Laudator Temporis Acti

Although I pretend that this blog is nothing more than my private commonplace book and that I write solely mihi et Musis (for myself and the Muses), in fact I'm vain enough to look from time to time at the blog's statistics page, where I'm surprised to learn that hundreds of people read Laudator Temporis Acti every day.

Even more astonishing is the generosity of some readers, who have given me books and engravings, copied book chapters and journal articles on my behalf, sent me souvenirs from their foreign travels, offered me hospitality when I travel, and extended many other kindnesses to me. One generous gentleman paid for my membership in the Boston Athenaeum, allowing me access to scholarly journals, early English books, and much more. This is a great boon, as I have no academic affiliation and no easy access to academic libraries.

Usually I'm able to express my thanks to these patrons and benefactors privately. But there are those who occupy rank number six ("the one who gives anonymously") in Maimonides' eight degrees of charity, and I feel compelled to thank those as well, in the only way I can—publicly.

In yesterday's mail, I received a book from the Loeb Classical Library series, the first volume of Wolfgang de Melo's excellent new edition and translation of Plautus, which I am very glad to have. I searched the packing slip for some clue as to the identity of the donor, but couldn't find one. I also want to take the opportunity to thank the person who sent me R.J. Hollingdale's translation of Lichtenberg's Waste Books last year—I mistakenly thought I had ordered this for myself, and when I realized that it was a gift, I had already discarded the packing slip. These two books will give me hours of pleasure, for which I'm grateful.

This post isn't a disguised plea for charity or donations (the farthest thing from my mind), but it is an expression of heartfelt thanks.

Ovid, Metamorphoses 15.234-236 (tr. Frank Justus Miller):

O Time, thou great devourer, and thou, envious Age, together you destroy all things; and, slowly gnawing with your teeth, you finally consume all things in lingering death!

The same, tr. Arthur Golding (1567):

Thou tyme, the eater up of things, and age of spyghtfull teene,
Destroy all things. And when that long continuance hath them bit,
You leysurely by lingring death consume them every whit.

teene = harm, grief

The Latin:

tempus edax rerum, tuque, invidiosa vetustas,
omnia destruitis vitiataque dentibus aevi
paulatim lenta consumitis omnia morte!

Eastman Johnson, Old Man Seated

Stefan C. Reif, "Taylor and the importance of the Genizah," in Charles Taylor and the Genizah Collection: A Centenary Seminar and Exhibition, St. John's College, Cambridge, 2 November 2008 (Cambridge: St. John's College, 2009), pp. 37-43 (at 43):

[I]t seems to me a fitting tribute to his memory to cite in conclusion part of a fragment from the Genizah collection that deservedly bears his name and that of his colleague and friend, Solomon Schechter. That small manuscript (T-S Ar.5.1) consists of an inscription that was prepared for a Jewish bookcase in Cairo some eight hundred years ago, at about the time that the University of Cambridge was being founded in distant England. The first five lines (in my translation, that does not do justice to the original Hebrew) convey a scholarly and religious message that would have commended itself to Taylor:

I, the bookcase, say to you: Open up my contents regularly and learn from them.
I, the bookcase, because of my contents, am greatly superior to all other containers.
They contain stores of silver and gold and precious items that cannot save you from fiery damnation.
I, the bookcase, contain treasure from Eden's tree of knowledge, Israel's special inheritance.
How can chaff be compared to the grain which it contains?

Hat tip: Ian Jackson.

Molière, The Learned Women (Les Femmes Savantes), Act III, Scene 3 (tr. Donald M. Frame):

PHILAMINTE. Good Heavens, Greek, Greek! Sister, he knows Greek!
BÉLISE. My niece, Greek!
ARMANDE. Greek! How lovely! How unique!
PHILAMINTE. The gentleman knows Greek? Let each of us, Sir, for the love of Greek, embrace you—thus.

****
PHILAMINTE. Du grec, Ô Ciel! du grec! Il sait du grec, ma soeur!
BÉLISE. Ah, ma nièce, du grec!
ARMANDE. Du grec! quelle douceur!
PHILAMINTE. Quoi? Monsieur sait du grec? Ah! permettez, de grâce, que pour l'amour du grec, Monsieur, on vous embrasse.

Richard Steele, The Spectator, no. 278 (Friday, January 18, 1712, quoting a supposed letter from a shop-keeper):

My Wife at the Beginning of our Establishment shewed her self very assisting to me in my Business as much as could lie in her Way, and I have Reason to believe 'twas with her Inclination; but of late she has got acquainted with a Schoolman, who values himself for his great Knowledge in the Greek Tongue. He entertains her frequently in the Shop with Discourses of the Beauties and Excellencies of that Language; and repeats to her several Passages out of the Greek Poets, wherein he tells her there is unspeakable Harmony and agreeable Sounds that all other Languages are wholly unacquainted with. He has so infatuated her with his Jargon, that instead of using her former Diligence in the Shop, she now neglects the Affairs of the House, and is wholly taken up with her Tutor in learning by Heart Scraps of Greek, which she vents upon all Occasions. She told me some Days ago, that whereas I use some Latin Inscriptions in my Shop, she advised me with a great deal of Concern to have them changed into Greek; it being a Language less understood, would be more conformable to the Mystery of my Profession; that our good Friend would be assisting to us in this Work; and that a certain Faculty of Gentlemen would find themselves so much obliged to me, that they would infallibly make my Fortune: In short her frequent Importunities upon this and other Impertinences of the like Nature make me very uneasy; and if your Remonstrances have no more Effect upon her than mine, I am afraid I shall be obliged to ruin my self to procure her a Settlement at Oxford with her Tutor, for she's already too mad for Bedlam.

Story of My Life: The Autobiography of George Sand: A Group Translation Edited by Thelma Jurgrau (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), pp. 565-566 (Part III, Chapter V):

Mme. de Bérenger stayed with us for six weeks, I believe, and left only when my grandmother was completely out of danger. But if this lady felt any distress of concern it did not show much, and I doubt that her heart was really touched. I honestly do not know why my grandmama, who had such great need for affection, had become so particularly attached to this haughty, imperious woman, in whom I have never been able to discover the least charm of mind or character.

She was very active and unable to stay still. She considered herself an expert at planning or improving the design of a garden or park, and no sooner had she seen our formal garden than she got it into her head to transform it into an English landscape—a preposterous idea—for on a flat terrain, without much of a view, and where trees are slow to grow, the best thing to do is conserve at all possible cost those which happen to be there; to plant for the future, not create clearings which show you the poverty of the surrounding lines of vision; and above all, especially when the road is right out front and very close to the house, to screen yourself as much possible behind walls or hedges, to preserve your privacy. But our hedges horrified Mme. de Bérenger, our square beds of flowers and vegetables, which seemed so beautiful and bright to me, she called a cabbage patch. Emerging from the first crisis of her illness, hardly had my grandmother regained her voice and hearing than her friend asked for permission to set the axe to the little woods and the pick and shovel to the paths. My grandmother was not fond of change, but her will was so weak at that moment (and besides, Mme. de Bérenger exerted such influence on her) that she gave her free rein.

So there we have that fine lady in action—she summons a score of workmen, and from her window directs the clearing operation, pruning here, destroying there, and always seeking a view which is nowhere to be found, for good reason: nothing can change the fact that, while the countryside is pretty enough from the second-storey window, when you are in the garden—on a level with the countryside—you see it flat and without panorama. To fulfil her desire, it would have been necessary to raise the earth in the garden by fifty feet. Each opening cut in the beds and tree clumps resulted only in our being able to enjoy the view of a vast, cultivated plain. The breach was growing larger; fine old trees that had no say in the matter were being cut down; Mme. de Bérenger drew patterns on paper, passed them from her window along a line of string to the workers, shouted after them, went upstairs, came downstairs, went back upstairs, lost her patience, and destroyed the little shade we had, without any profit in the exchange. At last she gave it up, thank God, for she could have made a clean sweep, but Deschartres pointed out to her that my grandmother, once she was well enough to go out and see for herself might perhaps miss her old hedges a great deal.

I was struck by the manner in which that lady spoke to the workmen. She was far too eminent to condescend to find out their names and deal with them as individuals. However, from her window she had dealings with each one in turn, and nothing in the world would have made her say "sir," or "my friend," or "old man," as they say in Berry, regardless of the age of the male you are addressing. She shouted to them at the top of her lungs, "Man Number Two!" "Listen, Man Number Four!" This caused gales of laughter among our quizzical peasants, but not one budged or turned his head in her direction. "By gum", they said to each other shrugging their shoulders, "we're all of us men, and we can't guess which one she's after—that woman."

It took some thirty years to undo the havoc wrought on our property by Mme. de Bérenger and to close off the openings for her "vistas."

The French, from George Sand, Histoire de Ma Vie (Paris, 1855), IV, 111-114:

Madame de Béranger resta, je crois, six semaines avec nous, et ne partit que lorsque ma grand'mère fut hors de tout danger. Mais cette dame, si elle eut du chagrin ou de l'inquiétude, ne le fit pas beaucoup paraître, et je doute qu'elle eût le coeur bien tendre. Je ne sais, en vérité, pourquoi ma bonne maman, qui avait un si grand besoin de tendresse, s'était particulièrement attachée à cette femme hautaine et impérieuse, en qui je n'ai jamais pu découvrir le moindre charme d'esprit ou de caractère.

Elle était fort active et ne pouvait rester en place. Elle se croyait très habile à lever ou à rectifier le plan d'un jardin ou d'un parc, et elle n'eut pas plutôt vu notre vieux jardin régulier, qu'elle se mit en tête de le transformer en paysage anglais; c'était une idée saugrenue, car, sur un terrain plat, ayant peu de vue, et où les arbres sont très lents à pousser, ce qu'il y a de mieux à faire, c'est de conserver précieusement ceux qui s'y trouvent, de planter pour l'avenir, de ne point ouvrir de clairières qui vous montrent la pauvreté des lignes environnantes; c'est surtout, lorsqu'on a la route en face et tout près de la maison, de se renfermer autant que possible derrière des murs ou des charmilles pour être chez soi. Mais nos charmilles faisaient horreur à madame de Béranger, nos carrés de fleurs et de légumes, qui me paraissaient si beaux et si riants, elle les traitait de jardin de curé. Ma grand'mère, au sortir de la première crise de son mal, avait à peine recouvré la voix et l'ouïe, que son amie lui demanda l'autorisation de mettre la cognée dans le petit bois et la pioche dans les allées. Ma grand'mère n'aimait pas le changement, mais elle avait la tête si faible en ce moment, et d'ailleurs madame de Béranger exerçait sur elle une telle domination, qu'elle lui donna pleins pouvoirs.

Voilà donc cette bonne dame à l'oeuvre; elle mande une vingtaine d'ouvriers, et de sa fenêtre dirigé l'abattage, élaguant ici, détruisant là, et cherchant toujours un point de vue qui ne se trouva jamais, parce que, si des fenêtres du premier étage de la maison la campagne est assez jolie, rien ne peut faire que, dans ce jardin, de plain-pied avec cette campagne, on ne la voie pas de niveau et sans étendue. Il aurait fallu exhausser de cinquante pieds le sol du jardin, et chaque ouverture pratiquée dans les massifs n'aboutissait qu'à nous faire jouir de la vue d'une grande plaine labourée. On élargissait la brèche, on abattait de bons vieux arbres qui n'en pouvaient mais; madame de Béranger traçait des lignes sur le papier, tendait de sa fenêtre des ficelles aux ouvriers, criait après eux, montait, descendait, retournait, s'impatientait et détruisait le peu d'ombrage que nous avions, sans nous faire rien gagner en échange. Enfin elle y renonça, Dieu merci, car elle eût pu faire table rase; mais Deschartres lui observa que ma grand'mère, dès qu'elle serait en état de sortir et de voir par ses yeux, regretterait peut-être beaucoup ses vieilles charmilles.

Je fus très frappée de la manière dont cette dame parlait aux ouvriers. Elle était beaucoup trop illustre pour daigner s'enquérir de leurs noms et pour les interpeller en particulier. Cependant elle avait affaire de sa fenêtre à chacun d'eux tour à tour, et pour rien au monde elle ne leur eût dit: «Monsieur, ou mon ami, ou mon vieux,» comme on dit, en Berry, quel que soit l'âge de l'être masculin auquel on s'adresse. Elle leur criait donc à tue-tête: «L'homme numéro 2! Ecoutez, l'homme numéro 4!» Cela faisait grandement rire nos paysans narquois, et aucun ne se dérangeait ni né tournait la tête de son côté. «Pardi!» se disaient-ils les uns aux autres en levant les épaules, «nous sommes bien tous des hommes, et nous ne pouvons pas deviner à qui elle en a, la femme!»

Il a fallu une trentaine d'années pour faire disparaître le dégât causé chez nous par madame de Béranger, et pour refermer les brèches de ses points de vue.

Hat tip: Eric Thomson.

Labels: arboricide

Jonathan Galassi, Elms, in The Paris Review Book of Heartbreak, Madness, Sex, Love, Betrayal, Outsiders, Intoxication, War, Whimsy, Horrors, God, Death, Dinner, Baseball, Travels, the Art of Writing, and Everything Else in the World since 1953 (New York: Picador, 2004), p. 38:

                              to a teacher

Your "yet-to-be-dismantled" elms are few,
and by the time you read this may be gone.
In my own childhood we had one or two
that framed the lawn before the hurricane,
trees that were far too noble to survive
a time like ours, too slender or too sublime.
Something in us wouldn't let them live.

Or was it only that they'd served their time?
"The size of our abidance" wasn't theirs,
the way it can't be yours. That is a trait
of nature, as it is a trait of ours
to see in something passing something great:
our backwardlookingness that makes a tree
the genius of the place it cannot be.

The "teacher" is Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979), and the quotations come from the closing lines of her Poem, which can be found in Elizabeth Bishop, Poems, Prose, and Letters (The Library of America, 2008), pp. 164-166 (at 166):

Life and the memory of it cramped,
dim, on a piece of Bristol board,
dim, but how live, how touching in detail
—the little that we get for free,
the little of our earthly trust. Not much.
About the size of our abidance
along with theirs: the munching cows,
the iris, crisp and shivering, the water
still standing from spring freshets,
the yet-to-be-dismantled elms, the geese.

Hat tip: Jescie.

Labels: arboricide

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), The French Revolution (London: The Colonial Press, 1900), II, 123-125:

From the purpose of crime to the act of crime there is an abyss; wonderful to think of. The finger lies on the pistol; but the man is not yet a murderer: nay his whole nature staggering at such consummation, is there not a confused pause rather,—one last instant of possibility for him? Not yet a murderer; it is at the mercy of light trifles whether the most fixed idea may not yet become unfixed. One slight twitch of a muscle, the death-flash bursts; and he is it, and will for Eternity be it; and Earth has become a penal Tartarus for him; his horizon girdled now not with golden hope, but with red flames of remorse; voices from the depths of Nature sounding, Woe, woe on him!

Of such stuff are we all made; on such powder-mines of bottomless guilt and criminality,—"if God restrained not," as is well said,—does the purest of us walk. There are depths in man that go the length of lowest Hell, as there are heights that reach highest Heaven;—for are not both Heaven and Hell made out of him, made by him, everlasting Miracle and Mystery as he is?

....

Horrible the hour when man's soul, in its paroxysm, spurns asunder the barriers and rules; and shows what dens and depths are in it!

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), The French Revolution (London: The Colonial Press, 1900), II, 366:

Aristocracy of Feudal Parchment has passed away with a mighty rushing; and now, by a natural course, we arrive at Aristocracy of the Moneybag. It is the course through which all European Societies are at this hour travelling. Apparently a still baser sort of Aristocracy? An infinitely baser; the basest yet known!

....

The Heavens cease not their bounty: they send us generous hearts into every generation. And now what generous heart can pretend to itself, or be hoodwinked into believing, that Loyalty to the Moneybag is a noble Loyalty? Mammon, cries the generous heart out of all ages and countries, is the basest of known Gods, even of known Devils.

Cartoon by William Gropper

Diogenes Laertius 7.1.2 (on Zeno, tr. R.D. Hicks):

It is stated by Hecato and by Apollonius of Tyre in his first book on Zeno that he consulted the oracle to know what he should do to attain the best life, and that the god's response was that he should take on the complexion of the dead. Whereupon, perceiving what this meant, he studied ancient authors.

Ἑκάτων δέ φησι καὶ Ἀπολλώνιος ὁ Τύριος ἐν πρώτῳ Περὶ Ζήνωνος, χρηστηριασαμένου αὐτοῦ τί πράττων ἄριστα βιώσεται, ἀποκρίνασθαι τὸν θέον, εἰ συγχρωτίζοιτο τοῖς νεκροῖς· ὅθεν ξυνέντα τὰ τῶν ἀρχαίων ἀναγινώσκειν.

George A. Kennedy, Afterword: An Essay on Classics in America after the Yale Report, in Meyer Reinhold, Classica Americana: The Greek and Roman Heritage in the United States (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1984), pp. 325-351 (at 342, footnote omitted):

William Howard Taft, a powerful member of the Yale Corporation, declared that Yale would abolish the Latin requirement over his dead body. He died in 1930 and the requirement died in 1931.

---

Update: Thanks to Robert J. O'Hara, who pointed me to a copy of the 1828 Yale Report on The Collegiate Way web site (link added above).

Richard Brinsley Sheridan, The Critic 1.1.304-306:

The newspapers! Sir, they are the most villanous, licentious, abominable, infernal—Not that I ever read them. No, I make it a rule never to look into a newspaper.

Søren Kierkegaard, The Last Years: Journals 1853-1855, tr. R.G. Smith (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), p. 98:

If I were a father and had a daughter who was seduced, I should by no means give her up; but if I had a son who became a journalist, I should regard him as lost.

Clément Marot (1496-1544), Chanson XXXII, tr. R.N. Currey:

Song of the Vineyard Knife

Enough of love; let's leave for something new
All that to-do, and sing the vineyard knife;
No grower of vines but has recourse to you,
Makes use of you to prune his vines; O knife,
My vineyard knife, my little vineyard knife,
Renewing life, you make my good vines grow,
From which year after year the rich wines flow!

Vulcan, the high gods' blacksmith, did design
This shape divine, in heaven hammered out
The white-hot steel, and dipped it in old wine
To give the fine edge temper; and the shout
Bacchus gave out proclaimed beyond a doubt
That even devout old Noah could not find
A knife for pruning vines more to his mind.

With vine leaves crowned, young Bacchus brings his slim
Curved blade to trim and bless the fruitful vine;
With flagons old Silenus follows him
And from each rim, in one unbroken line,
Pours down the wine, tries dancing, lies supine;
And for a sign his nose is cherry-red;
Of his great family many men are bred.

Hilaire Belloc, Avril: Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance (London: Duckworth and Co., 1904), p. 111, commenting on this poem:

Here is Marot's best—even though many of his native critics will not admit it so; but to feel it in full one must be exiled from the vines.

It is a tapestry of the Renaissance; the jolly gods of the Renaissance, the old gods grown Catholic moving across a happier stage. Bacchus in long robes and with solemnity blessing the vine, Silenus and the hobbling smith who smithied the Serpe, the Holy Vineyard Knife in heaven, all these by their diction and their flavour recall the Autumn in Herault and the grapes under a pure sky, pale at the horizon, and labourers and their carts in the vineyard, and these set in the frame of that great time when Saturn did return.

All the poem is wine. It catches its rhymes and weaves them in and in, and moves rapid and careless in a fugue, like the march from Asia when the Panthers went before and drew the car. The internal rhythm and pulse is the clapping of hands in barns at evening and the peasants' feet dancing freely on the beaten earth. It is a very good song; it remembers the treading of the grapes and is refreshed by the mists that rise at evening when the labour is done.

The French:

Changeons propos, c'est trop chanté d'amours:
Ce sont clamours, chantons de la serpette:
Tous vignerons ont à elle recours.
C'est leur secours pour tailler la vignette;
O serpilette, ô la serpillonnette,
La vignolette est par toy mise sus,
Dont les bons vins tous les ans sont yssus.

Le dieu Vulcain, forgeron des haults dieux,
Forgea aux cieulx la serpe bien taillante,
De fin acier trempé en bon vin vieulx,
Pour tailler mieulx et estre plus vaillante.
Bacchus la vante, et dit qu'elle est séante
Et convenante à Noé le bon hom
Pour en tailler la vigne en la saison.

Bacchus alors chappeau de treille avoit,
Et arrivoit pour benistre la vigne;
Avec flascons Silenus le suyvoit,
Lequel beuvoit aussi droict qu'une ligne;
Puis il trepigne, et se faict une bigne;
Comme une guigne estoit rouge son nez;
Beaucoup de gens de sa race sont nez.

Geoffrey Madan's Notebooks: A Selection, edd. J.A. Gere and John Sparrow (1981; rpt. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985) p. 91 (attributed to Elizabeth Bibesco):

American girl on the Commandments: 'They don't tell you what you ought to do: and they only put ideas into your head.'

Id., p. 94 (attributed to a "Country squire, after Mattins"):

Well, anyhow I haven't made a graven image.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799), Waste Books F.802:

Beware of that transcendental ventriloquism of the zealot, by means of which he makes you believe that something said on earth comes from heaven.

Fürchte dich vor jener transzendenten Ventriloquenz des Schwärmers, womit er dir glauben macht etwas was auf der Erde gesprochen ist käme vom Himmel.

John Philpot Curran (1750–1817), Let Us Be Merry Before We Go:

If sadly thinking, with spirits sinking,
    Could, more than drinking, my cares compose,
A cure for sorrow from sighs I'd borrow,
    And hope to-morrow would end my woes.
But as in wailing there's nought availing,
    And Death unfailing will strike the blow,
Then for that reason, and for a season,
    Let us be merry before we go!

To joy a stranger, a wayworn ranger,
    In every danger my course I've run;
Now hope all ending, and Death befriending,
    His last aid lending, my cares are done:
No more a rover, or hapless lover,
    My griefs are over, my glass runs low;
Then for that reason, and for a season,
    Let us be merry before we go!

By virtue of this song, John Philpot Curran has an apt middle name, which one could fancifully derive from Greek φιλοπότης (philopótēs) = lover of drinking.

William Barnes (1801-1886), "Thoughts on Beauty and Art," Macmillan's Magazine (June 1861), reprinted as Appendix Four in Giles Dugdale, William Barnes of Dorset (London: Cassell & Company, 1953), pp. 276-298 (at 290-291):

I am sorry to find that farmers have become such staunch foes of timber, if not of winding streams. A farmer, at a late meeting, thought that all the timber that may be needful for a farm should be grown together on the poorest land. Whether by poorest soils he meant those that are thinnest of mould, or deepest in corn-starving ground, I do not know; but I should be sorry to lose all elms but the stunted ones that may withstand the blasts on a soil of chalk, under three or four inches of earth. But I do not think the baleful gloom of a tree-head, or the winding of its roots is an unamended evil. It will shield a good space of ground from a slanting hail-storm, or nipping stroke of wind; its leaves are vegetable elements, and its wood is of service, and it screens cattle, and checks the waste of body-heat, which is a waste of good. A man who had seen some cows in a cleared field in a hail-storm, ended his tale to me with the question, "Didden they zet their backs up?" If, however, I were a landowner, and had, in a well-formed landscape before my house, a fine tree, whose body was the very heart of a well-clustered composition, and whose head repeated the breadth of morning light that fell on its hillock; and if, in the evening, it outbore a breadth of shade in the foreground that upfilled a picture with cows or hay-makers beneath it—if it showed boughs of gold or russet in the autumn, or waved its crystal limbs in the snowy winter—I should be unwilling to give it up to the ruthless hand of Pluto for a few pence or shillings a year; for, if a joy from the beautiful is not worth money, why do we buy a ticket for a concert of music, or give money for a landscape scene on canvas or a panel?

Barnes' poems on the subject of arboricide include The Girt Woak Tree That's in the Dell and Vellèn o' the Tree. See also some anecdotes about Barnes' love of trees and distress at their unnecessary destruction in Lucy Baxter, The Life of William Barnes: Poet and Philologist, by his Daughter (London: Macmillan, 1887), pp. 67, 104-105.

Charles Branwhite (1817-1880),
A Hard Day's Work, Winter
Hat tip: Eric Thomson.

Labels: arboricide

Lord Stowell (1745–1836), quoted in Geoffrey Madan's Notebooks: A Selection, edd. J.A. Gere and John Sparrow (1981; rpt. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 129:

If you provide a larger amount of highly cultivated talent than there is a demand for, the surplus is very likely to turn sour.

Joseph Addison, The Spectator, no. 249 (Saturday, December 15, 1711):

I have read a Sermon of a Conventual in the Church of Rome, on those Words of the Wise Man, I said of Laughter, it is mad; and of Mirth, what does it? Upon which he laid it down as a Point of Doctrine, that Laughter was the Effect of Original Sin, and that Adam could not laugh before the Fall.

The "Words of the Wise Man" come from Ecclesiastes 2.2.

Manfred Pfister, A History of English Laughter: Laughter from Beowulf to Beckett and Beyond (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2002), p. 52 (discussing Milton):

Having tried to account for God's and the fallen angels' laughter in Paradise Lost, we have to take a closer look at yet another set of protagonists. Do Adam and Eve laugh? They don't, since they live peacefully, fear no enemies and are in a state of utter contentment. There is no place and necessity for laughter in paradise. Prelapsarian mirth finds other ways of expression.

Related posts:

• Did Christ Ever Laugh?
  
• Agelasts

Thanks to Karl Maurer for drawing my attention to three more translations of Claudian's Old Man of Verona, one from the 18th century and two from the 19th century.

Samuel Boyse (1708–1749), Translations and Poems Written on Several Subjects (Edinburgh: Thomas and Walter Ruddimans, 1731), pp. 17-18:

Happy the Man who free from Noise and Strife
In his own Grounds has past his peaceful Life;
And in his solitary Cottage blest,
Counts o'er the joyful Days he has possest;
Who ne'er for Fortune's Baits exchang'd Content,
Nor knew what Av'rice or Ambition meant,
Ne'er heard the Clamours of the crowded Town,
Or the Chicane of the litigious Gown;
But freed from War, and ignorant of Trade,
Defies all Storms that may his Rest invade:
And from the World retir’d, serene enjoys
The kindly Influence of his native Skies;
While by the Marks of Nature that appear,
He knows the Seasons of the changing Year;
Who walks and sleeps beneath the neighb'ring Wood,
That with himself coeval, long has stood
The waste of Time, and as the Stripling stray'd,
Receiv'd him oft beneath its friendly Shade:
To whom Verona seems the Indian Coasts
And the Red Sea in Benacus is lost;
While firm in Health, and in his Reason sound
He daily measures his paternal Ground,
And o'er his Body, like a pleasing Sleep,
Feels his old Age with soft Advances creep,
Till blest with all a mortal Wish can crave,
Unknown, unseen, he sinks into the Grave.

Let others boast of Triumphs and of Toils,
The Pride of Riches, and the Pomp of Spoils!
Compar'd with his, how trifling are their Joys?
They only taste that Life which he enjoys.

Anonymous, in The Port Folio, New Series, by Oliver Oldschool, Esq., Vol. VI, No. 1 (Philadelphia, Saturday, July 2, 1808), p. 31:

Happy the man, who, satisfied at home,
From his own dwelling never learnt to roam,
And bending now with age, on the same floor
Of native earth, on which he crawl’d of yore,
Marks with his staff, a calculation rude,
And tells the years his rural cot hath stood.
He with no rage of rambling folly curst,
E’er toil’d at barb’rous streams to slake his thirst,
For love of gain ne’er plough’d the wintry wave,
Nor risk’ed his life among the madly brave.
The bar he ne’er frequented, for he thought
That right by wrangling was too dearly bought.
Heedless of bustling life, e’en the next town,
With all its wealth and vice, to him is still unknown.
Looks he abroad? The scenery of the sky
An unbought pleasure offers to his eye:
By crops alternate, not by calendars,
He measures time, and ascertains the years.
In mellow fruits the fall is manifest,
Gay flow’rs the spring sufficiently attest,
And even the hours he practically knows,
Assign’d to food, to labour, or repose.
To him his fields appear to occupy
Th’extent of day, and meet the bending sky.
Proportion’d to his wish, his little round
He scans with joy, nor craves a larger bound;
Of things remote incurious, and at ease,
Repos’d beneath contemporary trees,
Fondly compares their period with his own,
Together young—together aged grown.

Charles Abraham Elton (1778-1853), Specimens of the Classic Poets, Vol. III (London: Robert Baldwin, 1814), pp. 293-294:

Blest is the man who, in his father's fields,
Has past an age of quiet. The same roof
That screen'd his cradle, yields a shelter now
To his grey hairs. He leans upon a staff,
Where, as a child, he crept along the ground;
And, in one cottage, he has number'd o'er
A length of years. Him Fortune has not drawn
Into her whirl of strange vicissitudes;
Nor has he drunk, with ever-changing home,
From unknown rivers. Never on the deep,
A merchant, has he trembled at the storm;
Nor, as a soldier, started at the blare
Of trumpets; nor endured the noisy strife
Of the hoarse-clamouring bar: of the great world
Simply unconscious. To the neighbouring town
A stranger, he enjoys the free expanse
Of open heaven. The old man marks his year,
Not by the names of Consuls, but computes
Time by his various crops: by apple notes
The autumns; by the blooming flower the spring.
From the same field he sees his daily sun
Go down, and lift again its reddening orb;
And, by his own contracted universe,
The rustic measures the vast light of day.
He well remembers that broad massive oak,
An acorn; and has seen the grove grow old,
Coeval with himself. Verona seems
To him more distant than the swarthy Ind:
He deems the lake Benacus like the shores
Of the red gulph. But his a vigour hale,
And unabated: he has now outlived
Three ages: though a grandsire, green in years,
With firm and sinewy arms. The traveler
May roam to farthest Spain: he more has known
Of earthly space; the old man more of life.

Thanks also to Karl Maurer for sharing his own translation (and note):

About the old man of Verona who has never left his suburb

Happy, who passed his life in his own fields,
        whose same house sees the boy and the old man;
who with his cane on sand whereon he crawled
        counts the long ages of a single hut.
No Fortune tugged him with her varied tumult.
        No mobile guest, he drank no unknown spring;
feared no commercial seas, or soldier’s war-horn,
        nor suffered lawsuits in a raucous Forum.
Free of affairs, not knowing the near city,
        he enjoys a freer sight of stars. By changes
in crops, not consuls, he computes the year;
        knows Fall by apples, Spring by her bright blossoms.
His same field buries, then brings back the sun.
        He measures each day by his clock of tasks; *
recalls the huge oak as a small seed; sees
        that his coeval woods have aged with him;
thinks near Verona farther than black Indians;
        that Lake Benacus is the Red Sea shore.
But strong and fresh he is; in his firm muscles
        three generations see a grandsire still robust.
Let someone else ransack the farthest Spaniards;
        this man has more life; that, a longer road.

*More lit., 'Rustic, he measures each day by his circle'; but this echoes, I suspect, or even alludes to, an enchanting sentence in Vergil, Geo. 2.401 f. labor actus in orbem / atque in se sua per uestigia uoluitur annus, i.e. (the vine-grower's) labor, even when finished, returns again, as the year revolves, stepping in its own footprints. The rustic life is a kind of treadmill, never, ever finished! Yet this brings peace, because our life thus coincides with the very order of the world. It has this in common with 'verse'! Both turn, turn, turn, in the same hard but divine treadmill.

---

I'm indebted to Ian Jackson for sending me a copy of "Claudian's Old Man of Verona: An Anthology of English Translations with a New Poem by Edwin Morgan," Translation and Literature 2 (1993) 87-97. I won't print Edwin Morgan's Scots version, at least not yet, because it requires some glosses. But here are some more translations included in the article.

John Beaumont, Bosworth-Field, With a Taste of the Variety of Other Poems (London: Printed by Felix Kyngston for Henry Scale, 1629), p. 57:

Thrice happy he, whose age is spent vpon his owne,
The same house sees him old, which him a child hath known,
He leanes vpon his staffe in sand where once he crept,
His mem'ry long descents, of one poore cote hath kept,
He through the various strife of fortune neuer past,
Nor as a wand'ring guest would forraine waters taste,
He neuer fear'd the seas in trade, nor sound of warres,
Nor in hoarse courts of law, hath felt litigious iarres,
Vnskilfull in affaires, he knowes no City neare,
So freely he enioyes the sight of heau'n more cleare,
The yeeres by seu'rall corne, not Consuls he computes,
He notes the Spring by flowres, and Autumne by the fruits,
One space put downe the Sunne, and brings againe the rayes.
Thus by a certaine Orbe he measures out the dayes,
Remembring some great Oke from small beginning spred,
He sees the wood grow old, which with himselfe was bred.
Verona next of Townes as farre as India seemes,
And for the ruddy Sea, Benacus he esteemes:
Yet still his armes are firme, his strength vntam'd and greene;
The full third age hath him a lusty Grandsire seene.
Let others trauaile farre, and hidden coasts display,
This man hath more of life, and those haue more of way.

Elijah Fenton (1683-1730), Oxford and Cambridge Miscellany Poems (London: Printed for Bernard Lintott, 1708), pp. 18-20:

Happy the Man who all his Days does pass
In the paternal Cottage of his Race;
Where first his trembling Infant steps he try'd
Which now supports his Age, and once his Youth employ'd.
This was the Cottage his Forefathers knew,
It saw his Birth, shall see his Burial too;
Unequal Fortunes, and Ambition's Fate
Are things Experience never taught him yet.
Him to strange Lands no rambling Humour bore,
Nor breath'd he ever any Air but of his native Shore.
Free from all anxious Interests of Trade,
No storms at Sea have e'er disturb'd his Head:
He never Battel's wild Confusions saw,
Nor heard the worse Confusions of the Law.
A Stranger to the Town, and Town Employs,
Their dark and crowded Streets, their Stink and Noise;
He a more calm and brighter Sky enjoys.
Nor does the Year by change of Consuls know,
The Year his Fruit's returning Seasons show;
Quarters and Months in Nature's Face he sees,
In Flowers the Spring, and Autumn on his Trees.
The whole Day's Shadows in his Homestead drawn,
Point out the hourly Courses of the Sun.
Grown old with him, a Grove adorns his Field,
Whose tender setts his Infancy beheld.
Of distant India, Erythraean Shores,
Benacus Lake, Verona's neighb'ring Tow'rs,
(Alike unseen) from common Fame has heard,
Alike believes them, and with like Regard.
Yet firm and strong, his Grandchildren admire
The Health and Vigour of their brawny Sire.
The spacious Globe let those that will survey,
This good old Man, content at home to stay,
More happy Years shall know, more Leagues and Countries they.

Francis Fawkes (1721–1777), Original Poems and Translations (London: R. and J. Dodsley, 1761), pp. 137-138:

Blest who, content with what the country yields,
Lives in his own hereditary fields!
Who can with pleasure his past life behold!
Whose roof paternal saw him young and old:
And as he tells his long adventures o'er,
A stick supports him where he crawl'd before.
Who ne'er was tempted from his farm to fly,
And drink new streams beneath a foreign sky:
No merchant, he, solicitous of gain,
Dreads not the storms that lash the sounding main:
Nor soldier fears the summons to the war,
Nor the hoarse clamours of the noisy bar.
Unskill'd in business, to the world unknown,
He ne'er beheld the next contiguous town;
Yet nobler objects to his views are given,
Fair flowery fields, and star-embellish'd heaven.
He marks no change of consuls, but computes
Alternate seasons by alternate fruits;
Maturing autumns store of apples bring,
And flowerets are the luxury of spring.
His farm that catches first the sun's bright ray,
Sees the last lustre of his beams decay:
The passing hours erected columns show,
And are his landmarks and his dials too.
Yon spreading oak a little twig he knew,
And the whole grove in his remembrance grew.
Verona's walls remote as India seem;
Benacus is th' Arabian Gulph to him.
Yet health three ages lengthens out his span,
And grandsons hail the vigorous old man.
Let others vainly sail from shore to shore,
Their joys are fewer, and their labours more.

Helen Waddell (1889-1965):

This man has lived his life in his own fields.
The house that saw him as a little lad
Sees him an old man: leaning on his staff,
On the same earth he crawled on, he will tell you
The centuries that one low roof has seen.
Fate has not dragged him through the brawling crowds,
Nor ever, as a restless traveller,
Has he drunk at unknown springs; no greed of gain
Kept him a-quaking on the perilous seas.
No trumpet sounded for him the attack,
No lawsuit brought him to the raucous courts.
In politics unskilled, knowing naught of the neighbouring town,
His eye takes pleasure in a wider sky.
The years he'll reckon in alternate crops
And not by parliaments: spring has her flowers,
Autumn her apples: so the year goes by.
The same wide field that hides the setting sun
Sees him return again;
His light the measure of this plain man's day.
That massive oak he remembers a sapling once,
Yon grove of trees grew old along with him.
Verona further seems than India,
Lake Garda is as remote as the Red Sea.
Yet, strength indomitable and sinews firm,
The old man stands, a rock among his grandsons.
Let you go gadding, gape at furthest Spain:
You'll have seen life; but this old man has lived.

Still more translations of this splendid poem (some with the Latin text):

• There Was an Old Man of Verona (Abraham Cowley, Maurice Platnauer)
  
• Happy the Man (Thomas Randolph)
  
• In Cities Never Seen (Henry Vaughan)
  
• Fixed in Place (Mildmay Fane)

John Milton, Paradise Regained 3.47-56:

For what is glory but the blaze of fame,
The people's praise, if always praise unmixed?
And what the people but a herd confused,
A miscellaneous rabble, who extol
Things vulgar, and well weighed, scarce worth the praise?
They praise and they admire they know not what;
And know not whom, but as one leads the other;
And what delight to be by such extolled,
To live upon their tongues, and be their talk,
Of whom to be dispraised were no small praise?