Page:Tex; a chapter in the life of Alexander Teixeira de Mattos (IA texchapterinlife00mcke).pdf/40

 have been Procrus-Tex," he stretched out both hands for an authority that would justify him in broadening his rule. "I have always spelt judgment without an e in the middle," he declared in 1915, when, with the gravity that characterized his more trivial decisions, he had abandoned violet ink, because it seemed frivolous in war-time, and the long s, because it bore a Teutonic aspect. "I am too old to change now; and you know my rule, All or None." Four years later he announced: "In future I shall spell 'judgement with an e in the middle. The New English Dictionary favours it; you assure me that it is so spelt in your English prayer-book; and Germany has signed the peace terms."

No comparison with other translators can be attempted until another arise with Teixeira's range of languages and his volume of achievement. He himself could never say, within a dozen, how many books he had translated; but in them all he created such an illusion of originality that they are not suspected of being translations until his name is seen. In a wider view, he undermined the