Laudator Temporis Acti

When a despot is killed or a dynasty destroyed less is achieved than some expect. After the initial transports of newly won liberation men look around and discover that the system abides—and most of the people.

I answered him: 'Ciacco, thy distress so weighs on me that it bids me weep. But tell me, if thou canst, what the citizens of the divided city shall come to and whether any there is just, and tell me the cause of such discord assailing it.'

Io li rispuosi: 'Ciacco, il tuo affanno
    mi pesa sì, ch'a lagrimar mi 'nvita;
    ma dimmi, se tu sai, a che verranno
li cittadin de la città partita;
    s'alcun v'è giusto; e dimmi la cagione
    per che l'ha tanta discordia assalita.'

Curious effect, here in the sanatorium, on Easter Sunday, when the people in this (the most expensive) block of "chalets" mostly have visitors, of hearing large numbers of upper-class English voices. I have been almost out of the sound of them for two years, hearing them at most one or two at a time, my ears growing more & more used to working-class or lower-middle class Scottish voices. In the hospital at Hairmyres, for instance, I literally never heard a "cultivated" accent except when I had a visitor. It is as though I were hearing these voices for the first time. And what voices! A sort of over-fedness, a fatuous self-confidence, a constant bah-bahing of laughter about nothing, above all a sort of heaviness & richness combined with a fundamental ill-will — people who, one instinctively feels, without even being able to see them, are the enemies of anything intelligent or sensitive or beautiful. No wonder everyone hates us so.

But we on our part, thus visiting you, have come as suppliants to your knees, in the hope that you will give us entertainment, or in some other manner be generous to us, as is the due of strangers. Do not deny us, good sir, but reverence the gods; we are your suppliants; and Zeus is the avenger of suppliants and strangers—Zeus, the strangers' god—who walks in the footsteps of reverend strangers.

      ἡμεῖς δ᾿ αὖτε κιχανόμενοι τὰ σὰ γοῦνα
ἱκόμεθ᾿, εἴ τι πόροις ξεινήιον ἠὲ καὶ ἄλλως
δοίης δωτίνην, ἥ τε ξείνων θέμις ἐστίν.
ἀλλ᾿ αἰδεῖο, φέριστε, θεούς· ἱκέται δέ τοί εἰμεν,
Ζεὺς δ᾿ ἐπιτιμήτωρ ἱκετάων τε ξείνων τε,        270
ξείνιος, ὃς ξείνοισιν ἅμ᾿ αἰδοίοισιν ὀπηδεῖ.

Easy to know—the law of this floating life;
hard to deflect a single being from it:
when waters are deep, fish are at their happiest,
where groves flourish, birds find their roost.
Old, feeble, I'm content to be poor and sickly,
wouldn't know how to deal with abundance.
Autumn winds blow over my armrest and cane;
I don't disdain fern sprouts from the northern mountain.¹

1. A reference to the ancient sages Bo Yi and Shu Qi, who chose to live off the fern sprouts of Mt. Shouyang rather than compromise their principles.

Easy to recognize the pattern in this life adrift—
you can't make a single creature go against its nature.
Where the water is deep, the fish have the utmost joy;
birds knows to return where the woods are most leafy.
Aging and infirm, I accept poverty and sickness,
in prominence and glory there are judgments to be made.
The autumn wind blows on my cane and armrest,
I do not weary of north mountain's wild beans.

We may talke what we please of Lilies, and Lions Rampant, and Spread-Eagles in Fields d'Or, or d'Argent; But if Heraldry were guided by Reason, a Plough in a field Arable, would be the most Noble and Antient Armes.

I am one of these men who are always interested in trivialities.

Let us destroy, let us deny, let us annihilate politics, since it divides us and arms us against one another ...

Tuons, renions, anéantissons la politique, puisqu'elle nous divise et nous arme les uns contre les autres ...

"Now, Mr. Sawyer!" screamed the shrill voice of Mrs. Raddle, "are them brutes going?"

"They're only looking for their hats, Mrs. Raddle," said Bob; "they are going directly."

"Going!" said Mrs. Raddle, thrusting her nightcap over the banisters just as Mr. Pickwick, followed by Mr. Tupman, emerged from the sitting-room. "Going! What did they ever come for?"

Yet death, that's common to all, not the gods themselves
can ward off even from a man they love, whenever
the dire fate of pitiless death has once got hold of him.

ἀλλ᾿ ἦ τοι θάνατον μὲν ὁμοίιον οὐδὲ θεοί περ
καὶ φίλῳ ἀνδρὶ δύναται ἀλαλκέμεν, ὁππότε κεν δὴ
μοῖρ᾿ ὀλοὴ καθέλῃσι τανηλεγέος θανάτοιο.

You ask me, why, tho' ill at ease,
    Within this region I subsist,
    Whose spirits falter in the mist,
And languish for the purple seas.

It is the land that freemen till,
    That sober-suited Freedom chose,
    The land, where girt with friends or foes
A man may speak the thing he will;

A land of settled government,
    A land of just and old renown,
    Where Freedom slowly broadens down
From precedent to precedent:

Where faction seldom gathers head,
    But by degrees to fullness wrought,
    The strength of some diffusive thought
Hath time and space to work and spread.

Should banded unions persecute
    Opinion, and induce a time
    When single thought is civil crime,
And individual freedom mute;

Tho' Power should make from land to land
    The name of Britain trebly great—
    Tho' every channel of the State
Should fill and choke with golden sand—

Yet waft me from the harbour-mouth,
    Wild wind! I seek a warmer sky,
    And I will see before I die
The palms and temples of the South.

When I lie where shades of darkness
Shall no more assail mine eyes,
Nor the rain make lamentation
      When the wind sighs;
How will fare the world whose wonder        5
Was the very proof of me?
Memory fades, must the remembered
      Perishing be?

Oh, when this my dust surrenders
Hand, foot, lip, to dust again,        10
May these loved and loving faces
      Please other men!
May the rustling harvest hedgerow
Still the Traveller's Joy entwine,
And as happy children gather        15
      Posies once mine.

Look thy last on all things lovely,
Every hour. Let no night
Seal thy sense in deathly slumber
      Till to delight        20
Thou have paid thy utmost blessing;
Since that all things thou wouldst praise
Beauty took from those who loved them
      In other days.

The following stanza of Mr de la Mare's 'Fare well' first met my eyes, thus printed, in a newspaper review.

Oh, when this my dust surrenders
Hand, foot, lip, to dust again,        10
May these loved and loving faces
      Please other men!
May the rustling harvest hedgerow
Still the Traveller's Joy entwine,
And as happy children gather        15
      Posies once mine.

I knew in a moment that Mr de la Mare had not written rustling, and in another moment I had found the true word. But if the book of poems had perished and the verse survived only in the review, who would have believed me rather than the compositor? The bulk of the reading public would have been perfectly content with rustling, nay they would sincerely have preferred it to the epithet which the poet chose. If I had been so ill-advised as to publish my emendation, I should have been told that rustling was exquisitely apt and poetical, because hedgerows do rustle, especially in autumn, when the leaves are dry, and when straws and ears from the passing harvest-wain (to which 'harvest' is so plain an allusion that only a pedant like me could miss it) are hanging caught in the twigs; and I should have been recommended to quit my dusty (or musty) books and make a belated acquaintance with the sights and sounds of the English countryside. And the only possible answer would have been ugh!

But we are not told what the true word was—"rusting," in fact. The attitude here exemplified is well documented and familiar. We have all met people who, because they themselves have suffered or been excessively imposed upon, feel the need to compensate by dominating and manipulating others, if only in trivial ways, and the silly power games that Housman here plays with his readers fall squarely within this class. Paul Naiditch suggests that Housman wrote this passage and others like it in order "to let the reader take his own measure, and then, if need be, to confess to himself that the melancholy truth stares him in the face" ([2], p. 152), namely, the truth that he is no critic. This is right, so long as the emphasis falls on the latter part of the sentence: Housman was less interested in educating his readers than in crushing them.

[Y]our reference to the use of “rustling” in the American edition of de la Mare’s Collected Poems, 1901-1918, Volume 1 (Henry Holt 1920) piqued my curiosity. I have a copy of the English edition of the same collection, which was published by Constable in 1920 under the title Poems 1901 to 1918, Volume 1. I checked, and the line reads “May the rusting harvest hedgerow” in the Constable edition (page 250). Comparing the American and English editions on the Internet Archive, it appears that the Holt edition may have been re-set, rather than simply being a re-binding of the Constable sheets for the American edition. Hence, it would appear that someone at Holt decided that “rusting” was “incorrect,” and changed it to “rustling.”

The use of “rusting” in the Constable edition is consistent with Constable’s 1918 edition of Motley and Other Poems, the collection in which “Fare Well” first appeared (to my knowledge) in book form. I have a copy of the 1918 Holt edition of Motley and Other Poems, and “rusting” is used there as well.

Finally, “rusting” is also used in The Collected Poems of Walter de la Mare, which was published by Faber and Faber in 1979.

Thus at length we see both by this and other places, that there is scarce any one saying in the Gospel, but must bee read with limitations and distinctions, to bee rightly understood; for Christ gives no full comments or continued discourses, but as Demetrius the Rhetoritian phrases it, speakes oft in Monosyllables, like a maister scattering the heavenly grain of his doctrine like pearls heere and there, which requires a skilfull and laborious gatherer, who must compare the words he findes, with other precepts, with the end of every ordinance, and with the generall analogie of Evangelick doctrine: otherwise many particular sayings would bee but strange repugnant riddles ...

Commands too are always terse and brief, and every master is monosyllabic to his slave ...

καὶ τὸ μὲν ἐπιτάσσειν σύντομον καὶ βραχύ, καὶ πᾶς δεσπότης δούλῳ μονοσύλλαβος ...

I have been, as the phrase is, liberally educated, and am fit for nothing.

For younger people are always thoughtless.

αἰεὶ γάρ τε νεώτεροι ἀφραδέουσιν.

You are of good blood, dear child, that you speak thus.

αἵματός εἰς ἀγαθοῖο, φίλον τέκος, οἷ᾿ ἀγορεύεις.

• Father to Daughter
• A Man's Prayer for His Son
• Pride
• My Son

        Theirs was a greatness
        Got from their Grandsires —
        Theirs that so often in
        Strife with their enemies
Struck for their hoards and their hearths and their homes.

                                  swa him geæþele wæs
from cneomægum,    þæt hi æt campe oft
wiþ laþra gehwæne    land ealgodon,
hord and hamas.

It seems that the ancient Romans, like the Greeks, abhorred the taking of interest on loans as something knavish, and hard on the poor, and leading to contention and enmity; and by the same kind of reasoning the Persians considered lending as having itself a tendency to deceit and lying.

ἀποστραφῆναι γάρ μοι δοκοῦσιν οἱ πάλαι Ῥωμαῖοι, καθάπερ Ἕλληνες, τὸ δανείζειν ὡς καπηλικὸν καὶ βαρὺ τοῖς πένησι καὶ δύσερι καὶ ἐχθροποιόν, ᾧ λόγῳ καὶ Πέρσαι τὸ κίχρασθαι ὡς ἀπατηλόν τε καὶ φιλοψευδές.

• Usury
• Financial Instruments

I want to be read by less and less people; I have no interest in the life of the masses, nor in the intentions of the existing governments of the world. I hope and believe that the whole civilised world will be wiped out in the next hundred years or so. I believe that man can exist, and in an infinitely better, larger way, without "civilisation".

• Gómez Dávila on Writing for Oneself
• Few, One, or None
• Few, One, or None Revisited
• Write the Book You Want To Read
• An Audience of One
• Tolkien on Writing for Oneself
• To Write for Oneself
• Soliloquies
• Mihi et Musis
• Says I to Myself
• A Garbled Footnote
• For the Sole Benefit of the Performer

Then indeed with rejoicing did Agamemnon set foot on his native land, and laying hold of his land he kissed it, and many were the hot tears that streamed from his eyes, for welcome to him was the sight of his land.

ἦ τοι ὁ μὲν χαίρων ἐπεβήσετο πατρίδος αἴης
καὶ κύνει ἁπτόμενος ἣν πατρίδα· πολλὰ δ᾽ ἀπ᾽ αὐτοῦ
δάκρυα θερμὰ χέοντ᾽, ἐπεὶ ἀσπασίως ἴδε γαῖαν.

• Back Home Again! (T'ao Ch'ien)
• Homecoming (Joachim Du Bellay)
• Home Sweet Home (Homer, Theognis, Marcantonio Flaminio)
• Home Sweet Home (Catullus)

The planting of a tree, especially one of the long-living hardwood trees, is a gift which you can make to posterity at almost no cost and with almost no trouble, and if the tree takes root it will far outlive the visible effect of any of your other actions, good or evil.

A thing which I regret, and which I will try to remedy some time, is that I have never in my life planted a walnut. Nobody does plant them nowadays—when you see a walnut it is almost invariably an old tree. If you plant a walnut you are planting it for your grandchildren, and who cares a damn for his grandchildren? Nor does anybody plant a quince, a mulberry or a medlar. But these are garden trees which you can only be expected to plant if you have a patch of ground of your own. On the other hand, in any hedge or in any piece of waste ground you happen to be walking through, you can do something to remedy the appalling massacre of trees, especially oaks, ashes, elms and beeches, which has happened during the war years.

Even an apple tree is liable to live for about 100 years, so that the Cox I planted in 1936 may still be bearing fruit well into the twenty-first century. An oak or a beech may live for hundreds of years and be a pleasure to thousands or tens of thousands of people before it is finally sawn up into timber. I am not suggesting that one can discharge all one's obligations towards society by means of a private re-afforestation scheme. Still, it might not be a bad idea, every time you commit an antisocial act, to make a note of it in your diary, and then, at the appropriate season, push an acorn into the ground.

• Planting Trees
• A Pious Man
• More on a Pious Man
• An Octogenarian Plants a Tree
• A Disinterested Spirit
• The Long View
• Do Not Laugh At My Folly
• Factura Nepotibus Umbram

Antiquities, or remnants of history, are, as was said, tanquam tabula naufragii: when industrious persons, by an exact and scrupulous diligence and observation, out of monuments, names, words, proverbs, traditions, private records and evidences, fragments of stories, passages of books that concern not story, and the like, do save and recover somewhat from the deluge of time.

But I think that because he was weary of war, weary of power, weary of Rome, he finally fell in love with rural life.

ἀλλά μοι δοκεῖ κόρον τε πολέμων καὶ κόρον ἀρχῆς καὶ κόρον ἄστεος λαβὼν ἐπὶ τέλει καὶ ἀγροικίας ἐρασθῆναι.

This way, Lord Bacchus crowned with ivy,
do personally be our leader:
and with revels I will hymn you,
who love the dance!
Euius, you Noisemaker,
son of Zeus and Semele,
who enjoy the dances
of Nymphs at their charming songs
as you ramble over the mountains—
Euius, Euius, euoi!—
striking up the dances all night long;
and all around you their cries
echo on Cithaeron,
and the mountains shady
with dark leaves and the rocky
valleys reverberate.
And all around you ivy tendrils
twine in lovely bloom.

ἡγοῦ δέ γ᾿ ὧδ᾿ αὐτὸς σύ,
κισσοφόρε Βακχεῖε
δέσποτ᾿· ἐγὼ δὲ κώμοις
σε φιλοχόροισι μέλψω.

Εὔιε, ὦ Διὸς σὺ        990
Βρόμιε, καὶ Σεμέλας παῖ,
χοροῖς τερπόμενος
κατ᾿ ὄρεα Νυμφᾶν
ἐρατοῖς ἐν ὕμνοις,
ὦ Εὔι᾿ Εὔι᾿, εὐοῖ,
<παννύχιος> ἀναχορεύων.

ἀμφὶ δὲ σοὶ κτυπεῖται        995
Κιθαιρώνιος ἠχώ,
μελάμφυλλά τ᾿ ὄρη
δάσκια πετρώδεις
τε νάπαι βρέμονται·
κύκλῳ δὲ περί σε κισσὸς
εὐπέταλος ἕλικι θάλλει.        1000

990 Εὔιε, ὦ Διὸς σὺ Enger: εὔιον ὦ Διόνυσε R
994 suppl. Coulon (ἡδόμενος Austin)

Come, the Lord of wine and pleasure,
Evoi, Bacchus, lead us thou!
Yea, for Thee we adore!
Child of Semele, thee
With thy glittering ivy-wreaths,
Thee with music and song
Ever and ever we praise.
Thee with thy wood-nymphs delightedly singing,
    Evoi! Evoi! Evoi!
Over the joyous hills the sweet strange melody ringing.
    Hark! Cithaeron resounds,
    Pleased the notes to prolong;
    Hark! the bosky ravines
    And the wild slopes thunder and roar,
    Volleying back the song.
    Round thee the ivy fair
    With delicate tendril twines.

River slopes, already midmonth of spring;
under the blossoms, bright mornings again.
I look up, eager to watch the birds;
turn my head, answering what I took for a call.
Reading books, I skip the hard parts;
faced with wine, I keep my cup filled.
These days I've gotten to know the old man of Emei.¹
He understand this idleness that is my true nature.

————————————————

1. Emei is a famous mountain southwest of Chengdu.

On the river floodplain it is already mid-spring,
under the flowers once again a clear morning.
I raise my face, avid to watch the birds,
I turn my head, mistakenly to answer someone.
When I read, I pass over the hard words,
with ale before me, full pots are frequent.
Recently I've gotten to know an old fellow from Emei,
he understands that my indolence is my true nature.

What headstrong, what pitiless, what unbridled barbarity is this you display! Is it for this that you have visited our city? — to subvert that city's laws and traditions ... ?

quae est ista tam impotens, tam crudelis, tam immoderata inhumanitas? idcirco in hanc urbem venisti ut huius urbis iura et exempla corrumperes ... ?

To show how these things came about I have written and compiled this narrative, which is well worth the study of those who wish to know the measureless ambition of men, their dreadful lust of power, their unwearying perseverance, and the countless forms of evil.

ταῦτα δ᾽ ὅπως ἐγένετο, συνέγραψα καὶ συνήγαγον, ἀξιοθαύμαστα ὄντα τοῖς ἐθέλουσιν ἰδεῖν φιλοτιμίαν ἀνδρῶν ἄμετρον καὶ φιλαρχίαν δεινὴν καρτερίαν τε ἄτρυτον καὶ κακῶν ἰδέας μυρίων.

Be yours this fruit, take the produce of my night-watches:
my midnight oil burns in the service of your delight.

sit tuus hic fructus, vigilatas accipe noctes:
    obsequitur studio nostra lucerna tuo.

Second month spent by now, third month arrives;
old age creeps up, how many more springs will I see?
But cease thinking of endless matters beyond my ken—
first let me drink up the cups allowed me in this life!

Do you see how the villagers, outspread o'er the well-worn turf,        15
offer their yearly vows and begin the regular altar-worship?
Temples reek of wine; the hollow drums resound to the hands;
the Maenalids^a lead the youthful ring-dances amid the holy rites;
joyful sounds the pipe; from the elm hangs the he-goat doomed to sacrifice,
and with neck already stripped lays his vitals bare.        20
Surely then the offspring of to-day fight with no doubtful hazard?^b
Surely the blockish herd denies not to these times the realms of gold?^c
The days of Saturn have returned with Justice the Maid:^d
the age has returned in safety to the olden ways.
With hope unruffled does the harvester garner all his corn-ears;        25
the Wine-god betrays the languor of old age; the herd wanders on the lea;
we reap with no sword, nor do towns in fast-closed walls
prepare unutterable war: there is not any woman who, dangerous in her motherhood,
gives birth to an enemy.^e Unarmed our youth
can dig the fields, and the boy, trained to the slow-moving plough,        30
marvels at the sword hanging in the abode of his fathers.

^a Maenalus in Arcadia was especially associated with Pan.

^b i.e. the present generation has no handicap in the struggle of life: there is no conflict between man and nature, because the Golden Age has returned.

^c The very cattle must own that the blessings of the Golden Age belong to the present era.

^d Line 23 imitates Virg. Ecl. iv.6, iam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna.

^e No foeman can be born, as war is at an end.

cernis ut attrito diffusus cespite pagus        15
annua vota ferat sollennesque incohet aras?
spirant templa mero, resonant cava tympana palmis,
Maenalides teneras ducunt per sacra choreas,
tibia laeta canit, pendet sacer hircus ab ulmo
et iam nudatis cervicibus exuit exta.        20
ergo nunc dubio pugnant discrimine nati
et negat huic aevo stolidum pecus aurea regna?
Saturni rediere dies Astraeaque virgo
tutaque in antiquos redierunt saecula mores.
condit secura totas spe messor aristas,        25
languescit senio Bacchus, pecus errat in herba,
nec gladio metimus nec clausis oppida muris
bella tacenda parant; nullo iam noxia partu
femina quaecumque est hostem parit. arva iuventus
nuda fodit tardoque puer domifactus aratro        30
miratur patriis pendentem sedibus ensem.

15 cespite pagus Baehrens: cortice fagus E
16 inchoet Baehrens: imbuet E: imbuat Hagen: induat Peiper
21 nunc Baehrens: num E
22 tutaque Baehrens: totaque E

In my nineteenth year, after my father's death, I betook myself to Paris from love of Greek, believing that they who know not Greek, know nothing. After attending the learned lectures of Adrian Turnebus for two months, I found I was throwing all my work away, because I had no foundation. I secluded myself, therefore, in my study, and, shut in that grinding-mill, sought to learn, self-taught, what I had not been able to acquire from others. Beginning with a mere smattering of the Greek conjugations, I procured Homer, with a translation, and learned him all in twenty-one days. I learned grammar exclusively from observation of the relation of Homer's words to each other; indeed, I made my own grammar of the poetic dialect as I went along. I devoured all the other Greek poets within four months. I did not touch any of the orators or historians until I had mastered all the poets.

Anno aetatis meae decimonono Lutetiam post obitum patris petii literarum Graecarum amore, quas qui nescirent, omnia nescire putabam. Postquam menses duos operam Adriano Turnebo dedissem, quia destitutus aliis praesidiis operam omnem in eius doctissimo auditorio ludebam, in musaeum me abdidi, & in illo pistrino inclusus, quod ex aliis non potueram, me magistro discere experiebar. Igitur vix delibatis coniugationibus Graecis, Homerum cum interpretatione arreptum vno & viginti diebus totum didici: poeticae vero dialecti vestigiis insistens Grammaticam mihi ipse formavi: neque vllam aliam didici, quam quae mihi ex analogia verborum Homericorum obseruata fuit. Reliquos vero poetas Graecos omnes intra quatuor menses deuoraui. Neque vllum oratorem, aut historicum prius attigi, quam poetas omnes tenerem.

The whole world is full of impudence and brass.

ὡς ἅπαντ᾽ ἄρ᾽ ἐστὶ τόλμης ἔργα κἀναισχυντίας.

How everything is full of impudence and shamelessness!

One bend of the clear river crooks the village in its flow;
long summer days, river village, all activity stilled.
Swallows from the bridge come and go as they please,
gulls on the water friendlier, more fearless than ever.
My aging wife rules a sheet of paper, fashioning us a chessboard;
the boys hammer a needle, making it into a fishhook.
With all these ailments, all I require is medicine;¹
of humble station, what more could I ask?

————————————————

1. "I've an old friend who supplies me with rations of rice;" is an alternate reading given in one version of the text.

A hundred years ago, Charles Kingsley described science as "making nasty smells in a laboratory". A year or two ago a young industrial chemist informed me, smugly, that he "could not see what was the use of poetry". So the pendulum swings to and fro, but it does not seem to me that one attitude is any better than the other.

Be content with your present lot, but seek a better one.

Taunt no man with his misfortune; for fate is common to all and the future is a thing unseen.

στέργε μὲν τὰ παρόντα, ζήτει δὲ τὰ βελτίω.

μηδενὶ συμφορὰν ὀνειδίσῃς· κοινὴ γὰρ ἡ τύχη καὶ τὸ μέλλον ἀόρατον.

βελτίω Γ, Stobaeus: βέλτιστα ΕΖ

Let's doff our shirts, because a man's got to smell like a man from the word go, and shouldn't be all wrapped up like souvlaki.

ἀλλὰ τὴν ἐξωμίδ᾿ ἐκδυώμεθ᾿, ὡς τὸν ἄνδρα δεῖ
ἀνδρὸς ὄζειν εὐθύς, ἀλλ᾿ οὐκ ἐντεθριῶσθαι πρέπει.

For several years 'A man's gotta smell like a man' was the advertising slogan for an American men's cologne.

In the past, at any rate throughout the Protestant centuries, the idea of rebellion and the idea of intellectual integrity were mixed up. A heretic — political, moral, religious, or aesthetic — was one who refused to outrage his own conscience. His outlook was summed up in the words of the Revivalist hymn:

Dare to be a Daniel,
Dare to stand alone;
Dare to have a purpose firm,
Dare to make it known.

To bring this hymn up to date one would have to add a "Don't" at the beginning of each line.

Something about the composition of the Cité antique is revealed to us by two letters from Fustel published by L. Halkin in Mélanges Bidez, Volume I, 1934, pp. 465-74. A German scholar who for a long time had been Professor of Law at Liège and had now retired to Stuttgart, L.A. Warnkoenig, had said that he would be willing to review the Cité antique in a German periodical. He did in fact publish a long and admiring review in Jahrbücher der deutschen Rechtswissenschaft 11, 1865, pp. 81-94. Fustel thought it expedient to explain to him the method he had used in writing the book. He stated without false modesty that 'his type of mind was such that he could not be content with details'. His method had been the comparative one. By comparing the Rig-Veda with Euripides, the laws of Manu with the Twelve Tables or Isaeus and Lysias, he had arrived at the conclusion of a remote community of beliefs and institutions among Indians, Greeks and Italic peoples. He had not troubled to read what the moderns had written. Indeed he had imposed upon himself the principle of not reading them, and in particular of not reading the works of Mommsen, until he had almost finished his book. He insists on this independence from modern authors also in the reply to Morel, where the books of Becker and Marquardt are specified among those not read. It is nonetheless clear that these claims only go to demonstrate that Fustel was fully informed about contemporary historical research and made a distinction, for instance, between Marquardt and Mommsen. If the Cité antique is haughtily devoid of references to modern authors while revealing an enviable familiarity with classical texts, one must deduce from this not simple ignorance, but intentional disregard: the same disregard that led Hegel to ignore Niebuhr's critical method and that made Bachofen (with certain exceptions) indifferent to Mommsen's methods. The attitude they have in common is one which repudiates modern criticism of the sources in order to preserve the sources' data. In his inaugural lecture at Strasbourg in 1862 Fustel declared: 'I then resolved to have no masters on Greece other than the Greeks themselves, nor on Rome than the Romans.' Even more explicitly, in fragments published after his death: 'I would rather be mistaken in the manner of Livy than that of Niebuhr; and in the manner of Gregory of Tours than that of Mr Sohm.' And he added more generally about his adversaries: 'They put themselves up as critics because they have no critical spirit' (Revue Synthèse Hist. 2, 1901, pp. 249-50, 257-8). Later, in writing, or rather in rewriting the Histoire des Institutions politiques de l'ancienne France, Fustel confessed with regret that he had had to yield to the new fashion of presenting all the scholarly material (Histoire, I, La Gaule Romaine, 1891, p. iv n.).

The year 1905 was the seventy-fifth anniversary of the death of Fustel de Coulanges, the historian and author of La Cité Antique.

Labels: typographical and other errors

Tackle them! Hit them! Smash them!
Call them names, the nastier the better!

οὐχ ἕλξετ᾿, οὐ παιήσετ᾿, οὐκ ἀράξετε,
οὐ λοιδορήσετ᾿, οὐκ ἀναισχυντήσετε;

Won't you tackle them, won't you hit them, won't you smash them,
won't you call them names, won't you behave impudently?

The second person of the future may express a concession or permission; and it often expresses a command.

• Be quiet!
• Will you be quiet?
• Won't you be quiet?

It takes a lot of naïveté to believe that it helps to shout and scream in the world, as if one's fate would thereby be altered. Take what comes and avoid all complications. In my early years, when I went to a restaurant, I would say to the waiter: A good cut, a very good cut, from the loin, and not too fat. Perhaps the waiter would scarcely hear what I said. Perhaps it was even less likely that he would heed it, and still less that my voice would penetrate into the kitchen, influence the chef — and even if all this happened, there perhaps was not a good cut in the whole roast. Now I never shout anymore.

Aldous Huxley, in praising Lear's fantasies as a sort of assertion of freedom, has pointed out that the "They" of the limericks represent common sense, legality and the duller virtues generally. "They" are the realists, the practical men, the sober citizens in bowler hats who are always anxious to stop you doing anything worth doing. For instance:

There was an Old Man of Whitehaven,
Who danced a quadrille with a raven;
But they said, "It's absurd
To encourage this bird!"
So they smashed that Old Man of Whitehaven.

To smash somebody just for dancing a quadrille with a raven is exactly the kind of thing that "They" would do.

No study of Lear would be complete without at least a few remarks on "They" of the Nonsense Rhymes. "They" are the world, the man in the street; "They" are what the leader-writers in the twopenny press would call all Right-Thinking Men and Women; "They" are Public Opinion. The Nonsense Rhymes are, for the most part, nothing more nor less than episodes selected from the history of that eternal struggle between the genius or the eccentric and his fellow-beings. Public Opinion universally abhors eccentricity. There was, for example, that charming Old Man of Melrose who walked on the tips of his toes. But "They" said (with their usual inability to appreciate the artist), "It ain't pleasant to see you at present, you stupid old man of Melrose." Occasionally, when the eccentric happens to be a criminal genius, "They" are doubtless right. The Old Man with a Gong who bumped on it all the day long deserved to be smashed. (But "They" also smashed a quite innocuous Old Man of Whitehaven merely for dancing a quadrille with a raven.) And there was that Old Person of Buda, whose conduct grew ruder and ruder; "They" were justified, I dare say, in using a hammer to silence his clamour. But it raises the whole question of punishment and of the relation between society and the individual.