Laudator Temporis Acti

In August 1758, William Cowper wrote a letter in Latin to his friend Clotworthy Rowley. The letter ends with this paragraph:

Quod ad amicum nostrum Alston attinet, neque Epistolam mihi misit quamlibet, neque missurum reor; scio enim jamdudum ignavam hominis naturam, et obliviosam. Si videris, objurgationes aliquos a me in eum confer, Culumque meum osculetur, jube.

James King and Charles Ryskamp, in their edition of The Letters and Prose Writings of William Cowper, Vol. I: Adelphi and Letters 1750-1781 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), p. 82, content themselves with reproducing the following English translation of the final paragraph, by Thomas Wright, from his edition of The Correspondence of William Cowper Arranged in Chronological Order, Vol. I (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1904), p. 17:

As to our friend Alston, he has not written to me, nor is he likely to write; for I have long understood the sluggish and forgetful nature of the man. Should you see him, give him a sound rating for me.

This translation omits the last half of Cowper's final sentence ("Culumque meum osculetur, jube"), that is, "And bid him kiss my arse." As the omitted imperative presents to us a side of Cowper rarely seen, I think it is worthy of translation and publication. It is also not out of place here to quote from a poetical riddle by Cowper:

I am just two and two, I am warm, I am cold,
And the parent of numbers that cannot be told.
I am lawful, unlawful—a duty, a fault,
I am often sold dear, good for nothing when bought.
An extraordinary boon, and a matter of course,
And yielded with pleasure—when taken by force.
Alike the delight of the poor and the rich,
Tho' the vulgar is apt to present me his breech.

The answer to the riddle is a kiss.

For another glimpse at this hidden side of William Cowper, see a post by fellow blogger Tom Turdman: I Lose No Time.

William Cowper, letter to William Unwin (November 26, 1781):

There are indeed all sorts of characters in the world, there are some whose understandings are so sluggish, and whose hearts are such mere clods, that they live in society without either contributing to the sweets of it, or having any relish for them. A man of this stamp passes by our window continually. He draws patterns for the lace-makers. I never saw him conversing with a neighbour but once in my life, though I have known him by sight these 12 years. He is of a very sturdy make, has a round belly extremely protuberant, which he evidently considers as his best friend because it is his only companion, and it is the labour of his life to fill it. I can easily conceive that it is merely the love of good eating and drinking, and now and then the want of a new pair of shoes, that attaches this man so much to the neighbourhood of his fellow mortals. For suppose these exigencies and others of a like kind to subsist no longer, and what is there that could possibly give Society the preference in his esteem? He might strut about with his two thumbs upon his hips in a wilderness, he could hardly be more silent than he is at Olney, and for any advantage or comfort or friendship or brotherly affection, he could not be more destitute of such blessings there than in his present situation.

Cowper evidently regarded this silent, fat fellow with disapprobation, but I look fondly on him, as a man after my own heart and with my own habits and inclinations.

James Reeves, in his Collected Poems, 1929-1974 (London: Heinemann, 1974), includes translations of four poems by Catullus, which I've transcribed below, together with the Latin.

pp. 66-67 (title Catullus to Lesbia = Catullus 5):

I tell you, Lesbia, life is love,
Though rumbling dotards disapprove
  And chew their beards in spite.
For ever shines the blessed sun,
But we have little space to run,
And after our brief day is done,
  How long will be the night.

So kiss me, kiss me, kiss me, sweet.
Kiss me neither once nor twice,
But kiss me several hundred times
  And then the tale repeat.
A thousand, then a thousand times,
  And that will not suffice—
A thousand, then a hundred more,
And after many thousand kisses
  We'll forget the score,
In case some mad misanthropist,
Hearing how many times we've kissed,
Should bring down curses on our heads
  To think what he has missed.

Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus,
rumoresque senum severiorum
omnes unius aestimemus assis!
soles occidere et redire possunt;
nobis cum semel occidit brevis lux,
nox est perpetua una dormienda.
da mi basia mille, deinde centum;
dein mille altera, dein secunda centum;
deinde usque altera mille, deinde centum.
dein, cum milia multa fecerimus—
conturbabimus illa, ne sciamus,
aut ne quis malus invidere possit,
cum tantum sciat esse basiorum.

p. 82 (title Three Poems after Catullus = Catullus 60, 85, and 58):

What lioness that roamed the Libyan waste
  Or raucous Scylla barking from her womb
Bore you, she-monster of the stony will?
  For when in the extremity of doom
Your vassal calls, you hold his words in scorn.
Too savage heart, of what beast were you born?

Num te leaena montibus Libystinis
aut Scylla latrans infima inguinum parte
tam mente dura procreavit ac taetra,
ut supplicis vocem in novissimo casu
contemptam haberes, a nimis fero corde?

I hate: yet where I hate, I love.
  You ask me why: I cannot tell.
But this I know—I feel it so.
  And suffer all the pangs of hell.

Odi et amo. quare id faciam, fortasse requiris?
  nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.

Think of it, Caelius, only think, my friend:
  Lesbia, that Lesbia, Lesbia our dearest,
  She whom Catullus better than his nearest
Better than his own soul loved without end,
Now where the noblest sons of Rome explore
Rome's dirtiest backstreets, there she plays the whore.

Caeli, Lesbia nostra, Lesbia illa,
illa Lesbia, quam Catullus unam
plus quam se atque suos amavit omnes,
nunc in quadriviis et angiportis
glubit magnanimi Remi nepotes.

John Oldham (1653-1683), from A Satire Addressed to a Friend That is About to Leave the University, and Come Abroad in the World:

'T has ever been the top of my desires,
The utmost height to which my wish aspires,
That Heaven would bless me with a small estate,
Where I might find a close obscure retreat;
There, free from noise and all ambitious ends,
Enjoy a few choice books, and fewer friends,
Lord of myself, accountable to none,
But to my conscience, and my God alone:
There live unthought of, and unheard of die,
And grudge mankind my very memory.
But since the blessing is, I find, too great
For me to wish for, or expect of fate;
Yet, maugre all the spite of destiny,
My thoughts and actions are, and shall be, free.

Charles Spencelayh, A Lover of Dickens
Related posts:

• Parva Domus, Magna Quies
  
• My Little Zoar
  
• Happy the Man
  
• Live Unknown

John Milton, Il Penseroso, lines 131-138:

And, when the sun begins to fling
His flaring beams, me goddess bring
To archèd walks of twilight groves,
And shadows brown, that Sylvan loves,
Of pine, or monumental oak,
Where the rude axe with heavèd stroke,
Was never heard the nymphs to daunt,
Or fright them from their hallowed haunt.

Il Penseroso is the melancholy man, whose pleasure it is to walk in the woods. See, e.g., Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, Part. 1, Sect. 3, Mem. 1, Subs. 2:

It was one of the chiefest reasons why the citizens of Abdera suspected Democritus to be melancholy and mad, because that, as Hippocrates related in his Epistle to Philopaemenes, "he forsook the city, lived in groves and hollow trees, upon a green bank by a brook side, or confluence of waters all day long, and all night." Quae quidem (saith he) plurimum atra bile vexatis et melancholicis eveniunt, deserta frequentant, hominumque congressum aversantur; which is an ordinary thing with melancholy men.

Id., Part. 1, Sec. 2, Mem. 2, Subs. 6:

[M]ost pleasant it is at first, to such as are melancholy given, to lie in bed whole days, and keep their chambers, to walk alone in some solitary grove, betwixt wood and water, by a brook side, to meditate upon some delightsome and pleasant subject, which shall affect them most; amabilis insania, et mentis gratissimus error: a most incomparable delight it is so to melancholise, and build castles in the air...

Id., Part 2., Sec. 2, Mem. 4:

If my testimony were aught worth, I could say as much of myself; I am vere Saturnus; no man ever took more delight in springs, woods, groves, gardens, walks, fishponds, rivers, &c.

John Crome (1768-1821), Woodland Path

Horace, Odes 1.38 (tr. Niall Rudd):

I dislike Persian frippery, my boy: I do not care for garlands tied with linden bast; don't go looking for a place where the late rose lingers. Please don't go to the trouble of adding anything to plain myrtle; myrtle is entirely suitable for you as a servant, and for me as I sit drinking beneath the thick vine leaves.

Persicos odi, puer, apparatus,
displicent nexae philyra coronae;
mitte sectari rosa quo locorum
        sera moretur.

simplici myrto nihil allabores
sedulus curo: neque te ministrum
dedecet myrtus neque me sub arta
        vite bibentem.

I recently happened on an amusing translation of this ode by John Davis Long (1838-1915), with the title To the Boys:

I hate this Persian gingerbread,
These fixins round a feller's head;
I want the roses in their bed
        All in a body.

Give me the myrtle as it grows;
And let me take my sweet repose
Beneath the vine, unless it snows,
        And sip my toddy.

Long, born in Buckfield, Maine, was governor of Massachusetts and later U.S. Secretary of the Navy. He also translated Vergil's Aeneid (Boston: Lockwood & Brooks, 1879). See Richard F. Thomas, Virgil and the Augustan Reception (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 173 ff.

Here is a jocular adaptation of Horace's ode by William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863):

Dear Lucy, you know what my wish is,—
    I hate all your Frenchified fuss:
Your silly entrées and made dishes
    Were never intended for us.
No footman in lace and in ruffles
    Need dangle behind my arm-chair;
And never mind seeking for truffles,
    Although they be ever so rare.

But a plain leg of mutton, my Lucy,
    I pr'ythee get ready at three:
Have it smoking, and tender, and juicy,
    And what better meat can there be?
And when it has feasted the master,
    'Twill amply suffice for the maid;
Meanwhile I will smoke my canaster,
    And tipple my ale in the shade.

A macaronic version by Mortimer Collins (1827-1876):

Persicos odi, puer, apparatus;
Bring me a chop and a couple of potatoes:
When we are dining care should not await us,
        Spoiling our glory.

Simplici myrto nihil adlabores;
All ostentation a confounded bore is...
After, a glass of port that sound at core is
        Will suit a Tory.

Finally, two humorous paraphrases by Franklin P. Adams (1881-1960), the first from Tobogganing on Parnassus:

Nix on the Persian pretence!
    Myrtle for Quintus H. Flaccus!
Wreaths of the linden tree, hence!
    Nix on the Persian pretence!

Waiter, here's seventy cents—
    Come, let me celebrate Bacchus!
Nix on the Persian pretence!
    Myrtle for Quintus H. Flaccus.

and the second from In Other Words:

The Persian pomp and circumstance are things I do not like;
I shall not buy a motor-car while I possess a bike;
I will not buy a Panama to place upon my head,
A simple sennitt bonnet, boy, purchase for me instead.

For such a thatch will do for you as it has done for me—
An ordinary straw hat, for a dollar thirty-three.
Then to the coolest bar in town for some Milwaukee liquor,
Where I may watch the ball-game—as it comes over the ticker.

John Oldham (1653-1683), from The Eighth Satire of Monsieur Boileau, Imitated:

Answer me only this, what man is there
In this vile thankless age, wherein we are,
Who does by sense and learning value bear?

'Wouldst thou get honour, and a fair estate,
And have the looks and favours of the great?'
Cries an old father to his blooming son;
'Take the right course, be ruled by me, 'tis done.
Leave mouldy authors to the reading fools,
The poring crowds in colleges and schools:
How much is threescore nobles?' Twenty pound.

'Well said, my son, the answer's most profound:
Go, thou knowest all that's requisite to know;
What wealth on thee, what honours haste to flow!
In these high sciences thyself employ,
Instead of Plato, take thy Hodder, boy;
Learn there the art to audit an account,
To what the King's revenue does amount;
How much the Customs and Excise bring in,
And what the managers each year purloin.

Get a case-hardened conscience, Irish proof,
Which nought of pity, sense, or shame can move;
Turn Algerine, Barbarian, Turk, or Jew,
Unjust, inhuman, treacherous, base, untrue;
Ne'er stick at wrong; hang widows' sighs and tears,
The cant of priests to frighten usurers;
Boggle at nothing to increase thy store,
Nor orphans' spoils, nor plunder of the poor;
And scorning paltry rules of honesty,
By surer methods raise thy fortune high.

Then, shoals of poets, pedants, orators,
Doctors, divines, astrologers, and lawyers,
Authors of every sort, and every size,
To thee their works, and labours shall address,
With pompous lines their dedications fill,
And learnedly in Greek and Latin tell
Lies to thy face, that thou hast deep insight,
And art a mighty judge of what they write.

He that is rich, is everything that is,
Without one grain of wisdom he is wise,
And knowing nought, knows all the sciences;
He's witty, gallant, virtuous, generous, stout,
Well-born, well-bred, well-shaped, well-dressed, what not?
Loved by the great, and courted by the fair,
For none that e'er had riches found despair;
Gold to the loathsomest object gives a grace,
And sets it off, and makes even Bovey please;
But tattered poverty they all despise,
Love stands aloof, and from the scarecrow flies.'

Thus a staunch miser to his hopeful brat
Chalks out the way that leads to an estate;
Whose knowledge oft with utmost stretch of brain
No higher than this vast secret can attain,
Five and four's nine, take two, and seven remain.

Robert Dighton, Stock-Jobbers Extraordinary

John Oldham (1653-1683), The Careless Good Fellow, lines 1-6:

A plague of this fooling and plotting of late,
What a pother and stir has it kept in the State;
Let the rabble run mad with suspicions and fears,
Let them scuffle and jar, till they go by the ears;
  Their grievances never shall trouble my pate,
  So I can enjoy my dear bottle at quiet.

Édouard Manet, Le Bon Bock

John Milton, Elegy 5.131-134 (tr. Walter MacKellar):

The gods themselves are not slow to prefer the forests of earth to heaven, and every grove has its own deity. Long let each grove have its deity! Leave not, O gods, your homes amid the trees.

Dii quoque non dubitant caelo praeponere silvas,
  Et sua quisque sibi numina lucus habet.
Et sua quisque diu sibi numina lucus habeto,
  Nec vos arborea, dii, precor, ite domo.

Seneca, Letters to Lucilius 123.6 (tr. Richard M. Gummere):

How many things are superfluous we fail to realize until they begin to be wanting; we merely used them not because we needed them but because we had them. And how much do we acquire simply because our neighbours have acquired such things, or because most men possess them! Many of our troubles may be explained from the fact that we live according to a pattern, and, instead of arranging our lives according to reason, are led astray by convention.

Multa quam supervacua essent non intelleximus nisi deesse coeperunt; utebamur enim illis non quia debebamus sed quia habebamus. Quam multa autem paramus quia alii paraverunt, quia apud plerosque sunt! Inter causas malorum nostrorum est quod vivimus ad exempla, nec ratione componimur sed consuetudine abducimur.

Diogenes Laertius 2.25 (Life of Socrates, tr. R.D. Hicks):

Often when he looked at the multitude of wares exposed for sale, he would say to himself, "How many things I can do without!"

πολλάκις δ᾽ ἀφορῶν εἰς τὰ πλήθη τῶν πιπρασκομένων ἔλεγε πρὸς αὑτόν, "πόσων ἐγὼ χρείαν οὐκ ἔχω."

Nicolás Gómez Dávila (1913-1994), Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección (Bogotá: Villegas Editores, 2001), p. 334 (tr. by Stephen at Don Colacho's Aphorisms):

The classical languages have educational value because they are safe from the vulgarity with which modern life corrupts the languages that are in use.

Las lenguas clásicas tienen valor educativo porque están a salvo de la vulgaridad con que la vida moderna corrompe las lenguas en uso.

Marc Antoine Muret (1526-1585), Orationes, vol. 2, no. 22, included in A. Springhetti, Selecta Latinitatis Scripta (saec. xv-xx) (Rome, 1951):

Therefore those languages that depend on the whim of the ignorant multitude die each day, and are born each day. But those languages that the usage of learned men has rescued from the slavery of the crowd not only are alive, but have in a certain way achieved immortality and immutability.

Illae igitur linguae quotidie moriuntur, quotidie nascuntur, quae pendent ex libidine imperitae multitudinis: quas autem ex populi servitute eruditorum usus vindicavit, illae non vivunt tantum, sed immortalitatem quodammodo et immutabilitatem adeptae sunt.

Arthur Schopenhauer, tr. T. Bailey Saunders in Complete Essays of Schopenhauer (New York: Willey Book Company, 1942), IV.35:

There is no better recreation for the mind than the study of the ancient classics. Take any one of them into your hand, be it only for half an hour, and you will feel yourself refreshed, relieved, purified, ennobled, strengthened; just as if you had quenched your thirst at some pure spring.

German from Schopenhauer's Sämmtliche Werke, 2. Aufl., 6. Bd. = Parerga und Paralipomena, 2. Bd. (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1908), p. 597:

Es giebt doch keine größere Erquickung für den Geist, als die Lektüre der alten Klassiker: sobald man irgend einen von ihnen, und wäre es auch nur auf eine halbe Stunde, in die Hand genommen hat, fühlt man alsbald sich erfrischt, erleichtert, gereinigt, gehoben und gestärkt; nicht anders, als hätte man an der frischen Felsenquelle sich gelabt.

In the past few years I've read several news articles about the trend, among some runners, of eschewing expensive athletic shoes and instead running barefoot. Like many modern trends, this practice has ancient antecedents. See, e.g.:

• Xenophon, Constitution of the Lacedaemonians 2.3 (tr. E.C. Marchant): "Instead of softening the boys' feet with sandals he [Lycurgus] required them to harden their feet by going without shoes. He believed that if this habit were cultivated it would enable them to climb hills more easily and descend steep inclines with less danger, and that a youth who had accustomed himself to go barefoot would leap and jump and run more nimbly than a boy in sandals."
  
• Musonius Rufus, fragment 19 (tr. Cora Lutz): "Also going barefoot is better than wearing sandals, if one can do it, for wearing sandals is next to being bound, but going barefoot gives the feet great freedom and grace when they are used to it. It is for this reason that one sees couriers wearing no sandals on the highways and the runners in a contest unable to make the best speed if they have to run in sandals."

Socrates generally went barefoot, ἀνυπόδητος (Plato, Symposium 174a, 220b; Plato, Phaedrus 229 a; Aristophanes, Clouds 103, 363).

I borrowed the title of this post from James Greenleaf Whittier's poem Barefoot Boy, which ends with these lines:

Cheerily, then, my little man,
Live and laugh, as boyhood can!
Though the flinty slopes be hard,
Stubble-speared the new-mown sward,
Every morn shall lead thee through
Fresh baptisms of the dew;
Every evening from thy feet
Shall the cool wind kiss the heat:
All too soon these feet must hide
In the prison cells of pride,
Lose the freedom of the sod,
Like a colt’s for work be shod,
Made to treat the mills of toil,
Up and down in ceaseless moil:
Happy if their track be found
Never on forbidden ground;
Happy if they sink not in
Quick and treacherous sands of sin.
Ah! that thou couldst know thy joy,
Ere it passes, barefoot boy!

Stephen Pentz, at First Known When Lost, quotes the following from Maurice Hewlett, "The Crystal Vase," The London Mercury 1.2 (December, 1919) 176-183 (at 181), rpt. in A Green Shade: A Country Commentary (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1920), pp. 132-146 (at 141):

Coleridge was with them most days, or they with him. Here is a curious point to note. Dorothy records:

"March 7th.—William and I drank tea at Coleridge's. Observed nothing particularly interesting....One only leaf upon the top of a tree—the sole remaining leaf—danced round and round like a rag blown by the wind."

And Coleridge has in Christabel:

The one red leaf, the last of its clan,
That dances as often as dance it can,
Hanging so light, and hanging so high,
On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky.

These are excellent literary descriptions of the botanical phenomenon known as marcescence (a tree's retention of some of its dead leaves throughout the winter), and I'm glad to be able to add them to the following meagre collection of examples:

• Marcescence (Richard Wilbur, March; Robert Frost, Reluctance)
  
• Marcescence Again (Robert Frost, A Boundless Moment)
  
• Last Year's Leaves (John Betjeman, Loneliness)

Seneca, Trojan Women 371-408 (tr. John G. Fitch):

Is it true, or a tale to deceive the faint-hearted,
that spirits live on after bodies are buried,
when the spouse has placed a hand over the eyes,
and the final day has blocked out future suns,
and the grim urn has confined the ashes?

Verum est an timidos fabula decipit
umbras corporibus vivere conditis,
cum coniunx oculis imposuit manum
supremusque dies solibus obstitit
et tristis cineres urna coercuit?

Is nothing gained in yielding the soul to death?
Are the wretched faced with further life?
Or do we die wholly, and does no part of us survive,
once the spirit carried on the fugitive breath
has mingled with the mist and and receded into the air,
and the kindling torch has touched the naked flesh?

non prodest animam tradere funeri,
sed restat miseris vivere longius?
an toti morimur nullaque pars manet
nostri, cum profugo spiritus halitu
immixtus nebulis cessit in aera
et nudum tetigit subdita fax latus?

All that is known to the rising or setting sun,
all that is laved by Ocean with its blue waters
twice approaching and twice fleeing,
time will seize at the pace of Pegasus.

Quicquid sol oriens, quicquid et occidens
novit, caeruleis Oceanus fretis
quicquid bis veniens et fugiens lavat,
aetas Pegaseo corripiet gradu.

As the twelve constellations fly at whirlwind speed,
as the lord of the stars hastens apace
to roll on the centuries, in the way that Hecate
hurries to run on her slanting arcs:
so we all head for death. No longer does one
who has reached the pools that bind the gods' oaths
exist at all. As smoke from burning fires
fades away, soiling the air for a brief space;
as the leaden clouds that we saw just now
are scattered by the onset of northern Boreas:
so this spirit that rules us will flow away.

quo bis sena volant sidera turbine,
quo cursu properat volvere saecula
astrorum dominus, quo properat modo
obliquis Hecate currere flexibus:
hoc omnes petimus fata, nec amplius,
iuratos superis qui tetigit lacus,
usquam est. ut calidis fumus ab ignibus
vanescit, spatium per breve sordidus;
ut nubes, gravidas quas modo vidimus,
arctoi Boreae dissicit impetus:
sic hic, quo regimur, spiritus effluet.

After death is nothing, and death itself is nothing,
the finishing line of a swiftly run circuit.
Let the greedy lay down their hopes, the anxious their fears:
greedy time and Chaos devour us.

Post mortem nihil est ipsaque mors nihil,
velocis spatii meta novissima.
spem ponant avidi, solliciti metum:
tempus nos avidum devorat et chaos.

Death is indivisible, destructive to the body
and not sparing the soul. Taenarus, and the kingdom
under its harsh lord, and Cerberus guarding
the entrance with its unyielding gate
—hollow rumours, empty words,
a tale akin to a troubled dream.

mors individua est, noxia corpori
nec parcens animae. Taenara et aspero
regnum sub domino limen et obsidens
custos non facili Cerberus ostio
rumores vacui verbaque inania
et par sollicito fabula somnio.

You ask where you lie after death?
Where unborn things lie.

quaeris quo iaceas post obitum loco?
quo non nata iacent.

The same, tr. Edward Sherburne (1616-1702):

Is it a Truth? or Fiction blinds
        Our fearful Minds?
That when to Earth we Bodies give,
        Souls yet do live?
That when the Wife hath clos'd with Cries
        The Husband's Eyes,
When the last fatal Day of Light
        Hath spoil'd our Sight,
And when to Dust and Ashes turn'd
        Our Bones are urn'd;
Souls stand yet in no need at all
        Of Funeral.
But that a longer Life with Pain
        They still retain?
Or dye we quite? Nor aught we have
        Survives the Grave?
When like to Smoak immix'd with Skies,
        The Spirit flies.
And Funeral Tapers are apply'd
        To th'naked Side.
Whate'er Sol rising does disclose,
        Or setting shows;
Whate'er the Sea with flowing Waves
        Or ebbing laves;
Old Time, that moves with winged pace,
        Doth soon deface.
With the same Swiftness the Signs rowl
        Round, round the Pole,
With the same Course Day's Ruler steers
        The fleeting Years;
With the same Speed th'oblique-pac'd Moon
        Does wheeling run:
We all are hurried to our Fates,
        Our Lives last Dates;
And when we reach the Stygian Shore,
        Are then no more.
As Smoak, which springs from Fire, is soon
        Dispers'd and gone;
Or Clouds which we but now beheld,
        By Winds dispel'd;
The Spirit, which informs this Clay,
        So fleets away.
Nothing is after Death; and this
        Too, Nothing is:
The Gaol, or the extreamest space
        Of a swift Race.
The Covetous their Hopes forbear,
        The Sad their Fear.
Ask'st thou, whene'er thou com'st to dye,
        Where thou shalt lye?
Where lye th'unborn. Away Time rakes us,
        Then Chaos takes us.
Death's Individual; like kind
        To Body or Mind.
Whate'er of Taenarus they sing,
        And Hell's fierce King,
How Cerberus still guards the Port
        O'th' Stygian Court,
All are but idle Rumours found,
        And empty Sound;
Like the vain Fears of Melancholy
        Dreams, and fabulous Folly.

Paraphrase of lines 397-408 by John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1647-1680):

After death nothing is, and nothing, death,
The utmost limit of a gasp of breath.
Let the ambitious zealot lay aside
His hopes of heaven, whose faith is but his pride;
Let slavish souls lay by their fear
Nor be concerned which way nor where
After this life they shall be hurled.
Dead, we become the lumber of the world,
And to that mass of matter shall be swept
Where things destroyed with things unborn are kept.
Devouring time swallows us whole;
Impartial death confounds body and soul.
For Hell and the foul fiend that rules
God's everlasting fiery jails
(Devised by rogues, dreaded by fools),
With his grim, grisly dog that keeps the door,
Are senseless stories, idle tales,
Dreams, whimseys, and no more.

Franciscus Gysbrechts (17th century), Vanitas

Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, Part. 2, Sec. 3, Mem. 7:

It is an ordinary thing in these days to see a base impudent ass, illiterate, unworthy, insufficient, to be preferred before his betters, because he can put himself forward, because he looks big, can bustle in the world, hath a fair outside, can temporize, collogue, insinuate, or hath good store of friends or money; whereas a more discreet, modest, and better deserving man shall lie hid or have a repulse. 'Twas so of old, and ever will be...

Seneca, Letters to Lucilius 91.16 (tr. Richard M. Gummere):

We are unequal at birth, but are equal in death.

Inpares nascimur, pares morimur.

Seneca, Letters to Lucilius 88.1 (tr. Richard M. Gummere):

You have been wishing to know my views with regard to liberal studies. My answer is this: I respect no study, and deem no study good, which results in money-making.

De liberalibus studiis quid sentiam scire desideras: nullum suspicio, nullum in bonis numero, quod ad aes exit.

Paul, 1 Corinthians 13.11:

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

ὅτε ἤμην νήπιος, ἐλάλουν ὡς νήπιος, ἐφρόνουν ὡς νήπιος, ἐλογιζόμην ὡς νήπιος· ὅτε γέγονα ἀνήρ, κατήργηκα τὰ τοῦ νηπίου.

Teles, On Self-Sufficiency, p. 10 of Teletis Reliquiae, ed. Otto Hense, 2nd ed. (Tübingen: Mohr, 1909):

You have become an old man; don't desire youthful things.

γέρων γέγονας˙ μὴ ζήτει τὰ τοῦ νέου.

Epictetus 3.24.53 (tr. W.A. Oldfather):

When a person acts like a child, the older he is the more ridiculous he is.

ὁ τὰ παιδίου ποιῶν ὅσῳ πρεσβύτερος τοσούτῳ γελοιότερος.

Seneca, Letters to Lucilius 27.2 (tr. Richard M. Gummere):

I keep crying out to myself: "Count your years, and you will be ashamed to desire and pursue the same things you desired in your boyhood days."

Clamo mihi ipse: "Numera annos tuos, et pudebit eadem velle, quae volueras puer, eadem parare."

Seneca, On Firmness 12.1.1-2 (tr. John W. Basore):

The same attitude that we have toward young slaves, the wise man has toward all men whose childhood endures even beyond middle age and the period of grey hairs. Or has age brought any profit at all to men of this sort, who have the faults of a childish mind with its defects augmented, who differ from children only in the size and shape of their bodies, but are not less wayward and unsteady, who are undiscriminating in their passion for pleasure, timorous, and peaceable, not from inclination, but from fear? [2] Therefore no one may say that they differ in any way from children. For while children are greedy for knuckle-bones, nuts, and coppers, these are greedy for gold and silver, and cities; while children play among themselves at being magistrates, and in make-believe have their bordered toga, lictors' rods and tribunal, these play in earnest at the same things in the Campus Martius and the forum and the senate; while children rear their toy houses on the sea-shore with heaps of sand, these, as though engaged in a mighty enterprise, are busied in piling up stones and walls and roofs, and convert what was intended as a protection to the body into a menace. Therefore children and those who are farther advanced in life are alike deceived, but the latter in different and more serious things.

Quem animum nos adversus pueros habemus, hunc sapiens adversus omnes, quibus etiam post iuventam canosque puerilitas est. An quicquam isti profecerunt, quibus <puerilis> animi mala sunt auctique in maius errores, qui a pueris magnitudine tantum formaque corporum differunt, ceterum non minus vagi incertique, voluptatium sine dilectu adpetentes, trepidi et non ingenio sed formidine quieti? [2] Non ideo quicquam inter illos puerosque interesse quis dixerit, quod illis talorum nucumve et aeris minuti avaritia est, his auri argentique et urbium, quod illi inter ipsos magistratus gerunt et praetextam fascesque ac tribunal imitantur, hi eadem in campo foroque et in curia serio ludunt, illi in litoribus harenae congestu simulacra domuum excitant, hi ut magnum aliquid agentes in lapidibus ac parietibus et tectis moliendis occupati tutelae corporum inventa in periculum verterunt. Ergo par pueris longiusque progressis, sed in alia maioraque error est.

puerilis add. Gertz

I'm indebted for knowledge of these parallels to Walter C. Summers, ed., Select Letters of Seneca (1910; rpt. London: Macmillan and Co., 1952), pp. 190-191, who cites Teles from p. 6 of Hense (perhaps another edition).

Excerpts from John Aubrey, William Harvey, in Brief Lives:

He was wont to say that man was but a great mischievous baboon.

....

[H]e bid me goe to the fountain head, and read Aristotle, Cicero, Avicenna, and did call the neoteriques shitt-breeches.

....

From the meanest person, in some way, or other, the learnedst man may learn something. Pride has been one of the greatest stoppers of the advancement of learning.

John Le Carré, The Honourable Schoolboy (1977; rpt. New York: Pocket Books, 2000), p. 206:

"Your father was an Arabist, I recall?"

"Yes," said Guillam, his mind yet again on Molly, wondering whether dinner was still possible.

"And frightfully Almanach de Gotha. Now was he an A.D. man or a B.C. man?"

About to give a thoroughly obscene reply, Guillam realised just in time that Martindale was enquiring after nothing more harmful than his father's scholarly preferences.

"Oh B.C. B.C. all the way," he said. "He'd have gone back to Eden if he could have done."

William Cowper, letter to William Unwin (May 8, 1785):

You do well to make your letters merry ones, though not very merry yourself. And that both for my sake and your own.—For your own sake, because it sometimes happens that by assuming an air of cheerfullness we become cheerfull in reality, and for mine, because I have always more need of a Laugh than a Cry, being somewhat disposed to melancholy by natural temperament as well as by other causes.

Nicolás Gómez Dávila (1913-1994), Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección (Bogotá: Villegas Editores, 2001), p. 331 (tr. by Stephen at Don Colacho's Aphorisms):

Swimming against the current is not idiotic if the waters are racing toward a waterfall.

Nadar contra la corriente no es necedad si las aguas corren hacia cataratas.

C.S. Lewis (1898-1963), Mere Christianity, chapter 5:

We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.

William Cowper, letter to Joseph Hill (November 11, 1782):

You may not perhaps live to see your trees attain to the dignity of timber—I nevertheless approve of your planting, and the disinterested spirit that prompts you to it. Few people plant when they are young; a thousand other less profitable amusements divert their attention; and most people when the date of youth is once expired, think it too late to begin. I can tell you however for your comfort and encouragement that when a grove, which Major Cowper had planted, was of 18 years' growth, it was no small ornament to his grounds, and afforded as complete a shade as could be desired. Were I as old as your Mother, in whose longaevity I rejoice and the more because I consider it as in some sort a pledge and assurance of yours, & should come to the possession of land worth planting I would begin tomorrow, and even without previously insisting upon a bond from Providence that I should live 5 years longer.

Grant Wood, Tree Planting Group
Related posts:

• An Octogenarian Plants a Tree
  
• A Pious Man
  
• More on a Pious Man
  
• To Benefit Another Age
  
• Planting Trees

In F.E. Halliday, A Shakespeare Companion 1564-1964 (Baltimore: Penguin, 1964), there is an entry for the Revels Office. A Revels Office, with a Secretary of the Revelry, would be a worthwhile addition to the President's Cabinet. The United States of America could use a bit of revelry at this point in its history.

Another extinct position, which perhaps deserves to be resurrected, is Secretary of Lunatics, an office once held by William Cowper's correspondent Joseph Hill (1733-1811). Balancing our dearth of revelry is a corresponding rise in lunacy.

Stanley Fish, "The Crisis of the Humanities Officially Arrives," New York Times (October 11, 2010):

[O]n Oct. 1...George M. Philip, president of SUNY Albany, announced that the French, Italian, classics, Russian and theater programs were getting the axe.

....


Classics has been on the endangered species list for decades.

....

And it won't do, in the age of entrepreneurial academics, zero-based budgeting and "every tub on its own bottom," to ask computer science or biology or the medical school to fork over some of their funds so that the revenue-poor classics department can be sustained. That was the idea a while back, but today it won't fly.

---

Letter from Ed Turner to his son Ted Turner:

My dear son:

I am appalled, even horrified, that you have adopted classics as a major. As a matter of fact, I almost puked on my way home today.

....

I am a practical man, and for the life of me I cannot possibly understand why you should wish to speak Greek. With whom will you communicate in Greek?

....

I suppose everybody has to be a snob of some sort, and I suppose you will feel that you are distinguishing yourself from the herd by becoming a classical snob. I can see you drifting into a bar, belting down a few, turning around to the guy on the stool next to you—a contemporary billboard baron from Podunk, Iowa—and saying, "Well, what do you think of Leonidas?" He will turn to you and say, "Leonidas who?" You will turn to him and say, "Why, Leonidas, the prominent Greek of the twelfth century." He will, in turn, say to you, "Well, who the hell was he?" You will say, "Oh, you don’t know anything about Leonidas?" and dismiss him. And not discuss anything else with him for the rest of the evening. He will feel that you are a stupid snob and a fop, and you will feel that he is a clodhopper from Podunk, Iowa.

There is no question but this type of useless information will distinguish you, set you apart from the doers of the world. If I leave you enough money, you can retire to an ivory tower and contemplate for the rest of your days the influence that the hieroglyphics of prehistoric man had upon William Faulkner.

....

I think you are rapidly becoming a jackass and the sooner you get out of that filthy atmosphere, the better it will suit me.

....

Devotedly, DAD

Matthew Prior, Democritus and Heraclitus:

Democritus, dear Droll, revisit Earth,
And with our Follies glut Thy heighten'd Mirth.
Sad Heraclitus, serious Wretch, return,
In louder Grief our greater Crimes to mourn.
Between You both I unconcern'd stand by:
Hurt, can I laugh? and Honest, need I cry?

---

Sotion, On Anger, Book 2 (fragment preserved by Stobaeus 3.20.53; vol. 3, p. 550 Hense):

Instead of anger, tears came upon Heraclitus, laughter upon Democritus, both wise men.

τοῖς δὲ σοφοῖς ἀντὶ ὀργῆς ῾Ηρακλείτῳ μὲν δάκρυα, Δημοκρίτῳ δὲ γέλως ἐπῄει.

Seneca, On Anger 2.10.5 (tr. John W. Basore):

Whenever Heraclitus went forth from his house and saw all around him so many men who were living a wretched life—no, rather, were dying a wretched death—he would weep, and all the joyous and happy people he met stirred his pity; he was gentle-hearted, but too weak, and was himself one of those who had need of pity. Democritus, on the other hand, never appeared in public without laughing; so little did the serious pursuits of men seem serious to him. Where in all this is there room for anger? Everything gives cause for either laughter or tears.

Heraclitus quotiens prodierat et tantum circa se male viventium, immo male pereuntium viderat, flebat, miserebatur omnium, qui sibi laeti felicesque occurrebant, miti animo, sed nimis inbecillo, et ipse inter deplorandos erat. Democritum contra aiunt numquam sine risu in publico fuisse; adeo nihil illi videbatur serium eorum quae serio gerebantur. Ubi istic irae locus est? Aut ridenda omnia aut flenda sunt.

Seneca, On Tranquillity of Mind 15.2-3 (tr. John W. Basore):

We ought, therefore, to bring ourselves to believe that all the vices of the crowd are, not hateful, but ridiculous, and to imitate Democritus rather than Heraclitus. For the latter, whenever he went forth into public, used to weep, the former to laugh; to the one all human doings seemed to be miseries, to the other follies. And so we ought to adopt a lighter view of things, and put up with them in an indulgent spirit; it is more humanne to laugh at life than to lament over it. [3] Add, too, that he deserves better of the human race also who laughs at it than he who bemoans it; for the one allows it some measure of good hope, while the other foolishly weeps over things that he despairs of seeing corrected. And, considering everything, he shows a greater mind who does not restrain his laughter than he who does not restrain his tears, since the laugher gives expression to the mildest of the emotions, and deems that there is nothing important, nothing serious, nor wretched either, in the whole outfit of life.

In hoc itaque flectendi sumus, ut omnia vulgi vitia non invisa nobis sed ridicula videantur et Democritum potius imitemur quam Heraclitum. Hic enim, quotiens in publicum processerat, flebat, ille ridebat; huic omnia quae agimus miseriae, illi ineptiae videbantur. Elevanda ergo omnia et facili animo ferenda; humanius est deridere vitam quam deplorare. [3] Adice quod de humano quoque genere melius meretur qui ridet illud quam qui luget; ille ei spei bonae aliquid relinquit, hic autem stulte deflet quae corrigi posse desperat. Et universa contemplanti maioris animi est qui risum non tenet quam qui lacrimas, quando lenissimum adfectum animi movet et nihil magnum, nihil severum, ne miserum quidem ex tanto paratu putat.

Juvenal 10.28-30 (tr. Susanna Morton Braund):

So now do you approve the two philosophers? One of them would laugh whenever he stretched and stirred one foot from his threshold, while his opposite number would cry.

iamne igitur laudas quod de sapientibus alter
ridebat, quotiens a limine moverat unum
protuleratque pedem, flebat contrarius auctor?

Lucian, Philosophies for Sale 13 (tr. A.M. Harmon):

ZEUS
Remove him; bring on another—stay! those two, the one from Abdera who laughs and the one from Ephesus who cries, for I want to sell them together.

HERMES
Come down among us, you two. I sell the two best philosophies; we offer the two that are sagest of all.

BUYER
Zeus! What a contrast! One of them never stops laughing, and the other is apparently mourning a death, as he weeps incessantly. What is the matter, man? Why are you laughing?

DEMOCRITEAN
Dost thou need to ask? Because to me it seemeth that all your affairs are laughable, and yourselves as well.

BUYER
What, are you laughing at us all, and do you think nothing of our affairs?

DEMOCRITEAN
Even so; for there is nothing serious in them, but everything is a hollow mockery, drift of atoms, infinitude.

BUYER
No indeed, but you yourself are a hollow mockery in very truth and an infinite ass. Oh, what effrontery! Will you never stop laughing? (To the other.) But you, why do you cry? For I think it is much more becoming to talk with you.

HERACLITEAN
Because I consider, O stranger, that the affairs of man are woeful and tearful, and there is naught in them that is not foredoomed; therefore I pity and grieve for men. And their present woes I do not consider great, but those to come in future will be wholly bitter; I speak of the great conflagrations and the collapse of the universe. It is for this that I grieve, and because nothing is fixed, but all things are in a manner stirred up into porridge, and joy and joylessness, wisdom and unwisdom, great and small are all but the same, circling about, up and down, and interchanging in the game of Eternity.

Anonymus, in Greek Anthology 9.148 (tr. W.R. Paton):

Weep for life, Heraclitus, much more than when thou didst live, for life is now more pitiable. Laugh now, Democritus, at life far more than before; the life of all is now more laughable. And I, too, looking at you, am puzzled as to how I am to weep with the one and laugh with the other.

Donato Bramante, Heraclitus and Democritus

Matthew Prior, from Epistle to Fleetwood Shephard, Esq.:

Let me just tell You how my Time is
Past in a Country-Life.——Imprimis,
As soon as Phoebus' Rays inspect us,
First, Sir, I read; and then I Breakfast;
So on, 'till foresaid God does set,
I sometimes Study, sometimes Eat.
Thus, of your Heroes and brave Boys,
With whom old Homer makes such Noise,
The greatest Actions I can find,
Are, that They did their Work, and din'd.

Diogenes Laertius 2.71 (Life of Aristippus, tr. R.D. Hicks):

When some one gave himself airs for his wide learning, this is what he said: "As those who eat most and take the most exercise are not better in health than those who restrict themselves to what they require, so too it is not wide reading but useful reading that tends to excellence."

σεμνυνομένου τινὸς ἐπὶ πολυμαθείᾳ ἔφη, "ὥσπερ οὐχ οἱ τὰ πλεῖστα ἐσθίοντες καὶ γυμναζόμενοι ὑγιαίνουσι μᾶλλον τῶν τὰ δέοντα προσφερομένων, οὕτως οὐδὲ οἱ πολλὰ ἀλλ' οἱ χρήσιμα ἀναγινώσκοντές εἰσι σπουδαῖοι."

Seneca, Letters to Lucilius 2.2 (tr. Richard M. Gummere):

Be careful, however, lest this reading of many authors and books of every sort may tend to make you discursive and unsteady. You must linger among a limited number of master-thinkers, and digest their works, if you would derive ideas which shall win firm hold in your mind.

Illud autem vide, ne ista lectio auctorum multorum et omnis generis voluminum habeat aliquid vagum et instabile. Certis ingeniis immorari et innutriri oportet, si velis aliquid trahere quod in animo fideliter sedeat.

Id. 2.3-4:

And in reading of many books is distraction. Accordingly, since you cannot read all the books which you may possess, it is enough to possess only as many books as you can read. "But," you reply, "I wish to dip first into one book and then into another." I tell you that it is the sign of an over-nice appetite to toy with many dishes; for when they are manifold and varied, they cloy but do not nourish. So you should always read standard authors; and when you crave a change, fall back upon those whom you read before.

Distringit librorum multitudo; itaque cum legere non possis quantum habueris, satis est habere quantum legas. 'Sed modo' inquis 'hunc librum evolvere volo, modo illum.' Fastidientis stomachi est multa degustare; quae ubi varia sunt et diversa, inquinant non alunt. Probatos itaque semper lege, et si quando ad alios deverti libuerit, ad priores redi.

Pliny, Letters 7.9.15 (to Fuscus Salinator, tr. Betty Radice):

Remember to make a careful selection from representative authors in each subject, for the saying is that a man should be deeply, not widely, read.

Tu memineris sui cuiusque generis auctores diligenter eligere. Aiunt enim multum legendum esse, non multa.

John Aubrey, Thomas Hobbes, in Brief Lives:

He had very few bookes. I never sawe (nor Sir William Petty) above halfe a dozen about him in his chamber. Homer and Virgil were commonly on his table; sometimes Xenophon, or some probable historie, and Greek Testament, or so.

He had read much, if one considers his long life; but his contemplation was much more then his reading. He was wont to say that if he had read as much as other men, he should have knowne no more then other men.

Gustave Flaubert, letter to Louise Colet (February 17, 1853):

How learned one would be, if one knew well only five or six books!

Comme l'on serait savant si l'on connaissait bien seulment cinq à six livres!

John Frederick Peto, Old Companions

William Cowper, letter to William Unwin (July 3, 1784):

But I have a thought that when my present labours of the pen are ended, I may go to school again, and refresh my spirits by a little intercourse with the Mantuan and the Sabine bard; and perhaps by a reperusal of some others, whose works we generally lay by at that period of life when we are best qualified to read them, when, the judgment and the taste being formed, their beauties are least likely to be overlooked.

You, learned readers, probably don't need reminding that the Mantuan bard is Vergil, the Sabine bard Horace.

William Fettes Douglas, David Laing

James Reeves, Old Crabbed Men:

This old crabbed man, with his wrinkled, fusty clothes
And his offensive smell—who would suppose
That in his day he invented a new rose
Exciting still the fastidious eye and nose ?

That old crabbed man, sloven of speech and dress,
Was once known among women—who would now guess?—
As a lover of the most perfect address,
Reducing the stubbornest beauty to nakedness.

This old crabbed man, pattering and absurd,
With a falsetto voice—which of you has heard
How in his youth he mastered the lyric word?
His unflawed verse spoke like a March bird.

Charles Spencelayh, Departed Spirits

William Cowper, The Task, III, 721-740:

Nature, enchanting Nature, in whose form
And lineaments divine I trace a hand
That errs not, and find raptures still renewed,
Is free to all men—universal prize.

Strange that so fair a creature should yet want
Admirers, and be destined to divide
With meaner objects even the few she finds.
Stripped of her ornaments, her leaves, and flowers,
She loses all her influence. Cities then
Attract us, and neglected Nature pines,
Abandoned, as unworthy of our love.

But are not wholesome airs, though unperfumed
By roses, and clear suns, though scarcely felt,
And groves, if unharmonious, yet secure
From clamour, and whose very silence charms,
To be preferred to smoke, to the eclipse
That metropolitan volcanoes make,
Whose Stygian throats breathe darkness all day long,
And to the stir of Commerce, driving slow,
And thundering loud, with his ten thousand wheels?

Samuel Palmer, Scene from Lee, North Devon

K.M. Elisabeth Murray, Caught in the Web of Words: James Murray and the Oxford English Dictionary (1977; rpt. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), p. 136 (on Herbert Coleridge):

Coleridge died in 1861 at the early age of 31, from consumption brought on my a chill caused by sitting in damp clothes during a Philological Society lecture. When he was told that he would not recover he is reported to have exclaimed, 'I must begin Sanskrit tomorrow', and he died working on the Dictionary to the last, with quotation slips and word-lists spread on the quilt of his bed.

Herbert Weir Smyth, Greek Grammar, § 438.c:

In Homer and the lyric poets either the syllabic or the temporal augment is often absent; as φάτο and ἔφατο, βῆν and ἔβην, ἔχον and εἶχον. Iteratives (495) in Hom. usually have no augment (ἔχεσκον).

N. – In Homer the absence of the augment represents the usage of the parent language, in which the augment was not necessarily added to mark past time. It is therefore erroneous, historically, to speak of the omission of the augment in Homer.

Δῖος Ὅμηρος, in Prize Translations, Poems, and Parodies: Reprinted from the Journal of Education (London: John Walker & Company, 1881), p. 86:

Polyphloisboisteros Homer of old
Threw all his augments into the sea,
Though he'd been firmly but courteously told,
Perfect imperfects begin with an E.

"What the digamma, does any one care!"
The Poet replied with a haughty stare,
And he sat him down by the wine-dark sea,
To write a fresh book of the Odyssey.

On polyphloisboisteros cf. πολύφλοισβος (a Homeric epithet for the sea).

Edward Abbey, Confessions of a Barbarian: Selections from the Journals, ed. David Petersen (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1994), p. 295 (October 1981):

My body to be transported in the bed of a pickup truck and buried as soon as possible after death, in a hole dug on our private property somewhere (along Green River, up in the LaSals, or at Cliff Dwellers). No undertakers wanted; no embalming (for godsake!); no coffin. Just a plain pine box hammered together by a friend; or an old sleeping bag or tarp will do. If the site selected is too rocky for burial, then pile on sand and a pile of stones sufficient to keep coyotes from dismembering and scattering my bones. Wrap my body in my anarch's flag. But bury my body if possible; I want my body to help fertilize the growth of a cactus, or cliffrose, or sagebrush, or tree, etc. Disregard all state laws regarding burials. Hang a windbell nearby.

Ceremony? GUNFIRE! And—a little music, please: Jack Loeffler and his trumpet. Maybe a few readings from Thoreau, Whitman, Twain (something funny), Jeffers and/or Abbey. That should be sufficient. No speeches desired, though the deceased will not interfere if someone feels the urge. But keep it all simple and brief.

Then—a Wake! More music, lots of gay and lively music—bagpipes! Drums and flutes! The Riverine String Band playing jigs, reels, country swing and polkas; I want dancing! And a flood of beer and booze! A bonfire! And lots of food—meat! Corn on the cob! Beans and chilies! Cake and pie and ice cream and soda pop for the kids! Gifts for all my friends and all who come—books, record albums, curios and keepsakes. Invite everyone (we like)! No formal mourning, please—lots of singing, dancing, hollering, laughing and love-making instead. I want my widow to take a new man as soon as she can find one good enough—for her.

Sir Walter Scott, Rob Roy, chapter XXXV (Rob Roy speaking):

But the heather that I have trod upon when living, must bloom ower me when I am dead—my heart would sink, and my arm would shrink and wither like fern in the frost, were I to lose sight of my native hills; nor has the world a scene that would console me for the loss of the rocks and cairns, wild as they are, that you see around us.

Related posts:

• Parva Domus, Magna Quies
  
• The Old Man of the Stream
  
• More on Aglaus of Psophis
  
• Staying at Home
  
• Lottites
  
• There Was an Old Man from Verona
  
• To Be Happy At Home
  
• My Little Zoar
  
• Happy the Man
  
• Aglaus of Psophis
  
• Here
  
• Death Far from Home

Charles Turner, The First Week in October, from his Small Tableaux (London: Macmillan and Co., 1868), p. 59:

Once on an autumn day as I reposed
Beneath a noon-beam, pallid yet not dull,
The branch above my head dipt itself full
Of that white sunshine momently, and closed;
While, ever and anon, the ashen keys
Dropt down beside the tarnished hollyhocks,
The scarlet crane's-bill, and the faded stocks,—
Flung from the shuffling leafage by the breeze.
How wistfully I marked the year's decay,
Forecasting all the dreary wind and rain;
'Twas the last week the swallow would remain—
How jealously I watched his circling play!
A few brief hours, and he would dart away,
No more to turn upon himself again.

The crane's-bill is the geranium, from Greek γέρανος (géranos) = crane.

M.F.K. Fisher, The Art of Eating (Cleveland: World Publishing Company, 1954), pp. 611-612 (from An Alphabet for Gourmets, entry F is for Family):

Have a bowl of grated Parmesan, genuine and sandy and unadulterated by domestic packaged stuff; a large pat of sweet butter; a good salt shaker and a freshly filled pepper-mill; as many hot plates as there are people, and a big, hot casserole with a lump of butter melting in the bottom.

Cook good spaghetti rapidly in plenty of boiling water. (If the spaghetti is really reputable I do not salt the pot.) When half cooked add a lump of butter or a tablespoonful of olive oil; this keeps the water from boiling over and seems to eliminate the danger of sticking. When a strand of the spaghetti (of course not broken beforehand) can be pinched between my thumb and forefinger, I think it is done, somewhat more than al dente but not too soft. Then pour it it, throw it almost, into a big colander, dash very cold water thoroughly through it and then boiling hot water even more thoroughly (I know this is a heinous procedure to some gastronomical purists), and shake it furiously to dry it off a little. Pour it, blazing hot, into the almost sizzling casserole, and serve it immediately on the equally hot plate of whoever is hungry for it.

The next step precludes any so-called table manners: it must be carried out with rapidity, a skill easy to enlarge by pleasurable practice, and undaunted enthusiasm. Put a generous lump of sweet butter on top of the pile of spaghetti (first served first come...); shake and twist on the salt and pepper, also generously; pile Parmesan on top, and with your fork mix the whole into an odorous, steamy, rich, Medusa-like tangle.

All that is left is to eat it. That, according to the general bien-être and relaxation which should by now have spread through the company, is perhaps best left undescribed.

William Cowper, letter to Lady Hesketh (November 26, 1786):

I think every day of those lines of Milton, and congratulate myself on having obtained before I am quite superannuated, what he seems not to have hoped for sooner.—

And may at length my weary age
Find out the peaceful hermitage!

For if it be not an hermitage at least it is a much better thing, and you must always understand my Dear, that when poets talk of Cottages, hermitages, and such like matters, they mean a house with 6 sashes in front, two comfortable parlours, a smart Stair-case, and three bed-chambers of convenient dimensions; in short, exactly such a house as this.

At his blog Underbelly, Buce posts the following:

From the selected curses of my cousin Dave:

May your kids all wear their baseball caps backwards at your funeral.

I wouldn't go quite so far as Theodore Dalrymple ("It is impossible to look intelligent or dignified, and difficult even to look civil, in a baseball cap") or Terrence O. Moore ("Part security blanket, part good-luck charm, these distinctive head coverings unite each barbarian with the rest of the vast barbaric horde"), but something about a baseball cap worn backwards does make the wearer look like a Neanderthal, even if he's really a Nobel Prize winner. Catchers wear them backwards so the visor doesn't interfere with the protective mask, but no one else has an excuse.

Some say that outfielder Ken Griffey started this odious custom, but George Will pointed out that Holden Caulfield (in J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye) boasted, "I swung the old peak round to the back." Catcher in the Rye was first published in 1951, and Ken Griffey wasn't even born until 1969.

This practice started long ago, perhaps as early as the nineteenth century. The first stanza of "The Preacher's Boy" by American poet James Whitcomb Riley (1849-1916) contains a description of a preacher's wayward son that includes the phrase "his cap-rim turned behind" (line 7). See The Complete Poetical Works of James Whitcomb Riley (Garden City: Garden City Publishing Co., 1941), p. 284.

I've been searching, among works of art, for an early painting or photograph of someone wearing a baseball cap backwards, and this is the best I can find so far, not really what I'm looking for:


Winslow Homer, Crossing the Pasture
Maybe it's time for me to write out my funeral arrangements in detail. For a start, (1) no singing Kumbaya, and (2) no baseball caps worn backwards.

Vernon Watkins, Trees in a Town, from Fidelities (Plymouth: The Bowering Press, 1969; rpt. New York: New Directions, 2008), pp. 53-54:

Why must they fell the two chestnuts on the road?
I did not see the lorry and its load
Before a wall had grown where they had stood.
I wish I thought that sphinxlike block was good
Builders have raised, to brood upon upon the loss
Of those two chestnuts where the two roads cross.
In spite of all the gain some say has been,
How can my eyes accept the altered scene?
How often, checked here on my way to work
By the instant luck of life, I saw themes fork
Into the boughs, where thought could learn as much
As sight will learn, till it is taught by touch.
In March abounding sunlight drenched the tree,
But still those sticky buds would not set free
Their secret fledgling silk of crumpled fronds
Held in the icy trance of winter's bonds.
Summer's wide green brought gloom where eyes could range
Up the dark foliage of attentive change;
But soon that gloom was battered by a squall,
Then the long, yellow leaves were first to fall.

After, in frost, when all the boughs were bare,
What sudden grace the trees would print on air.
Call either tree a book for men to read
In any season; and then ask what need
A foursquare building had to pull them down.
I can forgive the traffic of this town
Its noise and brutal speed, but only just.
Metal and brick and glass above the dust
Smile on the road and on the lawn between.
What else is there the planners have not seen?

A fig-tree, thick with fruit which never grows
Ripe in our sun. When June is there it throws
Young, yellow fruit to the pavement while, unspent,
The broad leaves thrive and spread a fertile scent,
Warm memory of abundant nature's loins.
The shrivelled figs grow hard as ringing coins,
Seeming to prove the toll-gate has been paid
Out of that garden to the builder's trade.
How patient is the shadow those leaves cast:
They rob the Present who despoil the Past;
In all Utility's cold eye has seen
Beauty's profusion yields to what is mean,
And yet a fallen leaf can still express
Man's exile, his lost innocence, his dress.

Trees in a town, how long will they survive
The merchant's axe for all that looks alive?
How shall miraculous blossom, leaf and seed
Breathe life into the body lulled by speed,
Racing to nothing in an asphalt place?
Something is lost. The trees' obstructive grace
Seems to slick progress wasteful and obscene,
Whose highway must be useful and be clean.

Hat tip: Stephen Pentz.

Labels: arboricide

Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac (1966; rpt. New York: Ballantine Books, 1984), p. 190:

The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant: 'What good is it?'

[Warning — scatological and otherwise offensive content ahead.]

Dave Lull has drawn my attention to Google's Latin translation tool and a review of it by Mary Beard. In this post I feed the translation software some hitherto untranslated Neo-Latin to see what comes out.

On pp. 355-359 of Caspar Dornavius, Amphitheatrum sapientiae Socraticae joco-seriae (Hanoviae: Typis Wechelianis, 1619), is an edition of De peditu eiusque speciebus, crepitu et visio, Discursus methodicus, In theses digestus: quas praeside clariss. viro, Bombardo Stevarzio, Clarefortiensi, Defendere conabitur Buldrianus Sclopetarius, Blesensis. Disputabuntur autem in Aedibus Divae Cloacinae, a summo mane, ad noctem usque mediam (Clareforti: Apud Stancarum Cepollam, 1596).

Here is how Google renders the title into English:

Of the infantry and its species,, and the vision of the clashing of the discussion in methodically, In the theses and sorted: as if an assistance of the illustrious. the man, the ball chamber Stevarzio, Clarefortiensi, it will endeavor Buldrianus The defense of the Sclopetarius, of Blois. Be discussed in the Offices of the Cloacina of the Goddess, from the top in the morning, as far as the middle of the night to the

Many years ago, I taught Latin for a couple of semesters, and I used to tell students, "It makes sense in Latin, and it must make sense in English." By this measure alone, Google's translation fails. I translate the title thus:

A Systematic Treatise on Farting and its Types (Loud and Soft) Arranged by Theses, which Buldrianus Sclopetarius of Blois will Attempt to Defend under the Direction of the Most Illustrious Gentleman Bombardus Stevarzius of Clarefort. The Theses will be Debated in the Temple of the Goddess Cloacina, from Early Morning until Midnight.

One of the questions posed (on p. 359) is this:

An personae pedentis dignitas aliquid authoritati peditus? Exempli gratia, utrum peditus Papae dignior sit, quam gregarii alicujus sacrificuli, ambobus eadem quantitate & qualitate existentibus?

Google's translation of the question:

Is it something the dignity of the person pedentis the authority of infantry? For example, whether the infantry and more worthy of the Pope is, and how a common and sacrificing priests, of any one, to both of the same size and the quality of existing?

Infantry? How many legions does the Pope have? I translate the question thus:

Does the rank of the person farting contribute anything to the authority of the fart? For example, is the fart of a Pope more worthy than that of some common priest, when both farts are of the same volume and quality?

And now the answer to the question:

Resp. Quod sic. Nam Papae aut Imp. alicujus crepitum nemo reprehendit, sed omnes salutis acclamatione approbant. Quod secus in aliis inferioribus, qui interdum etiam ob id, contra omnia tamen iura, mulctantur. Nam iura naturae immutabilia sunt, & parva consuetudine contraria minime mutantur.

The answer as rendered by Google:

Ans. This is explained thus. For the pope, or Imp. no one even reproved the crack of any one, but that all of salvation is approved by acclamation. That situation is otherwise with the other inferior orders, which are sometimes also because of this, contrary to the rights of all, however, is fined. For the laws of nature are immutable, contrary custom or small change, not at all.

My translation of the answer:

The answer is yes. For no one criticizes the fart of a Pope or an Emperor, but all praise it with a Bravo. It is different with others of lower rank, who are sometimes even illegally penalized for this. For the laws of nature are unchanging, and they are scarcely altered by insignificant contrary custom.

Thanks to Eric Thomson for improving my translation in a couple of spots. I learned about this treatise from Sari Kivistö, Medical Analogy in Latin Satire (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), pp. 167-168.

It's heartening, in a way, to see how inept Google's Latin translation tool is, compared with what human beings can do. Our brains aren't obsolete quite yet.

Labels: Luddism, noctes scatologicae

William Cowper, letter to William Unwin (April 27, 1782):

What a dignity there is in the Roman language; and what an Idea it gives us of the good sense and masculine mind of the people that spoke it!

William Cowper, letter to William Unwin (October 22, 1785):

The most entertaining books are best to begin with, and none in the world, so far as entertainment is concerned, deserves the preference to Homer. Neither do I know, that there is anywhere to be found Greek of easier construction. Poetical Greek I mean; and as for prose, I should recommend Xenophon's Cyropaedia. That also is a most amusing narrative, and ten times easier to understand than the crabbed Epigrams and Scribblements of the minor poets, that are generally put into the hands of boys.

William Cowper, letter to John Newton (February 8, 1783):

You will suppose me a Politician; but in truth I am nothing less. These are the thoughts that occur to me while I read the News paper, and, when I have laid it down, I feel myself more interested in the success of my early Cucumbers than in any part of this great and important Subject.

William Cowper, The Task, III, 446-462:

To raise the prickly and green-coated gourd,
So grateful to the palate, and when rare
So coveted, else base and disesteem'd—
Food for the vulgar merely—is an art
That toiling ages have but just matur'd,
And at this moment unassay'd in song.
Yet gnats have had, and frogs and mice, long since,
Their eulogy; those sang the Mantuan bard,
And these the Grecian, in ennobling strains;
And in thy numbers, Phillips, shines for aye
The solitary shilling. Pardon then,
Ye sage dispensers of poetic fame,
Th' ambition of one, meaner far, whose pow'rs,
Presuming an attempt not less sublime,
Pant for the praise of dressing to the taste
Of critic appetite, no sordid fare,
A cucumber, while costly yet and scarce.

William Cowper, letter to William Unwin (November 24, 1783):

Simplicity is become a very rare quality in a writer. In the decline of great kingdoms, and where refinement in all the arts is carried to an excess, I suppose it is always rare. The latter Roman writers are remarkable for false ornament, they were yet no doubt admired by the readers of their own day; and with respect to authors of the present era, the most popular among them appear to me equally censurable on the same account. Swift and Addison were simple; Pope knew how to be so, but was frequently tinged with affectation; since their day I hardly know a celebrated writer who deserves the character.

Thanks to the indefatigable and erudite Eric Thomson for what follows.

---

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, On the Site of a Mulberry-Tree; Planted by Wm. Shakespeare; felled by the Rev. F. Gastrell, from The Academy (February 15, 1871) 128; rpt. in his Collected Works, ed. William M. Rossetti, vol. I (London: Ellis and Scruton, 1886), p. 285:

This tree, here fall'n, no common birth or death
  Shared with its kind. The world's enfranchised son,
  Who found the trees of Life and Knowledge one,
Here set it, frailer than his laurel-wreath.
Shall not the wretch whose hand it fell beneath
  Rank also singly—the supreme unhung?
  Lo! Sheppard, Turpin, pleading with black tongue
This viler thief's unsuffocated breath!

We'll search thy glossary, Shakespeare! whence almost,
  And whence alone, some name shall be reveal'd
    For this deaf drudge, to whom no length of ears
    Sufficed to catch the music of the spheres;
  Whose soul is carrion now,—too mean to yield
Some Starveling's ninth allotment of a ghost.

Stratford-on-Avon.

James Boswell, Life of Dr. Johnson (A.D. 1776, aetat. 67):

Mrs. Aston, whom I had seen the preceding night, and her sister, Mrs. Gastrel, a widow lady, had each a house and garden, and pleasure-ground, prettily situated upon Stowhill, a gentle eminence, adjoining to Lichfield. Johnson walked away to dinner there, leaving me by myself without any apology; I wondered at this want of that facility of manners, from which a man has no difficulty in carrying a friend to a house where he is intimate; I felt it very unpleasant to be thus left in solitude in a country town, where I was an entire stranger, and began to think myself unkindly deserted: but I was soon relieved, and convinced that my friend, instead of being deficient in delicacy, had conducted the matter with perfect propriety, for I received the following note in his handwriting: 'Mrs. Gastrel, at the lower house on Stowhill, desires Mr. Boswell's company to dinner at two.' I accepted of the invitation, and had here another proof how amiable his character was in the opinion of those who knew him best. I was not informed, till afterwards, that Mrs. Gastrel's husband was the clergyman who, while he lived at Stratford upon Avon, where he was proprietor of Shakspeare's garden, with Gothick barbarity cut down his mulberry-tree, and, as Dr. Johnson told me, did it to vex his neighbours. His lady, I have reason to believe, on the same authority, participated in the guilt of what the enthusiasts for our immortal bard deem almost a species of sacrilege.

Isabel Roome Mann "The Garrick Jubilee at Stratford-upon-Avon," Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 1, No. 3 (Jul., 1950), pp. 128-134, p.128:

The mulberry tree whose branches are intertwined in the tale was the one that William Shakespeare was said to have planted in his garden at New Place in 1609. By the 1750s, New Place had gone out of the hands of the Shakespeares, and was owned by Mr. Francis Gastrell, not a native Stratfordian. This retired clergyman was so annoyed by people coming to see the famous mulberry tree, and by the shade that the tree cast, that he had it cut down in or about 1758.⁴ The people of Stratford were roused to fury and to tears. In 1759, after further enraging the irate Stratfordians by razing New Place—because of his quarrel with them over the Poor Rate on the house—Mr. Gastrell left the town, "amid the curses of the populace."⁵ The mulberry tree survived, however, in the shape of small trunks, tea chests, etc., ingeniously made by the carpenter⁶ who purchased the felled tree.

⁴ According to R.B. Wheler, it was cut down in 1756. R. B. Wheler, A Guide to Stratford-upon- Avon (Stratford-upon-Avon, J. Ward, 1814) p. 46. J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps says "in or about 1758." J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare, 2nd Ed. (London, Longmans, Green, & Co., 1883), p. 443.
⁵ Thomas Davis, "The Jubilee at Stratford," in Memoirs of the Life of David Garrick, Esq. (London, Published by the Author, 1780), II, 214-5.
⁶ By "Mr. Thomas Sharp, watchmaker, of Stratford," according to R.B. Wheler, op. cit., p. 46.

Labels: arboricide

Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, Part. 2, Sec. 2, Memb. 4:

But amongst those exercises, or recreations of the mind within doors, there is none so general, so aptly to be applied to all sorts of men, so fit and proper to expel idleness and melancholy, as that of study: Studia, senectutem oblectant, adolescentiam, alunt, secundas res ornant, adversis perfugium et solatium praebent, domi delectant, &c., find the rest in Tully pro Archia Poeta.

....

To most kind of men it is an extraordinary delight to study. For what a world of books offers itself, in all subjects, arts, and sciences, to the sweet content and capacity of the reader?

....

What vast tomes are extant in law, physic, and divinity, for profit, pleasure, practice, speculation, in verse or prose, &c.! their names alone are the subject of whole volumes, we have thousands of authors of all sorts, many great libraries full well furnished, like so many dishes of meat, served out for several palates; and he is a very block that is affected with none of them. Some take an infinite delight to study the very languages wherein these books are written, Hebrew, Greek, Syriac, Chaldee, Arabic, &c.

Lawrence Alma-Tadema, 94 Degrees in the Shade

Horace, Odes 3.25.12-14:

To me, off the path, / it is pleasing to marvel at / rocks and deserted woods.

mihi devio / rupes et vacuum nemus / mirari libet.

rupes Muretus] ripas

Horace has strayed off (de) the beaten path (via), away from the strait and narrow. The Oxford Latin Dictionary, s.v. devius, gives the following senses:

1 (of places, etc.) Out-of-the-way, remote. b living or situated in a remote part; living in seclusion, sequestered. c [neut. pl. as sb.] remote parts or places.

2 Wandering off the road, straying; turning or swerving aside.

3 (of persons or conduct) Deviating from a straight course, erratic, inconstant.

We get English devious from Latin devius. The Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. devious, gives the following meanings:

1. Lying out of the way; off the high or main road; remote, distant, retired, sequestered.

2. Departing from the direct way; pursuing a winding or straying course; circuitous. b. Of persons or moving bodies: Following a winding or erratic course; rambling, roving.

3. fig. Deviating or swerving from the straight way; erring, straying.

4. quasi-adv. With wandering or straying course.

Asher Brown Durand, Kindred Spirits