_fode_, _loke_, _coke_, _roke_, etc., for
_foot_, etc. And _above_ rhymes in Chaucer to _remove_. Suspecting that the
broader sounds are the older, we may surmise that _remove_ and _food_ have
retained their old sounds, and that _cook_, once _coke_, would have rhymed
to our _Luke_, the vowel being brought a little nearer, perhaps, to the _o_
in our present _coke_, the fuel, probably so called as used by cooks. If
this be so, the Chief Justice _Cook_[614] of our lawyers, and the _Coke_
(pronounced like the fuel) of the greater part of the world, are equally
wrong. The lawyer has no right whatever to fasten his pronunciation upon
us: even leaving aside the general custom, he cannot prove himself right,
and is probably wrong. Those who {332} know the village of Rokeby
(pronounced Rookby) despise the world for not knowing how to name Walter
Scott's poem: that same world never asked a question about the matter, and
the reception of the parody of _Jokeby_, which soon appeared, was a
sufficient indication of their notion. Those who would fasten the hodiernal
sound upon us may be reminded that the question is, not what they call it
now, but what it was called in Cromwell's time. Throw away general usage as
a lawgiver, and this is the point which emerges. Probably _R[=u]ke-by_
would be right, with a little turning of the Italian [=u] towards [=o] of
modern English.

[Some of the above is from an old review. I do not always notice such
insertions: I take nothing but my own writings. A friend once said to me,
"Ah! you got that out of the _Athenaeum_!" "Excuse me," said I. "the
_Athenaeum_ got that out of me!"]

APOLOGIES TO CLUVIER.

It is part of my function to do justice to any cyclometers whose methods
have been wrongly described by any orthodox sneerers (myself included). In
this character I must notice _Dethlevus Cluverius_,[615] as the Leipzig
Acts call him (probably Dethleu Cluvier), grandson of the celebrated
geographer, Philip Cluvier. The grandson was a Fellow of the Royal Society,
elected on the same day as Halley,[616] November 30, 1678: I suppose he
lived in England. This {333} man is quizzed in the Leipzig Acts for 1686;
and, if Montucla insinuate rightly, by Leibnitz, who is further suspected
of wanting to embroil Cluvier with his own opponent Nieuwentiit,[617] on
the matter of infinitesimals. So far good: I have nothing against Leibnitz,
who though he was ironical, told us what he laughed at. But Montucla has