[...]Now dreadful deeds
Might have ensu'd; nor only Paradise,
In this commotion, but the starry cope
Of heav'n perhaps, or all the elements
At least, had gone to wrack, disturb'd and torn
With violence of this conflict, had not soon
Th' Eternal, to prevent such horrid fray,
Hung forth in heav'n his golden scales, yet seen
Betwixt Astraea and the Scorpion sign,
Wherein all things created first he weigh'd--
The pendulous round Earth with balanc'd Air
In counterpoise--now ponders all events,
Battles and realms. In these he put two weights,
The sequel each of parting and of fight:
The latter quick up flew and kick'd the beam;
Which Gabriel spying thus bespake the Fiend:

"Satan, I know thy strength, and thou know'st mine,
Neither our own, but giv'n; what folly then
To boast what arms can do! since thine no more
Than Heav'n permits, nor mine, though doubl'd now
To trample thee as mire. For proof look up,
And read thy lot in yon celestial sign,
Where thou art weigh'd, and shown how light, how weak
If thou resist." The Fiend look'd up and knew
His mounted scale aloft: nor more, but fled
Murmuring; and with him fled the shades of night.

John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book IV.990-1015

From A.E. Housman's introductory lecture to the Faculties of Arts and Laws and of Science in University College London, 03 October 1892:

Matthew Arnold went to his grave under the impression that the proper way to spell lacrima was to spell it with a y, and that the words andros paidophonoio poti stoma cheir oregesthai* meant 'to carry to my lips the hand of him that slew my son'. We pedants know better: we spell lacrima with an i, and we know that the verse of Homer really means 'to reach forth my hand to the chin of him that slew my son'. But when it comes to literary criticism, heap up in one scale all the literary criticism that the whole nation of professed scholars ever wrote, and drop into the other the thin green volume of Matthew Arnold's Lectures on Translating Homer, which has long been out of print becasue the British public does not care to read it, and the first scale, as Milton says, will staight fly up and kick the beam.

**N.B.: Housman's manuscript here breaks into the original Greek, but there is not doubt in my mind that those, indeed, are (or are at least close to) the words which he himself spoke in the lecture. Either way, I do apologize for not doing the original Greek script.

Josh, who I'm sure none of you know, interrupted me in my monastic rituals yesterday to ask why nonsensically was a word, and sensically wasn't a word. He's been trained well: a jaunt through the Oxford English Dictionary verifies Josh's statement, and provides some interesting further insight:

As it turns out, sensical appears only after nonsensical--nearly a century afterwards, by OED reckoning. This in itself is reason to stop and ponder: how could one have nonsense without sense (and for a hundred years, at that--)?

I toss my palms to the heavens, and forego any attempt at rationality: sensical is an archaic an obscure version of sensible, which means, perceptible by the senses, and predates (first used formally by Chaucer, OED reckoning) any of the words so far mentioned. In fact, the word predates the English sense, which comes into use in the sixteenth century (again, OED reckoning). Sensibly comes in close, in the fifteenth century. To add cornstarch to the mix, nonsensible isn't really an English word in origin, it would seem, but was first translated from the German nichtsinnlich in the ninteenth century.

Thus, for those keeping tabs: sensible, followed by sensibly, then, sense, nonsense, nonsenical, nonsensically then sensical and nonsensible. Never, but never do nonsensically or nonsensibly make it onto the Queen's tounge. There are many reasons why, of course, but, as far as I can tell, most of the reasons aren't exactly testable or more than mere speculation.

But there's something deeper here I'd like to point out, and it speaks to the maps I've discussed (albeit briefly and cryptically) earlier: this is a perfect counterexample to the hypothesis that the "non"-prefix is a bijective function with the positive form of adverbs as its domain, failing in surjectivity. Injectivity, however, might be a completely different matter, and I have yet to think of a counterexample.

It might also be interesting to consider whether the "non"-prefix holds on the positive forms of adjectives as its domain, although it might be difficult to find a counterexample. They must exist and are probably trivial to find since there are certainly not as many words that begin with 'n' as there are adjectives in the entire English language--again, a failure of surjectivity, but what about injectivity?

That said, however, Josh, who I'm sure none of you know, would also like me to announce loudly, publicly, (hypertextually?) that Rendezvous in Central Square provide after-dinner mints to its patrons. If I a) didn't have extreme reservations as to what that might do to the (how to say?) je ne se qua of the restaurant and 2) didn't have extreme moral and karmic reservations about agreeing with Josh, I would almost certainly agree.

UPDATE (ERRATUM):

Never, but never do nonsensically or nonsensibly make it onto the Queen's tounge.

Never, but never do sensically or nonsensibly make it onto the Queen's tounge.