Square from Delaware, etc

[George Thompson]

> If a square was seen as fitting Delaware but not Harlem, perhaps
> consider the
> following, related to OED's 1836/7 quote from A.W. Fondblanque. I
> didn't find
> the claimed mention by Jeremy Taylor.
>
> THE POLITICAL EXAMINER
> The Examiner (London, England), Sunday, November 6, 1836; Issue 1501.
> LYNDHURST versus PEEL. [Unsigned. By Fonblanque?]
>
> [page 1 and/or 699?? 2nd col. last paragraph]
> Jeremy Taylor says that the world is a board with peg-holes, some
> square and
> some round, and that certain men, fitted for one state of things and
> not for
> another, are square pegs which get into round holes, and round pegs
> which get
> into square holes. Nothing can adjust them to their stations, or fits
> them with
> any firmness of uprightness. Change their positions, and each is set
> right; but
> the change is impossible. So it is with Sir Robert Peel and Lord
> Lyndhurst. Sir
> Robert Peel was a smooth round peg, in a sharp-cornered square hole,
> and Lord
> Lord [sic] Lyndhurst is a rectangular square-cut peg, in a smooth
> round hole.
>
> Stephen Goranson
> http://www.duke.edu/~goranson


Having just moved, I can't put my hands on a quotation book; however, If I recall, the square peg/round hole image came from Jeremy Bentham.

It seems to me that the usual way of referring tho this analogy is to say "he's a square peg in a round hole" (as opposed to "he's a round peg. . . ."  So, it's the square peg that doesn't fit in, and SG's suggestion that this is the root of why the unhip are squares rather than, say, pentagrams, is interesting.

GAT



George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.

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