The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 5Poe, Edgar Allan
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The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 5
Poe, Edgar Allan
American fiction -- 19th century; American poetry; Fantasy fiction; Horror tales, American
Mr. Goodfellow went on for some half hour longer in this strain, very much
to the credit both of his head and of his heart; but your warm-hearted
people are seldom apposite in their observations—they run into all
sorts of blunders, contre-temps and mal apropos-isms, in the
hot-headedness of their zeal to serve a friend—thus, often with the
kindest intentions in the world, doing infinitely more to prejudice his
cause than to advance it.
So, in the present instance, it turned out with all the eloquence of “Old
Charley”; for, although he laboured earnestly in behalf of the suspected,
yet it so happened, somehow or other, that every syllable he uttered of
which the direct but unwitting tendency was not to exalt the speaker in
the good opinion of his audience, had the effect to deepen the suspicion
already attached to the individual whose cause he pleaded, and to arouse
against him the fury of the mob.
One of the most unaccountable errors committed by the orator was his
allusion to the suspected as “the heir of the worthy old gentleman Mr.
Shuttleworthy.” The people had really never thought of this before. They
had only remembered certain threats of disinheritance uttered a year or
two previously by the uncle (who had no living relative except the
nephew), and they had, therefore, always looked upon this disinheritance
as a matter that was settled—so single-minded a race of beings were
the Rattleburghers; but the remark of “Old Charley” brought them at once
to a consideration of this point, and thus gave them to see the
possibility of the threats having been nothing more than a threat. And
straightway hereupon, arose the natural question of cui bono?—a
question that tended even more than the waistcoat to fasten the terrible
crime upon the young man. And here, lest I may be misunderstood, permit me
to digress for one moment merely to observe that the exceedingly brief and
simple Latin phrase which I have employed, is invariably mistranslated and
misconceived. “Cui bono?” in all the crack novels and elsewhere,—in
those of Mrs. Gore, for example, (the author of “Cecil,”) a lady who
quotes all tongues from the Chaldaean to Chickasaw, and is helped to her
learning, “as needed,” upon a systematic plan, by Mr. Beckford,—in
all the crack novels, I say, from those of Bulwer and Dickens to those of
Bulwer and Dickens to those of Turnapenny and Ainsworth, the two little
Latin words cui bono are rendered “to what purpose?” or, (as if quo bono,)
“to what good.” Their true meaning, nevertheless, is “for whose
advantage.” Cui, to whom; bono, is it for a benefit. It is a purely legal
phrase, and applicable precisely in cases such as we have now under
consideration, where the probability of the doer of a deed hinges upon the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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