Principles of the Kantesian, or transcendental philosophy. By Thomas Wirgman.[590] London, 1824, 8vo.
Mr. Wirgman's mind was somewhat attuned to psychology; but he was cracky and vagarious. He had been a fashionable jeweler in St. James's Street, no doubt the son or grandson of Wirgman at "the well-known toy-shop in {259} St. James's Street," where Sam Johnson smartened himself with silver buckles. (Boswell, _aet._ 69). He would not have the ridiculous large ones in fashion; and he would give no more than a guinea a pair; such, says Boswell, in Italics, were the _principles_ of the business: and I think this may be the first place in which the philosophical word was brought down from heaven to mix with men. However this may be, _my_ Wirgman sold snuff-boxes, among other things, and fifty years ago a fashionable snuff-boxer would be under inducement, if not positively obliged, to have a stock with very objectionable pictures. So it happened that Wirgman--by reason of a trifle too much candor--came under the notice of the _Suppression_ Society, and ran considerable risk. Mr. Brougham was his counsel; and managed to get him acquitted. Years and years after this, when Mr. Brougham was deep in the formation of the London University (now University College), Mr. Wirgman called on him. "What now?" said Mr. B. with his most sarcastic look--a very perfect thing of its kind--"you're in a scrape again, I suppose!" "No! indeed!" said W., "my present object is to ask your interest for the chair of Moral Philosophy in the new University!" He had taken up Kant!
Mr. Wirgman, an itinerant paradoxer, called on me in 1831: he came to convert me. "I assure you," said he, "I am nothing but an old brute of a jeweler;" and his eye and manner were of the extreme of jocosity, as good in their way, as the satire of his former counsel. I mention him as one of that class who go away quite satisfied that they have wrought conviction. "Now," said he, "I'll make it clear to you! Suppose a number of gold-fishes in a glass bowl,--you understand? Well! I come with my cigar and go puff, puff, puff, over the bowl, until there is a little cloud of smoke: now, tell me, what will the gold-fishes say to that?" "I should imagine," said I, "That they would not know what to make of it." "By Jove! you're a Kantian;" said he, and with this and the like, he left me, vowing that {260} it was delightful to talk to so intelligent a person. The greatest compliment Wirgman ever received was from James Mill, who used to say he did not _understand_ Kant. That such a man as Mill should think this worth saying is a feather in the cap of the jocose jeweler.
Some of my readers will stare at my supposing that Boswell may have been the first down-bringer of the word _principles_ into common life; the best answer will be a prior instance of the word as true vernacular; it has never happened to me to notice one. Many words have very common uses which are not old. Take the following from Nichols (_Anecd._ ix. 263): "Lord Thurlow presents his best respects to Mr. and Mrs. Thicknesse, and assures them that he knows of no cause to complain of any part of Mr. Thicknesse's carriage; least of all the circumstance of sending the head to Ormond Street." Surely Mr. T. had lent Lord T. a satisfactory carriage with a movable head, and the above is a polite answer to inquiries. Not a bit of it! _carriage_ is here _conduct_, and the _head_ is a _bust_. The vehicles of the rich, at the time, were coaches, chariots, chaises, etc., never carriages, which were rather _carts_. Gibbon has the word for baggage-wagons. In Jane Austen's novels the word carriage is established.
