to give. They can say nothing about the how, or the when; these they leave to others; but as to the where, they know the very place, the precise spot, and they modestly confess that they do pretend to speak with some little accuracy and exactness upon that point. And when to the point they are brought, a million to one that their idea of locality, their sure guidance of your "unacquainted feet," (in Milton's phrase,) to the exact spot with which you wish them to be on intimate terms, merges at last in the satisfactory intelligence, "It was in that street which runs out of Seven-dials." No closer to the explana Catch them in which street, if you can. tory point can you draw or drive them. In that street they take their stand, and will die at the stake rather than stir. They insist as of old -"that's near enough." You will never teach a man of this sort his way to the temple of useful knowledge. You may apply a stick as thick as his head to his boasted organ of locality, but you will never make the bump bigger. Courts of law, and courts of justice, (for with wonderful candour it is admitted that courts are of two kinds,) daily exhibit instances of a species of evidence which "that street running out of Seven-dials" very literally exemplifies. A witness starts up to swear to the receipt of a letter, the seal of which was composed of red wax, bearing the impression of the head of George the Third. But presently you find that he has no particular reason for supposing that it was the head of George the Third, and indeed he doesn't know that it was a head of anybody; he conjectures that it was the impression of a thimble, and rather believes that the letter was sealed with a wafer, without any red wax at all. As he observes to himself, however, when told to stand down," What a toil about trifles-it was near enough!" Judges are bound to be especially guarded in their expressions. When a prisoner lately petitioned for a respite of a week, the judge told him he would make a minute of it. This incidental reference to our law courts reminds me (has the reader forgotten him?) of a famous witness of the near-enough orderan impracticable fellow, whom no counsel, though of a forty-bully power, could ever have brought to specify with any precision or accuracy. He had seen a stone flung, but he knew nothing about the size of it. He thought it did not look much like a house, and that description he conceived to be quite near enough. It was a stone of a magnitude between a pebble and one of the pyramids. He should say that it was a biggish stone-some people might think it bigger than that, and some smaller. He really believed, and wouldn't mind swearing, that it wasn't quite so huge as anything of a larger size. Still the cross-questioning counsel did not think this went near enough, and still he pressed for a closer explanation. Still, however, the evasive witness, leaving no stone unturned, avoided every comparison that could convey a definite idea of magnitude; until at length the subtle counsel, forcing him by mingled coaxing and threats to liken the stone to some one object in nature which everybody had seen, extracted an explicit declaration that " it was about the size of a lump of chalk." It must be admitted that this fairly illustrates the near-enough principle. On the stage we see it perpetually illustrated; not merely in the halfconception of character, and the careless style of execution, which the actor evidently thinks "will do"-intending to atone for all fallings off by a flash of effect here and there, and a point made in the expected place -but even in the less difficult particular of accuracy in rendering the text. The Cassio whom we lately saw deemed himself, beyond all doubt, quite near enough, when in reply to the Moor's admission of having contrived against his life, "Dear general, I never gave you cause," he addressed the astonished Othello in a free translation of the line "Dear general, you never had the least occasion whatever." The sporting gentleman, who made his appearance upon the stage in the character of Hamlet, (having very handsomely backed himself to play the part in eighteen minutes less than Mr. Young,) was doubtless a victim to a whimsical and unlucky association of ideas, when he inadvertently introduced a new reading into the famous soliloquy -"Tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished. To die-to sleep; To sleep!-perchance to dream! Ay, that's coming to the scratch; All misquoters have not the same excuse; and, in misquotation, of all things, the principle under discussion is continually seen in its full glory. Witness the well-known specimen of ingenious inaccuracy which a popular member of the Lower House once conceived to be quite near enough to the text of Shakspeare, when he delivered a pathetic admonition to the listening minister opposite:-"I address myself to the right honourable gentleman with a countenance more in regret than irritation,' I tell him that his 'leaping ambition' will be of no avail; and I warn him, in the language of the immortal bard whom I have just quoted, "Lay not that flattering ointment to your breast!'" If, in courts of law, on the stage, and in the senate, this loose habit prevails, how is it to be expected that people will cast it off in the ordinary intercourse of life, during which, when a passage from the poets turns up, it passes from mouth to mouth, taking a new turn upon every repetition, as a beggar's coat takes patches, until the last turn comes, which is inside out. Thus one line in its time plays many parts, and becomes as flexible of feature as that which Betterton and the THAT'S NEAR ENOUGH. rest of the Elysian debaters are so amusingly discussing at this very hour in the Journey from this World to the Next. Volumes might easily be filled with accredited jokes at the expense of translators, French, Dutch, and Otaheitan, who may often have blundered from the sublime to the ridiculous, and done nothing very wonderful after all; but what an appendix would be wanted for our home-manglers and mutilators, who, like sage Mrs. Malaprop, remember the front of Job and the eye like March, together with something about kissing on a hill,-all which they think quite near enough. But respectable prosy people will tell us that it is no crime to misquote a poet. No; but it is, at the same time, a suspicious circumstance. If we find a man adopting this or that form of expression instead of the exact one, when upon his oath, we cannot expect him to be scrupulously accurate in his ordinary communications, whether important or not; and, by the same rule, when people fail to note, or are careless about repeating, the close, guarded, measured, and felicitous language of poetry, we should in vain look for correctness in their reports of the looser and more informal and rambling phraseology of prose. And so it is. Not only is it impossible, as we all experience, to obtain from two persons the same account of a transaction with which both are equally well acquainted, having seen it from a like point of view; but we cannot even find a man reporting it twice in the same The whole gist of the argument, the point of the story, may terms. absolutely depend on a close adherence to one set form of wordsthe employment of one particular phrase; yet will he vary it. When a deviation from the right line, a little extra colour or emphasis will spoil all, his notion of "that's near enough" prevails, and everything goes When Goldsmith, according to the old anecdote, told the wrong. waiter to take the peas to Hammersmith, he little thought how very Turn'em-green"-he imagined he was quite near far he was from " enough. The quickest-witted persons are sometimes slow to perceive the importance of nice distinctions, and a rigid adherence to the text. There is a licence granted in all cases of story-telling, ample enough for every legitimate vagary of the imagination, and each repeater of the tale in succession is allowed to add one black crow to it, and no more ; but with matters of fact no such liberty and indulgence should be claimed or granted. If an idle word be dropped, the reporter must not be permitted to make two of it; if a little hot breath escape, its historian cannot be allowed to fan it into a flame. It is wonderful how much confusion and mischief-nay, how much sin and wretchedness, the world owes to the free translations and speculative paraphrases of credible witnesses-witnesses of undoubted veracity, who yet think a little more than the truth, or a little less, as it may happen, quite near enough. "That's near enough" is often a very long way off. When a man of the average class, however well meaning, comes to you to report words uttered in his presence, and seriously affecting your interests, write the words down, and set a friend to ask him in the evening what the words were. You will then, it is more than probable, get a second version of them. Next morning, through the medium of another communicant, you will obtain a third; and, in the course of four-and twenty hours, may be in possession of half a dozen different editions, although it be a case in which a verbatim report, the ipsissima verba, were imperatively required. Thus you will discover, that your informant, though veracious and well-intentioned, has a memory so little retentive, and an observation so liable to err, that you cannot attach any great value to his wavering reports and indistinct impressions. "Near enough" does not always reach half-way; and, if the captain who had engaged to carry you safely into port, were to bid you disembark in the middle of the Atlantic ocean, telling you at the same time that "it was near enough," he would but imitate a practice that prevails extensively on shore. Run any risk rather than trust your reputation, or your life, or anything that may be dear to you, in the keeping of one of these near enough people. If you sit to them for your portrait, they will work carefully at the likeness for some time, and then, dashing a most abominable obliquity into one of the eyes, they will tell you it is quite near enough. If they owe you guineas, they will pay you pounds-light sovereigns, and tell you it is near enough. Commission them to buy you a choice edition of an author, in twelve volumes; they will bid for a broken set, send you home eleven out of the dozen, and consider it to be near enough. Rich as Croesus though they be, if you ask them for champagne they hand you gooseberry-and here perhaps you will feel disposed to admit that they are near enough." They remember to have heard, only the day before, something very greatly to your advantage, but what it was, or where said, they cannot recollect-however, that's near enough. If they catch you at cards two nights running, they report that you play every evening regularly throughout the year -high; which rumour, though not precisely truth, they are pleased to think near enough. Were they to hear that your grandfather had made a fortune by selling figs, they would go about telling everybody that you never had a grandfather-and people would think it near enough. Tell them that you had seen Mrs. at the opera, quite plain-and they will report to Mrs. that you said you had seen her looking quite plain at the opera; a version of your remark which they of course pronounce to be near enough. They keep half a score of famished people waiting for dinner, and, arriving three quarters of an hour after time, call it near enough. There is no blunder or barbarism too gross for them to perpetrate under this plea; they care not how wide of the mark they may be, while they can raise up this excuse; they would deem themselves near enough in protesting that Jonah swallowed a whale, retaining it on his stomach for three days. When they have settled, in their felicitous way of reckoning, that two and two are five, they esteem the account to be quite near enough. I may exaggerate the danger to be apprehended from this fraternity; but, for my part, I always feel, if one of them happen to be within hearing, that he is rather too near-when he is outside the door, he is quite near enough. [Not 1st JULY-but near enough. |