Talk:Speech is silver, silence is golden

First use in English?

 * 1804: "Speech might be silver, silence was golden"
 * 1801: " 'speech is silver'—'silvern' he calls it, pedantically—'while silence is golden.' "

I've removed the incorrect image accordingly. Fram (talk) 08:58, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Ha. Well, this goes to show how important is to make the literary corpus searchable and digitized. Google Books did not exist in 1999 when Wasserstein wrote his piece. Now we can say he was wrong, but it would be WP:OR, wouldn't it? What's the best practice here? How can we indicate to the reader that the reliable, scholarly source is wrong, because our (Wikipedian volunteer) research found more new primary sources? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 13:26, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Quietly remove the reference to the 1999 research? We can hardly include it, knowing that it is wrong: but we can't include the reasons why we believe it to be wrong :-( Perhaps hide it in a hidden comment which refers to this discussion? Fram (talk) 13:45, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
 * For now I attributed the claim, and I also emailed Wasserstein directly, it would be interesting to see what he thinks about your finds. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 02:06, 28 October 2020 (UTC)
 * , I did receive a reply from Wasserstein, but sadly he didn't reply to my second email in which I suggested he posts his comments here himself. He did however say in his initial reply "If you want to put this up on a Wikipage, please let me know and we can perhaps tweak it a little for public consumption.", so I think he is fine with me quoting the relevant parts here.
 * You sent me an indication of two earlier occurrences of the expression. One was apparently dated 1801 and the other 1804. Both come from Google Books. I cannot see the actual texts in question directly because of technical aspects of Wikipedia editing pages that you sent me. However, it takes little effort to find the two quotations at issue.
 * The first, allegedly dated 1801 (so Google Books tells your colleague), is from a work by Charles Kingsley called Alton Locke. Kingsley (who wrote, among many other works, also the wonderful Water Babies) published Alton Locke in 1849. More importantly, he was born in 1819. He could not, therefore, have published Alton Locke (which is presented as an autobiography but is in fact a novel) in 1801. More significantly still, a glance at the context of the expression in his work shows that Kingsley, writing a decade after Carlyle, is actually quoting Carlyle in referring to our expression (He writes: ). I don’t know where the date 1801 in your colleague’s research comes from. It looks like an error. I wonder whether might be a slip: the title-page of the 1850 edition (The actual publication date is given sometimes as 1849, sometimes as 1850) shows the date as  Perhaps the L was misread by someone or something as an . But that is just a passing thought.
 * The second alleged occurrence is dated by your colleague to 1804, and attributed to one R. Bagshaw in a speech recorded in Parliamentary Debates of that year. The suggestion that Bagshaw was the author or speaker of the expression is wrong and appears to come from Google Books’ way of presenting its material. Bagshaw was actually one of the printers/publishers of the long series of Parliamentary Debates. This wonderful series of records of debates in the British parliament indeed began publication around 1804, but it continued for many decades thereafter, surviving in different form to this day. A glance at the speech in question using the more up-to-date search engine of Hansard ( https://hansard.parliament.uk/search/Contributions?startDate=1800-01-01&endDate=2020-10-28&searchTerm=%22Speech%20might%20be%20silver%2C%20silence%20was%20golden%22&partial=False ) shows that our phrase indeed occurs in a speech in Parliament. But that speech was delivered by the then Prime Minister, the Earl of Salisbury, in the House of Lords on 5 July 1895. (In fact an earlier occurrence in Parliament is also recorded, for the year 1875, but while that is earlier than the example you cite, it is also no earlier than Carlyle.) There does not seem to be any occurrence in 1804.
 * I am afraid, therefore, that your colleague’s research is wrong. It shows that the expression was used on at least two (actually I suspect more than two) further occasions during the nineteenth century, but not that it was used before 1840.
 * The second alleged occurrence is dated by your colleague to 1804, and attributed to one R. Bagshaw in a speech recorded in Parliamentary Debates of that year. The suggestion that Bagshaw was the author or speaker of the expression is wrong and appears to come from Google Books’ way of presenting its material. Bagshaw was actually one of the printers/publishers of the long series of Parliamentary Debates. This wonderful series of records of debates in the British parliament indeed began publication around 1804, but it continued for many decades thereafter, surviving in different form to this day. A glance at the speech in question using the more up-to-date search engine of Hansard ( https://hansard.parliament.uk/search/Contributions?startDate=1800-01-01&endDate=2020-10-28&searchTerm=%22Speech%20might%20be%20silver%2C%20silence%20was%20golden%22&partial=False ) shows that our phrase indeed occurs in a speech in Parliament. But that speech was delivered by the then Prime Minister, the Earl of Salisbury, in the House of Lords on 5 July 1895. (In fact an earlier occurrence in Parliament is also recorded, for the year 1875, but while that is earlier than the example you cite, it is also no earlier than Carlyle.) There does not seem to be any occurrence in 1804.
 * I am afraid, therefore, that your colleague’s research is wrong. It shows that the expression was used on at least two (actually I suspect more than two) further occasions during the nineteenth century, but not that it was used before 1840.
 * I am afraid, therefore, that your colleague’s research is wrong. It shows that the expression was used on at least two (actually I suspect more than two) further occasions during the nineteenth century, but not that it was used before 1840.
 * I am afraid, therefore, that your colleague’s research is wrong. It shows that the expression was used on at least two (actually I suspect more than two) further occasions during the nineteenth century, but not that it was used before 1840.

Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 07:29, 14 May 2021 (UTC)


 * Thanks! However, there is e.g. also this from June 1834 "Speech is silvern, silence is golden"). Now, this seems to be the same source as used bby your correspondent, but from 1834? Perhaps the first book edition was 1836, and this is the first, earlier, magazine publication? I found another one which Google claims is from 1714: "Silence is gold we know and speech is but silver", but this turns out to be from the 1880s.
 * A true older one, from 1818 (I checked it this time) is : "Discourse is silver, silence is gold". (Also in an 1831 book) Fram (talk) 08:04, 14 May 2021 (UTC)
 * , I concur, based on the prefaces, those two works are from 1818 and 1831, respectively. When I have some time I'll email Wasserstein again to see what he thinks about those finds. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 09:41, 14 May 2021 (UTC)
 * , I have a reply from him, this time I think he agrees we (you...) found some new and relevant stuff. He also pointed out that "You will note that it is represented there as nothing but a reprint of material from the Researches in Greece of William Martin-Leake (a most interesting soldier, explorer and scholar). That work, or the relevant volume of it, was published earlier still, in 1814." That said, I am not sure what's the best practice of including this information in our article? Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 06:58, 17 May 2021 (UTC)