Either it was an
act of pure verbal pedantry, or a mere titular decoration of honor, (as if
a modern prince should create a person Arch-Grand-Elector, with no objects
assigned to his electing faculty,) or else, if it really meant to revive
the old duties of the censorship, and to assign the very same field for
the exercise of those duties, it must be viewed as the very grossest
practical anachronism that has ever been committed. We mean by an
anachronism, in common usage, that sort of blunder when a man ascribes to
one age the habits, customs, or generally the characteristics of another.
This, however, may be a mere lapse of memory, as to a matter of fact, and
implying nothing at all discreditable to the understanding, but only that
a man has shifted the boundaries of chronology a little this way or that;
as if, for example, a writer should speak of printed books as existing at
the day of Agincourt, or of artillery as existing in the first Crusade,
here would be an error, but a venial one. A far worse kind of anachronism,
though rarely noticed as such, is where a writer ascribes sentiments and
modes of thought incapable of co-existing with the sort or the degree of
civilization then attained, or otherwise incompatible with the structure
of society in the age or the country assigned.
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