Laudator Temporis Acti

Holbrook Jackson (1874-1948), The Anatomy of Bibliomania (London: The Soncino Press, 1932), p. 167 (Part VIII: "Of the Uses of Books," § V: "Their Belligerent Usefulness"):

Whether they have proved successful as armour or not, they are no despicable munitionment of war in other respects. As weapons they have done their bit, most effectively, as when Dr. Johnson knocked Osborne down with a folio, because that notorious bookseller had blamed his learned and diligent employee for negligence. The historic volume, so Sir Leslie Stephen records, a copy of Biblia Graeca Septuaginta, 1594, was in the possession of a Cambridge bookseller as late as the year 1812. Few will dispute with Stephen when he urges that so desirable an association copy should have been placed in some safe author’s museum.² Another instance of the use of books as weapons is recorded by Anthony Trollope, whose father often knocked him down with a great Folio Bible as a punishment for youthful idleness.³ As missiles they are widely appreciated, lending themselves as they do both by reason of their size and shape to sudden precipitation at an offending head. Another Johnson, William (Cory), used them in this manner. He threw a book at any boy in his class at Eton who was either flagrantly unoccupied or suspiciously absorbed;⁴ and it is reported that William Morris hurled a fifteenth-century quarto (which was so precious that he would allow no one to touch it) at the head of a person who had irritated him, and with such force that in the course of its militant career it knocked the panel out of a door.

² L. Stephen, Johnson. 27. ³ Autobiography. World’s Classics Ed. 14. ⁴ In Lit. Anec. of 19th Cent. ii, 400.

"Man Arrested for Easter Bible Belting of Walgreens Worker, Cops Say," The Smoking Gun (April 2, 2024):

On Easter, the manager of a Walgreens store suffered a Bible belting “because she was being rude,” according to a customer who is now facing a felony battery charge.

Police say Peter Owens, 35, went to the pharmacy Sunday evening to purchase a pair of headphones. While at the Clearwater, Florida business, Owens got into a “verbal altercation” with an employee over the headphones, according to a criminal complaint.

When Nicole Merck, the 36-year-old store manager, approached Owens ... and asked him to leave the Walgreens, “Peter used the brown Bible in his hand and struck Nicole in the face one time before he exited the store.”

After the alleged Bible battery, cops located Owens and took him into custody. After being read his rights, Owens reportedly admitted to striking Merck “in the face one time with his Bible because she was being rude to him.”

“Peter stated he did not mean to hit her,” Officer Ryan Wall reported.

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