Wilkins showed him into a servant’s room where a writing desk had been set up, and papers and books mounded up with as little concern for order as the bees had shown in building their honeycomb. Wilkins moved a lot of air, and so leaves of paper flew off of stacks as he passed through the room. Daniel picked one up and read it: “Mule fern, panic-grass, hartstongue, adderstongue, moonwort, sea novelwort, wrack, Job’s-tears, broomrope, toothwort, scurvy-grass, sowbread, golden saxifrage, lily of the valley, bastard madder, stinking ground-pine, endive, dandelion, sowthistle, Spanish picktooth, purple loose-strife, bitter vetch.”
Wilkins was nodding impatiently. “The capsulate herbs, not campanulate, and the bacciferous sempervirent shrubs,” he said. “Somehow it must have gotten mixed up with the glandiferous and the nuciferous trees.”
“So, the Philosophical Language is some sort of botanical-”
“Look at me, I’m shuddering. Shuddering at the thought. Botany! Please, Daniel, try to collect your wits. In this stack we have all of the animals, from the belly-worm to the tyger. Here, the terms of Euclidean geometry, relating to time, space, and juxtaposition. There, a classification of diseases: pustules, boils, wens, and scabs on up to splenetic hypochondriacal vapours, iliac passion, and suffocation.”
“Is suffocation a disease?”
“Excellent question-get to work and answer it!” Wilkins thundered.
Daniel, meanwhile, had rescued another sheet from the floor: “Yard, Johnson, dick…”
“Synonyms for ‘penis,’ “ Wilkins said impatiently.
“Rogue, mendicant, shake-rag…”
“Synonyms for ‘beggar.’ In the Philosophical Language there will only be one word for penises, one for beggars. Quick, Daniel, is there a distinction between groaning and grumbling?”
“I should say so, but-”
“On the other hand-may we lump genuflection together with curtseying, and give them one name?”
“I-I cannot say, Doctor!”
“Then, I say, there is work to be done! At the moment, I am bogged down in an endless digression on the Ark.”
“Of the Covenant? Or-”
“The other one.”
“How does that enter into the Philosophical Language?”
“Obviously the P.L. must contain one and only one word for every type of animal. Each animal’s word must reflect its classification-that is, the words for perch and bream should be noticeably similar, as should the words for robin and thrush. But bird-words should be quite different from fish-words.”
“It strikes me as, er, ambitious…”
“Half of Oxford is sending me tedious lists. My- our-task is to organize them-to draw up a table of every type of bird and beast in the world. I have entabulated the animals troublesome to other animals-the louse, the flea. Those designed for further transmutation-the caterpillar, the maggot. One-horned sheathed winged insects. Testaceous turbinated exanguious animals-and before you ask, I have subdivided them into those with, and without, spiral convolutions. Squamous river fish, phytivorous birds of long wings, rapacious beasts of the cat-kind-anyway, as I drew up all of these lists and tables, it occurred to me that (going back to Genesis, sixth chapter, verses fifteen through twenty-two) Noah must have found a way to fit all of these creatures into one gopher-wood tub three hundred cubits long! I became concerned that certain Continental savants, of an atheistical bent, might misuse my list to suggest that the events related in Genesis could not have happened-”
“One could also imagine certain Jesuits turning it against you-holding it up as proof that you harbored atheistical notions of your own, Dr. Wilkins.”
“Just so! Daniel! Which makes it imperative that I include, in a separate chapter, a complete plan of Noah’s Ark-demonstrating not only where each of the beasts was berthed, but also the fodder for the herbivorous beasts, and live cattle for the carnivorous ones, and more fodder yet to keep the cattle alive, long enough to be eaten by the carnivores-where, I say, ’twas all stowed.”
“Fresh water must have been wanted, too,” Daniel reflected.
Wilkins-who tended to draw closer and closer to people when he was talking to them, until they had to edge backwards-grabbed a sheaf of paper off a stack and bopped Daniel on the head with it. “Tend to your Bible, foolish young man! It rained the entire time!”
“Of course, of course-they could’ve drunk rainwater,” Daniel said, profoundly mortified.
“I have had to take some liberties with the definition of ‘cubit,’ “ Wilkins said, as if betraying a secret, “but I think he could have done it with eighteen hundred and twenty-five sheep. To feed the carnivores, I mean.”
“The sheep must’ve taken up a whole deck!?”
“It’s not the space they take up, it’s all the manure, and the labor of throwing it overboard,” Wilkins said. “At any rate-as you can well imagine-this Ark business has stopped all progress cold on the P.L. front. I need you to get on with the Terms of Abuse.”
“Sir!”
“Have you felt, Daniel, a certain annoyance, when one of your semi-educated Londoners speaks of ‘a vile rascal’ or ‘a miserable caitiff’ or ‘crafty knave,’ ‘idle truant,’ or ‘flattering parasite’?”
“Depends upon who is calling whom what…”
“No, no, no! Let’s try an easy one: ‘fornicating whore.’ “
“It is redundant. Hence, annoying to the cultivated listener.”
“ ‘Senseless fop.’ “
“Again, redundant-as are ‘flattering parasite’ and the others.”
“So, clearly, in the Philosophical Language, we needn’t have separate adjectives and nouns in such cases.”
“How about ‘filthy sloven?”
“Excellent! Write it down, Daniel!”
“ ‘Licentious blade’… ‘facetious wag’… ‘perfidious traitor’…” As Daniel continued in this vein, Wilkins bustled over to the writing-desk, withdrew a quill from an inkwell, shook off redundant ink, and then came over to Daniel; wrapped his fingers around the pen; and guided him over to the desk.
And so to work. Daniel exhausted the Terms of Abuse in a few short hours, then moved on to Virtues (intellectual, moral, and homiletical), Colors, Sounds, Tastes and Smells, Professions, Operations (viz. carpentry, sewing, alchemy), and so on. Days began passing. Wilkins became fretful if Daniel, or anyone, worked too hard, and so there were frequent “seminars” and “symposia” in the kitchen-they used honey from Christopher Wren’s Gothic apiary to make flip. Frequently Charles Comstock, the fifteen-year-old son of their noble host, came to visit, and to hear Wilkins or Hooke talk. Charles tended to bring with him letters addressed to the Royal Society from Huygens, Leeuwenhoek, Swammerdam, Spinoza. Frequently these turned out to contain new concepts that Daniel had to fit into the Philosophical Language’s tables.
Daniel was hard at work compiling a list of all the things in the world that a person could own (aqu?ducts, axle-trees, palaces, hinges) when Wilkins called him down urgently. Daniel came down to find the Rev. holding a grand-looking Letter, and Charles Comstock clearing the decks for action: rolling up large diagrams of the Ark, and feeding-schedules for the eighteen hundred and twenty-five sheep, and stowing them out of the way to make room for more important affairs. Charles II, by the Grace of God of England King, had sent them this letter: His Majesty had noticed that ant eggs were bigger than ants, and demanded to know how that was possible.
Daniel ran out and sacked an ant-nest. He returned in triumph carrying the nucleus of an anthill on the flat of a shovel. In the front room Wilkins had begun dictating, and Charles Comstock scribbling, a letter back to the King-not the substantive part (as they didn’t have an answer yet), but the lengthy paragraphs of apologies and profuse flattery that had to open it: “With your brilliance you illuminate the places that have long, er, languished in, er-”