So the men of Hottentottenville, they passed a little law, Which they called the Hotta-Shotta-Shootum Act, Which fixed it so the postman was a sort of Grand Bashaw, Who determined what was false and what was fact. And the postman sentenced Tillypoo, and wouldn't hear his wails, But gave him twenty years apiece in all the local jails, And said he couldn't vote no more, and barred him from the mails, And expressed the hope that this would teach him tact.
Well, the last I heard of Tilly he was planning not to think, And he'd tied a piece of string around his tongue, And he never went within a mile of either pen or ink, And he always stood when _any_ song was sung. And maybe you are thinking that his fate was rather tough, But what I say is, not a bit, they didn't do enough. When anybody differs with you, dammit, treat 'em rough, Why, they ought to be bub-boiled alive and hung!
It is not only every country that has its own language. It is each generation. The books and family letters of our grandfathers are not quite in our dialect. And so of the books of their grandfathers, and the letters they wrote. These dialects are not so different from ours that we can't make them out: they sound a little queer, that is all. Just as our own way of talking and writing (and thinking) will seem so quaint to our descendants that they'll put us away on the shelves.
A few books are written in a tongue that all times understand.
A few of us are linguists and have learned to enjoy the books of all ages.
For the rest, agèd books need translation into the speech of the day.
The poets of each generation seldom sing a new song. They turn to themes men always have loved, and sing them in the mode of their times. Each new tribe of artists perpetually repaints the same pictures. The story-men tell the same stories. They remain fresh and young.
The disguise is new sometimes, but never the story behind it. A few generations ago, when some one wrote Humpty-Dumpty, he was merely retelling an old story for the men of his era, one of the oldest of stories, the first part of Genesis.
It is a condensed account--it leaves out the serpent and Eve and the apple. Some editor blue-penciled these parts, perhaps, as fanciful little digressions. "Stick to the main theme," said the editor, "don't go wandering off into frills. Your story is about the fall of Adam. Get on. Make him fall."