Laudator Temporis Acti

Emily Dickinson, Reticence:

The reticent volcano keeps
  His never slumbering plan;
Confided are his projects pink
  To no precarious man.

If nature will not tell the tale
  Jehovah told to her,
Can human nature not survive
  Without a listener?

Admonished by her buckled lips
  Let every babbler be.
The only secret people keep
  Is Immortality.

Related posts:

• The Contagion of Misery
  
• Emotional Incontinence
  
• Euripidea
  
• Hostile Laughter
  
• Hostile Laughter in Euripides' Medea
  
• Icy Laughter
  
• Notes to Myself
  
• On Concealing One's Misfortunes
  
• Quotations about Complaints

From a television commercial for the pimple cream Proactiv (emphasis added):

I put it on in the evening, when I go to bed, and when I get up in the morning, you don't have acne.

From http://www.abelprisen.no/en/:

The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters has decided to award the Abel Prize for 2008 to John Griggs Thompson, University of Florida and Jacques Tits, Collège de France. This was announced by the Academy’s President, Ole Didrik Lærum, at a press conference in Oslo today. Thompson and Tits receive the Abel Prize "for their profound achievements in algebra and in particular for shaping modern group theory".

An attitude I admire is expressed in this saying attributed to Louis Agassiz:

I cannot afford to waste my time in making money.

I can't find a written source. Perhaps it was recalled and handed down from a remark he made in conversation. Cf. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Topical Notebooks, vol. 3 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1994), p. 50 (on Agassiz):

When they tempted him once with high prices for lectures he said, "Sir, I can't waste my time in making money."

These are notes to myself after re-reading Euripides' Suppliant Women. Translations are by E.P. Coleridge unless otherwise indicated. I don't have access to Christopher Collard's commentary.

Adrastus exhibits "survivor's guilt" at 769 ("Ah me! how much rather I had died with them!") and 821 ("Would God the Theban ranks had laid me in the dust!"). On this phenomenon see Jonathan Shay, Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character (New York: Athenaum, 1994), chapter 4 (Guilt and Wrongful Substitution).

The ways to settle disputes between states are either by words or by force of arms (ἢ λόγοισιν ἢ δορὸς / ῥώμῃ, 25-26). In hindsight Adrastus knows which way is preferable (748-749):

Ye cities likewise, though ye might by parley end your ills, yet ye choose the sword instead of reason to settle all disputes.

See also the words of Adrastus at 949-954:

O wretched sons of men! Why do ye get you weapons and bring slaughter on one another? Cease therefrom, give o'er your toiling, and in mutual peace keep safe your cities. Short is the span of life, so 'twere best to run its course as lightly as we may, from trouble free.

The Theban herald (486-493) likewise expresses a preference for peace:

And yet each man amongst us knows which of the two to prefer, the good or ill, and how much better peace is for mankind than war,-peace, the Muses' chiefest friend, the foe of sorrow, whose joy is in glad throngs of children, and its delight in prosperity. These are the blessings we cast away and wickedly embark on war, man enslaving his weaker brother, and cities following suit.

The Theban herald at 485 uses the word δοριμανής (spear-mad, spear-crazy), a form that seems to occur only here, although Liddell & Scott cite the Palatine Anthology 9.553 for δουρομανής. Cf. also Ἀρειμανής, Ἀρειμάνιος and Horace's bello furiosa (Odes 2.16.5).

The Greeks thought that shame was a good thing, as a brake on bad behavior. See 911-912 (in David Kovacs' translation):

A noble upbringing produces a sense of shame. Every man who is trained in good deeds is prevented by shame from becoming base.

On this theme see K.J. Dover, Greek Popular Morality (1974; rpt. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994), V.B (Honour and Shame), pp. 226-242, esp. pp. 236-242 (5. Causes and effects of shame).

Anu Garg, A.Word.A.Day, May 12, 2008 (sideburns):

The words barb, barber, rebarbative, and beard are derived from the same root: Latin barba (beard).

This is inaccurate. English beard is related to, but not derived from, Latin barba. Both share the same Indo-European ancestor. See Calvert Watkins, Indo-European Roots, s.v. bhardhā:

Beard. Possibly related to bhar-, projection, bristle. 1. Germanic *bardaz in Old English beard, beard: BEARD. 2. Germanic bardō, beard, also hatchet, broadax (the association of beard and ax is attested elsewhere in the Indo-European family; both were symbols of patriarchal authority), in Old High German barta, beard, and bart, ax: HALBERD. 3. Latin barba, beard: BARB¹, BARBEL, BARBELLATE, (BARBER), BARBETTE, BARBICEL, BARBULE, REBARBATIVE. [Pok. bhardhā 110.]

Walter W. Skeat, An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, 2nd edition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1893), s.v. halberd (p. 251), compares Icelandic skeggja (halberd), derived from skegg (beard).

Garg's mistake is minor compared with Robert Hendrickson, QPB Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, 2nd edition (New York: Facts on File, 2004), s.v. barbarian (p. 53):

Barba means "beard" in Latin, and when the Romans called hirsute foreigners barbarians they were strictly calling them "bearded men," though the word shortly came to mean, rightly or wrongly, "rude, uncivilized people." A barber was, of course, one who cut beards or hair. The barber pole outside barber shops today has its origins in the ancient barber's duties as a surgeon and dentist as well as a hair cutter. It was first the symbol of these professions — a blood-smeared white rag. However, barbarian may have Greek origins.

Henderson is way off base here. The derivation of barbarian from Latin barba is totally bogus, a folk etymology. The word barbarian is indubitably (not just possibly) Greek in origin, and it has nothing to do with beards. The Romans didn't regard bearded men as barbarians. The Romans themselves wore beards during certain historical periods and were clean-shaven in others. In general, they wore beards before the second century B.C. and after the 2nd century A.D.

Related post: Barbarians and Beards.

Today is the birthday of Edward Lear (1812-1888). Here are some of his illustrations of rare botanical species:

Phattfacia stupenda

Manypeeplia upsidownia

Piggiawiggia pyramidalis
Related post: Profollias downhoki.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits (tr. R.J. Hollingdale), § 283 (Principal deficiency of active men):

As at all times, so now too, men are divided into the slaves and the free; for he who does not have two-thirds of his day to himself is a slave, let him be what he may otherwise: statesman, businessman, official, scholar.

Alle Menschen zerfallen, wie zu allen Zeiten so auch jetzt noch, in Sclaven und Freie; denn wer von seinem Tage nicht zwei Drittel für sich hat, ist ein Sclave, er sei übrigens wer er wolle: Staatsmann, Kaufmann, Beamter, Gelehrter.

Op. cit., § 284 (In favour of the idle):

But there is something noble about leisure and idleness. — If idleness really is the beginning of all vice, then it is at any rate in the closest proximity to virtue; the idle man is always a better man than the active. — But whan I speak of leisure and idleness, you do not think that I am alluding to you, do you, you sluggards?

Es ist aber ein edel Ding um Musse und Müssiggehen.— Wenn Müssiggang wirklich der Anfang aller Laster ist, so befindet er sich also wenigstens in der nächsten Nähe aller Tugenden; der müssige Mensch ist immer noch ein besserer Mensch als der thätige.— Ihr meint doch nicht, dass ich mit Musse und Müssiggehen auf euch ziele, ihr Faulthiere?

Op. cit., § 285 (Modern restlessness):

From lack of repose our civilization is turning into a new barbarism.

Aus Mangel an Ruhe läuft unsere Civilisation in eine neue Barbarei aus.

Op. cit., § 289 (Value of illness):

The man who lies ill in bed sometimes discovers that what he is ill from is usually his office, his business or his society and that through them he has lost all circumspection with regard to himself: he acquires this wisdom from the leisure to which his illness has compelled him.

Der Mensch, der krank zu Bette liegt, kommt mitunter dahinter, dass er für gewöhnlich an seinem Amte, Geschäfte oder an seiner Gesellschaft krank ist und durch sie jede Besonnenheit über sich verloren hat: er gewinnt diese Weisheit aus der Musse, zu welcher ihn seine Krankheit zwingt.

Op. cit., § 291 (Prudence for free spirits):

He too knows the weekdays of unfreedom, of dependence, of servitude. But from time to time he has to have a Sunday of freedom, or he will find life unendurable.

Auch er kennt die Wochentage der Unfreiheit, der Abhängigkeit, der Dienstbarkeit. Aber von Zeit zu Zeit muss ihm ein Sonntag der Freiheit kommen, sonst wird er das Leben nicht aushalten.

Related posts:

• The Dreary Vacuum of Idleness
  
• Idleness and Business
  
• Darling Laziness
  
• Archilochus on the Idle Life
  
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Pilcrow is the paragraph symbol (¶), and octothorp is the hash mark or number sign symbol (#) on touch-tone telephone keypads. I knew octothorp from my years working in the telephone business, but I just learned pilcrow from Michael Quinion, World Wide Words, Issue 586 (May 3, 2008, also available here):

The word is delightful, not least because it gives no clue at all to what it means or where it might come from. The recently revised entry for it in the Oxford English Dictionary says that it is "now chiefly historic", which I rather dispute, since it's easy to find examples in current books on typography and it continues to be used in standards documents that list character sets.

What makes it truly weird is that the experts are sure it's a much bashed-about transformation of paragraph. This can be traced back to ancient Greek paragraphos, a short stroke that marked a break in sense (from para-, beside, plus graphein, write). The changes began with people amending the first r to l (it appeared in Old French in the thirteenth century as pelagraphe and pelagreffe). Then folk etymologists got at it, altering the first part to pill and the second to craft and then to crow. The earliest recorded version was pylcrafte, in 1440; over the next century it settled down to its modern form.

The paragraph symbol, by the way, isn't a reversed P as you might guess. It's actually a script C that was crossed by one or two vertical lines. The letter stood for Latin capitulum, chapter.

On the Greek paragraph symbol, see William A. Johnson, "The Function of the Paragraphus in Greek Literary Prose Texts," Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 100 (1994) 65-68.

Walter W. Skeat, Notes on English Etymology: Chiefly Reprinted from the Transactions of the Philological Society (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1901), pp. 215-216, describes in detail the phonetic development of the word pilcrow:

First of all, the Lat. paragraphus became F. paragraphe. This is given by Cotgrave, who has: 'paragraphe, a Paragraffe, or Pillcrow; ... as much as is comprehended in one sentence or section.' The next form is paragraffe, just cited as an E. word from Cotgrave. After this, the middle a was dropped, and an excrescent t added at the end. This is quoted by Way from the Ortus Vocabulorum: 'Paragraphus, Anglice, a pargrafte in writing.' The next step is the corruption from pargrafte to the form pylcrafte in the Promptorium. This is rather violent, but we must remember that the change of r to l is the commonest of all changes in every Aryan language, that the prefixes par- and per- were convertible, and that the change from per- to pil- occurs in the common English word pilgrim, in which per- passes into pil- through the Ital. pell- in pellegrino. This shows the precise process; pargrafte became *pergrafte, then *pelgrafte, then *pilgrafte, and finally pilcrafte, with c for g. The change from g to c easily took place when the original form had become entirely obscured. After this, a further corruption took place, from pilcrafte to pilcrow. This was due to mere laziness. The excrescent t was again dropped, giving pilcraf, and then the -craf became -crow. Hence we get the full order of successive forms, viz. paragraphe, paragraffe, *pargraf, pargrafte, *pergrafte, *pelgrafte, *pilgrafte, pilcrafte, *pilcraf, pilcrow. Not all of these forms are found, but a sufficient number of them appear to enable us to trace the complete process; at the same time, it is highly probable that some of these steps were passed over by a sudden leap. We may assume, as sufficiently proved, that pilcrow and paragraph, words used with precisely the same meaning, are mere doublets.

Oxford English Dictionary s.v. octothorp:

Forms: 19- octothorp, 19- octothorpe. [Origin uncertain; perh. < OCTO- comb. form + the surname Thorpe (cf. THORP n.: see note below).

The term was reportedly coined in the early 1960s by Don Macpherson, an employee of Bell Laboratories:

1996 Telecom Heritage No. 28. 53 His thought process was as follows: There are eight points on the symbol so octo should be part of the name. We need a few more letters or another syllable to make a noun... (Don Macpherson..was active in a group that was trying to get Jim Thorpe's Olympic medals returned from Sweden). The phrase thorpe would be unique.

For an alternative explanation see quot. 1996; in a variant of this explanation, the word is explained as arising from the use of the symbol in cartography to represent a village.]

The hash sign (#), as it appears on the buttons of touch-tone telephones and some other keypads.

1974 Telephony 25 Feb. 16/1 A few months ago, a story traveled through the Bell System that the familiar symbol '#'..at long last had a name: 'octothorp'. 1975 Vancouver Province 15 Nov. (Canad. Mag.) 32 Punch an octothorpe when you reach your desk every morning, and the accounting department automatically registers you in. 1987 Radio & Electronics World Feb. 47/1 As well as the numbers 1 to 9 and 0, you also have buttons marked with a star and square (also known as hash or octothorp). 1996 New Scientist 30 Mar. 54/3 The term 'octothorp(e)' (which MWCD10 dates 1971) was invented for '#', allegedly by Bell Labs engineers when touch-tone telephones were introduced in the mid-1960s. 'Octo-' means eight, and 'thorp' was an Old English word for village: apparently the sign was playfully construed as eight fields surrounding a village.

But for a different explanation and spelling see Douglas A. Kerr, The ASCII Character "Octatherp". Kerr was responsible for the selection of the non-numeric symbols * and # for use on the touch-tone telephone keypad. He attributes the invention of the word to John C. Schaak and Herbert T. Uthlaut:

They told me that they had read with interest the part of my report in which I regretted the absence of a unique typographical name for the character "#", and said they had solved my problem by coining one, "octatherp". They said that it had no etymological basis, but they had been guided by one principle. They said they were irritated that I had rejected some candidate characters they thought were good on the basis of lack of compatibility with emerging international standards (with which the Bell System had a tradition at the time of little interest). Thus, they said, as a way of getting even, they had included in the name the diphthong "th", which of course does not appear in German and several other languages and thus might be difficult for users of those languages to pronounce, which would serve them right.

Kerr started using the word in field memoranda, and he relates:

Before long, we were seeing, in non-Bell System publications, similar notes about the octatherp, sometimes accompanied by fanciful (and of course completely bogus) etymological explanations, such as "the prefix 'octa' refers to the eight tips of the four strokes of the character".

One author opined that "therp" was obtained by corruption of the German word "dorf", meaning village. He said he was not exactly sure of the logical trail there.

Thanks to Dave Lull for drawing my attention to Charles Conrad Abbott, The Rambles of an Idler (Philadelphia: George W. Jacobs, 1906).

Charles Conrad Abbott (1843-1919) was a contemporary of fellow nature writers John Burroughs (1837-1921) and John Muir (1838-1914). Burroughs and Muir are still read, but Abbott is largely forgotten. Kessinger Publishing has reprinted a few titles, but Abbott doesn't appear in anthologies such as Robert Finch and John Elder, edd. The Norton Book of Nature Writing (New York: W.W. Norton, 1990), and Thomas J. Lyon, ed. This Incomparable Lande: A Book of American Nature Writing (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1989), and not one of his works has been transcribed for Project Gutenberg.

Although not a nature writer of the top rank, Abbott is nevertheless lively, genial, observant, and entertaining. Here is the beginning of his essay "In Defence of Idleness," from Recent Rambles, or, In Touch with Nature (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1892), pp. 220-221:

Chesterfield asks somewhere, of some one, "Will you improve that hour instead of idling it away?" That depends. For myself, I hold it most righteous to idle away many an hour, for, paradoxical as it may seem, with folded arms and half-closed eyes we may wax wiser with every hour. An "idle hour" is a contradiction. The world does not pause because your step becomes a shuffle; and where, out of doors, is it empty? Custom is a cruel taskmaster; but when his back is turned it is well to watch a chance and give ourselves over to receptive idleness. It is the enjoyment of such moments in anticipation that makes labor tolerable. One day in seven is every man's by law, and so he values it at far less than its real worth. A stolen week-day hour, for which one plans and struggles, is a tidbit more clearly remembered than a month of Sundays. I never met him yet who had no love for a holiday. Toil is necessary, but it does not charm; labor per se is not man's chiefest aim, but to complete a life-work as soon as possible, that the inactive contemplation of it may be indulged. So universal is a love of such idleness that, it is safe to assume, idleness is the aim of life. Every one disputes this, but it matters not. We all know it as a feeling hidden in every breast; else why every one wishes he was so far rich that he need not labor? Not necessarily to sit with folded hands and dream; but to be able to follow the whim of the moment,—to do as he pleases,—to indulge in idleness.

From Eric Thomson, via email, on fact checking and proofreading (with a parody of William Blake):

O Text, thou art sic!
The invisible worm
That flies in the night,
In the howling storm,

Has found out thy bed
Of sooty joy...

Here are a couple I came across recently:

From Anatoly Liberman's An Analytic Dictionary of English Etymology: An Introduction (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008): "The authors of etymological dictionaries find it difficult to eliminate errors" (pg. xxx). Two pages later: "After his death, my articles axli ii peared in various journals, miscellaneous collections, and Festschriften" (pg. xxxii).

From Eric G. Wilson's Against Happiness (New York: Sarah Chrichton Books, 2008): "Between 1802 and 1810, Beethoven created several of his most unforgettable masterpieces. These great works included the Tempest Sonata (opus 3), the Eroica, or Third, Symphony; the Waldheim Sonata (opus 53) ..." (pg. 128). The Tempest Sonata is opus 31, and Kurt Waldheim would no doubt have been smug to hear of a Waldheim Sonata, but Count Waldstein less so.

Regarding the 'vast Homerian' (more Batrachomyomachian) movements of chipmunk, marten and sea-lion, I wonder if Patrick Zollner didn't really have the Atlantic in mind (as in L'Inferno, XXVI) instead of the Aegean. Striking out to find new terrritory in that pond-with-stepping-stones doesn't sound like much of an adventure.

George Borrow, Lavengro, chapter XIV:

I have heard talk of the pleasures of idleness, yet it is my own firm belief that no one ever yet took pleasure in it. Mere idleness is the most disagreeable state of existence, and both mind and body are continually making efforts to escape from it. It has been said that idleness is the parent of mischief, which is very true; but mischief itself is merely an attempt to escape from the dreary vacuum of idleness. There are many tasks and occupations which a man is unwilling to perform, but let no one think that he is therefore in love with idleness; he turns to something which is more agreeable to his inclination, and doubtless more suited to his nature; but he is not in love with idleness. A boy may play the truant from school because he dislikes books and study; but, depend upon it, he intends doing something the while—to go fishing, or perhaps to take a walk; and who knows but that from such excursions both his mind and body may derive more benefit than from books and school?

Related posts:

• Idleness and Business
  
• Darling Laziness
  
• Archilochus on the Idle Life
  
• Idleness
  
• More on Idleness
  
• Futile Work
  
• Otium Cum Dignitate

Evelyn Waugh, quoted by Joseph Epstein, The Middle of My Tether: Familiar Essays (New York: W.W. Norton, 1983), p. 195:

I am told that printers' readers no longer exist because clergymen are no longer unfrocked for sodomy.

For whatever reason, printers' readers, or fact checkers, or proofreaders do seem rare these days, if one may judge from the prevalence of typographical errors and mistakes of fact in modern books. The following examples come from Sy Montgomery, The Wild Out Your Window: Exploring Nature Near at Hand (Camden: Down East Books, 2002).

"Meek creatures," as the 18th-century British art critic John Ruskin called them, "the first mercy of the earth," mosses prove again the prophesy that the meek shall inherit the earth, for at the first stroke of spring, the world is theirs. (p. 13)

Ruskin lived in the 19th century, not the 18th.

Despite their questionable palettes, flies make fine pollinators, and some flowers work hard to attract them. (p. 28)

For "palettes" read "palates."

Thoreau, recording his observations of snappers in 1854, compared their journeys to Ulysses' decades-long return home in The Iliad. (p. 121)

I don't see any such comparison in Thoreau's Journal for 1854 (using the index of the Torrey-Allen edition, s.v. turtle). Besides, Thoreau knew his Homer and never would have made such an error. Ulysses' wanderings are the subject of the Odyssey, not the Iliad.

But by studying mammals' movements, researchers are now beginning to discover a whole new way of seeing the landscape—though another species' eyes. (p. 162)

Read "through" for "though."

When a young adult chipmunk or pine martin or sea lion strikes out to find new territory, he points out, "it's like Odysseus striking out over the Agean Sea—these are vast Homerian movements." (p. 163, where "he" is Patrick Zollner)

For "martin" read "marten," and for "Agean" read "Aegean." I'll let "Homerian" for "Homeric" pass, because at least it's in the dictionary.

Three decades ago, when he was a growing up in West Hartford, Connecticut, relatives sent his family four baby holly trees one Christmas. (p. 216)

Something ("boy," "child," "lad," or whatever) has dropped out between "a" and "growing." Alternatively, just omit the indefinite article.

Doubtless there are those to whom this is mere pedantic quibbling. To them I reply with the pedant's stock retort, "He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much" (Luke 16:10).

Sometimes even a tiny misprint can be important. A few months ago I noticed in a slip opinion that the word "enforceable" appeared in a holding where the opposite ("unenforceable") was clearly called for. I emailed the judge who wrote the opinion, and he was able to make the correction before the official version was released.

I lack the qualification for a printer's reader mentioned by Waugh—I am not an unfrocked clergyman. But, in my humble opinion, I have the sharp eye, the patience, and the general knowledge needed for fact checking and proofreading. Send job offers to me at my email address.