Laudator Temporis Acti

Multatuli, i.e. Eduard Douwes Dekker (1820-1887), The Oyster & the Eagle: Selected Aphorisms and Parables of Multatuli. Translated, edited, annotated, with an Introductory Essay by E.M. Beekman (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1974), p. 43 (from Over specialiteiten):

He who does not bother with the correct usage of a word shows unconcern for the purity of his thoughts and consequently doesn't care very much about distinguishing between good and evil.

Id., pp. 19-20 (from the editor's introduction):

The third collection of Ideeën appeared in 1870-71, Millioenen-studiën in 1873, and Duizend-en-eenige-hoofdstukken over specialiteiten (Thousand and One Chapters about Specialties) in 1871. The latter book is an elegant defense of diversity and rages against the curse of specialization. This concern—still relevant today—can be found throughout his work, even as early as 1851, when he wrote in a letter:

Imagine Christ saying: "The Kingdom of Heaven is like unto a mustard seed." And the answer: "No—that—is—incorrect.—Mustard seed—is—etc." With a botanical and culinary lecture on mustard. Can't stand it any more.

Hat tip: Ian Jackson.

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman, chapter XXXII:

'I don't quite feel easy,' she said to herself. 'All this good fortune may be scourged out of me afterwards by a lot of ill. That's how Heaven mostly does.'

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman, chapter XIX:

[H]e reflected that what are called advanced ideas are really in great part but the latest fashion in definition—a more accurate expression, by words in logy and ism, of sensations which men and women have vaguely grasped for centuries.

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman, chapter XLV (Tess to Alec d'Urberville):

'You, and those like you, take your fill of pleasure on earth by making the life of such as me bitter and black with sorrow; and then it is a fine thing, when you have had enough of that, to think of securing your pleasure in heaven by becoming converted!'

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman, chapter XXV:

Once upon a time Angel had been so unlucky as to say to his father, in a moment of irritation, that it might have resulted far better for mankind if Greece had been the source of the religion of modern civilization, and not Palestine; and his father's grief was of that blank description which could not realize that there might lurk a thousandth part of a truth, much less a half truth or a whole truth, in such a proposition.

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman, chapter XIV:

The past was past; whatever it had been it was no more at hand. Whatever its consequences, time would close over them; they would all in a few years be as if they had never been, and she herself grassed down and forgotten. Meanwhile the trees were just as green as before; the birds sang and the sun shone as clearly now as ever. The familiar surroundings had not darkened because of her grief, nor sickened because of her pain.

She might have seen that what had bowed her head so profoundly—the thought of the world's concern at her situation—was founded on an illusion. She was not an existence, an experience, a passion, a structure of sensations, to anybody but herself. To all humankind besides Tess was only a passing thought. Even to friends she was no more than a frequently passing thought. If she made herself miserable the livelong night and day it was only this much to them—'Ah, she makes herself unhappy.' If she tried to be cheerful, to dismiss all care, to take pleasure in the daylight, the flowers, the baby, she could only be this idea to them—'Ah, she bears it very well.' Moreover, alone in a desert island would she have been wretched at what had happened to her? Not greatly. If she could have been but just created, to discover herself as a spouseless mother, with no experience of life except as the parent of a nameless child, would the position have caused her to despair? No, she would have taken it calmly, and found pleasure therein. Most of the misery had been generated by her conventional aspect, and not by her innate sensations.

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman, chapter XIV:

The sun, on account of the mist, had a curious sentient, personal look, demanding the masculine pronoun for its adequate expression. His present aspect, coupled with the lack of all human forms in the scene, explained the old-time heliolatries in a moment. One could feel that a saner religion had never prevailed under the sky. The luminary was a golden-haired, beaming, mild-eyed, God-like creature, gazing down in the vigour and intentness of youth upon an earth that was brimming with interest for him.

Henry James (1843-1916), "Gustave Flaubert," in Essays in London and Elsewhere (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1893), pp. 121-150 (at 146):

The horror, in particular, that haunted all his years was the horror of the cliché, the stereotyped, the thing usually said and the way it was usually said, the current phrase that passed muster. Nothing, in his view, passed muster but freshness, that which came into the world, with all the honors, for the occasion. To use the ready-made was as disgraceful as for a self-respecting cook to buy a tinned soup or a sauce in a bottle.

Paul Elmer More (1864-1937), A Century of Indian Epigrams, Chiefly from the Sanskrit of Bhartrihari (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1899), p. 112 (no. LXXXIX):

Are there no caverns in the mountains left?
Are all the forest boughs of leaves bereft
And mellowing fruit? are the wild cataracts still
    On every lonely hill?

Why haunt the servile press? or cringe and bow
To win the nod of some majestic brow
That wears for honor the low insolence
    Of wealth—how got and whence?

Paul Elmer More (1864-1937), A Century of Indian Epigrams, Chiefly from the Sanskrit of Bhartrihari (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1899), p. 96 (no. LXXIV):

    When like an arrow in the dark
    Sorrow hath made our breast her mark,
    Piercing the mail 'twixt link and link,
One balm there is, one salve: just not to think.

Paul Elmer More (1864-1937), A Century of Indian Epigrams, Chiefly from the Sanskrit of Bhartrihari (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1899), p. 92 (no. LXX):

    A while the helpless wailing child,
    A while the youth by lusts defiled,
    A while for gold to cringe and swink,
A while to hear the yellow counters clink:

    A while of lonely eld's disgrace,
    The palsied limb and wizened face,—
    Then like the player he too creeps
Behind the heavy curtain—he too sleeps.

Paul Elmer More (1864-1937), A Century of Indian Epigrams, Chiefly from the Sanskrit of Bhartrihari (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1899), p. 56 (no. XXXIV):

    I saw an ass who bore a load
    Of sandal wood along the road,
    And almost with the burden bent,
    Yet never guessed the sandal scent;
    So pedants bear a ponderous mass
Of books they comprehend not,—like the ass.

Paul Elmer More (1864-1937), A Century of Indian Epigrams, Chiefly from the Sanskrit of Bhartrihari (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1899), p. 54 (no. XXXII):

Better, I said, in trackless woods to roam
  With chattering apes or the dumb grazing herds,
Than dwell with fools, though in a prince's home,
  And bear the dropping of their ceaseless words.

William Ellery Leonard (1876-1944), "Choice," in The Vaunt of Man and Other Poems (New York: B.W. Huebsch, 1912), p. 185:

(From the Norwegian of Björnson.)

My choice be April, then,
In which departs the old,
In which the new takes hold,
With hubbub round again —
For peace is not the best,
But doing things with zest.

My choice be April, then,
Because it storms and sweeps,
Because it smiles and weeps,
And owns the strength of ten —
Because it stirs the powers
Whence summer and its flowers.

The original:

Jeg vælger mig april!
i den det gamle falder,
i den det ny får fæste;
det volder lidt rabalder, —
dog fred er ej det bedste,
men at man noget vil.

Jeg vælger mig april,
fordi den stormer, fejer,
fordi den smiler, smelter,
fordi den ævner ejer,
fordi den kræfter vælter, —
i den blir somren til!

William Ellery Leonard (1876-1944), Socrates: Master of Life (Chicago: The Open Court Publishing Co., 1915), p. 114:

The other philosophic movements, as is well known, derive also from Socrates. Aristippus, stressing and revising the utilitarian criterion, develops a hedonism, which, combined with the atomism of Democritus, gives birth to Saint Epicurus, the long misjudged.

William Ellery Leonard (1876-1944), "The Wildman," in The Vaunt of Man and Other Poems (New York: B.W. Huebsch, 1912), p. 41:

But still the wildman calls the tameless boy;
Primeval instincts of the cave and tree,
The summons of the years that used to be,
Ages before Achilles fought at Troy,
Calls him abroad to his ancestral joy
With spear and belt and arrow; and he stands
Out on the rocks, and peers with lifted hands
For wolf to flee or wigwam to destroy.

Thus, when I mark in our museums a lance,
A feathered stick, a twisted curio,
I think with pride in my omnipotence:
"I made these things ten thousand years ago,
Where the sun set on plains that now are France,
Upon my ways from Pyrenees to Po."

Claire Tomalin, Thomas Hardy (New York: The Penguin Press, 2007), p. 40, with note on p. 395:

He was a haunter of bookshops, and was remembered for it by the son of a Dorchester bookseller, who used to watch Tom at the shop's counter, reading his way through one volume after another. The boy welcomed Hardy, because he brought him some particularly good eating apples, the Bockhampton Sweets from his parents' garden, and the bookseller was too good-natured to complain, knowing that a reader will one day turn into a buyer.³⁴

34. This is from Florence Hardy's letter of 3 Apr. 1937 to Morris Parish about Joshua J. Foster, a few years younger than Hardy, son of the Dorchester bookseller James Foster, listed in the 1861 Census as bookseller and printer. Florence reported that 'JJF told me this himself, and he was the only person I ever spoke to who remembered T.H. at that early age.' Letters of E & F Hardy, 346.

Craig Crosby, "After 27 years of burglaries, 'North Pond Hermit' is arrested," Kennebec Journal (April 10, 2013; on Christopher Knight):

"He said he just came into the woods one day in 1986," [Maine State Police Trooper Diane] Perkins-Vance said. "He claims he hadn't had a conversation with another human being since the mid-1990s, when he encountered someone on a trail. I was the first person he talked to since the 1990s."

....

Knight went to great lengths to make the camp invisible from the ground and the air, even covering a yellow shovel with a black bag. Knight never had a fire, even on the coldest days, for fear of being detected. He covered shiny surfaces, like his metal trash cans, with moss and dirt and painted green a clear plastic sheet over his tent.

....

The campsite is neat and orderly — remarkably civilized for someone who tried so desperately to avoid civilization. Knight even set up mouse traps inside his tents to keep the critters from eating his food.

....

Clothes hung for drying on rope stretched between trees immediately outside the tent. Nearby, Knight had erected a makeshift shower well hidden behind a small growth of fir trees.

There were no permanent structures — nothing was nailed down. The dirt was worn in the area, but otherwise there were no permanent reminders of a life lived in the space.

Knight said he spent his days at camp reading and meditating.

"I asked him, 'What kind of books do you read?'" [Sgt. Terry] Hughes [of the Maine Warden Service] said. "He said, 'Whatever I can steal.'"

....

Knight, who shaves without a mirror, said he has caught only glimpses of his reflection in pools of water.

"He hasn't seen himself in the mirror for well over 20 years," Hughes said. "It's a very unusual situation."

....

Knight said he never got sick in those 27 years because he never had contact with any people, Hughes said. Knight managed to avoid significant injuries, such as broken bones, despite traipsing through the woods at night.

Apart from the thefts, I find much to admire in Knight's story. Ever since I was a small boy, I have dreamed of doing something similar.

Hat tip: Jim K.

Valerius Maximus 3.3 ext 1 (tr. D.R. Shackleton Bailey):

There is another strong and resolute soldiering of the spirit, powerful through letters, priestess of the venerable rites of learning, Philosophy. Once received in the heart, she drives away every unseemly and useless emotion, confirms its entirety with the bulwark of solid virtue, makes it more powerful than fear of pain.

Est et illa vehemens et constans animi militia, litteris pollens, venerabilium doctrinae sacrorum antistes, Philosophia. quae ubi pectore recepta est, omni inhonesto atque inutili adfectu dispulso, totum [in] solidae virtutis munimento confirmat, potentiusque metu facit ac dolore.

in del. Gertz

Related post: Hymn to Philosophy.

John Skinner (1721-1807), Tullochgorum:

Come, gie's a sang, Montgomery cried,
And lay your disputes a' aside,
What signifies't for folks to chide
  For what's been done before 'em?
Let Whig and Tory a' agree,        5
Whig and Tory, Whig and Tory,
Let Whig and Tory a' agree,
  To drop their Whig-mig-morum;
Let Whig and Tory a' agree,
To spend this night in mirth and glee,        10
And cheerfu' sing alang wi' me
  The reel o' Tullochgorum.

O, Tullochgorum's my delight,
It gars us a' in ane unite,
And ony sumph that keeps up spite,        15
  In conscience I abhor him.
For blythe and cheerie we's be a',
Blythe and cheerie, blythe and cheerie,
Blythe and cheerie we's be a',
  And mak' a happy quorum.        20
For blythe and cheerie we's be a',
As lang as we ha'e breath to draw,
And dance, till we be like to fa',
  The reel o' Tullochgorum.

There needs na' be sae great a phraise,        25
Wi' dringing dull Italian lays,
I wadna gi'e our ain strathspeys,
  For half a hundred score o' 'em.
They're douff and dowie at the best,
Douff and dowie, douff and dowie,        30
They're douff and dowie at the best,
  Wi' a' their variorum:
They're douff and dowie at the best,
Their allegros, and a' the rest,
They canna please a Scottish taste,        35
  Compar'd wi' Tullochgorum.

Let warldly minds themselves oppress
Wi' fears o' want, and double cess,
And sullen sots themselves distress
  Wi' keeping up decorum:        40
Shall we sae sour and sulky sit,
Sour and sulky, sour and sulky,
Shall we sae sour and sulky sit,
  Like auld Philosophorum?
Shall we sae sour and sulky sit,        45
Wi' neither sense, nor mirth, nor wit,
Nor ever rise to shake a fit
  In the reel o' Tullochgorum?

May choicest blessings still attend
Each honest open-hearted friend,        50
And calm and quiet be his end,
  And a' that's good watch o'er him!
May peace and plenty be his lot,
Peace and plenty, peace and plenty,
May peace and plenty be his lot,        55
  And dainties a great store o' 'em:
May peace and plenty be his lot,
Unstain'd by ony vicious spot!
And may he never want a groat
  That's fond o' Tullochgorum.        60

But for the sullen, frampish fool,
That loves to be oppression's tool,
May envy gnaw his rotten soul,
  And discontent devour him!
May dool and sorrow be his chance,        65
Dool and sorrow, dool and sorrow,
May dool and sorrow be his chance,
  And nane say, Wae's me, for 'im!
May dool and sorrow be his chance,
Wi' a' the ills that come frae France,        70
Whae'er he be, that winna dance
  The reel o' Tullochgorum!

14 gars: makes
15 sumph: fool
26 dringing: singing in a melancholy manner
27 strathspeys: Scottish dances
29 douff: dull
29 dowie: sad
38 cess: tax
47 fit: foot
61 frampish: quarrelsome
65 dool: grief

William Godwin (1756-1836), Fleetwood: or, The New Man of Feeling, Vol. II (London: Richard Phillips, 1805), pp. 198-200 (chapter XV; Macneil speaking):

"Fleetwood, you are too much alone. I hear people talk of the raptures of solitude; and with what tenderness of affection they can love a tree, a rivulet, or a mountain. Believe me, they are pretenders; they deceive themselves, or they seek, with their eyes open, to impose upon others. In addition to their trees and their mountains, I will give them the whole brute creation; still it will not do. There is a principle in the heart of man which demands the society of his like. He that has no such society, is in a state but one degree removed from insanity. He pines for an ear into which he might pour the story of his thoughts, for an eye that shall flash upon him with responsive intelligence, for a face the lines of which shall talk to him in dumb but eloquent discourse, for a heart that shall beat in unison with his own. If there is any thing in human form that does not feel these wants, that thing is not to be counted in the file for a man: the form it bears is a deception; and the legend, Man, which you read in its front, is a lie. Talk to me of rivers and mountains! I venerate the grand and beautiful exhibitions and shapes of nature, no man more; I delight in solitude; I could shut myself up in it for successive days. But I know that Christ did not with more alacrity come out of the wilderness after his forty days' sequestration, than every man, at the end of a course of this sort, will seek for the interchange of sentiments and language. The magnificence of nature, after a time, will produce much the same effect upon him, as if I were to set down a hungry man to a sumptuous service of plate, where all that presented itself on every side was massy silver and burnished gold, but there was no food."

Byron, letter to his sister Augusta Leigh (December 14, 1808):

I live here much in my own manner, that is, alone, for I could not bear the company of my best friend, above a month; there is such a sameness in mankind upon the whole, and they grow so much more disgusting every day, that, were it not for a portion of Ambition, and a conviction that in times like the present we ought to perform our respective duties, I should live here all my life, in unvaried Solitude.

Renzo Tosi, Dictionnaire des sentences latines et grecques, tr. Rebecca Lenoir (Grenoble: Jérôme Millon, 2010), #1283, pp. 953-954 (at 953):

Nulla dies sine linea
Pas un jour sans une ligne
Cet adage, célèbre déjà au Moyen Age (cf. De gestis episcoporum Antissiodorensium, PL 138, 835b; cf. aussi Walther 18899)...n'est pas d'origine classique, même si un proverbe similaire existait certainement dans l'Antiquité...

Walther is Hans Walther, Proverbia Sententiaeque Latinitatis Medii Aevi (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1963-1969), unavailable to me (the proverb is in vol. III, I think).

There are two problems with Tosi's citation from De Gestis Episcoporum Antissiodorensium (Concerning the Deeds of the Bishops of Auxerre). First, the column number is incorrect. The correct reference is De Gestis Episcoporum Antissiodorensium, Pars II, Cap. XCIII (De Francisco a Dintavilla secundo), in Patrologia Latina, tome 138, column 385 B, where the following sentence occurs:

Pictoria vero summopere delectabatur, ejus artis peritos domi semper alens; temporis parcissimus, vetus illud Apelleum saepiuscule adducebat, ut nulla dies sine linea abiret.

My translation:

He was certainly very fond of painting, always supporting at his home adepts in that art; most frugal in his use of time, he quite often quoted that old saying of Apelles, that no day should go by without a line.

Secondly, Tosi misleadingly implies that this passage from De Gestis Episcoporum Antissiodorensium comes from the Middle Ages. Although the core of that work does date from the 9th century, the passage in question is no earlier than the late 16th century. Its subject is François de Dinteville II, who lived from 1498 to 1554.

Hubertus Kudla, Lexikon der lateinischen Zitate, 2nd ed. (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2001), #2840, p. 432, cites an earlier example of the proverb, from the Italian humanist Publio Fausto Andrelini (ca. 1460-1518), his Epistolae Proverbiales (1513). The relevant passage occurs in letter VI (Temporis iactura nihil esse, neque pernitiosius, neque detestabilius), at the bottom of this page (click to enlarge):


My transcription, followed by my translation:

Apelles picturae venustate insignis, numquam tam occupatam diem egit, quin artis lineam duceret, quod et in proverbium cessit, nulla dies sine linea.

Apelles, famed for the beauty of his painting, never spent a day so full of business that he didn't draw a line, which also passed into a proverb: no day without a line.

Credit for first tracking the source of the proverb to Andrelini belongs to Oleg Nikitinski, "Zum Ursprung des Spruches Nulla Dies Sine Linea," Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 142 (1999) 430-431, who mentions (note 6) editions of Andrelini's Epistolae Proverbiales (or Epistolae Adagiales) earlier than the 1513 edition cited above.

---

Update from Ian Jackson:

I do have a set of Walther. The line is indeed in vol.3 (page 443). He prints the Latin and simply gives locations where it may be found. Here are his references, which I've expanded, and in two cases, corrected a misprint:

"Flor. Poet 58 (Apelles)" This is the page number in Flores Poetarum hieme et aestate fragrantes, sive sententiosi versus ... Prague, 1684.

"s. Reichert S. 401 ff" This is under a page number in Heinrich G. Reichert: Lateinische Sentenzen: Essays. Wiesbaden, 1948.

"s. Hempel Nr. 3766" This is under an item number in Hermann Hempel: Lateinischer Sentenzen-und Sprichwörterschatz. 2 Ausg. Bremen 1890.

"Dielitz 222" This is a page number in Die Wahl- und Denksprüche, Feldgeschreie, Losungen, Schlacht- und Volksrufe, besonders des Mittelalters und der Neuzeit gesammelt ... v. J. Dielitz. Frankfurt 1884.

"Lipp. 834" This is a page number in Franz, Freiherr von Lipperheide: Spruchwörterbuch. Berlin 1907.

"Wa, s.v. Tag 342" This is K.F.W. Wander: Deutsches Sprichwörter-Lexikon. 5 Bande. Leipzig 1867-80.

Labels: typographical and other errors

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman, chapter II:

The dialect was on her tongue to some extent, despite the village school: the characteristic intonation of that dialect for this district being the voicing approximately rendered by the syllable UR, probably as rich an utterance as any to be found in human speech.

Id., chapter III:

Mrs Durbeyfield habitually spoke the dialect; her daughter, who had passed the Sixth Standard in the National School under a London-trained mistress, spoke two languages: the dialect at home, more or less; ordinary English abroad and to persons of quality.

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman, chapter IV:

"Did you say the stars were worlds, Tess?"

"Yes."

"All like ours?"

"I don't know; but I think so. They sometimes seem to be like the apples on our stubbard-tree. Most of them splendid and sound—a few blighted."

"Which do we live on—a splendid one or a blighted one?"

"A blighted one."

"'Tis very unlucky that we didn't pitch on a sound one, when there were so many more of 'em!"

"Yes."

Henry James (1843-1916), review of A Winter in Russia. From the French of Théophile Gautier. By M.M. Ripley. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1874, in Nation (November 12, 1874), rpt. in Henry James, Literary Criticism: French Writers, Other European Writers, The Prefaces to the New York Edition (New York: The Library of America, 1984) pp. 384-386 (at 384-385):

We have observed for some time past an increasing mania for translations.

It is a very good fashion, but even the best things may be overdone. Of course, dull books should never be translated, but it by no means follows that because a book is clever it should be translated into another tongue. A book may be very clever in French or in German and very dull in English, and translation, intended as a compliment, may become in fact an unpardonable injury. There are certain cases, indeed, in which it seems to us really immoral; when it deliberately encumbers a foreign language, namely, with books of a light and trivial order. Natives have a certain property in their language, and though we may regret their using it for frivolous purposes, one can hardly pretend to legislate against them. As a general thing, a people may be trusted to produce its own padding, and there is no good reason why our groaning English idiom should be weighted with exotic commonplaces. A great many things are said in society which it is very well to hear once, if you happen to be sitting near the speaker; but he would be a very officious master of ceremonies who should insist on repeating and propagating them. In so far as we may lay down a general rule in the case we should say that the books translatable were books of matter, and books untranslatable books of manner. If the substance of a book is light and its chief attraction is in the way things are said, it had certainly better be left in the closely-fitting garment of the original. This, of course, limits very much the translation of merely entertaining and amusing books, but the restriction in such cases is especially wholesome. If a writer has nothing but sweetened froth to offer the public, it is well that he should at least have been at pains to beat his froth into the finest possible consistency; and just so it is well that readers who have an appetite for the compound should be forced, to take such exercise as is involved in a walk to the confectioner's. To read such a writer as Théophile Gautier, for instance, is pure diversion, and a healthy-minded reader ought to pay for his pastime by making the very moderate effort required for reading him in the original. It is true that readers are becoming such abandoned Sybarites, and the aversion of the public at large to anything which compels attention to pause for an instant and touch her feet to the earth is so strikingly on the increase, that the "healthy mind" in question can be but rarely postulated. Gautier is precisely one of the writers who are everything in their own tongue, and nothing, or almost nothing, out of it. He is what the French call a fantaisiste, and his fantasies are four-fifths verbal to one-fifth intellectual. Half the charm of his writing is in the mere curl and flutter of his phrase, as he unreels it in long bright-colored ribands; but in an English version the air of spontaneity soon disappears, and this ceaseless play of style becomes rigid and awkward. Moreover, Gautier chose his words with an extraordinary fineness of instinct, and in his pictures, as they stand, every hair-stroke tells. A translator rarely chooses the foreign equivalent with the care with which such an artist as Gautier selects the original term, so that the phrase must often be at best but a rough approximation to the author's. In each case the deflection is slight, but in the whole is enormous. The house when it is finished is found to stand crooked. The translation before us is executed with commendable skill; its only fault is that it is a translation. It will have rendered a service, however, if it sends a few readers to its untranslated companions.

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), When Dead:

                    To —

        It will be much better when
            I am under the bough;
I shall be more myself, Dear, then,
            Than I am now.

        No sign of querulousness
            To wear you out
Shall I show there: strivings and stress
            Be quite without.

        This fleeting life-brief blight
            Will have gone past
When I resume my old and right
            Place in the Vast.

        And when you come to me
            To show you true,
Doubt not I shall infallibly
            Be waiting you.

Hat tip: Tim Parkin.

[Thomas and] Florence Hardy, The Early Life of Thomas Hardy, 1840-1891 (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1928), pp. 19-20:

Reflecting on his experiences of the world so far as he had got, he came to the conclusion that he did not wish to grow up. Other boys were always talking of when they would be men; he did not want at all to be a man, or to possess things, but to remain as he was, in the same spot, and to know no more people than he already knew (about half a dozen).

Marc-Antoine Girard, sieur de Saint-Amant (1594-1661), wrote a poem on cheese (first line "Assis sur le bord d'un chantier"). While trying, without success, to find an English translation, I came across a version of another one of Saint-Amant's poems, by Walter Besant (1836-1901) in his book The French Humourists, from the Twelfth to the Nineteenth Century (London: Richard Bentley and Sons, 1873), pp. 186-187:

In idle rhymes we waste our days,
With yawning fits for all our praise,
While Bacchus, god of mirth and wine,
Invites us to a life divine.
Apollo, prince of bards and prigs,
May scrape his fiddle to the pigs;
And for the Muses, old maids all,
Why let them twang their lyres, and squall
Their hymns and odes on classic themes,
Neglected by their sacred streams.
As for the true poetic fire,
What is it but a mad desire?
While Pegasus himself, at best,
Only a horse must be confess'd;
And he must be an ass indeed,
Who would bestride the winged steed.

Bacchus, thou who watchest o'er
All feasts of ours, whom I adore
With each new draught of rosy wine
That makes my red face like to thine—
By thy ivied coronet,
By this glass with rubies set,
By thy thyrsus—fear of earth—
By thine everlasting mirth,
By the honor of the feast,
By thy triumphs, greatest, least,
By thy blows, not struck, but drunk,
With king and bishop, priest and monk,
By the jesting, keen and sharp,
By the violin and harp,
By the bells, which are but flasks,
By our sighs which are but masks
Of mirth and sacred mystery,
By thy panthers fierce to see,
By this place so fair and sweet,
By the he-goat at thy feet,
By Ariadne, buxom lass,
By Silenus on his ass,
By this sausage, by this stoup,
By this rich and thirsty soup,
By this pipe from which I wave
All the incense thou dost crave,
By this ham, well spiced, long hung,
By this salt and wood-smoked tongue,
Receive us in the happy band
Of those who worship glass in hand.
And, to prove thyself divine,
Leave us never without wine.

Besant's translation is rather free, and omits several lines (17-34) of the original, which can be found in Oeuvres complètes de Saint-Amant, ed. Ch.-L. Livet, Vol. 1 (Paris: P. Jannet, 1855), pp. 135-138 (footnotes omitted, line numbers added):

Nous perdons le temps à rimer,
Amis, il ne faut plus chommer;
Voicy Bacchus qui nous convie
A mener bien une autre vie;
Laissons là ce fat d'Apollon,        5
Chions dedans son violon;
Nargue du Parnasse et des Muses,
Elles sont vieilles et camuses;
Nargue de leur sacré ruisseau,
De leur archet, de leur pinceau,        10
Et de leur verve poétique,
Qui n'est qu'une ardeur frenetique;
Pegase enfin n'est qu'un cheval,
Et pour moi je croy, cher Laval,
Que qui le suit et luy fait feste,        15
Ne suit et n'est rien qu'une beste.

Morbleu! comme il pleut là-dehors!
Faisons pleuvoir dans nostre corps
Du vin, tu l'entens sans le dire,
Et c'est là le vray mot pour rire;        20
Chantons, rions, menons du bruit,
Buvons icy toute la nuit,
Tant que demain la belle Aurore
Nous trouve tous à table encore.
Loing de nous sommeil et repos;        25
Boissat, lors que nos pauvres os
Seront enfermez dans la tombe
Par la mort, sous qui tout succombe,
Et qui nous poursuit au galop,
Las! nous ne dormirons que trop.        30
Prenons de ce doux jus de vigne;
Je voy Faret qui se rend digne
De porter ce dieu dans son sein,
Et j'approuve fort son dessein.

Bacchus! qui vois notre desbauche,        35
Par ton sainct portrait que j'esbauche
En m'enluminant le museau
De ce trait que je boy sans eau;
Par ta couronne de lierre,
Par la splendeur de ce grand verre,        40
Par ton thirse tant redouté,
Par ton eternelle santé,
Par l'honneur de tes belles festes,
Par tes innombrables conquestes,
Par les coups non donnez, mais bus,        45
Par tes glorieux attribus,
Par les hurlemens des Menades,
Par le haut goust des carbonnades,
Par tes couleurs blanc et clairet,
Par le plus fameux cabaret,        50
Par le doux chant de tes orgyes,
Par l'esclat des trognes rougies,
Par table ouverte à tout venant,
Par le bon caresme prenant,
Par les fins mots de ta cabale,        55
Par le tambour et la cymbale,
Par tes cloches qui sont des pots,
Par tes soupirs qui sont des rots,
Par tes hauts et sacrés mysteres,
Par tes furieuses pantheres,        60
Par ce lieu si frais et si doux,
Par ton boucq paillard comme nous,
Par ta grosse garce Ariane,
Par le vieillard monté sur l'asne,
Par les Satyres tes cousins,        65
Par la fleur des plus beaux raisins,
Par ces bisques si renommées,
Par ces langues de bœuf fumées,
Par ce tabac, ton seul encens,
Par tous les plaisirs innocens,        70
Par ce jambon couvert d'espice,
Par ce long pendant de saucisse,
Par la majesté de ce broc,
Par masse, toppe, cric et croc,
Par cette olive que je mange,        75
Par ce gay passeport d'orange,
Par ce vieux fromage pourry,
Bref, par Gillot, ton favory,
Reçoy-nous dans l'heureuse trouppe
Des francs chevaliers de la couppe,        80
Et, pour te montrer tout divin,
Ne la laisse jamais sans vin.

Labels: nunc est bibendum

John Hill Burton (1809-1881), The Book-Hunter etc. (Edinburgh: William Blackwood & Sons, 1862), p. 97:

In fact, "a course of reading," as it is sometimes called, is a course of regimen for dwarfing the mind, like the drugs which dog-breeders give to King Charles spaniels to keep them small. Within the span of life allotted to man there is but a certain number of books that it is practicable to read through, and it is not possible to make a selection that will not, in a manner, wall in the mind from a free expansion over the republic of letters. The being chained, as it were, to one intellect in the perusal straight on of any large book, is a sort of mental slavery superinducing imbecility. Even Gibbon's Decline and Fall, luminous and comprehensive as its philosophy is, and rapid and brilliant the narrative, will become deleterious mental food if consumed straight through without variety. It will be well to relieve it occasionally with a little Boston's Fourfold State, or Hervey's Meditations, or Sturm's Reflections for Every Day in the Year, or Don Juan, or Ward's History of Stoke-upon-Trent.

Ernest Meissonier (1815-1891), Le Liseur Blanc

Valerius Maximus 2.6.9 (tr. D.R. Shackleton Bailey):

However, to return to the Massilian community from which I strayed into this digression, none may enter their town with a weapon. A person is in attendance to take such for safe keeping and return it to its owner as he leaves. So their hospitality is both kindly to strangers and safe for themselves.

Sed ut ad Massiliensium civitatem, unde in hoc deverticulum excessi, revertar, intrare oppidum eorum nulli cum telo licet, praestoque est qui id custodiae gratia acceptum exituro reddat, ut hospitia sua, quemadmodum advenientibus humana sunt, ita ipsis quoque tuta sint.

Herodotus 1.155.4 (speech of Croesus to Cyrus, tr. Aubrey de Selincourt):

As for the Lydians, forgive them—but all the same, if you want to keep them loyal and to prevent any danger from them in future, I suggest that you put a veto upon their possession of arms. Make them wear tunics under their cloaks, and high boots, and tell them to teach their sons to play the zither and harp, and to start shopkeeping. If you do that, my lord, you will soon see them turn into women instead of men, and there will not be any more danger of them rebelling against you.

Λυδοῖσι δὲ συγγνώμην ἔχων τάδε αὐτοῖσι ἐπίταξον, ὡς μήτε ἀποστέωσι μήτε δεινοί τοι ἔωσι· ἄπειπε μέν σφι πέμψας ὅπλα ἀρήια μὴ ἐκτῆσθαι, κέλευε δὲ σφέας κιθῶνάς τε ὑποδύνειν τοῖσι εἵμασι καὶ κοθόρνους ὑποδέεσθαι, πρόειπε δ᾽ αὐτοῖσι κιθαρίζειν τε καὶ ψάλλειν καὶ καπηλεύειν παιδεύειν τοὺς παῖδας. καὶ ταχέως σφέας ὦ βασιλεῦ γυναῖκας ἀντ᾽ ἀνδρῶν ὄψεαι γεγονότας, ὥστε οὐδὲν δεινοί τοι ἔσονται μὴ ἀποστέωσι.

John Hill Burton (1809-1881), The Book-Hunter etc. (Edinburgh: William Blackwood & Sons, 1862), pp. 14-15:

It is a matter of extreme anxiety to his friends, and, if he have a well-constituted mind, of sad misgiving to himself, when the collector buys his first duplicate. It is like the first secret dram swallowed in the forenoon—the first pawning of the silver spoons—or any other terrible first step downwards you may please to liken it to. There is no hope for the patient after this. It rends at once the veil of decorum spun out of the flimsy sophisms by which he has been deceiving his friends, and partially deceiving himself, into the belief that his previous purchases were necessary, or, at all events, serviceable for professional and literary purposes. He now becomes shameless and hardened; and it is observable in the career of this class of unfortunates, that the first act of duplicity is immediately followed by an access of the disorder, and a reckless abandonment to its propensities.

Id. pp. 86-87 (quoting Richard Heber):

"Why, you see, sir, no man can comfortably do without three copies of a book. One he must have for a show copy, and he will probably keep it at his country-house; another he will require for his own use and reference; and unless he is inclined to part with this, which is very inconvenient, or risk the injury of his best copy, he must needs have a third at the service of his friends."

I am one of these shameless and hardened characters. For example, I have three copies of the "little Liddell," one for the study, one for the bedroom, and one for the living room. I need only one more, for the bathroom. Even if I don't need a duplicate of a favorite book, I sometimes buy one anyway if the price is right. I reckon I can give it a good home, where it will be appreciated and well cared for.

John Hill Burton (1809-1881), The Book-Hunter etc. (Edinburgh: William Blackwood & Sons, 1862), pp. 5-6:

True, there are many of our brethren violently ready to proclaim themselves frail mortals, miserable sinners, and no better, in theological phraseology, than the greatest of criminals. But such has been my own unfortunate experience in life, that whenever I find a man coming forward with these self-denunciations on his lips, I am prepared for an exhibition of intolerance, spiritual pride, and envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness, towards any poor fellow-creature who has floundered a little out of the straight path, and, being all too conscious of his errors, is not prepared to proclaim them in those broad emphatic terms which come so readily to the lips of the censors, who at heart believe themselves spotless,—just as complaints about poverty, and inability to buy this and that, come from the fat lips of the millionaire, when he shows you his gallery of pictures, his stud, and his forcing-frames.

No; it is hard to choose between the two. The man who has no defect or crack in his character—no tinge of even the minor immoralities—no fantastic humour carrying him sometimes off his feet—no preposterous hobby—such a man, walking straight along the surface of this world in the arc of a circle, is a very dangerous character, no doubt; of such all children, dogs, simpletons, and other creatures that have the instinct of the odious in their nature, feel an innate loathing.

James Thomson (1834-1882):

Once in a saintly passion
    I cried with desperate grief,
"O Lord, my heart is black with guile,
    Of sinners I am chief."

Then stooped my guardian angel
    And whispered from behind,
"Vanity, my little man,
    You're nothing of the kind."

John Hill Burton (1809-1881), The Book-Hunter etc. (Edinburgh: William Blackwood & Sons, 1862), pp. 2-4:

No doubt, the ductile inflections and wonderful facilities for decomposition and reconstruction make Greek an excellent vehicle of scientific precision, and the use of a dead language saves your nomenclature from being confounded with your common talk. The use of a Greek derivative gives notice that you are scientific. If you speak of an acanthopterygian, it is plain that you are not discussing perch in reference to its culinary merits; and if you make an allusion to monomyarian malacology, it will not naturally be supposed to have reference to the cooking of oyster-sauce.

Like many other meritorious things, however, Greek nomenclature is much abused. The very reverence it is held in—the strong disinclination on the part of the public to question the accuracy of anything stated under the shadow of a Greek name, or to doubt the infallibility of the man who uses it—makes this kind of nomenclature the frequent protector of fallacies and quackeries. It is an instrument for silencing inquiry and handing over the judgment to implicit belief. Get the passive student once into palaeozoology, and he takes your other hard names—your ichthyodorulite, trogontherium, lepidodendron, and bothrodendron—for granted, contemplating them, indeed, with a kind of religious awe or devotional reverence. If it be a question, whether a term is categorematic, or is of a quite opposite description, and ought to be described as suncategorematic, one may take up a very absolute positive position without finding many people prepared to assail it.

Antiquarianism, which used to be an easy-going slipshod sort of pursuit, has sought this all-powerful protection and called itself Archaeology. An obliterated manuscript written over again is called a palimpsest, and the man who can restore and read it a paleographist. The great erect stone on the moor, which has hitherto defied all learning to find the faintest trace of the age in which it was erected, its purpose, or the people who placed it there, seems as it were to be rescued from the heathen darkness in which it has dwelt, and to be admitted within the community of scientific truth, by being christened a monolith. If there be any remains of sculpture on the stone, it becomes a lythoglyph or a hieroglyph; and if the nature and end of this sculpture be quite incomprehensible to the adepts, they may term it a cryptoglyph, and thus dignify, by a sort of title of honour, the absoluteness of their ignorance. It were a pity if any more ingenious man should afterwards find a key to the mystery, and destroy the significance of the established nomenclature.

The vendors of quack medicines and cosmetics are aware of the power of Greek nomenclature, and apparently subsidise scholars of some kind or other to supply them with the article. A sort of shaving soap used frequently to be advertised under a title which was as complexly adjusted a piece of mosaic work as the geologists or the conchologists ever turned out. But perhaps the confidence in the protective power of Greek designations has just at this moment reached its climax, in an attempt to save thieves from punishment by calling them kleptomaniacs.

Sir Herbert Maxwell (1845-1937), Rainy Days in a Library (London: Elliot Stock, 1896), p. 123 (on Blaeu's Atlas):

To the book-lover it is a delight merely to handle the ample leaves of pure flax paper, with their liberal margins flowing around double columns of beautiful type. How the workmanship and material put to shame the slatternly printing and flimsy pages of so many common modern books!

Sir Herbert Maxwell (1845-1937), Rainy Days in a Library (London: Elliot Stock, 1896), pp. 64-65:

To this day, ninety-nine out of every hundred new books may be set down as containing no original thought or fresh fact; all their matter has been printed over and over again in different forms. But modern readers have a distaste for obvious compilation; writers are expected to throw a semblance of originality over the stale ideas, and give them the guise of independent observation, much as a skilful cook knows how to produce dainty dishes out of yesterday's joints. But until the close of the seventeenth century it was otherwise. The press gave birth to huge folios and quartos, crammed by scholars with information already stored in the folios and quartos of their predecessors. Everyone who has idled his morning away in the library of some old country-house must be familiar with this class of work—must have marvelled at the excruciating assiduity with which such volumes have been compiled, have wondered how in the world our ancestors ever could afford to buy them in days when cash was notoriously scarce, and what satisfaction they could derive from them when bought.

Édouard Manet (1832-1883), The Reader

Thomas Hardy, quoted in Claire Tomalin, Thomas Hardy (New York: The Penguin Press, 2007), p. 358, from Marjorie Lilly, "The Hardy I Knew," Thomas Hardy Society Review 1.4 (1978) 100-103:

I never let a day go without using a pen. Just holding it sets me off; in fact I can't think without it. It's important not to wait for the right mood. If you do it will come less and less.

Adam Petrie, Rules of Good Deportment, or of Good Breeding. For the Use of Youth (1720), rpt. in The Works of Adam Petrie, the Scotish Chesterfield (Edinburgh: Scotish Literary Club, 1877), pp. 6-7:

A Gentleman ought not to run or walk too fast in the Streets, lest he be suspected of going a Message; nor ought his Pace to be too slow; nor must he take large Steps, nor too stiff and stately, nor lift his Legs too high, nor stamp hard on the Ground; neither must he swing his Arms backward and forward, nor must he carry his Knees too close, nor must he go wagging his Breech, nor with his Feet in a straight Line, but with the Inside of his Feet a little out; nor with his Eyes looking down, nor too much elevated, nor looking hither and thither, but with a sedate Countenance.

Id., p. 20:

It is unmannerly to bite your Lip or Nail, pick your Teeth or Nose, to scratch or make Faces, rowl your Tongue in your Mouth, wink with your Eyes, rub your Hands, clack your Fingers, shrug your Shoulders, look morosely, arrogantly or scornfully, to right your Garters or Buckles, or put off your Periwig, or comb your Head, or put off your Shoes or Boots, or appear in your Slippers or Night-gown, Cloak or big Coat, before your Superior....It is rude in Company to break Wind any Manner of Way, tho amongst Inferiors.

Despatch from Sir Julian Bullard, British ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany, to Sir Geoffrey Howe, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (March 7, 1988), in Matthew Parris and Andrew Bryson, Parting Shots (New York: Viking, 2010), p. 39:

Certain constants have operated here throughout my time. There are the regional differences, which become more evident as one learns to recognise the surnames, accents and facial characteristics which go with certain attitudes of mind. But I think it is still possible to talk of German national characteristics, and one of these is the seriousness, thoroughness, humourlessness, perfectionism and pedantry which have made the German the butt of so many anecdotes. (To quote a true one, the artist Philip Ernst painted the view from his window, leaving out a tree which spoiled the design: that night he was attacked by remorse, got up from bed—and cut down the tree.)

Barbara W. Tuchman, The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890-1914 (1966; rpt. New York: Ballantine Books, 1996), p. 302:

The painter Philip Ernst, father of Max Ernst, when painting a picture of his garden omitted a tree which spoiled the composition and then, overcome with remorse at this offense against realism, cut down the tree.

The painter was Philipp Ernst (1862–1942).

Hat tip: Ian Jackson.

Labels: arboricide

John Harrington, letter to Thomas Howard (April 1603), in The Letters and Epigrams of Sir John Harrington, ed. Norman Egbert McClure (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1930), pp. 99-100:

I am now settynge forthe for the countrie, where I will read Petrarch, Ariosto, Horace, and such wise ones. I will make verses on the maidens, and give my wine to the maisters; but it shall be such as I do love, and do love me. I do muche delight to meete my goode freindes, and discourse of getting rid of our foes. Each nighte do I spende, or muche better parte thereof, in counceil with the aunciente examples of lerninge; I con over their histories, their poetrie, their instructions, and thence glean my own proper conducte in matters bothe of merrimente or discretion...

Hat tip: Ian Jackson.

Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Short (October 31, 1819):

As you say of yourself, I too am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us. Epictetus, indeed, has given us what was good of the stoics; all beyond, of their dogmas, being hypocrisy and grimace. Their great crime was in their calumnies of Epicurus and misrepresentations of his doctrines; in which we lament to see the candid character of Cicero engaging as an accomplice.

Erasmus, Adagia II vii 55 (tr. R.A.B. Mynors):

Ne Jupiter quidem omnibus placet
Even Jupiter does not please everybody

Theognis among his moral maxims: 'For Jove himself may not content us all, / Whether he holds rain back or lets it fall.' For in our own day too there is a common saying that no one can be found who pleases everybody. For different people like different things, and 'Three guests¹ I have, of wishes quite contrary; / As their tastes differ, so their orders vary.' Pindar² in the eighth of his Olympians: 'But among men nothing will be equally delightful,' because of course some like one thing, some another, and 'What is one's own is beautiful.'³ This resembles that saying in the Gospel⁴ which I referred to in the outset of this work, when I was speaking of the respect due to proverbs: 'We have piped to you and you have not danced; we have mourned to you and you have not wept.'

55. From Theognis, the moralist-poet of the sixth century BC, 25-6; our version is borrowed from section V of Erasmus' introduction (C[ollected]W[orks of]E[rasmus] 31, 13). Suringar [Erasmus over nederlandsche spreekwoorden ...(Utrecht 1873)] 134; Tilley [Dictionary of Proverbs in English in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Ann Arbor 1950)] J 103 Jupiter himself cannot please all.
1 Three guests] Horace Epistles 2.2.61-2, already cited in I iii 7
2 Pindar] Olympians 8.53, one of nearly thirty texts from that book added in [Erasmus's adages of] 1533
3 beautiful] I ii 15
4 Gospel] Luke 7.32; the Latin, added in [Erasmus's adages of] 1515, is not the Vulgate version

The original:

Ne Jupiter quidem omnibus placet

Theognis in Sententiis:

                                     Οὐ δὲ γὰρ ὁ Ζεὺς
Οὔθ' ὕων πάντας ἀνδάνει οὐτ' ἀνέχων.

                         Neque Jupiter ipse
Sive pluat seu non, unicuique placet.

Hodie vulgo dicunt neminem inveniri, qui satisfaciat omnibus; nam aliis alia probantur. Et:

Tres mihi convivae prope dissentire videntur,
Poscentes vario multum diversa palato.

Pindarus in Olympiorum octavo:

Τερπνὸν δ᾿ ἐν ἀνθρώποις ἴσον ἔσσεται οὐδέν. Id est,

Inter homines nihil erit aeque jucundum,

videlicet quod alios alia delectant et suum cuique pulchrum est. Cui simile est illud Evangelicum, quod in operis initio retulimus, cum de paroemiae dignitate loqueremur: Ηὐλήσαμεν ὑμῖν, καὶ οὐκ ὠρχήσασθε, ἐθρηνήσαμεν, καὶ οὐκ ἐκλαύσατε. Id est, Cecinimus vobis et non saltastis; lamentati sumus vobis et non plorastis.

Cf. Plutarch, Life of Solon 25.5 (tr. Bernadotte Perrin):

for 'in great affairs,' as he says himself, 'it is difficult to please all'

ἔργμασι γὰρ ἐν μεγάλοις πᾶσιν ἁδεῖν χαλεπόν, ὡς αὐτὸς εἴρηκε.

See Renzo Tosi, Dictionnaire des sentences latines et grecques, tr. Rebecca Lenoir (Grenoble: Jérôme Millon, 2010) #144, p. 147.

In an alternative formulation (Gilleland's Law):

Everything offends someone.

Thanks to Ian Jackson for sending me the end notes to Mynors' translation of Erasmus.

Luís de Camões (1524-1580), Sonnet LVII (tr. William Baer):

Time changes, and our desires change. What we
believe—even what we are—is ever-
changing. The world is change, which forever
takes on new qualities. And constantly,
we see the new and the novel overturning
the past, unexpectedly, while we retain
from evil, nothing but its terrible pain,
from good (if there’s been any), only the yearning.
Time covers the ground with her cloak of green
where, once, there was freezing snow—and rearranges
my sweetest songs to sad laments. Yet even more
astonishing is yet another unseen
change within all these endless changes:
that for me, nothing ever changes anymore.

  Mudam-se os tempos, mudam-se as vontades,
muda-se o ser, muda-se a confiança;
todo o mundo he composto de mudança,
tomando sempre novas qualidades.
  Continuamente vemos novidades,
differentes em tudo da esperança;
do mal ficam as mágoas na lembrança,
e do bem (se algum houve) as saüdades.
  O tempo cobre o chão de verde manto,
que já coberto foi de neve fria,
e em mi converte em choro o doce canto.
  E, afora este mudar-se cada dia,
outra mudança faz de mor espanto:
que não se muda já como soía.

Wye Saltonstall (bap. 1602, d. after 1640), Picturae Loquentes, 2nd ed. (London: Tho. Cotes, 1635), no. 2:

An old Man,
Is loath to bid the world goodnight, hee knowes the grave is a long sleepe, and therefore would sit up as long as hee could. His soule has long dwelt in a ruinous tenement, and yet is so unwilling to leave it that it could be content to sue the body for reparitions. He lives now to be but a burthen to his friends, as age is to him, and yet his thoughts are as farre from death as he is nigh it. Howsoever time bee a continued motion, yet the Dyall of his age stands still at 50, that's his age for ten yeares afterward, and love's such a friend that like a flattering glasse tels him hee seemes farre younger. His memory is full of the actions of his youth, which hee often historifies to others in tedious tales, and thinks they should please others because himselfe. His discourses are full of parenthesis, and his wordes fall from him as slowly as water from an Alimbecke; drop by drop. He loves the chimney corner and his chaire which he brags was his grandfathers, from whence he secures the cubboard from the Catts and Dogges, or the milke from running over, and is onely good to build up the architecture of a seacole fyre by applying each circumstant cynder. When his naturall powers are all impotencyes, hee marries a young wench for warmth sake, and when hee dyes, makes her an estate durante viduitate onely for widowhood. At talke hee commonly uses some proverbiall verses gathered perhaps from cheese-trenchers or Schola Salerna, which he makes as applyable, as a mountebank plasters to all purposes, all occasions. Hee cals often to the Servingman for a cup of Sacke, and to that end stiles him friend; and wonders much that new wine should not bee put in old bottles. Though the proverbe be, once a man and twice a childe, yet he hopes from his second childhood to runne backe into his teenes, and so bee twice a man too. Lastly, hee's a candle burnt to the snuffe, the ruines onely of a man, whose soule is but the salt of his body to keepe it from stincking, and can scarcely performe that too.

Martial 13.7 (tr. D.R. Shackleton Bailey):

                            Beans

If pale beans froth for you in a red pot, you can often say no to the dinners of the high-livers.

                            Faba

Si spumet rubra conchis tibi pallida testa,
  lautorum cenis saepe negare potes.

Latin conchis (Lewis and Short, "kind of bean boiled with the pods") comes from Greek κόγχος (Liddell-Scott-Jones, sense III = "soup of lentils boiled with the pods"). According to Andrew Dalby, Food in the Ancient World from A to Z (London: Routledge, 2003), p. 252, it means pea soup. Dalby says, "There is no evidence for the usual translation of conchis as 'beans cooked with the pods'."

Greek Anthology 10.13 (Satyrus, tr. W.R. Paton):

How lovely are the laurels and the spring that gushes at their feet, while the dense grove gives shade, luxuriant, traversed by Zephyrs, a protection to wayfarers from thirst and toil and the burning sun!

Ἦ καλὸν αἱ δάφναι, καλὸν δ᾽ ὑπὸ πυθμέσιν ὕδωρ
  πιδύει, πυκινὸν δ᾽ ἄλσος ὑποσκιάει
τηλεθάον, ζεφύροισιν ἐπίδρομον, ἄλκαρ ὁδίταις
  δίψης καὶ καμάτου καὶ φλογὸς ἠελίου.

Greek Anthology 10.76 (Paulus Silentiarius, tr. W.R. Paton):

There is no natural pleasure in life itself, but in casting off from our mind anxieties that whiten the temples. I wish for sufficient wealth, but mad lust for gold is a superfluous care that ever devours the heart. Therefore among men thou shalt often find poverty better than wealth, and death than life. Knowing this, make straight the ways of thy heart, looking to one hope, even to wisdom.

The same, tr. J.W. Mackail:

It is not living that has essential delight, but throwing away out of the breast cares that silver the temples. I would have wealth sufficient for me, and the excess of maddening care for gold ever eats away the spirit; thus among men thou wilt find often death better than life, as poverty than wealth. Knowing this, do thou make straight the paths of thine heart, looking to our one hope, Wisdom.

The Greek:

Οὐ τὸ ζῆν χαρίεσσαν ἔχει φύσιν, ἀλλὰ τὸ ῥῖψαι
  φροντίδας ἐκ στέρνων τὰς πολιοκροτάφους.
πλοῦτον ἔχειν ἐθέλω τὸν ἐπάρκιον· ἡ δὲ περισσὴ
  θυμὸν ἀεὶ κατέδει χρυσομανὴς μελέτη.
ἔνθεν ἐν ἀνθρώποισιν ἀρείονα πολλάκι δήεις
  καὶ πενίην πλούτου, καὶ βιότου θάνατον.
ταῦτα σὺ γινώσκων κραδίης ἴθυνε κελεύθους,
  εἰς μίαν εἰσορόων ἐλπίδα, τὴν σοφίην.

Latin translation by Hugo Grotius:

Vivere non dulce est, animo sed pellere curas
  Quae pingunt celeri tempora canitie.
Divitias cupiam quantum satis: id quod abundat,
  Est animum auratis sollicitudinibus.
Hinc et saepe mori melius quam vivere, et audax
  Paupertas magnas saepe lacessit opes.
Haec bene cum noris, maneat sapientia sola
  Spes tibi, in hanc certum dirige mentis iter.

Hávamál 81, tr. R.I. Page in Anglo-Saxon Attitudes: An Inaugural Lecture Delivered before the University of Cambridge on 6 March 1985 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 25:

Don't say, 'It's a good day', till nightfall.
Don't say, 'She's a good wife', till she's buried.
Don't say, 'It's a good sword', till you've tested it.
Don't say, 'She's a good daughter', till she's married off.
Don't say, 'The ice is safe', till you've crossed it.
Don't say, 'This is Real Ale', till you've drunk it down.

At kveldi skal dag leyfa,    kono, er brennd er,
mæki, er reyndr er,    mey, er gefin er,
ís, er yfir kømr,    ǫl, er drukkit er.

Page warns (p. 30, n. 42):

The translation should not be used as a crib. It contains occasional idiosyncrasies of wording.

Another translation, by D.E. Martin Clarke in The Hávamál: With Selections from Other Poems of the Edda (1923; rpt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), p. 63:

Praise no day until evening, no wife until she is burnt,
no sword until tested, no maid until given in marriage,
no ice until crossed, no ale until it has been drunk.

For the idea, cf. the Latin proverb "Omnia tunc bona sunt clausula quando bona est," no. 89 in Renzo Tosi, Dictionnaire des sentences latines et grecques, tr. Rebecca Lenoir (Grenoble: Jérôme Millon, 2010), p. 108.

Hat tip: Ian Jackson.

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), "An Acre of Grass," in The Collected Works, Vol. I: The Poems, 2nd ed. (New York: Scribner, 1997), p. 308:

Picture and book remain,
An acre of green grass
For air and exercise,
Now strength of body goes;
Midnight an old house
Where nothing stirs but a mouse.

My temptation is quiet.
Here at life's end
Neither loose imagination,
Nor the mill of the mind
Consuming its rag and bone,
Can make the truth known.

Grant me an old man's frenzy,
Myself must I remake
Till I am Timon and Lear
Or that William Blake
Who beat upon the wall
Till Truth obeyed his call;

A mind Michael Angelo knew
That can pierce the clouds,
Or inspired by frenzy
Shake the dead in their shrouds;
Forgotten else by mankind
An old man's eagle mind.

Yeats, "The Tower," lines 180-194, id., p. 203:

Now shall I make my soul,
Compelling it to study
In a learned school
Till the wreck of body,
Slow decay of blood,
Testy delirium
Or dull decrepitude,
Or what worse evil come—
The death of friends, or death
Of every brilliant eye
That made a catch in the breath—
Seem but the clouds of the sky
When the horizon fades,
Or a bird's sleepy cry
Among the deepening shades.

Willa Cather (1873-1947), "Prairie Dawn," in April Twilights (Boston: The Gorham Press, 1903), p. 40:

A crimson fire that vanquishes the stars;
A pungent odor from the dusty sage;
A sudden stirring of the huddled herds;
A breaking of the distant table-lands
Through purple mists ascending, and the flare
Of water ditches silver in the light;
A swift, bright lance hurled low across the world;
A sudden sickness for the hills of home.

Raymond Carr, Spain 1808-1975, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), pp. 424-426:

[p. 424] The destruction of forests is the historic crime of agricultural Spain. In the past, sheep and the privileges of the Mesta may have been to blame: but the ravages continued into modern times, long after the great days of sheep. Sheep destroy trees less than goats and even donkeys and the main criminal is man.³ Apart from the demands of the fleet, the building industry, and the kitchen, it was the constant extension of the plough that [p. 425] destroyed the forest cover.¹ The hatred of the peasant for trees is one of the most reliably attested and curious features of country life outside of northern Spain: trees harboured sparrows, weakened corn, and 'wasted' land.' Nowhere is the liberal optimism of the eighteenth century more evident than in Jovellanos's dogma that forests were better preserved by private interest than public legislation. In fact, only strict legislative control, a state forestry service, and large-scale state investment could begin the immense task of restoring the forests of Spain.

Without effective legislation the destruction of Spain's forest cover was continued in the late nineteenth century; between 1866 and 1932–largely to meet the increasing demands of the building industry–perhaps half of the woods left standing by the mid-century speculators were cut down, usually without replanting.² Critics pointed to the crime, to the mean grants for forest services, without realizing the immensity of the difficulties involved in replanting partially eroded scrub. In Murcia 5,000 trees were planted, protected by individual shields and hand-watered: after five years twenty-five trees were still living.³ Without adequate cover crops, the soil of Spain blew away or was washed away by the winter torrents, its balance and texture destroyed. In similar conditions in north Africa the cultivation of a slight slope meant total ruin within ten years.⁴ Only scientific re-afforestation, combined with cutting on a sustained yield basis, could have re-established a permanent [p. 426] stream flow by absorbing water in the higher reaches of the river system and reducing the enormous and devastating fluctuations characteristic of deforested watersheds: recurrent flood disasters were a consequence of heavy rains on a hard, baked soil. Useful rivers, which could form the basis of profitable irrigation and hydro-electric schemes, were thus a corollary of useful forests.¹

[p. 424]
³ Should this be doubted, I had a hundred beech trees ringed by one donkey in less than a month; sheep prefer grass seeds and dry pasture and I have watched sheep for days in Aragon without seeing them destroy saplings. Goats on the other hand, apart from ringing trees, will even climb stumpy trees to destroy foliage.

[p. 425]
¹ In some parts of Spain burning ground to improve grazing is common, though illegal, practice. Sometimes fires do great damage in dry years and their origin is attributed to private feuds or to shepherd 'carelessness', a lingering relic of the great feud between graziers and agriculturalists. The tourist may observe such fires on the Costa Brava between Puerto de la Selva and Cadaqués.
² A farmer in Aragon told me he had cut down all his trees in the lean years after 1939 and had assumed they would replant naturally. In 1952 there were no signs of natural replacement.
³ E.G.H. Dobby, 'The Agrarian Problem in Spain' (Geographical Review, New York, xxvi (1936), 187). For an examination of the budgetary allocations for re-afforestation see Celedonio Rodrigañaez, El problema económica, 187. There was one forestry officer per 41,387 hectares as compared with 3,862 hectares in France. Half of the 'cultivable land' of Spain was counted as forest: of this 58 per cent. had no trees. Understandably the production of wood per capita was among the lowest in Europe (Portugal 1.59 cubic metres; France 0.63; Spain 0.10).
⁴ It might be argued that latifundia scrub pasture (cf. J. Carandell, Córdoba, 14, for its extent in a typical latifundist area) respected the soil and prevented gully erosion. This is true only where the scrub is not heavily grazed.

[p. 426]
¹The flood flow of some Spanish rivers is 1,000 times that of its normal flow. Much Spanish replanting was of eucalyptus, in itself a doubtful remedy (cf. South African experience).

Hat tip: Eric Thomson.

Labels: arboricide

David Konstan, "Excerpting as a Reading Practice," in Thinking Through Excerpts: Studies on Stobaeus, ed. G. Reydams-Schils (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), pp. 9-22 (at 9-10, footnotes omitted):

Excerptors, generally speaking, have a bad name. As mere compilers, their own thoughts, if they had any, are concealed behind the wisdom of others. They are essentially derivative, secondary; at best, they may be classed with authors of synopses and abridgements, or with scholiasts, or even, at a stretch, with commentators, writers who take it upon themselves to make important works composed by others (or sometimes by themselves) more accessible to the general reader — what Markus Dubischar calls 'auxiliary texts' (Auxiliartexte). Of these, excerptors seem the most anonymous and impersonal, even mechanical: they cut and paste, and so lack any voice of their own. We are grateful, of course, when they preserve fragments that would otherwise have been lost, and in this respect we particularly value their dutifulness as copiers: we do not want them to tamper with the extracts they reproduce, but to leave them exactly in the form in which they found them (and can only hope that they chanced upon reasonably good manuscripts). The less creativity they exhibit, the better.

What is more, excerptors represent, according to the common view, a decadent phase of civilization. They copy out bits and pieces of works that are no longer available, or that no one is willing or able to read, any longer, in complete versions. Culture is in decline, and literature must be pre-digested, simplified, abbreviated. In a sense, the excerptors have assumed the noble task of preserving something of the great tradition that has now diminished to a trickle, but their very activity is a sign of loss and diminishment. There is a fin-de-siècle, or fin-d'époque, quality to their enterprise, evoking a sense of nostalgia and even melancholy, something like Gustave Flaubert's last novel, Bouvard et Pécuchet, with its curious appendix, Le dictionnaire des idées reçues. When John Stobaeus wrote, the classical world had reached its end, and the future was dark: literacy itself was threatened with extinction, an impression that some people of a scholarly temperament have of the intellectual state of affairs today.

In the rest of this very interesting essay, Konstan dissents from the "common view" and persuasively argues that Stobaeus continues a "long tradition of excerpting that goes back to the very beginning of Greek and Latin literary culture" (p. 11).

Hat tip: Ian Jackson.

Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887), "The Virtue and Fanaticism of Neatness," in Eyes and Ears (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1862), pp. 167-173 (at 172-173):

You live under a perpetual and sounding, "Take care." It is "Take care, don't touch that silver, you will tarnish it." "Take care of that sofa, it is newly covered." "Take care! don't sit on that clean chintz; you ought to know better than to sit down on such a chair!" "Take care! let that hat alone, you will soil it." "Take care! pray don't go near that sideboard, you'll scratch it." "Take care! a stick! a knife too!! Whittling in the parlor!!! Go out—out with you; go out of the yard, go into the road; go behind the barn, where the wind won't blow your shavings back." "Take care! don't eat apples in the sitting-room,—you always drop some seeds." "Take care, child, come away from that door. You are not going into that room; it is just put in order!" And thus, family discipline, domestic life, and the whole end of living seems to be, to avoid dirt, and secure neatness. Is there anything so tormenting as ecstatic neatness? O, for a morsel of dirt, as a luxury! How good dust looks! A ploughed field with endless dirt,—all hail! The great sentence itself, which consigns man finally to dust again, becomes a consolation!

Lucretius 3.972-975 (tr. Martin Ferguson Smith):

Look back also and see how the ages of everlasting time past before we were born have been to us nothing. Time therefore is a mirror which nature holds up to us, showing the time to come after we at length shall die.

respice item quam nil ad nos anteacta vetustas
temporis aeterni fuerit, quam nascimur ante.
hoc igitur speculum nobis natura futuri
temporis exponit post mortem denique nostram.

James Warren, Facing Death: Epicurus and his Critics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004), p. 65 (discussing whether this passage from Lucretius is a particular version of the "symmetry argument," viz. "looking back from within a lifetime, our pre-natal non-existence is nothing to us; pre-natal non-existence is relevantly like post mortem non-existence; looking forward from within a lifetime, our post mortem non-existence is nothing to us"):

The image is of a viewer who looks back in time at a mirror in front of him.<sup>8

8</sup> The image of someone looking backwards in time conforms to the ancient image of us 'backing into the future'. We can 'see' (i.e. remember) the past but the future is not visible. Compare the use of the Greek ὀπίσω to mean 'hereafter' (LSJ s.v. II).

Liddell-Scott-Jones, s.v. ὀπίσω (whose primary meaning is backwards, back). sense II:

of Time, hereafter, since the future is unseen and was therefore regarded as behind us, whereas the past is known and therefore before our eyes.

Cf. also Lewis and Short, s.v. post, which means "behind, back, backwards" in reference to place, "afterwards, after" in reference to time.

Warren concludes (pp. 65-67) that Lucretius is in fact offering a different version of the symmetry argument, viz. "our pre-natal non-existence was nothing to us before we were born; pre-natal non-existence is relevantly like post mortem non-existence; our post mortem non-existence will be nothing to us after our death."

Dear Mr. Gilleland,

I was delighted to read the extract you have quoted from Roger Scruton's memoir, about the late Laurence Picken; and I promptly ordered the book (to add to some others I already possess by Professor Scruton).

Laurence Picken was one of the most inspiring men I have ever known. I first made his acquaintance as a student at Cambridge in the later 1950s; and he made me aware that there were whole worlds of music outside the European tradition, with their own long history, instruments and musical forms. His Cambridge Asian Music Circle, the offshoot of one created by Yehudi Menuhin in London, brought Ravi Shankar, Ali Akbar Khan and others to perform in Cambridge; as well as occasional visiting speakers. More particularly, holding court at Jesus College, where he occupied beautiful 17th-century rooms, he would discourse learnedly on Japanese, Chinese and other non-Western music, surrounded by an exotic array of instruments which he had collected from around the world, and which now belongs to Cambridge University. There was even an 18th-century English chamber organ (which on one occasion he used to demonstrate the Javanese scale system); later, as a result of field trips to Turkey and elsewhere, he was to add many other instruments. His library of books on music, in many languages, included the complete Bach Gesellschaft edition; and he was to acquire an important archive of manuscripts on Japanese music, which formed the basis of the studies he edited on Japanese and Chinese court music. The theoretical basis for his work is best seen in the lengthy postscript to his Folk Musical Instruments of Turkey (1975), and in the essays contained in Vol. 7 of his Music from the Tang Court (2000). He brought to the classification and description of musical instruments the mind of a trained scientist, as well as an acute eye for detail; at the same time as he would make original and sometimes startling historical generalisations about music across Eurasia.

In case you have not seen it, here is the link to a short memoir which was put together by Laurence's former graduate students, in celebration of the centenary of his birth. It sketches his life, and itemises some of his scholarly achievements: https://sites.google.com/site/pickencentenary/home/laurence-picken. I was not myself a student under him, and I was at King's College, not Jesus. At that time there was no academic programme in Oriental Music, within either the Faculty of Music or the Faculty of Oriental Studies. Later, Laurence advised me when I was thinking of leaving England for the United States to study ethnomusicology: I stayed the weekend as his guest at Jesus, and he warmly recommended the University of Washington, where he had been a visiting professor of zoology, and where I was to spend two happy years, before coming to Toronto. We continued to correspond in the years that followed, and I visited him from time to time in Cambridge, almost up to the time of his death. I treasure my many letters from him, as well as most of his publications on Asian music.

David Waterhouse

---

David Waterhouse is Professor Emeritus of East Asian Studies, University of Toronto. I'm grateful for permission to publish his email.

Willa Cather (1873-1947), "In Media Vita," in April Twilights (Boston: The Gorham Press, 1903), p. 21:

Streams of the spring a-singing,
        Winds o' the May that blow,
Birds from the Southland winging,
        Buds in the grasses below.
Clouds that speed hurrying over,
        And the climbing rose by the wall,
Singing of bees in the clover,
        And the dead, under all!

Lads and their sweethearts lying
        In the cleft o' the windy hill;
Hearts that hushed of their sighing,
        Lips that are tender and still.
Stars in the purple gloaming,
        Flowers that suffuse and fall,
Twitter of bird-mates homing,
        And the dead, under all!

Herdsman abroad with his collie,
        Girls on their way to the fair,
Hot lads a-chasing their folly,
        Parsons a-praying their prayer.
Children their kites a-flying,
        Grandsires that nod by the wall,
Mothers soft lullabies sighing,
        And the dead, under all!

Emperor Ch'ien Lung, letter to King George III (1793), in E. Backhouse and J.O.P. Bland, Annals and Memoirs of the Court of Peking (from the 16th to the 20th Century) (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1914), p. 325:

As your Ambassador can see for himself, we possess all things. I set no value on objects strange or ingenious, and have no use for your country's manufactures.

Id., p. 326:

[O]ur Celestial Empire possesses all things in prolific abundance and lacks no product within its own borders. There was therefore no need to import the manufactures of outside barbarians in exchange for our own produce.

Aristotle, Politics 1.2 (tr. Benjamin Jowett):

When several villages are united in a single complete community, large enough to be nearly or quite self-sufficing, the state comes into existence, originating in the bare needs of life, and continuing in existence for the sake of a good life. And therefore, if the earlier forms of society are natural, so is the state, for it is the end of them, and the nature of a thing is its end. For what each thing is when fully developed, we call its nature, whether we are speaking of a man, a horse, or a family. Besides, the final cause and end of a thing is the best, and to be self-sufficing is the end and the best.

James Gillray (1756–1815),
The Reception of the Diplomatique
& his Suite at the Court of Pekin

Simon Winchester, The Man Who Loved China (New York: HarperCollins, 2008), p. 44 (on Joseph Needham):

Studying Chinese, he once wrote, was "a liberation, like going for a swim on a hot day, for it got you entirely out of the prison of alphabetical words, and into the glittering crystalline world of ideographic characters."

Winchester doesn't give a source for the quotation. The quotation also appears in Robert Finlay, "China, the West, and World History in Joseph Needham's 'Science and Civilisation in China'," Journal of World History 11.2 (Fall, 2000) 265-303 (at 271, n. 20), who cites as a source Lu Gwei-Djen, "The First Half-Life of Joseph Needham," in Explorations in the History of Science and Technology in China (Shanghai: Shanghai Chinese Classics Publishing House, 1982), pp. 1-36 (at 8), which I haven't seen.

Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887), "Strawberries and Cream," in Eyes and Ears (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1862), pp. 375-378 (at 376-377):

And this harvest of strawberries,—what visions of bliss lie in the near future! They shall be picked in great, cool dishes, before the sun rises, with dew fresh on their blushing cheeks! They shall be pulled by delicate fingers; heaped up in saucers forever too small,—great berries,—each one a mouthful,—some to be eaten just as they are, while the red multitude are to be overpoured with cream. Cream! what is that? A pasture, knee-deep with clover, with bluegrass, with orchard grass, and red-top; spring water gushing cool close by; a pail, large, scoured white, and brimming full with milk crowned with foam; pans, bright as silver, in a cool, sweet cellar, through which the air circulates, carrying off every gas or odor; and then, after twelve hours, do not be too particular, but take that which comes first on the pan,—not too long kept and clotted, not too soon skimmed and thin, but cream that is neither young nor old, but a term midway between both,—take this, O inquisitive reader! and let your hand be liberal toward the saucer-full of Jenny Lind, Triumph de Gand, Bartlett's Seedling, or Lanier's Madison, and then, with sweet bread and butter, and your friends around you, eat, and pity the gods that sit above the clouds where they can't have cows or strawberries!

Roger Scruton, England: An Elegy (2000; rpt. London: Continuum, 2006), pp. 167-168:

My first discussion with my tutor, Dr Laurence Picken — a bachelor don of the old school, an established scholar in the fields of biochemistry, cytology, musicology, Chinese, Slavonic studies and ethnomusicology, world expert on Turkish musical instruments, Bach cantatas, ancient Chinese science and the reproduction of cells — concerned my course of study. Under Dr Picken's influence I opted for philosophy (then called 'moral sciences'). And so I discovered my vocation.

Dr Picken typified the osmotic process whereby a cultural and intellectual influence was transmitted within college walls. You could pick up from him an amount of knowledge on any number of subjects — from Baroque keyboard ornamentation to the vinification of burgundy, from the wave structure of the benzene ring to the translation of the Confucian Odes, from Frazer’s theory of magic to the chronology of Cavalcanti — and the very irrelevance to the surrounding world of everything he knew made the learning of it all the more rewarding.

This irrelevance characterised the curriculum as it developed in England during the great years of the public school. Although the natural sciences gradually came into their own as subjects of study, they were taught not for their practical but for their theoretical content. Pure mathematics was expressly separated from 'applied mathematics', and given the higher standing proper to a true intellectual pursuit. Latin, Greek and ancient history were at the heart of the old curriculum, literature was studied through classical texts and national history was assumed to have stopped some hundred years earlier than the time of study. You learned poetry by rote, and even at the lowest level of study you were taught to read Chaucer in the original. The further the subject seemed from the day-to-day concerns of the student, the more worthy of study it was held to be.

Related posts:

• Aimless Incursions into Knowledge
• The Value of Useless Knowledge
• Ornamental Knowledge

Mark Pattison, Isaac Casaubon: 1559-1614, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1892), p. 316:

The true approach to christian antiquity is through pagan antiquity. The continuity of history is complete. There is no break. As the christian empire is the pagan empire under a new name, so christian literature is the outcome of the greek classical literature. It is not only built up with the old materials, like the forts which the Turks constructed with the sculptured blocks of the greek temples, it issues from the greek sources of thought.

Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887), "Apple-Pie," in Eyes and Ears (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1862), pp. 251-255 (at 252-253):

"Henry, go down cellar, and bring me up some Spitzenbergs." The cellar was as large as the whole house, and the house was broad as a small pyramid. The north side was windowless, and banked up outside with frost-defying tan-bark. The south side had windows, festooned and frescoed with the webs of spiders, that wove their tapestries over every corner in the neighborhood, and, when no flies were to be had, ate up each other, as if they were nothing but politicians, instead of being lawful and honorable arachnidae. On the east side stood a row of cider-barrels; for twelve or twenty barrels of cider were a fit provision for the year,—and what was not consumed for drink was expected duly to turn into vinegar, and was then exalted to certain hogsheads kept for the purpose. But along the middle of the cellar were the apple-bins; and when the season had been propitious, there were stores and heaps of Russets, Greenings, Seeknofurthers, Pearmains, Gilliflowers, Spitzenbergs, and many besides, nameless, but not virtueless. Thence selecting, we duly brought up the apples. Some people think anything will do for pies. But the best for eating are the best for cooking. Who would make jelly of any other apple, that had the Porter? who would bake or roast any other sweet apple, that had the Ladies' Sweeting,—unless, perhaps, the Talman Sweet? and who would put into a pie any apple but Spitzenberg, that had that?

Levi Wells Prentice (1851-1935), Harvest of Apples
Related posts:

• Apple Loft
• November (IV)
• Orange Speck
• Cider

Lionel Trilling (1905-1975), "A Ramble on Graves," in A Gathering of Fugitives (1956; rpt. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978), pp. 23-33 (at 24):

One might spend one's life pleasantly and very profitably with the secondary writers of the English nineteenth century, the writers whom no one would think to call "great," the odd, quirky spirits from George Burrow to Mark Rutherford, the travelers, the autobiographers, the essayists, the men who had a particular, perhaps eccentric, thing to say, and said it fully and well, with delight in what they were doing and no worry about greatness.