Laudator Temporis Acti

Hāfiz, Dīwān, Ghazal 355 (tr. A.J. Alston):

Let me have no friends or companions
But a wine-flask and a book,
That I may avoid all association
With the deceitful denizens of the world.

Recent pieces by Theodore Dalrymple:

• Vox Populi
  
• "Treating" Drug Abuse
  
• Divided Hearts

Aristophanes, Wealth 817-818 (tr. Alan H. Sommerstein):

[A]nd we don't even wipe our bottoms with stones any more -- we're so spoilt we now always use garlic cloves!

ἀποψώμεσθα δ' οὐ λίθοις ἔτι,
ἀλλὰ σκοροδίοις ὑπὸ τρυφῆς ἑκάστοτε.

Aristophanes, Peace 1224-1230 (tr. Sommerstein):

ARMS-DEALER [displaying a cuirass]: And what, alack, shall I do with this rounded cuirass, a beautiful fit, worth ten minas?
TRYGAEUS: Well, that one won't make a loss for you, anyway. Give me that at cost price. [The dealer hands over the cuirass.] It'll be very convenient to crap in --
ARMS-DEALER: Stop this impudent mockery of my goods!
TRYGAEUS [who has placed the cuirass on the ground like a chamberpot and is squatting on it]: -- like this, if you put three stones beside it. Isn't that clever?

Θωρακοπώλης
τί δαὶ δεκάμνῳ τῷδε θώρηκος κύτει
ἐνημμένῳ κάλλιστα χρήσομαι τάλας;
Τρυγαῖος
οὗτος μὲν οὐ μή σοι ποιήσει ζημίαν.
ἀλλ᾽ αἶρέ μοι τοῦτόν γε τῆς ἰσωνίας·
ἐναποπατεῖν γάρ ἐστ᾽ ἐπιτήδειος πάνυ--
Θωρακοπώλης
παῦσαί μ᾽ ὑβρίζων τοῖς ἐμοῖσι χρήμασιν.
Τρυγαῖος
ὡδὶ παραθέντι τρεῖς λίθους. οὐ δεξιῶς;

The scholiast on Aristophanes, Peace 1230, refers to a proverb:

Three stones are enough to wipe one's arse.

τρεῖς εἰσιν ἱκανοὶ πρωκτὸν ἀπομάξαι λίθοι.

This proverb is similar to an instruction in the Islamic tradition, from the hadith Sallallaahu alayhi wasallam:

If any of you goes to defecate, he should take with him three stones, for they will be sufficient for him.

Machon, quoted by Athenaeus 13.578 e (tr. C.B. Gulick):

Now it seems, as is reported, that Mania suffered from the stone; but Gnathaena, because she soiled the bedclothes, was chastised somehow for this by Diphilus. And once after Gnathaena was reviling Mania and said "How about this, sister, even if you did have a stone?" Mania retorted, "I should have given it to you, you wretch, that you might have had something with which to cleanse yourself."

Ἐδόκει δὲ λιθιᾶν, ὡς ἔοιχ', ἡ Μανία·
Γνάθαινα δ'εἰς τὰ στρώμαθ' ὅτι προίετο,
ἐνουθετήθη τοῦτό πως ὑπὸ Διφίλου.
μετὰ ταῦτα δ' ἡ Γνάθαινα πρὸς τὴν Μανίαν
ἐλοιδορεῖτο καὶ λέγει "τί τοῦτο, παῖ,
εἰ καὶ λίθον εἶχες;" ὑπολαβοῦσ' ἡ Μανία
"ἔδωκ' ἄν, ἵν' εἶχες, φήσ', ἀποψᾶσθαι, τάλαν."

Lyncaeus, quoted by Athenaeus 13.584 c (tr. Gulick) tells a similar story, with Phrynê replacing Mania:

Once Phrynê said rather sourly to her, "Suppose you had the stone?" She retorted, "I'd have given it to you to wipe yourself with." For it so happened that one of them had the stone, while the other was suffering from diarrhoea.

Φρύνης δὲ πικρότερον εἰπούσης αὐτῇ "εἱ δὲ λίθον, έφη, εἶχες," "ἀποψήσασθαι ἄν σοι ἔδωκα." ἐτύγχανεν δὲ ἣ μὲν αἰτίαν ἐχουσα λιθιᾶν, ἣ δὲ κοιλίαν προπετεστέραν ἔχειν.

Anthony Burgess, Little Wilson and Big God (1987; rpt. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991), p. 91:

I would as often as not walk down Moss Lane East, passing Whitworth Park with its pond, its meteorological station, and its highly regarded art gallery from which for some time I was banned; in the company of other kids I had sucked at the marble breast of a Greek goddess and been ejected by one of the curators.

I wonder if it would be possible to identify the gallery and the sculpture.

---

Professor David Whitehead writes:

The gallery is Manchester University's Whitworth Art Gallery [www.whitworth.man.ac.uk] which Burgess, a student there in the late 1930s, would indeed have passed when approaching the main campus from the south. It doesn't have very many antiquities, so the sculpture in question ought to be easy to identify, especially if it is still there.

Allen & Greenough, New Latin Grammar § 336: "There is no one Latin word in common use meaning simply yes or no." On ways around this lack, see H. Thesleff, Yes and No in Plautus and Terence (Helsinki, 1960) = Societas Scientiarum Fennica. Commentationes humanarum litterarum, XXVI, 3.

Cf. Anthony Burgess, Little Wilson and Big God (1987; rpt. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991), p. 100:

Burgess swore that there was a Latin word for yes unrecorded in Roman literature. This, he said, was chut and derived from the sneezing of Caligula. When Caligula sneezed at the games, it was interpreted ambiguously -- yes, let him die; yes, let him live. Because the meanings cancelled out, chut did not survive.

The imaginative Burgess of this anecdote was James Burgess, no relation to Anthony Burgess, the nom de plume of John Burgess Wilson.

Charles Baudelaire, beginning of Petits poèmes en prose, 10 (A une heure du matin), tr. Louise Varèse:

At last! I am alone! Nothing can be heard but the rumbling of a few belated and weary cabs. For a few hours at least silence will be ours, if not sleep. At last! the tyranny of the human face has disappeared, and now there will be no one but myself to make me suffer.

At last! I am allowed to relax in a bath of darkness! First a double turn of the key in the lock. This turn of the key will, it seems to me, increase my solitude and strengthen the barricades that, for the moment, separate me from the world.

Enfin! seul! On n'entend plus que le roulement de quelques fiacres attardés et éreintés. Pendant quelques heures, nous posséderons le silence, sinon le repos. Enfin! la tyrannie de la face humaine a disparu, et je ne souffrirai plus que par moi-même.

Enfin! il m'est donc permis de me délasser dans un bain de ténèbres! D'abord, un double tour à la serrure. Il me semble que ce tour de clef augmentera ma solitude et fortifiera les barricades qui me séparent actuellement du monde.

Thoreau, Journals (Aug. 19, 1851):

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live! Methinks that the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow, as if I had given vent to the stream at the lower end and consequently new fountains flowed into it at the upper. A thousand rills which have their rise in the sources of thought burst forth and fertilize my brain. You need to increase the draught below, as the owners of meadows on Concord River say of the Billerica Dam. Only while we are in action is the circulation perfect. The writing which consists with habitual sitting is mechanical, wooden, dull to read.

John Burroughs, Birds and Poets:

How the best modern novel collapses before the homely but immense human significance of Homer's celestial swineherd entertaining divine Ulysses, or even the solitary watchman in Aeschylus' "Agamemnon," crouched, like a night-dog, on the roofs of the Atreidae, waiting for the signal fires that should announce the fall of sacred Ilion!

John Owen, Epigrams 9.44 (Heautontimoroumenos, tr. Thomas Harvey):

Dum mortem vitare studet, vitamque tueri,
  se toto vitae tempore torquet homo.
Bruta bonis fruitur praesentis bestia vitae;
  dum vivit, vivit; cum moritur, moritur.

While Death to shun, Life to preserve, poor Man
Doth vex himself the space of all his span.
Brute Beasts enjoy the present Life's supply,
Living they live, and when they die, they die.

John Owen, Epigrams 1.172 (Ad Lectorem = To the Reader, tr. Thomas Harvey):

Tabificum non accedat liber iste tabaccum,
  Terge libro potius posteriora meo.

Lest this my Book should make Tobaco vapour,
Wipe rather thy Posteriours with my Paper.

Other posts on this topic:

• Bumf Again
  
• Bumf
  
• Books and Toilets

I'm sick of hearing about George "Macaca" Allen, Mahmoud "Da Bomb" Ahmadinejad, Kofi "Abettor" Annan, Tom "Mouth" Cruise, hoc genus omne.

I regularly read the police reports from central Maine, though. Things were a bit wacky the other day in Waterville:

9:10 a.m., two 9-year-old girls were reportedly racing baby carriages with children in them on Gold Street.

2:52 p.m., a big fight with people using kitchen utensils was reported on Carey Lane.

3:15 p.m., a caller from College Avenue reported a neighbor had covered her pets with cooking oil.

Athena to Odysseus, in Sophocles, Ajax 79 (tr. Hugh Lloyd-Jones):

Is not laughing at one's enemies the most delighful sort of laughter?

οὔκουν γέλως ἥδιστος εἰς ἐχθροὺς γελᾶν;

Sophocles, Electra 277-281 (tr. R.C. Jebb):

Nay, as if exulting in [ἐγγελῶσα = laughing in] her deeds, having found the day on which she treacherously slew my father of old, she keeps it with dance and song, and month by month sacrifices sheep to the gods who have wrought her deliverance.

ἀλλ᾽ ὥσπερ ἐγγελῶσα τοῖς ποιουμένοις,
εὑροῦσ᾽ ἐκείνην ἡμέραν, ἐν ᾗ τότε
πατέρα τὸν ἀμὸν ἐκ δόλου κατέκτανεν,
ταύτῃ χοροὺς ἵστησι καὶ μηλοσφαγεῖ
θεοῖσιν ἔμμην᾽ ἱερὰ τοῖς σωτηρίοις.

Sophocles, Electra 804-807 (tr. Jebb):

How think ye? Was there not grief and anguish there, wondrous weeping and wailing of that miserable mother, for the son who perished by such a fate? Nay, she left us with a laugh!

ἆρ᾽ ὑμὶν ὡς ἀλγοῦσα κὠδυνωμένη
δεινῶς δακρῦσαι κἀπικωκῦσαι δοκεῖ
τὸν υἱὸν ἡ δύστηνος ὧδ᾽ ὀλωλότα;
ἀλλ᾽ ἐγγελῶσα φροῦδος.

Sophocles, Electra 1153 (tr. Lloyd-Jones):

Our enemies are laughing.

γελῶσι δ᾽ ἐχθροί.

Sophocles, Electra 1293-1295 (tr. Lloyd-Jones):

But tell me what will suit the present time, where we must appear or where we must hide to put a stop to our enemies' laughter by our present expedition.

ἃ δ᾽ ἁρμόσει μοι τῷ παρόντι νῦν χρόνῳ
σήμαιν᾽, ὅπου φανέντες ἢ κεκρυμμένοι
γελῶντας ἐχθροὺς παύσομεν τῇ νῦν ὁδῷ.

Sophocles, Philoctetes 258-259 (tr. Jebb):

No, the men who wickedly cast me out keep their secret and laugh.

ἀλλ᾽ οἱ μὲν ἐκβαλόντες ἀνοσίως ἐμὲ
γελῶσι σῖγ᾽ ἔχοντες.

Sophocles, Philoctetes 1020-1024 (tr. Jebb):

But, since the gods grant nothing sweet to me, thou livest and art glad, while life itself is pain to me, steeped in misery as I am, -- mocked [γελώμενος = laughed at] by thee and by the sons of Atreus, for whom thou doest this errand.

ἀλλ᾽ οὐ γὰρ οὐδὲν θεοὶ νέμουσιν ἡδύ μοι,
σὺ μὲν γέγηθας ζῶν, ἐγὼ δ᾽ ἀλγύνομαι
τοῦτ᾽ αὔθ᾽, ὅτι ζῶ σὺν κακοῖς πολλοῖς τάλας,
γελώμενος πρὸς σοῦ τε καὶ τῶν Ἀτρέως
διπλῶν στρατηγῶν, οἷς σὺ ταῦθ᾽ ὑπηρετεῖς.

Sophocles, Philoctetes 1123-1125 (tr. Lloyd-Jones):

Alas for me, somewhere by the shore of the gray sea he sits and mocks me [γελᾷ μου = laughs at me].

οἴμοι μοι, καί που πολιᾶς
πόντου θινὸς ἐφήμενος
γελᾷ μου.

Psalms 22.7-8:

All they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the head saying, He trusted on the LORD that he would deliver him: let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him.

Psalms 80.6:

Our enemies laugh among themselves.

Euripides, Orestes 772 (tr. E.P. Coleridge):

A terrible thing is the mob, when it has villains to lead it.

δεινὸν οἱ πολλοί, κακούργους ὅταν ἔχωσι προστάτας.

---

If you've never studied Greek, you still might be able to recognize the first three words of this quotation, deinon hoi polloi. I'm a little puzzled by the entry in the Online Etymology Dictionary s.v. dinosaur:

1841, coined by Sir Richard Owen, from Gk. deinos "terrible" + sauros "lizard," of unknown origin. Fig. sense of "person or institution not adapting to change" is from 1952.

How can the word dinosaur be of unknown origin, if we know who coined it and from what Greek roots? As for the secondary meaning "person or institution not adapting to change," see the last paragraph of C.S. Lewis' 1954 lecture De Descriptione Temporum.

In its article on hoi polloi, Merriam Webster's Concise Dictionary of English Usage discusses two issues concerning this expression, its use with "the" (hoi means "the," so "the hoi polloi" is "the the many") and its use to mean "the snobby elite." Only the snobby elite, I suppose, would object to these two uses of hoi polloi.

Martial 5.20 (tr. Robert Louis Stevenson):

God knows, my Martial, if we two could be
To enjoy our days set wholly free;
To the true life together bend our mind,
And take a furlough from the falser kind.
No rich saloon, nor palace of the great,
Nor suit at law should trouble our estate;
On no vainglorious statues should we look,
But of a walk, a talk, a little book,
Baths, wells and meads, and the veranda shade,
Let all our travels and our toils be made.
Now neither lives unto himself, alas!
And the good suns we see, that flash and pass
And perish; and the bell that knells them cries:
"Another gone: O when will ye arise?"

Si tecum mihi, care Martialis,
securis liceat frui diebus,
si disponere tempus otiosum
et verae pariter vacare vitae:
nec nos atria nec domos potentum
nec litis tetricas forumque triste
nossemus nec imagines superbas;
sed gestatio, fabulae, libelli,
campus, porticus, umbra, Virgo, thermae,
haec essent loca semper, hi labores.
Nunc vivit necuter sibi, bonosque
soles effugere atque abire sentit,
qui nobis pereunt et inputantur.
Quisquam vivere cum sciat, moratur?

This is not a soliloquy. Martial is addressing his friend Julius Martialis. See translations of the same poem by Henry Newbolt and Andrew Lang.

Christopher Morley, A Morning in Marathon, from Shandygaff (1918):

As I passed through on my way to the Philadelphia train I was amused by a wicker basket full of Scotch terrier puppies -- five or six of them tumbling over one another in their play and yelping so that the station rang. "Every little bit yelps" as someone has said. I was reminded of the last words I ever read in Virgil (the end of the sixth book of the Aeneid) -- stant litore puppes, which I always yearned to translate "a litter of puppies."

This is another note to myself, of little interest to anyone else.

Euripides, Orestes 201-207 (tr. E.P. Coleridge):

You are in your grave, and the greater part of my life is spent in weeping and wailing, and tears at night; unmarried, childless, I drag out forever a joyless existence.

σύ τε γὰρ ἐν νεκροῖς, τό τ' ἐμὸν οἴχεται
βίου τὸ πλέον μέρος ἐν στοναχαῖσί τε καὶ γόοισι
δάκρυσί τ' ἐννυχίοις, ἄγαμος    205
[ἐπὶ δ'] ἄτεκνος ἅτε βίοτον ἁ
μέλεος ἐς τὸν αἰὲν ἕλκω χρόνον.

206 ἐπὶ δ' L: ἔπιδ᾽ rell.: secl. Wilamowitz, e Σ irrepsisse ratus

The text and apparatus are Gilbert Murray's, from C.W. Willink, Euripides Orestes. With introduction and commentary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986). James Diggle's edition is not available to me. Willink ad loc.:

ἄγαμος ἄτεκνος: a frequent pair (Al. 882, IT 220, Hel. 689; Al. 887-9 ἀτέκνους ἀγάμους τ᾽); these parallels (and many others, e.g. Tr. 1186 ἄπολις ἄτεκνος, Su. 966 ἄπαις ἄτεκνος) confirm Wilamowitz' excision of the otherwise obscure ἔπιδ᾽ (or ἐπὶ δ').

With Wilamowitz' excision, we have an example of asyndetic, privative adjectives, not cited in any of my earlier posts on this subject. Another example in the Orestes (310) is ἀνάδελφος ἀπάτωρ ἄφιλος.

There is an odd misprint in Willink's commentary on lines 126-139:

A link-passage between Helen's exit and the entry of the Chorus. First Helen gives vent to the hatred which she has had to control (hoping for help from Men.) in Helen's presence.

"First Helen" is obviously a mistake for "First Electra".

In my list of drinking songs by the Chesterbelloc, I overlooked Hilaire Belloc's West Sussex Drinking Song:

They sell good Beer at Haslemere
And under Guildford Hill.
At Little Cowfold, as I've been told,
A beggar may drink his fill:
There is a good brew in Amberley too,
And by the bridge also;
But the swipes they take in at Washington Inn
Is the very best Beer I know, the very best Beer I know.

With my here it goes, there it goes,
All the fun's before us;
The tipple's aboard and the night is young,
The door's ajar and the Barrel is sprung,
I am singing the best song ever was sung
And it has a rousing chorus.

If I were what I never could be,
The master or the squire:
If you gave me the hundred from here to the sea,
Which is more than I desire:
Then all my crops should be barley and hops,
And should my harvest fail
I'd sell every rood of mine acres, I would,
For a bellyful of good Ale, a bellyful of good Ale.

With my here etc.

I suspect that the following verses by D.B. Wyndham Lewis, with the bombastic title Song in Praise of Saint Dunstan and the Holy Country of Sussex, and to the Eternal Confusion of Them That Live in Surrey and Do Very Damnably Peddle in Stocks; Peccator Videbit et Irascetur; Meet to be Sung at Hock-Tide and Festivals with Octave, are a parody of the Chestertonian/Bellocian manner:

  I

Saint Dunstan was a Sussex Man,
  Benedicamus Domino.
He drank strong ale from a silver can,
  Semper sit laudatio.
The Devil came bouncing out of Surrey
And left for home in a devilish hurry,
At Gué-de-Vède he lost his way --
He found it again at Buzançay.

Chorus

Oh, snouts are red at Wisboro' Green,
And they whack the pot like men, I ween,
In Horsham Town and Helling-ly,
In little Alfriston and in Rye.

  II

The Devil he lived round Hindhead way,
  Bombinans in vacuo.
He snatched five brokers' souls away,
  Mortis in articulo.
But when he got to Roundabout
They banged him silly and threw him out,
At Storrington they gnawed his ear --
They welcomed him at Haslemere.

Chorus

Oh, the lads of Sussex swagger and screech
From Ditchling Beacon to Hastings Beach,
And Sussex men do bellow and sing
From Birling Gap to Chancton Ring.

  III

The Devil flew off to Périgueux,
  Tamquam leo rugiens.
By Folq-les-Rois, Fijeac, and Eu,
  Prae timore fugiens.
But Saint Dunstan he called the Sussex Men
From barn and sheepfold, byre and pen,
From Harting, Houndsditch, Troon, and Tring,
And they roared and howled like anything.

Chorus

Oh, the brown ale foams in Uckfield inns,
And in Lewes they drink from salmon-tins,
But the Sussex lads who roar the most
Take a genteel sip and give up the ghost.

Labels: nunc est bibendum

Thoreau, Journals (Sept. 4, 1851):

It is wise to write on many subjects, to try many themes, that so you may find the right and inspiring one. Be greedy of occasions to express your thought. Improve the opportunity to draw analogies. There are innumerable avenues to a perception of the truth. Improve the suggestion of each object however humble, however slight and transient the provocation. What else is there to be improved? Who knows what opportunities he may neglect? It is not in vain that the mind turns aside this way or that: follow its leading; apply it whither it inclines to go. Probe the universe in a myriad points. Be avaricious of these impulses. You must try a thousand themes before you find the right one, as nature makes a thousand acorns to get one oak. He is a wise man and experienced who has taken many views; to whom stones and plants and animals and a myriad objects have each suggested something, contributed something.

C.S. Lewis, In Praise of Solid People, from Spirits in Bondage:

Thank God that there are solid folk
Who water flowers and roll the lawn,
And sit and sew and talk and smoke,
And snore all through the summer dawn.

Who pass untroubled nights and days
Full-fed and sleepily content,
Rejoicing in each other's praise,
Respectable and innocent.

Who feel the things that all men feel,
And think in well-worn grooves of thought,
Whose honest spirits never reel
Before man's mystery, overwrought.

Yet not unfaithful nor unkind,
With work-day virtues surely staid,
Theirs is the sane and humble mind,
And dull affections undismayed.

O happy people! I have seen
No verse yet written in your praise,
And, truth to tell, the time has been
I would have scorned your easy ways.

But now thro' weariness and strife
I learn your worthiness indeed,
The world is better for such life
As stout suburban people lead.

Too often have I sat alone
When the wet night falls heavily,
And fretting winds around me moan,
And homeless longing vexes me

For lore that I shall never know,
And visions none can hope to see,
Till brooding works upon me so
A childish fear steals over me.

I look around the empty room,
The clock still ticking in its place,
And all else silent as the tomb,
Till suddenly, I think, a face

Grows from the darkness just beside.
I turn, and lo! it fades away,
And soon another phantom tide
Of shifting dreams begins to play,

And dusky galleys past me sail,
Full freighted on a faerie sea;
I hear the silken merchants hail
Across the ringing waves to me

-Then suddenly, again, the room,
Familiar books about me piled,
And I alone amid the gloom,
By one more mocking dream beguiled.

And still no nearer to the Light,
And still no further from myself,
Alone and lost in clinging night
-(The clock's still ticking on the shelf).

Then do I envy solid folk
Who sit of evenings by the fire,
After their work and doze and smoke,
And are not fretted by desire.

A few months ago I quoted part of my son's description of a camping trip:

On our midnight canoe run, Ken and I disturbed a great blue heron nesting in the canopy above us: as it flew away, loudly protesting, it discharged its copious cloacal contents in our direction, which splashed loudly around the canoe nearly hitting us. I shone the light upwards through the canopy and I remember quite clearly the sight of the fecal salvo descending rapidly towards us.

In my earlier post, I showed how this fulfilled a prophesy in Aeschylus. Thanks to the generosity of my son, I now own a complete set of Thoreau's Journals. As first fruits, I offer Thoreau's description (October 29, 1855) of a heron's copious cloacal contents:

Returning, I scare up a blue heron from its bathing-rock this side the Island. It is whitened by its droppings, in great splotches a foot or more wide.

---

The Carpetbagger Report investigates claims about George W. Bush, reader. He is supposed to have read Macbeth and Hamlet recently. Someone commented on this post, "Reading Shakespeare. Looking for fart jokes." If that's true, maybe President Bush and I have more in common than I thought.

---

Two correspondents this week sent links to stories about Evelyn Waugh.

Dave Lull sent a link to a piece by Peter Stothard, who quotes a passage from Waugh's Scoop about a schoolgirl reciting Vergil's second Eclogue. I'm surprised that a schoolmaster, even a fictional one, would let his impressionable pupils read the second eclogue. André Gide borrowed the title of his controversial Corydon from a character in that poem. There is a small town in Indiana named Corydon. I wonder if the town fathers are aware of the overtones of the name.

Neil O'Sullivan sent a link to Arthur Jones, Literary Scamp Evelyn Waugh, Notre Dame Magazine (Autumn 2003), in which some verses from G.K. Chesterton's The Song of Right and Wrong appear:

Feast on wine or fast on water
And your honor shall stand sure,
God Almighty's son and daughter
He the valiant, she the pure;
If an angel out of heaven
Brings you other things to drink,
Thank him for his kind attention,
Go and pour them down the sink.

The "other things" include tea, cocoa, and soda water. Chesterton and his friend Hilaire Belloc wrote a fair amount of poetry on the merits of various beverages, e.g.

• Chesterton, The Englishman, which starts out

  St George he was for England.
  And before he killed the dragon
  He drank a pint of English ale
  Out of an English flagon.

• Chesterton, Wine and Water
  
• Chesterton, A Ballade of an Anti-Puritan, with its refrain "Will someone take me to a pub?" and its praise of the "fellowship of beer and board."
  
• Chesterton, A Cider Song
  
• Belloc, Drinking Song, On the Excellence of Burgundy Wine
  
• Belloc, Heroic Poem in Praise of Wine
  
• Belloc, The Catholic Sun:

  Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine,
  There's always laughter and good red wine.
  At least I've always found it so.
  Benedicamus Domino!

• Belloc, The Pelagian Drinking Song, which ends

  And thank the Lord
  For the temporal sword
  And howling heretics too.
  And all good things
  Our Christendom brings
  But especially barley brew!
  With my row-ti-tow
  Ti-oodly-ow
  Especially barley brew!

---

Welcome back to David Meadows at rogueclassicism.