Discovering Brewer enriched my childhood I would wander through his pages and learn things fascinating enough that it didn't matter how useless the knowledge might be. It's still in print, and I urge you to get yourself a copy if you can- it's easily found second-hand. Even though he was sixty by the time the book was published, he went on to produce a revised edition in 1891 at the age of seventy-four. Many of the questions he had considered were about mysterious allusions in his reading what did this phrase mean? or what story was referred to there? He determined to answer as many as possible, in alphabetical order.
He returned to England at the age of forty-six, to begin his greatest work: Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. Because the book also brought him into the public eye, he began to receive a great deal of correspondence about questions the book had raised, which nourished his files still further. This sold so well that it enabled him to leave Norwich and travel around Europe, investigating and learning.
GENTLE READER PHRASE MANUAL
In his mid-twenties, he collected many of these questions together into a popular science manual entitled A Guide to the Scientific Knowledge of Things Familiar. You may imagine that paper files formed a large part of his life, and also a large part of his house.
When he found the answer, he would write it on the same piece of paper, then file it. As he read, and he read a great deal, he would write down every question that crossed his mind. Can you imagine going out to get fish and chips with Carl Linnaeus, for example? You'd be chatting about something, and all of a sudden you'd hear him gasp "Oh, Veronica," so you'd look round and he'd be on his hands and knees saying, "My goodness, a hitherto undiscovered variety of speedwell!" And of course it's rather easier to imagine what Johnson was like to meet socially, since that's how so many of his biographers observed him.Īnother such person is a Baptist minister named Ebenezer Cobham Brewer (1810-1897), the owner of an inquisitive mind, a formidable beard, and one of the strongest things in the world: a good habit. Sometimes, when I read about people from the past, I wonder what it was like to have a conversation with them. I'll see you in the Eagle then, and stand you beer and pies. That I may lie for evermore and watch the Cambridge skies. Then draw a splendid hatchment up, proclaiming my decease.Īnd cast me where the lamp-post towers over Parker's Piece ( “Behold, that dreamer cometh” should be given as the text), Say masses for my soul (for I shall need them, heaven knows),Īnd ring a muffled quarter-peal, and preach a sermon next
I want some decent hymns, some "Love Divine"s, and "Guide me, O"s. I don't intend to die, for I have much to finish first.īut if you plan my funeral, if worst should come to worst, I may start adding in some extra days in order to make up the time. So I haven't been in a fit state to write this for a week or so, which is frustrating because I had a lot of interesting articles planned. It was rather worse than it should have been, because I hadn't registered with a new doctor up here yet, and then quite a lot of paper had to fly around giving various people permission to do various things.
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