Laudator Temporis Acti

Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887), "The Good of Disorder," in Eyes and Ears (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1862), pp. 413-419 (at 417-418):

She steals in! She views the happy scene! There was Bayle lying on the floor, with Mape's Farmer in his lap, and an Atlas genially covering both. There was a squadron of Living Ages lying around, like a picket of cavalry at ease. In one corner was a thicket of newspapers, on the sofa a ream of paper, a shawl, an Affghan, a Concordance, a Bible, new books uncut, magazines, and various other treasures; near the window all the books that at various times for a month we had bought up, but had not put up, waiting till we had time to arrange; near the door a stack of portfolios, and here and there a picture, patiently waiting to be hung. The book-cases were in benevolent sympathy with the floor. Indeed, the book-case might be called a vertical floor, and the floor a horizontal book-case. Whichever way the eye turned it found unexpected contrasts. Nothing was tame. Everything was fitted to excite surprise in a well-regulated housekeeper's mind. It was a stimulating sight. No art could have designedly arranged it. It was the workmanship of distributive and gradual chance. Like frostwork on the window, it defied invention and challenged imitation.

The same remorseless hand that would rub out a windowful of frost etchings, for the sake of seeing vulgar things outside, has invaded our room and "put everything to rights." Two months of industrious carelessness will scarce suffice to bring back my paradise! And all the time that fatal fear will overhang us that, in an unguarded hour, the same calamity will sweep through the room again, and where it found all, everything in disorder and loneliness, leave everything blasted with regularity and order!

Could "loneliness" in the last sentence perhaps be a printer's error for "loveliness"?

D.H. Lawrence, letter to Catherine Carswell (November 27, 1916):

It amazes me that we have bowed down and worshipped these foreigners as we have. Their art is clumsy, really, and clayey, compared with our own. I read Deerslayer just before the Turgenev. And I can tell you what a come-down it was, from the pure and exquisite art of Fennimore [sic] Cooper — whom we count nobody — to the journalistic bludgeonings of Turgenev. They are all — Turgenev, Tolstoi, Dostoevsky, Maupassant, Flaubert — so very obvious and coarse, beside the lovely mature and sensitive art of Fennimore Cooper or Hardy. It seems to me that our English art, at its best, is by far the subtlest and loveliest and most perfect in the world. But it is characteristic of a highly-developed nation to bow down to that which is more gross and raw and affected....No, enough of this silly worship of foreigners. The most exquisite literature in the world is written in the English language.

Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887), "Outlandish Books," in Eyes and Ears (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1862), pp. 290-293 (at 291-293):

At such times I stroll into one of those establishments, now so numerous, that import and sell second-hand books. The moment that one is across the threshold he feels that he has changed worlds. All the clamor of the street, the ceaseless passage and clash of innumerable vehicles, the confusion of voices, seem smothered to a low and gentle hum, and even that is forgotten in a moment. Then one walks up and down the passages lined with books, the alcoves of books, the long tables thick with books, the corners stocked and heaped with books, as if this were a city of books, in ruins, like some Oriental city of desolation. All languages are here, and all of them are dumb. Their silent symbols hold up hieroglyphic significance to such eyes as may chance to know them. But as one might stand over a tomb, and muse who was laid therein, of what nature, disposition, history; of what experience of woe or joy in life; with what hopes, thoughts, ambitions, struggles, failures, or evanescent victories; so do we stand by the side of a book in an unknown language. What means this title-page? What are the words of introduction? Open to the middle: is this a story, an argument, a criticism, a history? Is it a grave affirmation of mighty truth, such as Bacon would have plucked down for heavenly thoughts? or is it some jester, that flashes his momentary say, and waits for an answering laughter? How causeless are causes here. These words that have fallen on many a soul like a bow on the violin, and caused vivid emotions to spring forth from their touch, are now reaching toward my eye, but without a response. They touch, but I do not sound. They are like winds blowing among petrified trees whose leaves are fast and whose branches are stiffened forever. But though their glory is gone, once they were sovereigns. This well-thumbed volume has once been a favorite. It has been the last thing consulted before sleep; a solace to lucid intervals; perhaps often a companion of journeys. Or when the new grass was soft to pavement-worn feet, and the solitary scholar has wandered out to hear blackbirds sing by the side of spring-swollen streams, or to search for cowslips in the watery edges of the marsh lands, under his arm, but with affectionate care, goes this welcome companion. A book is good company. It is full of conversation without loquacity. It comes to your longing with full instruction, but pursues you never. It is not offended at your absent-mindedness, nor jealous if you turn to other pleasures, of leaf, or dress, or mineral, or even of books. It silently serves the soul without recompense, not even for the hire of love. And yet more noble, it seems to pass from itself, and to enter the memory, and to hover in a silvery transfiguration there, until the outward book is but a body, and its soul and spirit are flown to you, and possess your memory like a spirit. And while some books, like steps, are left behind us by the very help which they yield us, and serve only our childhood, or early life, some others go with us in mute fidelity to the end of life, a recreation for fatigue, an instruction for our sober hours, and a solace for our sickness or sorrow. Except the great out-doors, nothing that has no life of its own gives so much life to you.

And here are these uncomplaining favorites, now tumbled in heaps, or keeping dusty company in this great catacomb of literature! No gentle hand now fondles them, no eye searches them. They are foreigners, strangers in a strange land. But, peradventure, there yet shall come a dried and wrinkled man, poor in garb, as befits so poor a purse, and, wandering up and down among these silent souls imprisoned in ink and paper words, who, seeking this dusky volume, shall renew his youth of joy, greet a loving, absent friend, go and sell all that he hath to buy this pearl of price to him, and faintly kindle again in his heavy, dark heart the light of a long-lost treasure.

Related post: Prince of the City of Books.

Claire Tomalin, Thomas Hardy: The Time-torn Man (London: Viking, 2006), pp. 201-202 (on Hardy's house Max Gate):

Work started on the site almost at once, and at the end of the year Hardy himself planted an infant forest around the site, mostly beech trees and Austrian pines, to provide shelter from the wind as they grew. He had never planted trees before, as far as we know, but either he knew instinctively how to set about it or he sought expert advice. Two years later, when he described Giles Winterborne and Marty South at work in The Woodlanders, he was able to draw on his own experience:

Winterborne's fingers were endowed with a gentle conjurer's touch in spreading the roots of each little tree, resulting in a sort of caress, under which delicate fibres all laid themselves out in their proper directions for growth...

'How they sigh directly we put 'em upright, though while they are lying down they don't sigh at all,' said Marty.

'Do they?' said Giles. 'I've never noticed it.'

She erected one of the young pines into its hole, and held up her finger; the soft musical breathing instantly set in, which was not to cease night or day till the grown tree should be felled — probably long after the two planters should be felled themselves.

'It seems to me,' the girl continued, 'as if they sigh because are very sorry to begin life in earnest — just as we be.'

Giles plants skilfully, but it is only Marty who notices the sighing of the newly set trees. Hardy must have heard it when he planted his. He became their protector and would never have them lopped back or cut down, even if they grew into dense thickets. He spoke of 'wounding' them and refused to curtail the 'soft musical breathing' he had initiated and given Marty to appreciate.⁵ His trees were silenced only after his death, when his widow had most of them cut down.

5. The Woodlanders, Chapter 8. He also wrote a poem, 'The Pine Planters (Marty South's Reveries)', printed in Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses. Marty goes further here and makes the trees' sighing signify grief that they have not remained undeveloped seeds, safe from storm and drought.

Claudia FitzHerbert, "The House that Hardy built," The Telegraph (April 8, 2011):

Little has survived of the forest of Austrian pines which Hardy planted against the winds of the nearby heath and the prying eyes of passers by. During the poet’s lifetime these progressively shaded the house — "I set every tree in my June time. And now they obscure the sky" — but many were cut down by the second Mrs Hardy in the interval between his death and hers nine years later.

Hat tip: Eric Thomson.

Related post: Forest Murmurs.

Labels: arboricide

Seneca, Letters to Lucilius 94.69-71 (tr. Richard M. Gummere):

[69] It is a great part of health to have forsaken the counsellors of madness and to have fled far from a companionship that is mutually baneful. That you may know the truth of my remark, see how different is each individual's life before the public from that of his inner self. A quiet life does not of itself give lessons in upright conduct; the countryside does not of itself teach plain living; no, but when witnesses and onlookers are removed, faults which ripen in publicity and display sink into the background. [70] Who puts on the purple robe for the sake of flaunting it in no man's eyes? Who uses gold plate when he dines alone? Who, as he flings himself down beneath the shadow of some rustic tree, displays in solitude the splendour of his luxury? No one makes himself elegant only for his own beholding, or even for the admiration of a few friends or relatives. Rather does he spread out his well-appointed vices in proportion to the size of the admiring crowd. [71] It is so: claqueurs and witnesses are irritants of all our mad foibles. You can make us cease to crave, if you only make us cease to display. Ambition, luxury, and waywardness need a stage to act upon; you will cure all those ills if you seek retirement.

[69] Magna pars sanitatis est hortatores insaniae reliquisse et ex isto coitu invicem noxio procul abisse. Hoc ut esse verum scias, aspice quanto aliter unusquisque populo vivat, aliter sibi. Non est per se magistra innocentiae solitudo nec frugalitatem docent rura, sed ubi testis ac spectator abscessit, vitia subsidunt, quorum monstrari et conspici fructus est. [70] Quis eam quam nulli ostenderet induit purpuram? quis posuit secretam in auro dapem? quis sub alicuius arboris rusticae proiectus umbra luxuriae suae pompam solus explicuit? Nemo oculis suis lautus est, ne paucorum quidem aut familiarium, sed apparatum vitiorum suorum pro modo turbae spectantis expandit. [71] Ita est: inritamentum est omnium in quae insanimus admirator et conscius. Ne concupiscamus efficies si ne ostendamus effeceris. Ambitio et luxuria et inpotentia scaenam desiderant: sanabis ista si absconderis.

Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887), "Worth of Money," in Eyes and Ears (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1862), pp. 192-195 (at 193-194):

The poor scholar passes daily by the stall where books tempt his poverty. Poor clothes he is content to wear; plain and even meagre diet he is willing to subsist upon; and, as for all the gay dissipations and extravagant wastes of fashionable life, he looks upon them without even understanding what they mean, as a child looks upon the Milky-Way, in the heavens, a glowing band of far-away and unexplored wonders. But, O those books! He looks longingly at morning; he peers at them with a gentle covetousness at night. He imagines new devices for earning a few dollars. He ponders whether there is not some new economy which can save a few shillings. And when good luck at last brings a score of dollars to him, with what fever of haste does he get rid of them, fairly running to the stall, and fearing, at every step, lest some fortunate man should have seized the prize.

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), "The Old Stone Cross," in The Collected Works, Vol. I: The Poems, 2nd ed. (New York: Scribner, 1997), pp. 324-325:

A statesman is an easy man,
He tells his lies by rote;
A journalist makes up his lies
And takes you by the throat;
So stay at home and drink your beer
And let the neighbours vote,
    Said the man in the golden breastplate
    Under the old stone Cross.

Because this age and the next age
Engender in the ditch,
No man can know a happy man
From any passing wretch;
If Folly link with Elegance
No man knows which is which,
    Said the man in the golden breastplate
    Under the old stone Cross.

But actors lacking music
Do most excite my spleen,
They say it is more human
To shuffle, grunt and groan,
Not knowing what unearthly stuff
Rounds a mighty scene,
    Said the man in the golden breastplate
    Under the old stone Cross.

R.F. Foster, W.B. Yeats: A Life, Vol. II: The Arch-Poet (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003; rpt. 2005), p. 600:

As in much of his late verse, there is an echo of his Sligo youth, and an anticipation of last things: Drumcliff Churchyard, where the Sligo Yeatses were buried, was supposedly guarded by an ancient Irish warrior lying in his armour, and an ancient cross stands sentinel nearby.

William Butler Yeats, "Drumcliff and Rosses," in The Celtic Twilight (1893; rpt. London: A.H. Bullen, 1902), pp. 148-159 (at 156-157):

At Drumcliff there is a very ancient graveyard. The Annals of the Four Masters have this verse about a soldier named Denadhach, who died in 871: 'A pious soldier of the race of Con lies under hazel crosses at Drumcliff.' Not very long ago an old woman, turning to go into the churchyard at night to pray, saw standing before her a man in armour, who asked her where she was going. It was the 'pious soldier of the race of Con,' says local wisdom, still keeping watch, with his ancient piety, over the graveyard.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799), Philosophical Writings, tr. Steven Tester (Albany: SUNY Press, 2012), p. 48 (Sudelbücher, C 151):

The rules of grammar are merely human dictates, which is why the devil himself speaks poor Latin through the possessed.

Die Regeln der Grammatik sind bloße Menschen-Satzungen daher auch der Teufel selbst, wenn er aus besessenen Leuten geredet, schlecht Latein geredet.

On the other hand, "schlecht Latein" is not incompatible with piety, according to St. Gregory the Great, Moralia in Job (Patrologia Latina 75.516 B, tr. E.K. Rand):

Wherefore I have scorned to observe all art of style, in which pupils are drilled in schools of the outer [i.e., lower] training. For, as the tenor of the present letter makes evident, I shun not the collision of m's; I avoid not the disorder of barbarisms; I despise a conformity to constructions and moods and cases of prepositions. For I deem it exceedingly inept to fetter the words of the Heavenly Oracle to the rules of Donatus.

Unde et ipsam loquendi artem, quam magisteria disciplinae exterioris insinuant, servare despexi. Nam sicut hujus quoque epistolae tenor enuntiat, non metacismi collisionem fugio, non barbarismi confusionem devito, situs motusque et praepositionum casus servare contemno, quia indignum vehementer existimo, ut verba coelestis oraculi restringam sub regulis Donati.

Hat tip: Ian Jackson.

Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887), "The Right Kind of Farming," in Eyes and Ears (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1862), pp. 125-129 (at 125-126):

Speaking of vegetables, it may be cruel to say to people in the city, that they have no idea of the flavor of peas or of corn; not unless they remember how they used to taste when they lived in the country.

They must be eaten alive, or they are poor luxuries. They should be plucked only long enough to be shelled or shredded for cooking.

Then, in the sultry days of July and August, as the great tureen comes steaming with the one, and the huge platter smoking with pyramids of the other, who cares for meats, or for all costly confections? Peas alone are a feast; and sweet corn, in its various methods,—on the cob, cut off and mixed with cream, or raised into the ineffable glory of succotash,—is a banquet which would have made all the gods forget ambrosia and nectar, and stroke their beards with celestial satisfaction.

Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887), "Men Need What They Do Not Want," in Eyes and Ears (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1862), pp. 161-164 (at 161):

Men love to read "on their own side," to hear the things which they already believe enforced with new arguments; to hear their ministers or political speakers praise the things in which already they are fully established. But they are seldom willing to hear another side, to have enforced the truths which they do not believe, and the qualities which they do not possess. In this way men grow narrow: they intensify their opinions, rather than enlarge their knowledge, and become selfish and bigoted.

Id. (p. 162):

Men strengthen each other in their faults. Those who are alike associate together, repeat the things which all believe, defend and stimulate their common faults of disposition, and each one receives from the others a reflection of his own egotism.

These are some notes, for my own use, on the summary of Epicurean doctrine known as τετραφάρμακος (tetrapharmakos) = four-fold remedy or cure. I don't have access to an academic library, so I rely on bits and pieces gathered mostly from Google Books.

The tetrapharmakos is preserved in a work by Philodemus. The title of Philodemus' work is uncertain, as only the first two words of the title survive: Πρὸς τοὺς. The preposition Πρὸς could mean either against (Latin adversus) or to (Latin ad). Suggestions for completing the title are Σοφιστάς (against the Sophists), Στωικούς (against the Stoics), and ἑταίρους or συνήθεις (to the companions or associates, sc. of Epicurus' school). See Elizabeth Asmis, "Philodemus' Epicureanism," Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt II.36.4 (1990) 2369-2406 (at 2378-2380, esp. 2379). This work of Philodemus has been edited twice, by Francesco Sbordone as Philodemi Adversus [Sophistas] e Papyro Herculanensi 1005 (Naples: L. Loffredo, 1947), and by Anna Angeli as Filodemo, Agli Amici di Scuola (PHerc. 1005) (Naples: Bibliopolis, 1988).

Philodemus' work survives in Papyrus Herculanensis (PHerc) 1005. The tetrapharmakos is on column IV, lines 10-14, of the papyrus (p. 87 of Sbordone's edition). Here is an image of a copy of column IV of the papyrus, drawn by Gennaro Casanova (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Gr. class. c. 2, fol. 454; click to enlarge):


Here is the Greek text of the tetrapharmakos, with each of the four parts on a separate line:

ἄφοβον ὁ θεός,
ἀνύποπτον ὁ θάνατος,
καὶ τἀγαθὸν μὲν εὔκτητον,
τὸ δὲ δεινὸν εὐεκκαρτέρητον.

In Sbordone's Latin translation:

deus metum non incutit
neque mors perturbationem,
ac bonum quidem facile parabile,
malum vero facile perferri potest.

Here is my translation of the Greek:

Not to be feared—god,
not to be viewed with apprehension—death;
and on the one hand, the good—easily acquired,
on the other hand, the terrible—easily endured.

The adjectives ἄφοβον (aphobon) and ἀνύποπτον (anupopton) both start with alpha privative: ἄφοβον is related to the noun φόβος (phobos) = fear, ἀνύποπτον to the verb ὑποπτεύω (hypopteuō) = suspect, hold in suspicion; look with suspicion or apprehension on. The adjectives εὔκτητον (euktēton) and εὐεκκαρτέρητον (euekkarterēton) both start with the prefix εὐ- (eu-), which in compounds can denote ease, as here. A thing that is εὔκτητον is easy to acquire, related to the verb κτάομαι (ktaomai) = procure, get, acquire. A thing that is εὐεκκαρτέρητον is easy to endure fully, related to the verb καρτερέω (kartereō) = be steadfast, patient; bear patiently, endure.

I haven't seen Francesco Sbordone, "Il quadrifarmaco epicureo," Cronache Ercolanesi 13 (1983) 117–119, or Anna Angeli, "Compendi, eklogai e tetrapharmakos: due capitoli di dissenso nell' Epicureismo," Cronache Ercolanesi 16 (1986) 53-66.

---

Thanks to Mart van der Hiele for corrections.

Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887), "Book-Keeping," in Eyes and Ears (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1862), pp. 396-399 (at 398-399):

When we are Pope, we intend to make great changes in the Creeds and Articles. Stealing books, i.e. borrowing them, shall be put among the mortal sins, and private revenge upon stealers of books shall be venial, under a very slight tariff.

Then, when we are Emperor, we intend, every year, to require each man in the empire who can read and write, to make solemn search of his household, and to file an affidavit that there is not remaining with him a borrowed book!

Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887), "The Duty of Owning Books," in Eyes and Ears (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1862), pp. 154-156:

If on visiting the dwelling of a man of slender means we find that he contents himself with cheap carpets, and very plain furniture, in order that he may purchase books, he rises at once in our esteem. Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house. The plainest row of books that cloth or paper ever covered is more significant of refinement than the most elaborately carved étagère or sideboard.

Give us a house furnished with books rather than furniture! Both, if you can, but books at any rate! To spend several days in a friend's house, and hunger for something to read, while you are treading on costly carpets, and sitting upon luxurious chairs, and sleeping upon down, is as if one were bribing your body for the sake of cheating your mind.

Is it not pitiable to see a man growing rich, augmenting the comforts of home, and lavishing money on ostentatious upholstery, upon the table, upon everything but what the soul needs? We know of many and many a rich man's house where it would not be safe to ask for the commonest English classics. A few gairish annuals on the table, a few pictorial monstrosities, together with the stock religious books of his "persuasion," and that is all! No poets, no essayists, no historians, no travels or biographies, no select fictions, or curious legendary lore. But the wall-paper cost three dollars a roll, and the carpets four dollars a yard!

Books are the windows through which the soul looks out. A house without books is like a room without windows. No man has a right to bring up his children without surrounding them with books, if he has the means to buy them. It is a wrong to his family. He cheats them! Children learn to read by being in the presence of books. The love of knowledge comes with reading and grows upon it. And the love of knowledge, in a young mind, is almost a warrant against the inferior excitement of passions and vices. Let us pity these poor rich men who live barrenly in great, bookless houses! Let us congratulate the poor that, in our day, books are so cheap that a man may every year add a hundred volumes to his library for the price of what his tobacco and his beer would cost him.

Ernest Biéler (1863-1948), Portrait of Édouard Rod

"Death Takes All," in John Addington Symonds, Wine, Women, and Song: Mediaeval Latin Students' Songs. Now First Translated into English Verse, with an Essay (London: Chatto and Windus, 1884), pp. 159-160:

Hear, O thou earth, hear, thou encircling sea,
Yea, all that live beneath the sun, hear ye
How of this world the bravery and the glory
Are but vain forms and shadows transitory,
Even as all things 'neath Time's empire show        5
By their short durance and swift overthrow!
  Nothing avails the dignity of kings,
Naught, naught avail the strength and stuff of things;
The wisdom of the arts no succour brings;
Genus and species help not at death's hour,        10
No man was saved by gold in that dread stour;
The substance of things fadeth as a flower,
As ice 'neath sunshine melts into a shower.
  Where is Plato, where is Porphyrius?
Where is Tullius, where is Virgilius?        15
Where is Thales, where is Empedocles,
Or illustrious Aristoteles?
Where's Alexander, peerless of might?
Where is Hector, Troy's stoutest knight?
Where is King David, learning's light?        20
Solomon where, that wisest wight?
Where is Helen, and Paris rose-bright?
  They have fallen to the bottom, as a stone rolls:
Who knows if rest be granted to their souls?
  But Thou, O God, of faithful men the Lord,        25
To us Thy favour evermore afford
When on the wicked judgment shall be poured!

"Stour" in line 11 means "death-struggle."

Latin text, from Carl Bernh. Moll, ed., Hymnarium: Blüthen lateinischer Kirchenpoesie zur Erbauung (Halle: H. Petersen, 1861), p. 138:

Audi tellus, audi magni maris limbus,
Audi omne, quod vivit sub sole,
Huius mundi decus et gloria
Quam sint falsa et transitoria,
Ut testantur haec temporalia,        5
Non in uno statu manentia.
Nulli valet regalis dignitas,
Nulli valet corporis quantitas.
Nulli artium valet profunditas,
Nulli magnae valent divitiae,        10
Nullum salvat genus aut species,
Nulli prodest auri congeries.
Transierunt rerum materies,
Ut a sole liquescit glacies.
Ubi Plato, ubi Porphyrius;        15
Ubi Tullius aut Virgilius;
Ubi Thales, ubi Empedocles
Aut egregius Aristoteles;
Alexander ubi rex maximus;
Ubi Hector Troiae fortissimus;        20
Ubi David rex doctissimus;
Ubi Salomon prudentissimus;
Ubi Helena Parisque roseus —
Ceciderunt in profundum ut lapides:
Quis scit, an detur eis requies.        25
Sed tu, Deus, rector fidelium,
Fac te nobis semper propitium,
Quum de malis fiet iudicium.

There is a somewhat different Latin text in B. Hauréau, Notices et Extraits de Quelques Manuscrits Latins de la Bibliothèque Nationale, Vol. 4 (Paris: Librairie C. Klincksieck, 1892), pp. 331-332 (ms. 15363, fol. 231 = Prosa in officio mortuorum).

See James W. Bright, "The 'Ubi Sunt' Formula," Modern Language Notes 8.3 (March 1893) 94, and Geoffrey Shepherd, "'All the Wealth of Croesus...': A Topic in the 'Ancren Riwle'," Modern Language Review 51.2 (April 1956) 161-167. Mariantonia Liborio, "Contributi alla storia dell' Ubi sunt," Cultura Neolatina 20 (1960) 141-209, is unavailable to me.

"The Invitation to Youth," in John Addington Symonds, Wine, Women, and Song: Mediaeval Latin Students' Songs. Now First Translated into English Verse, with an Essay (London: Chatto and Windus, 1884), pp. 66-67:

Take your pleasure, dance and play,
Each with other while ye may:
Youth is nimble, full of grace;
Age is lame, of tardy pace.

We the wars of love should wage,
Who are yet of tender age;
'Neath the tents of Venus dwell
All the joys that youth loves well.

Young men kindle heart's desire;
You may liken them to fire:
Old men frighten love away
With cold frost and dry decay.

Symonds intentionally omitted the refrain from his translation. Here is the original, from Gaudeamus! Carmina Vagorum Selecta in Usum Laetitiae, ed. R. Peiper (Leipzig: B.G. Teubner, 1877), pp. 90-91:

Congaudentes ludite!
choros simul ducite!
    iuuenes sunt lepidi,
    senes sunt decrepiti.
        Audi bela mia,
        mille modos Veneris
        da hizevaleria.

Militemus Veneri
nos qui sumus teneri!
    Veneris tentoria
    res est amatoria.
        Audi etc.

Iuuenes amabiles
igni comparabiles;
    senes sunt horribiles
    frigori consimiles.
        Audi etc.

In the refrain, some read "bel'amia" for "bela mia" and "hahi zevaleria" for "da hizevaleria". According to S. Santangelo, Studio sulla Poesia Goliardica (Palermo: Alberto Reber, 1902), p. 83:

Su zevaleria poi non può esserci dubbio: essa è italianizzamento di parola francese, chevalerie: così si spiega la desinenza italiana ia invece della fr. ie, e la z in luogo del ch francese (cfr. fr. chambre = it. zambra).

Cf. Fritz Peter Knapp, "Die Carmina Burana als Ergebnis europäischen Kulturtransfers," in Kultureller Austausch und Literaturgeschichte im Mittelalter. Transferts culturels et histoire littéraire au Moyen Âge, edd. Ingrid Kasten et al. (Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 1998 = Francia, Beiheft 43), pp. 283-301 (at 284-285):

Ähnliches gilt für CB 94, wo der Refrain in der Hs. heißt:

Audi bela / mia. mille modos ueneris da hizeualeria.

Der Schreiber hat wohl bela mia als italienische Wörter aufgefaßt, hinter denen freilich aprov. bel'amia bzw. afrz. bel'amie stehen könnten. Wenn h₁ damit, wie Sayce behauptet (S. 45), virtuos zugleich auf drei Sprachen hätte anspielen wollen, warum hat er dann den Schluß der Zeile so sinnwidrig verballhornt, indem er hi und zeualeria nicht trennt? Dies letzte Wort muß wohl eine norditalienische Schreibung von frz. chevalerie sein. Die italienisch-provenzalische Entsprechung wäre caval(l)eria. In der gesamten mittelalterlichen Galloromania, also auch im Norditalienischen und Alpenromanischen wird k vor i, e zur dentalen Affrikata /ts/ verschoben. Nur in ihrem nördlichen Teil erfaßt die Palatalisierung auch k vor a.⁴ Der Schreiber (oder seine Vorlage) hat also die altfranzösische Graphemfolge che-, die fur die Phonemfolge /će/ steht, durch die in der eigenen Mundart geläufige Folge ze- (für /tse/) ersetzt. Nur ein verständnisloser Abschreiber konnte aber die Silbe hi vorne darankleben. Sie muß ursprünglich entweder allein gestanden oder zum vorhergehenden Wort gehört haben. Keine der vorgeschlagenen Deutungen befriedigt allerdings wirklich.⁵

4 Vgl. Heinrich LAUSBERG, Romanische Sprachwissenschaft, II, Berlin 1967, §§ 312-313.
5 Die älteren Vorschläge in der krit. Ausgabe. Den von Hermann PATZIG (da hi zevaleria) greift VÖLLMANN auf und übersetzt: »Tausend Formen der Liebe schenkt - hei! - das Venusrittertum.« Am ehesten ist die Verschreibung in der Hs. aber zu begreifen, wenn dem hi ein (proklitisch herangerückter) Artikel afrz. la, le zugrunde lag. Der lat./afrz. Refrain könnte dann gelautet haben: Audi, bel'amie / mille modos Veneris de la chevalerie (»Vernimm, schöne Freundin, tausend Formen der Venusritterschaft«).

The phrase "da hizevaleria" at first made me think of the nonsense syllables "valeri, valera" in some German folk songs, but I suppose Santangelo and Knapp are right about the connection to French "chevalerie". I haven't seen Olive Sayce, Plurilingualism in the Carmina Burana: A Study of the Linguistic and Literary Influences on the Codex (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1992), who also discusses the refrain.

Edgar Anderson (1897-1969), Plants, Man, and Life (Boston: Little Brown, 1952), pp. 140-141 (on a garden in Santa Lucia, Guatemala):

Though at first sight there seemed little order, as soon as we started mapping the garden, we realized that it was planted in fairly definite crosswise rows. There were fruit trees, native and European in great variety: annonas, cheromoyas, avocados, peaches, quinces, plums, a fig, and a few coffeebushes. There were giant cacti grown for their fruit. There was a large plant of rosemary, a plant of rue, some poinsettias, and a fine semiclimbing tea rose. There was a whole row of the native domesticated hawthorn, whose fruits like yellow, doll-sized apples, make a delicious conserve. There were two varieties of corn, one well past bearing and now serving as a trellis for climbing string beans which were just coming into season, the other, a much taller sort, which was tasseling out. There were specimens of a little banana with smooth wide leaves which are the local substitute for wrapping paper, and are also used instead of cornhusks in cooking the native variant of hot tamales. Over it all clambered the luxuriant vines of various cucurbits. Chayote, when finally mature, has a large nutritious root weighing several pounds. At one point there was a depression the size of a small bathtub where a chayote root had recently been excavated; this served as a dump heap and compost for waste from the house. At one end of the garden was a small beehive made from boxes and tin cans. In terms of our American and European equivalents, the garden was a vegetable garden, an orchard, a medicinal garden, a dump heap, a compost heap, and a beeyard. There was no problem of erosion though it was at the top of a steep slope; the soil surface was practically all covered and apparently would be during most of the year. Humidity would be kept up during the dry season and plants of the same sort were so isolated from one another by intervening vegetation that pests and diseases could not readily spread from plant to plant. The fertility was being conserved; in addition to the waste from the house, mature plants were being buried in between the rows when their usefulness was over.

It is frequently said by Europeans and European Americans that time means nothing to an Indian. This garden seemed to me to be a good example of how the Indian, when we look more than superficially into his activities, is budgeting his time more efficiently than we do. The garden was in continuous production but was taking only a little effort at any one time: a few weeds pulled when one came down to pick the squashes, corn and bean plants dug in between the rows when the last of the climbing beans was picked, and a new crop of something else planted above them a few weeks later.

I was so impressed by the apparent efficiency of the garden that I have since tried out several of its basic principles on my own vegetable plots with considerable success. Instead of putting my sweet potatoes all neatly in one little bed down at the far end of the garden I plant them one row at a time in different places. They now grow vigorously across the garden by late summer; they keep the ground moist during the dry days of August; and they help keep out weeds. I also plant a few cornfield beans in among the corn plants after they are pretty well up and have a good extra crop of string beans after the sweet-corn season is over. From these experiences I suspect that if one were to make a careful time study of such an Indian garden, one would find it more productive than ours in terms of pounds of vegetables and fruit per man-hour per square foot of ground. Far from saying that time means nothing to an Indian, I would suggest that it means so much more to him that he does not wish to waste it in profitless effort as we do.

Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977), Lectures on Literature, Vol. I (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), p. 125 (on Flaubert's Madame Bovary):

Let us not kid ourselves; let us remember that literature is of no practical value whatsoever, except in the very special case of somebody's wishing to become, of all things, a professor of literature.

Owen Felltham (1602?–1668), Resolves: Divine, Moral, Political, 8th ed. (London: Printed for Peter Dring, 1661), pp. 250-252 (II.XXXI [sic, should be XXXIV; p. 252 is also mis-numbered as 225]: The Misery of being old and ignorant):

Since old Age is not only a Congregation of diseases, but even a disease it self; and, That, (in regard of the Decree which Providence hath pass'd upon man) incurable save by death. The best thing next to a Remedy is a diversion or an Abatement of the Malady. When infirmities are grown habitual and remedilesse, all we can do is give them some Respite and a little Allevation, that we may be lesse sensible of the smart and sting they smite us with. The cold Corelian cannot change his clime: but yet by furrs and fires he can preserve himself, and stove out winter arm'd with Ice and Wind. The Drum and Fife can drown the Battails noise, though many times there is no room to escape it. The little Pismire can instruct great Man, that (winter comming) store should be provided. And what thing is there in the fathome of industrious man, that can so qualifie him against the breaches and decays that Age makes on him, as knowledg as study and meditation: with this he can feast at home alone, and in his Closest put himself into what ever Company that best shall please him, with Youths Vigour, Ages gravity, Beauties pleasantnesse, with Peace or Warr as he likes. It abates the tediousnesse of decrepit Age and by the divine raptures of Contemplation it beguiles the wearinesse of the Pillow and Chair. It makes him not unpleasing to the Young, reverenc'd by age, and beloved of all. A gray head with a wise mind enricht by Learning is a Treasury of Grave precepts, experience, and Wisdome. 'Tis an Oracle to which the lesser-wise resort to know their Fate; He that can read and meditate need not think the Evening long, or Life tedious; 'Tis at all times imployment fit for a man: Like Davids harp it cures the evill spirit of this Saul that is naturally testy, froward, and complaining. Though perhaps there was a Vivacity more then Ordinary; yet I doubt not but it was this that in the main from Gorgias produc'd that memorable answer. Being a hundred and seven years of Age, One ask'd him, Why he liv'd so long. He replyes because he yet found nothing in old Age to complain of. And that this is probable, he was master to Isocrates, had got such wealth by teaching Rhetorique that he bequeathed his statue in Gold, to Apollo's Temple; and to any Theme was able well to speak extempore, and certainly, if any thing hath power, 'tis Vertue and Knowledge that can ransome us from the Infirmities and Reproaches of Age. Without this, an old man is but the lame shadow of that which once he was. They honour him too far that say he is twice a Child. There is something in Children that carryes a becomming prettiness, which is pleasant and of grateful relish. But ignorant Old age is the worst picture that Time can draw of Man. Tis a barren Vine in Autumne, a leaky Vessel ready to drop in pieces at every remove, a map of mentall and Corporeal weakness; not pleasing to others, but a Burthen to himself. His Ignorance and Imbecillity condemns him to Idlenesse; which to the active Soul is more irksome then any employment. What can he do when strength of limbs shall fail; and the gust of pleasure which help'd him to mispend his youth, through time and Languid Age shall blunted be and dull? Abroad he cannot stir to partake the Variation of the World; nor will others be fond of comming to him, when they shall find nothing but a cadaverous man, composed of diseases and Complaints, that for want of knowledg hath not discourse to keep Reason company. Like the Cuccow he may be left to his own moultring in some Hollowed Cell: but since the voice of his Spring is gone (which yet was all the Note he had to take us with) he now's not listned after: So the bloudlesse Tortoise in his melancholly hole, lazeth his life away. Doubtlesse were it for nothing else, even for this is Learning to be highly valued, That it makes a man his own Companion without either the Charge or the Cumber of Company. He needs neither be oblig'd to humour, nor engag'd to flatter. He may hear his Author speak as far as he likes, and leave him when he doth not please him, nor shall he be angry though he be not of his Opinion. It is the guide of Youth, to Manhood a Companion, and to old Age a Cordial and an Antidote. If I dye to morrow, my Life to day will be somewhat the sweeter for Knowledg. The answer was good, which Antisthenes gave when he was asked, What fruit he had reaped of all his studies? By them (saith he) I have learned, both to live, and discourse with my self.

Albert Anker (1831-1910), Die Andacht des Grossvaters

Helen Cam (1885-1968), "Eating and Drinking Greek," The Listener (May 21, 1964), pp. 836-837 (at 836):

After nursery breakfast—for, incredible as it sounds today, though the family income did not leave room for pocket money, let alone boarding schools for us, we had a nurserymaid as well as a cook and housemaid—mother would come up and take our lessons, beginning with the youngest, who were then free to play when the turn of the elders came. Her technique was, I suppose, that of her own youth. She heard the poetry we had learnt by heart, chosen by ourselves from such poetry books as were available; she corrected our written exercises; she went through the translations we had prepared, she questioned us on the grammar, the history, and the geography books we had read. The first requisite was honesty; we were not allowed to pretend we understood anything if we did not. I can recall early painful strugglings to grasp the meaning of mysterious words like 'the government' or 'the river-basin', and if we had read our history portion carelessly we had to read it again. And we had to be thorough. In our French, for example, when we had got past learning verbs and nouns and were launched into little French story books we had to look up the words for ourselves in the glossary. One sister remembers complaining bitterly that it had taken half an hour to prepare four lines, as there were so many new words to look up; she was told hard-heartedly that it would go quicker in time; and so it did—very soon. Another, trying to skip the difficult words as she translated, remembers mother's needle coming out of the sock she was darning and pouncing down, one after another, on the missing words.

My mother, born in 1857, had learnt her modern languages from the French and German women who helped in my grandmother's small private school. She passed on to us decent foreign accents, but as we grew older we reached the limits of her knowledge of grammar and syntax. She would say: 'I know that's wrong, but I don't know why. Let's look it up'; and with her we would dig into the grammar book and worry out the logic of the correct rendering. By the time we reached our teens our French and German lessons were turning into arguments. We learnt Schiller and Racine by heart; we translated passages from good authors and turned them back again. By the time I got to college I could read history in both languages readily. I remember my early pride when she gave me a French story book to read to myself for amusement.

All the time we were expected to use our minds. If we asked her a question on some general moral or ethical matter she would say: 'What do you think about it yourself?' We lived in an atmosphere of discussion and argument; it was not uncommon for my father to get up from the table at meal times to consult a map or work of reference in order to check some fact. As compared with the schoolchildren of today, I suppose we did far more by ourselves. Lessons with mother did not last more than two hours; preparing them occupied the rest of the morning, and the hours between tea and supper.

The pattern of our curriculum was set by the old Oxford Local Examinations, for which we entered from ten years upwards. We went to Oxford to take them, which meant that examinations were a delightful break in the ordinary routine of life. My B.A. finals in 1907 was the first examination that I did not wholeheartedly enjoy. The wonderful year when an uncle took two of us to Italy with my mother for six weeks in early spring, and lessons went to the wall, did not damage our results, which were even better than usual in July.

There were plenty of books in the house, outside the nursery bookshelves. Reading aloud was a regular institution. Both my father and my mother read very well, and I look back to breathless moments listening to A Tale of Two Cities, and Lorna Doone, or more modern thrillers like Mary Johnstone's By Order of the Company. We had half an hour's sewing after lunch, when one of the four girls in turn read aloud to the other three. Reading aloud persisted in our family to the end of my mother's long life in 1949. My mother, at one period, made me read fiction and non-fiction alternately and keep a record of the books I read. My father's mother (who lived with us till her death in 1902, herself a self-educated scholar of great dignity) gave me on my twelfth birthday a marvellous work called The Treasury of Knowledge, containing half a dozen dictionaries and a choice collection of proverbs (four bordering each page). I revelled in the classical section, from which I compiled genealogies of the gods of Olympus. We still find it handy for crossword puzzles.

The assets that we carried from our home education to the next stage of college or other training were habits of independent working and thinking, standards of thoroughness and a demand for evidence, and, above all, an unspoiled appetite for learning (best, I think, embodied in something my mother said to me when she was over eighty: 'Isn't it nice, Helen, how many things there are still to find out?') I feel that in this we were the heirs of the Victorian age. My mother and her two sisters were educated at home, in my grandmother's little private school, where they also helped to teach. My eldest aunt prepared herself for the Cambridge Higher Locals and so won a scholarship to Newnham, although she did not take it up. To go back to the still older generation, my grandmother's four sisters all went out as governesses when the family fortunes suffered. They had a very different experience from the Brontës, for they became the life-long friends of the families where they taught.

Of the five sisters of the older generation, only my grandmother married; the home of the four great-aunts, where they had lived from childhood, had its own literary associations, as their father had known Coleridge, and in their dining-room, according to tradition, he and Southey had wept at the news of the death of Robespierre. We were not the only children who ransacked their bookshelves.

I do not think we ever considered our family exceptional. When I look at the educational background of the mid-Victorian woman, I keep on recognizing common features. The home teaching on which Charlotte Yonge and Mrs Ewing and Florence Nightingale and Josephine Butler were nurtured is there; so is the passion for reading. Jane Austen wrote that 'a fondness for reading, properly directed, is an education in itself'; and she set the quiet little student Fanny Price over against the complacent and pretentious Bertram sisters, whose schooling is so often quoted as typical. Elizabeth Barrett 'eating and drinking Greek'; Harriet Martineau teaching herself Italian and getting up at 5 o'clock to read Tacitus and Petrarch; Anne Moberley teaching herself Hebrew; Mary Everett Green finding her own way through the scattered and uncalendered national archives—these are simply the outstanding examples from a crowd of less eminent students who one way or another satisfied their hunger for learning.

Gwen John (1876-1939), The Student
Hat tip: Ian Jackson.

Related post: Home Schooling.

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), "The Old Men Admiring Themselves in the Water," in Poetical Works, Vol. I: Lyrical Poems (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1906), p. 294:

I heard the old, old men say,
"Everything alters,
And one by one we drop away."
They had hands like claws, and their knees
Were twisted like the old thorn trees
By the waters.
I heard the old, old men say,
"All that's beautiful drifts away
Like the waters."

Plato, Cratylus 402 A (tr. H.N. Fowler):

Heracleitus says, you know, that all things move and nothing remains still, and he likens the universe to the current of a river, saying that you cannot step twice into the same stream.

λέγει που Ἡράκλειτος ὅτι "πάντα χωρεῖ καὶ οὐδὲν μένει," καὶ ποταμοῦ ῥοῇ ἀπεικάζων τὰ ὄντα λέγει ὡς "δὶς ἐς τὸν αὐτὸν ποταμὸν οὐκ ἂν ἐμβαίης."

Simon Leys, The Hall of Uselessness (Collingwood: Black Inc., 2012), p. 206:

The great modern Chinese writer Zhou Zuoren, whose essays are interspersed with a vast range of translations (Greek classics, classical and modern Japanese literature, English literature), developed this idea: a writer can translate various texts in order to give form to things he had in himself but which he could not find other means of expressing. This is why it is appropriate to include these translations in any collection of his own works. The same goes for the quotations and the notes on reading that certain writers accumulate, and that the English sometimes call a commonplace book (see for example that of E.M. Forster, published recently, or Montesquieu's Spicilège). String together all the pages that you have copied out over the course of your readings and, without there being a single line by you, the ensemble may turn out to be the most accurate portrait of your mind and your heart. Such mosaics of quotations resemble pictorial 'collages': all the elements are borrowed, but together they form original pictures.

Hat tip: Daniel Fertig.

"A Sequence in Praise of Wine," in John Addington Symonds, Wine, Women, and Song: Mediaeval Latin Students' Songs. Now First Translated into English Verse, with an Essay (London: Chatto and Windus, 1884), pp. 136-137:

Wine the good and bland, thou blessing
Of the good, the bad's distressing,
Sweet of taste by all confessing,
    Hail, thou world's felicity!
Hail thy hue, life's gloom dispelling;
Hail thy taste, all tastes excelling;
By thy power, in this thy dwelling
    Deign to make us drunk with thee!

Oh, how blest for bounteous uses
Is the birth of pure vine-juices!
Safe's the table which produces
    Wine in goodly quality.
Oh, in colour how auspicious!
Oh, in odour how delicious!
In the mouth how sweet, propitious
    To the tongue enthralled by thee!

Blest the man who first thee planted,
Called thee by thy name enchanted!
He whose cups have ne'er been scanted
    Dreads no danger that may be.
Blest the belly where thou bidest!
Blest the tongue where thou residest!
Blest the mouth through which thou glidest,
    And the lips thrice blest by thee!

Therefore let wine's praise be sounded,
Healths to topers all propounded;
We shall never be confounded,
    Toping for eternity!
Pray we: here be thou still flowing,
Plenty on our board bestowing,
While with jocund voice we're showing
    How we serve thee—Jubilee!

There are many versions of the Latin. Here is one (perhaps the one used by Symonds, who omitted the fourth stanza), as printed in Gaudeamus! Carmina Vagorum Selecta in Usum Laetitiae, ed. R. Peiper (Leipzig: B.G. Teubner, 1877), pp. 17-19 (I've added a comma after the second line):

1. Vinum bonum et suaue,
bonis bonum, prauis praue,
cunctis dulcis sapor, aue
    mundana laetitia!
Aue color uini clari!
aue sapor sine pari;
tua nos inebriari
    digneris potentia!

2. O quam felix creatura,
quam produxit uitis pura!
omnis mensa fit secura
    in tua praesentia.
O quam placens in colore,
o quam fragrans in odore,
o quam sapidum in ore,
    dulcis linguae cingula.

3. Felix homo te plantauit,
qui te uinum nuncupauit;
contra talem qui potauit
    nulla sunt pericula.
Felix uenter quem intrabis,
felix lingua quam rigabis,
felix os quod tu lauabis
    et beata labia!

4. [Aue sospes in modestis,
in gulosis mala pestis,
post amissionem uestis
    sequitur patibulum.
Monachorum grex deuotus,
omnis ordo, mundus totus
bibunt ad aequales potus
    et nunc et in saeculum.]

5. Ergo uinum collaudemus,
potatores exaltemus!
non potantes confundemus
    in aeterna saecula.
Supplicamus: hic abunda!
per te mensa fit fecunda,
et nos cum uoce iucunda
    deducamus gaudia!

As is well known, this is a parody of a sequence to the Blessed Virgin Mary, in Analecta Hymnica Medii Aevi, Vol. LIV (Leipzig: G.R. Reisland, 1915), p. 343 (no. 218):

Verbum bonum et suave
Personemus, illud Ave,
Per quod Christi fit conclave
    Virgo, mater, filia;

Per quod Ave salutata,
Mox concepit fecundata
Virgo, David stirpe nata,
    Inter spinas lilia.

Ave, veri Salomonis
Mater, vellus Gedeonis,
Cuius magi tribus donis
    Laudant puerperium;

Ave, solem genuisti,
Ave, prolem protulisti;
Mundo lapso contulisti
    Vitam et imperium.

Ave, mater verbi summi,
Maris portus, signum dumi,
Aromatum virga fumi,
    Angelorum domina;

Supplicamus, nos emenda,
Emendatos nos commenda
Tuo nato ad habenda
    Sempiterna gaudia.

Here is a translation of the Marian sequence by G[eorge] H[erbert] P[almer] in The Hymner: Containing Translations of the Hymns from the Sarum Breviary together with Sundry Sequences & Processions, 2nd ed. (London: Plainsong & Medieval Music Society, 1905), p. 140:

Sing we 'Ave,' word endearing,
O Mary's welcome, sweet and cheering,
When th' expected hour was nearing
    To the Daughter, Mother, Maid;

At the quick'ning salutation,
David's seed of royal station
Won the Lord of all creation,
    Lily 'mid the thorns display'd.

Ave! with their trine oblation
Sages gave thee salutation,
Gideon's fleece prefiguration,
    Mother of true Solomon;

Ave! Sun resplendent bearing,
Virgin, joy maternal sharing,
For a fallen world preparing
    Life in glory, and a throne.

Ave! Branch of perfume rarest,
Burning Bush, the Word who barest,
Queen of Angels, best and fairest,
    Port for wanderers o'er the sea;

From thy Son, by intercession,
Mercy win for our transgression,
And a title to possession
    Of eternal bliss with thee.

The parody is most noticeable in the first and last stanzas.

Labels: nunc est bibendum

W. Greenwell, ed., The Pontifical of Egbert, Archbishop of York, A.D. 732-766. Now First Printed from a Manuscript of the Tenth Century, in the Imperial Library, Paris = Publications of the Surtees Society, XXVII (Durham: George Andrews, 1853), p. 133:

ORATIONES AD LIBROS BENEDICENDOS.

Oremus.
Descendat, quaesumus Domine, virtus Spiritus Sancti tui super hos libros, qui eos mundando purificet, et bene✠dicat, atque sancti✠ficet, et omnium clementer corda illuminet, et verum intellectum tribuat, sed et illuminata precepta conservare, et implere, secundum tuam voluntatem bonis operibus implendo concedat: qui vivit.

Alia oratio.

Accende et inflamma, suppliciter flagitamus, Domine Deus noster, virtute Spiritus Sancti corda nostra et sensus nostros atque intelligentias nostras ad scrutandos sive intelligendos hos libros, nec non et alios tuae inspirationis gratia conscriptos, ut ea, quae in eis repperrimus, et intelligere veraciter, aliosque docere valeamus. Sed et in omnibus tua sequi, te donante, mandata studeamus: et nos omnesque hos libros dextera potentiae tuae bene✠dicere, magni✠ficare, consecrare, exal✠tare, puri✠ficare, ac conservare, atque omni tempore sanctificare digneris. Quatenus studiose ac devote hos et alios plurimos libros tuae voluntatis jure conscriptos, legendo et intelligendo docendoque multos tibi lucrare, omnesque nobis commissos inmaculatos tuae majestati representare valeamus, ipso auxiliante, cui est honor.

Georges Croegaert (1848-1923), Le Bibliophile

Dear Mike,

Gilbert Bagnani (b. Rome, 1900) was evidently no Rhoman. His native city had been founded by Lomulus and Lemus.

I can imagine Palladas revelling in any levelling of words for 'lust' and 'rust'. In fact, his unchivalrous summing-up of a woman's two excellent seasons, ἐν θαλάμῳ / ἐν θανάτῳ ('in bed and dead') in PA XI, 381, does something similar. He also addressed the thin r/l divide in PA ΧΙ, 323:

Ῥῷ καὶ λάμβδα μόνον κόρακας κολάκων διορίζει·
    λοιπὸν ταὐτὸ κόραξ βωμολόχος τε κόλαξ.
τοὔνεκά μοι, βέλτιστε, τόδε ζῷον πεφύλαξο,
    εἰδὼς καὶ ζώντων τοὺς κόλακας κόρακας.

Alcibiades' lambdacism (Aristophanes' Wasps 44 ff.) must be in the background here, repeated in Plutarch's Life (1,4):

τῇ δὲ φωνῇ καὶ τὴν τραυλότητα συμπρέψαι λέγουσι καὶ τῷ λάλῳ πιθανότητα παρασχεῖν χάριν ἐπιτρέχουσαν. μέμνηται δὲ καὶ Ἀριστοφάνης αὐτοῦ τῆς τραυλότητος ἐν οἷς ἐπισκώπτει Θέωρον·

εἶτ᾽ Ἀλκιβιάδης εἶπε πρός με τραυλίσας·
"ὁλᾷς Θέωλον; τὴν κεφαλὴν κόλακος ἔχει."
ὀρθῶς γε τοῦτ᾽ Ἀλκιβιάδης ἐτραύλισεν.

Best wishes,
Eric Thomson

---

Translation of Palladas by W.R. Paton:

Corakes (crows) and colakes (flatterers) are only distinguished by Rho and Lambda. Therefore a crow and a lick-spittle flatterer are the same thing. So, my good sir, beware of this beast, knowing that flatterers are crows that pick the living too.

Translation of the excerpt from Plutarch's life of Alcibiades by Robin Waterfield:

Aristophanes also mentions this lisp of his, in the passage where he makes fun of Theorus by saying:

A. Then Alcibiades said to me in his lisping voice:
'Look at Theolus in a laven's head! What a thing to blandish!'
B. Yes, Theorus certainly blandishes! Alcibiades and his lisp have got that right!

John Johnstone (1768-1836), "Memoirs," in The Works of Samuel Parr, LL.D. Prebendary of St. Paul's, Curate of Hatton, &c. with Memoirs of his Life and Writings and a Selection from his Correspondence, Vol. I (London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1828), pp. 379-380:

Mr. Richard Porson remained at Hatton in the winter, 1790-1, collecting materials for future works, and enriching his mind with the stores of Parr's library, and of his conversation. He rose late, seldom walked out, and was employed in the library till dinner, reading and taking notes from books, but chiefly the latter. His notes were made in a small distinct text, of the most exquisitely neat writing I have ever beheld. He was very silent, and, except to Parr, whom he often consulted, and to whose opinions he seemed to defer, he seldom spoke a word. His manners in a morning, indeed, were rather sullen, and his countenance gloomy. After dinner he began to relax, but was always under restraint with Parr and the ladies.

At night, when he could collect the young men of the family together, and especially if Parr was absent from home, he was in his glory. The charms of his society were then irresistible. Many a midnight hour did I spend with him, listening with delight, while he poured out torrents of various literature—the best sentences of the best writers, and sometimes the ludicrous beyond the gay—pages of Barrow, whole letters of Richardson, whole scenes of Foote, favourite pieces from the periodical press, and, among them, I have heard recited "The Orgies of Bacchus."

His abode in the house became at last so tiresome to Mrs. Parr, that she insulted him in a manner which I shall not record. From this time the visits of Porson were not repeated at Hatton; and though there was no open breach of friendship on his part, there was no continuance of kindness, notwithstanding Dr. Parr's strenuous endeavours to secure his comforts and independence.

John Selby Watson (1804-1884), The Life of Richard Porson, M.A. Professor of Greek in the University of Cambridge from 1792 to 1808 (London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1861), pp. 92-93 (after quoting the above passage from Johnstone's memoirs of Parr):

As Dr. Johnstone does not choose to describe Mrs. Parr's insult, we may suppose that it was of a very gross character. She may indeed have fancied that she had reason for offering such an insult. But there are women who imagine that they may say, without censure, the most disagreeable things to any man, however great or good, of whom they conceive a dislike, or wish to be rid. As they are safe from personal chastisement, they venture to utter all the bitterness that may arise in their minds. Nothing is more disgraceful to the female sex than these cowardly attacks on men, often of great ability and merit, whom they know to be restrained by good sense, and gentlemanly forbearance towards the sex, from retaliation. No man can know, who has not experienced, how much mischief may be produced by the impertinent intrusions of a wife between her husband and his friends. Mrs. Parr was a woman of violent and overbearing temper, presumptuous and inconsiderate, and having little respect or kindness for any human being.

Mr. Maltby believed that Porson's offence was, in the words of Horace, Comminxit lectum potus, and that Mrs. Parr, in consequence, made some allusion in his hearing to the duties of college scouts.*

* Barker's Lit. Anecdotes, vol. ii. p. 14.

E.H. Barker (1788-1839), Literary Anecdotes and Contemporary Reminiscences of Professor Porson and Others, Vol. II (London: J.R. Smith, 1852), p. 14:

Mr. M. thinks that he occasionally used his bed for more than one purpose, and that Mrs. Parr probably intended by her device about the c.e s...s to mark her sense of this awkward occurrence.

Samuel Butler (1835-1902), The Life and Letters of Dr. Samuel Butler, Head-Master of Shrewsbury School 1798-1836, and Afterwards Bishop of Lichfield, Vol. I: Jan. 30, 1774-March 1, 1831 (London: John Murray, 1896), p. 57:

Through the kindness of Professor J.E.B. Mayor, who had the story from the late Rev. W.H. Luard, who had it from Dyce, who had it from E.H. Barker, I have learned that the insult consisted in Mrs. Parr's setting a close-stool for Porson at the dinner-table instead of a chair.

In short, Porson, during his stay with Parr, wet the bed, perhaps after an evening of heavy drinking. In a not very subtle reminder of his failure to control his bladder, Mrs. Parr seated him on a close-stool at table. Insulted, Porson left Parr's house for good.

Some people, I'm told, don't know what a close-stool is. The Oxford English Dictionary definition is euphemistic: "A chamber utensil enclosed in a stool or box." Julie L. Horan, The Porcelain God: A Social History of the Toilet (Secaucus: Carol Pub. Group, 1996), p. 202, is a little more explicit: "Dating from the Renaissance, the close-stool resembled a box with a lid opening to reveal a circular seat. Under the seat, a chamber pot was housed to collect the waste."

John Selby Watson's criticisms of "the female sex" in general and Mrs. Parr in particular are harsh, and we should remember that he later murdered his own wife.

I owe the title of this blog post to Solomon Katz, "Even Classicists Are Odd: Part II," Classical Journal 43.7 (April 1948) 411-415 (at 414):

His appearance made him, as one wit said, "Porsona non grata."

Here is Thomas Kirkby's portrait of Richard Porson, seated, but not in the chair provided by Mrs. Parr:

Tales of the Elders of Ireland. A New Translation of Acallam na Senórach by Ann Dooley and Harry Roe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 107:

Cold winter, a sharp wind, a fierce red stag rises.
No warmth this night on the mountain. The stag is swift to bell.

The stag of Slieve Aughty takes no rest,
Listening to the music of wolves.

Dark Díarmait and I, and Oscar, keen and light,
Heard their music on a freezing night.

Well sleeps the stag in his lair,
Shielded against the very cold night.

Today I am old, I know but few.
On icy mornings I shook my spear.

I thank the King of Heaven above,
That I held a host, though tonight I'm cold.

In line 2, "bell" is "bellow, roar, make a loud noise...spec. of the voice of deer in rutting time" (Oxford English Dictionary).

The same, tr. Gerald Murphy in Early Irish Lyrics: Eighth to Twelfth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956), p. 155 (I can't guarantee the accuracy of all of this, as I can only see bits of it in Google Books' snippet view):

Winter is cold; the wind has risen; the fierce stark-wild stag arises; not warm tonight is the unbroken mountain, even though the swift stag be belling.

The stag of Slievecarran of the assemblies does not lay his side to the ground; the stag of the head of cold Aughty listens likewise to wolf-music.

I Caoílte, and brown-haired Díarmait, and keen light Oscar, used to listen to wolf-music at the end of a very cold night.

Well, forsooth, sleeps the brown stag pressing his hide to Corran¹s earth as though he were beneath the water of the Tuns at the end of a truly cold night!

Today I am old and aged; few men do I recognize; I used to brandish a pointed spear hardily on a morning of truly cold ice.

I thank the King of Heaven, Son of the Virgin Mary: often used I to still armies, though I be tonight very cold.

The same, tr. Kenneth Jackson in Studies in Early Celtic Nature Poetry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1935; rpt. 2011), pp. 17-18:

Cold is the winter, wind has risen,
the vehement wanton stag arises;
not warm to-night is the whole mountain
though the ardent stag is belling.

The stag of Sliabh Cairn of the assemblies
does not lay his side to the ground,
the stag of the crest of cold Echtge
listens not less to the music of the wolf pack.

I, Caoilte, and brown Diarmaid,
and nimble Oscar,
used to hear the music of the wolf pack
at the end of the very cold night.

It is well sleeps the brown stag
with his body close to the sharp rock,
as if he were under Tonn Tuaighe
at the end of the very cold night.

To-day I am an aged old man,
I know but a few folk,
yet I used to brandish a pointed spear fiercely
on a cold icy morning.

I give thanks to the King of Heaven,
to the Son of Mary the Virgin,
I used to bring great silence on a host
though to-night I fare very coldly.

The same, tr. George Sigerson in Bards of the Gael and Gall: Examples of the Poetic Literature of Erinn, Done into English after the Metres and Modes of the Gael (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907), p. 146:

Chill the winter, cold the wind,
Up the stag springs, stark of mind:
Fierce and bare the mountain fells—
But the brave stag boldly bells.

He will not set side to rest
On Sliav Carna's snowy breast;
Echta's stag, also rousing,
Hears wail of wolves carousing.

Cailté I, and Diarmid Donn,
Oft, with Oscar apt to run,
When piercing night was paling,
Heard rousing wolves a-wailing.

Sound may sleep the russet stag,
With his hide hid in the crag;
Him, hidden, nothing aileth
When piercing night prevaileth.

I am aged now and gray,
Few of men I meet this day;
But I hurled the javelin bold
Of a morning, icy cold.

Thanks unto the King of Heaven,
And the Virgin's son be given:
Many men have I made still,
Who this night are very chill.

The same, tr. Standish H. O'Grady in Silva Gadelica (I.-XXXI.) A Collection of Tales in Irish, with Extracts Illustrating Persons and Places (London: Williams and Norgate, 1892), p. 192 (square brackets in original):

Cold the winter is, the wind is risen, the high-couraged unquelled stag is on foot: bitter cold to-night the whole mountain is, yet for all that the ungovernable stag is belling. The deer of Slievecarn of the gatherings commits not his side to the ground; no less than he the stag of frigid Echtge's summit catches the chorus of the wolves. I, Caeilte, with brown Dermot and with keen light-footed Oscar: we too in the nipping night's waning end would listen to the music of the pack. But well the red deer sleeps that with his hide to the bulging rock lies stretched—hidden as though beneath the country's surface—all in the latter end of chilly night. To-day I am an aged ancient, and but a scant few men I know; once on a time though in the cold and ice-bound morning I used to vibrate a sharp javelin hardily. To Heaven's King I offer thanks, to Mary Virgin's Son as well; often and often I imposed silence on [i.e. daunted] a whole host whose plight to-night is very cold [i.e. they are all dead now].

Original, from Irische Texte, edd. W.H. Stokes and E. Windisch, 4. Ser., 1. Heft (Lepizig: S. Hirzel, 1900), p. 100:

Is fuar geimred, atracht gaeth . eirgid dam discir dergbaeth,
ní te anocht in sliab slan . gé beth dam dian ic dordan.
Ní thabair a tháeb re lár . dam tsleibe cairnn na comdál,
ní lugha atchluin céol cúaine . dam chind Echtgi indfuaire.
Missi, ar Cailte, ar is Diarmaid donn . ocus Oscur aithédrom
ro chloisdis re ceol cuaine . dered áidchi adhuaire.
As maith chodlus in dam donn . fuil is a chnes re coronn,
mar do beth fá thuind tuaidhi . deiredh oidche indfuaire.
Aniu isam senóir sen . ni aithnim acht becán fer,
ro chraithinn corrsleig co cruaidh . a maduin oighridh innfuair.
Atlochar do ríhg nime . do Mac Muire inghine
dobeirinn mór sochd ar sluag . ge ber anocht co hadfuar.

Helmold of Bosau, Chronicle of the Slavs 1.47, tr. Francis Joseph Tschan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1935; rpt. Octagon Books, 1966), p. 149 (priest [later bishop] Vicelin among the Nordalbingians in the year 1127):

When they had come to the place to which he had been appointed, Vicelin observed the appearance of the locality and the fields, frightful as a wasted and unproductive heath. It was also a boorish and uncultivated folk, having nothing of religion saving only the name of Christianity; for there existed among them the manifold error of groves and springs and other superstitions. In beginning, then, to live "in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation” and “in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness” Vicelin commended himself the more entirely to the divine protection, [the more] he was destitute of human solace. The Lord, however, gave him grace and favor in the sight of that folk, for as soon as he began to preach the glory of God and the happiness of the life to come and the resurrection of the body, the boorish people was by a great miracle deeply moved at the novelty of the teaching it had not understood, and the darkness of sin was dispelled by the brightness of the illuminating grace of God. In truth, we would not be believed if we were to say how great a multitude of people had recourse in those days to the cure of penance. And the voice of Vicelin's preaching resounded in all the country of the Nordalbingians. He began with pious solicitude to visit the neighboring churches, proffering the people wholesome admonitions, setting right the erring, reconciling the discordant, rooting up, besides, groves and all sacrilegious rites.

The Latin text of this excerpt is in Helmoldi Presbyteri Bozoviensis Chronica Slavorum, ed. Bernhard Schmeidler, 3rd ed. (Hannover: Hahn, 1937) = Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores Rerum Germanicarum in Usum Scholarum Separatim Editi, T. 32, p. 93.

Id., 1.84, tr. Tschan pp. 218-220 (Helmold accompanies Gerold, Bishop of Lübeck in the year 1156):

After staying that night and the following day and night with the ruler, we crossed into farther Slavia to be the guests of an influential man, Thessemar, who had invited us. It happened that on our journey we came into a forest, which is the only one in that country, for it all stretches out in a plain. Among very old trees we saw there the sacred oaks which had been consecrated to the god of that land, Prove. There was a courtyard about them and a fence very carefully constructed of wood and having two gates. For, besides the household gods and the idols with which each village abounded, that place was the sanctuary of the whole land for which a flamen and feast days and a variety of sacrificial rites had been appointed. On the second week day the people of the land were wont to assemble there for holding court with the ruler and with the flamen. Entrance to this courtyard was forbidden to all, except only to the priest and to those wishing to make sacrifices, or to those in danger of death, because they were never to be denied asylum. For the Slavs show such reverence for their holy things that they do not allow the neighborhood of a fane to be defiled by blood even in time of war. They admit oaths with the greatest reluctance; for among the Slavs to swear is, as it were, to forswear oneself, because of the avenging wrath of the gods. The Slavs have many forms of idol worship, for they are not all agreed upon the same superstitious customs. Some display in the temples fantastically formed images, as, for example, the idol at Plön, the name of which is Pogada; other deities live in the woods and groves, like Prove, the god of Oldenburg; of these no effigies are fashioned. They also carve out many deities with two, three, or more heads. But they do not deny that there is among the multiform godheads to whom they attribute plains and woods, sorrows and joys, one god in the heavens ruling over the others. They hold that he, the all powerful one, looks only after heavenly matters; that the others, discharging the duties assigned to them in obedience to him, proceeded from his blood; and that one excels another in the measure that he is nearer to this god of gods.

When we came to that wood and place of profanation, the bishop exhorted us to proceed energetically to the destruction of the grove. Leaping from his horse, he himself with his staff broke in pieces the decorated fronts of the gates and, entering the courtyard, we heaped up all the hedging of the enclosure about those sacred trees and made a pyre of the heap of wood by setting fire to it, not, however, without fear that perchance we might be overwhelmed in a tumult of the inhabitants. But we were protected by heaven.

The Latin text of this excerpt is in Schmeidler, pp. 159-160.

Id., tr. Tschan p. 223 (priest Bruno in 1156 or 1157):

For as soon as he came to Oldenburg he entered with great zeal upon God's work and called the Slavic people to the grace of regeneration, cutting down groves and doing away with sacrilegious rites.

The Latin text of this excerpt is in Schmeidler, p. 164.

Labels: arboricide

Niall Rudd, It Seems Like Yesterday (Produced in Aid of the Classical Association Centennial Fund, 2003), p. 19 (on Gilbert Bagnani, Professor at the University of Toronto):

His students were fascinated by his style and learning, and they enjoyed mimicking his accent with its fudged r's. On one occasion, after rejecting all the orthodox explantions for the fall of the Roman Empire, he said, 'It was almost entirely due to glain lust.' For a moment they wondered if this was some sexual deviation they'd never heard of, but in the end realised that the factor in question was grain rust.

William M. Calder III, "Bruère, Richard Treat," in Biographical Dictionary of North American Classicists, ed. Ward W. Briggs, Jr. (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1994), pp. 68-70 (at 69):

He belonged to a species today not just endangered but extinct. He was a gentleman and a scholar.

Aristophanes' Acharnians was performed in 425 B.C., in the sixth year of the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta. The play's hero, Dicaeopolis, weary of war, negotiates a private peace treaty with Sparta. The chorus, old men from the deme Acharnae, want to stone Dicaeopolis to death for this treasonous act. In preparation for making his defence, Dicaeopolis asks Euripides (lines 393-479) for various stage props from his tragedy Telephus, performed in 438 B.C. In that tragedy, which survives now only in fragments (numbered 696-727), Telephus may have argued in favor of peace between the Greeks and the Trojans, just as Dicaeopolis argues in favor of peace between Athens and Sparta.

Dicaeopolis uses diminutives to denote most of the stage props he wants Euripides to give him:

• A little rag (ῥάκιον, diminutive of ῥάκος, line 415)
• A little cap made of felt (πιλίδιον, diminutive of πῖλος, line 439)
• A little staff or cane (βακτήριον, diminutive of βακτηρία, line 448)
• A little basket (σπυρίδιον, diminutive of σπυρίς, lines 453 and 469)
• A little cup (κοτυλίσκιον, diminutive of κοτύλη, line 459)
• A little jar (χυτρίδιον, diminutive of χυτρίς, line 463)
• A little sponge (σπογγίον, diminutive of σπόγγος, line 463)

S. Douglas Olson, in his commentary on Aristophanes' Acharnians (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 181-182 (on lines 412-413), notes:

For the use of diminutives throughout the begging scene, Petersen 163; Dover on Nu. 92.

I don't have access to "Dover on Nu. 92," i.e. K.J. Dover's commentary on Aristophanes' Clouds (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968). "Petersen 163" is Walter Petersen, Greek Diminutives in -ION: A Study in Semantics (Weimar: R. Wagner Sohn, 1910), p. 163, § 215, who writes:

Closely related to the use of a diminutive because of modesty is the use of one designating an object of which the speaker asks that it shall be given to him. This is already repeatedly mentioned by the Greek grammarians, e.g. in the scholia to Dionysius Thrax AB. 855, ἱππάριόν μοι χάρισαι· μειῶ γὰρ τὸ ζητούμενον ἵνα ἑτοιμότερον πρὸς τὸ δοῦναι ποιήσω τὸν ἔχοντα. Similarly Michael Syngelus ap. Cram. Anecd. 4.273.9, γίνεται δὲ τὰ ὑποκοριστικὰ ... δι' ἀναγκαιότατα [sic], ὡς ἐὰν ὃ αἰτῇ τις σμικρύνῃ, ἵνα μὴ μεγάλην ποιήσῃ τὴν χάριν· ᾧ κέχρηνται οἱ κωμικοί, ὡς ἔχει τὸ παρὰ Μενάνδρῳ λεβήτιον. The motive, then, as understood by the Greek grammarians, was the desire to appear modest in asking.

Here are my translations from the grammarians quoted by Petersen.

First, the scholia to Dionysius Thrax, in Alfred Hilgard, ed., Scholia in Dionysii Thracis Artem Grammaticam (Lepizig: B.G. Teubner, 1901), p. 226, lines 17-19 (cf. also p. 375, lines 3-5, and p. 539, lines 22-24):

"Kindly give me a little horse." For I disparage the thing asked for, to make the one possessing it more ready to give it.

Next, Michael Syngelus (or Syncellus), from the text in J.A. Cramer, ed., Anecdota Graeca, Vol. IV (Oxford, 1837), p. 273, lines 9-11:

Diminutives occur...by necessity, as if someone belittles what he asks for, to make the favor smaller; the comic writers used this, as the "little kettle" in Menander [Dyscolus 472].

By using diminutives, Dicaeopolis lowers the value of the items asked for, so that it might appear less of a sacrifice for Euripides to give them up.

John Earle (1601?–1665), "A Pretender to Learning," from Micro-cosmographie. Editio princeps, 1628. With Additional Characters from the Fifth Edition of 1629; and the Sixth Edition of 1633, ed. Edward Arber (London: [Murray], 1868), pp. 52-54 (no. 31):

Is one that would make others more fooles than himself; for though he know nothing, he would not haue the world know so much. He conceits nothing in Learning but the opinion, which he seekes to purchase without it, though hee might with lesse labour cure his ignorance, then hide it. He is indeed a kind of Scholler-Mountebank, and his Art, our delusion. He is trickt out in all the accoutrements of Learning, and at the first encounter none passes better. Hee is oftner in his study, then at his Booke, and you cannot pleasure him better, then to deprehend him. Yet he heares you not till the third knock, and then comes out very angry, as interrupted. You find him in his Slippers, and a Pen in his eare, in which formality he was asleep. His Table is spred wide with some Classicke Folio, which is as constant to it as the carpet, and hath laid open in the same Page this half yeere. His Candle is alwayes a longer sitter vp then himselfe, and the boast of his Window at Midnight. He walks much alone in the Posture of Meditation, and ha's a Booke still before his face in the fields. His pocket is seldome without a Greeke Testament, or Hebrew Bible, which he opens only in the Church, and that when some stander by lookes ouer. He has his sentences for Company, some scatterings of Seneca and Tacitus, which are good vpon all occasions. If he read any thing in the morning, it comes vp all at dinner: and as long as that lasts, the discourse is his. Hee is a great Plagiarie of Tauerne-wit: and comes to Sermons onely that he may talke of Austin. His Parcels are the meere scrapings from Company, yet he complains at parting what time he has lost. He is wondrously capricious to seeme a iudgement, and listens with a sowre attention to what hee vnderstands not. Hee talkes much of Scaliger and Causabone, and the Iesuites, and prefers some vnheard-of Dutch name before them all. He has verses to bring in vpon these and these hints, and it shall goe hard but he will wind in his opportunity. Hee is criticall in a language hee cannot conster, and speaks seldome vnder Arminius in Diuinity. His businesse and retirement and caller away is his Study, and he protests no delight to it comparable. Hee is a great Nomen-clator of Authors, which hee has read in generall in the Catalogue, and in particular in the Title, and goes seldome so farre as the Dedication. Hee neuer talkes of any thing but learning, and learnes all from talking. Three incounters with the same men pumpe him, and then hee onely puts in, or grauely sayes nothing. He ha's taken paines to be an Asse, though not to be a Scholler, and is at length discouered and laught at.

J.-J. Grandville, (1803-1847), Les savants
envoyèrent un académicien armé de ses ouvrages

Theognis 351-354 (tr. M.L. West):

O wretched Poverty, why won't you up and seek
    another man? Don't cling, I love you not,
so go away, call at another house. Don't stay
    to share this miserable life with me.

Ἆ δειλὴ πενίη, τί μένεις προλιποῦσα παρ' ἄλλον
    ἄνδρ' ἰέναι; μὴ ὦν δὴν οὐκ ἐθέλοντα φίλει·
ἀλλ' ἴθι καὶ δόμον ἄλλον ἐποίχεο, μηδὲ μεθ' ἡμέων
    αἰεὶ δυστήνου τοῦδε βίου μέτεχε.

Adriaen van de Venne (1580-1662),
't zijn ellendige benen die Armoede moeten dragen
(It is miserable legs that must bear poverty)

Solon, fragment 26 (my translation):

But now dear to me are the works of the Cyprus-born goddess and Dionysus
    and the Muses, which bring gladness to men.

ἔργα δὲ Κυπρογενοῦς νῦν μοι φίλα καὶ Διονύσου
    καὶ Μουσέων, ἃ τίθησ' ἀνδράσιν εὐφροσύνας.

Thanks to Ian Jackson for another example of hearth-side dining, this one rather different in tone—Xenophanes, fragment 22, tr. Kathleen Freeman in Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983), p. 25:

One should hold such converse by the fire-side in the winter season, lying on a soft couch, well-fed, drinking sweet wine, nibbling peas: 'Who are you among men, and where from? How old are you, my good friend? What age were you when the Mede came?'

πὰρ πυρὶ χρὴ τοιαῦτα λέγειν χειμῶνος ἐν ὥρῃ
ἐν κλίνῃ μαλακῇ κατακείμενον, ἔμπλεον ὄντα,
πίνοντα γλυκὺν οἶνον, ἐπιτρώγοντ᾽ ἐρεβίνθους·
'τίς πόθεν εἶς ἀνδρῶν, πόσα τοι ἔτἐ ἐστί, φέριστε;
πηλίκος ἦσθ᾽ ὅθ᾽ ὁ Μῆδος ἀφίκετο;'

J.H. Lesher, Xenophanes of Colophon, Fragments: A Text and Translation with a Commentary (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992; rpt. 2001), p. 72 (on line 4):

πόθεν (pothen): D-K: 'von wem bist du,' Heitsch: 'von wem stammst du ('from whom...'); as Heitsch explains 'pothen is not the place, but parents and family' (143); cf. Odyssey 17.373 and 19.162: εἰπὲ τεὸν γένος ὁππόθεν ἐσσί.

Related posts:

• Cold Outside, Cozy Inside
• Winter Pursuits
• Invitation
• The Science of Happiness