From the Purist's Mouth

That severest of task-masters, Bill, has been good enough to point out what he calls another serious misjudgment on my part in this morning’s blog. To talk about something moving “exceeding slow”, he tells me, is to risk offending those among any possible readers I might have who mind about such things. It's at best a piece of sloppy grammar, he tells me; at worst, a grave distortion of a rather fine old line. In vain did I protest that I’d seen it written that way many and many a time…. If I had, it was wrong, he asserted. The line is from the old German epigrammist, Von Logau, who himself translated it from something else that Bill can’t quite bring to mind (so even Bill isn't perfect, then). This version was later translated by Longfellow, and ought to read:

Though the wheels of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small .

I had it wrong on both counts, therefore. I might just have got away with ‘exceeding small’ - but with ‘exceeding slow’, never!

So there you have it. From the mouth of the purist himself.

It's my view that Bill didn't know the origin of the line either. I believe he had a vague memory, just as I did; and then went away to look it up in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotatations while my back was turned. I mean - hands on your hearts out there, which of you has ever heard of that obscure German epigrammist, Von Logau? Life is just too short for that kind of thing, isn't it...?

But I’m going to take precautions, in future, to keep Bill well away from any newly posted blogs of mine.