Laudator Temporis Acti

'The world's a nest of nincompoops,' he said;
  'Only a hermit can avoid the Ass,
The Pedant, and the Prig.' Straight home he fled
  And barred the door. When lo! a looking-glass.

And in one of his last letters, Niccolò exclaims to his old friend Vettori: "I love my country more than my soul." Certainly this declaration can and does mean willingness to suffer anything for one's country—shame, torture, mistreatment, dishonor, exile. It can and does mean willingness to lie, cheat, and kill, to do evil for one's country, thereby forfeiting one's soul. It can and does mean dying for one's country and—if necessary—going to hell for her.

amo la patria mia più dell'anima (L to Francesco Vettori, April 16, 1527: 5.505)

Agayne, it shall greately helpe ye to understonde scripture, yf thou marke not onely what is spoken or wrytten, but of whom, & unto whom, with what wordes, at what tyme where, to what intent, with what circumstaunce, consyderynge what goeth before, and what foloweth after.

I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame the earth seems to me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appeareth nothing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god: the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—and yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me—nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.

Where all are filthy, the stench of one is hardly noticed.

ubi omnes sordent, unius fetor minime sentitur.

'It is the fashion nowadays,' said Clovis, 'to talk about the romance of Business. There isn't such a thing. The romance has all been the other way, with the idle apprentice, the truant, the run-away, the individual who couldn't be bothered with figures and book-keeping and left business to look after itself. I admit that a grocer's shop is one of the most romantic and thrilling things I have ever happened upon, but the romance and thrill are centred in the groceries, not the grocer. The citron and spices and nuts and dates, the barrelled anchovies and Dutch cheeses, the jars of caviar and the chests of tea, they carry the mind away to Levantine coast towns and tropic shores, to the Old World wharfs and quays of the Low Countries, to dusty Astrachan and far Cathay; if the grocer's apprentice has any romance in him it is not a business education he gets behind the grocer's counter, it is a standing invitation to dream and to wander, and to remain poor. As a child such places as South America and Asia Minor were brought painstakingly under my notice, the names of their principal rivers and the heights of their chief mountain peaks were committed to my memory. and I was earnestly enjoined to consider them as parts of the world that I lived in; it was only when I visited a large well-stocked grocer's shop that I realized that they certainly existed. Such galleries of romance and fascination are not bequeathed to us by the business man; he is only the dull custodian, who talks glibly of Spanish olives and Rangoon rice, a Spain that he has never known or wished to know, a Rangoon that he has never imagined or could imagine. It was the unledgered wanderer, the careless-hearted seafarer, the aimless outcast, who opened up new trade routes, tapped new markets, brought home samples or cargoes of new edibles and unknown condiments. It was they who brought the glamour and romance to the threshold of business life, where it was promptly reduced to pounds, shillings and pence; invoiced, double-entried, quoted, written off, and so forth; most of these terms are probably wrong, but a little inaccuracy sometimes serves tons of explanation.

'On the other side of the account there is the industrious apprentice, who grew up into the business man, married early and worked late, and lived, thousands and thousands of him, in little villas outside big towns. He is buried by the thousand in Kensal Green and other large cemeteries; any romance that was ever in him was buried prematurely in shop and warehouse and office. Whenever I feel in the least tempted to be business-like or methodical or even decently industrious I go to Kensal Green and look at the graves of those who died in business.'

In the glorification of 'work', in the unwearied talk of the 'blessings of work', I see the same covert ideas as in the praise of useful impersonal actions: that of fear of everything individual. Fundamentally, one now feels at the sight of work — one always means by work that hard industriousness from early till late — that such work is the best policeman, that it keeps everyone in bounds and can mightily hinder the development of reason, covetousness, desire for independence. For it uses up an extraordinary amount of nervous energy, which is thus denied to reflection, brooding, dreaming, worrying, loving, hating; it sets a small goal always in sight and guarantees easy and regular satisfactions. Thus a society in which there is continual hard work will have more security: and security is now worshipped as the supreme divinity.

Bei der Verherrlichung der "Arbeit," bei dem unermüdlichen Reden vom "Segen der Arbeit" sehe ich den selben Hintergedanken, wie bei dem Lobe der gemeinnützigen unpersönlichen Handlungen: den der Furcht vor allem Individuellen. Im Grunde fühlt man jetzt, beim Anblick der Arbeit — man meint immer dabei jene harte Arbeitsamkeit von früh bis spät —, dass eine solche Arbeit die beste Polizei ist, dass sie jeden im Zaume hält und die Entwickelung der Vernunft, der Begehrlichkeit, des Unabhängigkeitsgelüstes kräftig zu hindern versteht. Denn sie verbraucht ausserordentlich viel Nervenkraft und entzieht dieselbe dem Nachdenken, Grübeln, Träumen, Sorgen, Lieben, Hassen, sie stellt ein kleines Ziel immer in's Auge und gewährt leichte und regelmässige Befriedigungen. So wird eine Gesellschaft, in welcher fortwährend hart gearbeitet wird, mehr Sicherheit haben: und die Sicherheit betet man jetzt als die oberste Gottheit an.

There are men who always seem to hold marked cards in their hand. Prices fall or rise, markets may change or not, they are always holders of the game, & winners.

Tobacco had nowhere been forbidden in the Bible, but then it had not yet been discovered, and had probably only escaped proscription for this reason. We can conceive of St. Paul or even our Lord Himself as drinking a cup of tea, but we cannot imagine either of them as smoking a cigarette or a churchwarden. Ernest could not deny this, and admitted that Paul would almost certainly have condemned tobacco in good round terms if he had known of its existence. Was it not then taking rather a mean advantage of the Apostle to stand on his not having actually forbidden it? On the other hand, it was possible that God knew Paul would have forbidden smoking, and had purposely arranged the discovery of tobacco for a period at which Paul should be no longer living. This might seem rather hard on Paul, considering all he had done for Christianity, but it would be made up to him in other ways.

Dr. Matrix professes to find a defense of cigarette smoking in "Rebekah lifted up her eyes, and when she saw Isaac, she lighted off the camel" (Gen. 24:64).

A stray volume of the Encyclopaedia is like the mind of a learned madman—stored with correct ideas, between which, however, there is no other connection than the fact that there is a B in both; from orach, or mountain spinach, one passes directly to oracles. That one does not oneself go mad, or become, in the process of reading the Encyclopaedia, a mine of useless and unrelated knowledge is due to the fact that one forgets. The mind has a vast capacity for oblivion. Providentially; otherwise, in the chaos of futile memories, it would be impossible to remember anything useful or coherent. In practice, we work with generalizations, abstracted out of the turmoil of realities. If we remembered everything perfectly, we should never be able to generalize at all, for there would appear before our minds nothing but individual images, precise and different. Without ignorance we could not generalize. Let us thank Heaven for our powers of forgetting. With regard to the Encyclopaedia they are enormous. The mind only remembers that of which it has some need. Five minutes after reading about mountain spinach, the ordinary man, who is neither a botanist nor a cook, has forgotten all about it. Read for amusement, the Encyclopaedia serves only to distract for the moment; it does not instruct, it deposits nothing on the surface of the mind that will remain. It is a mere time-killer and momentary tickler of the mind.

The Taoists objected to machinery. There are of course many grounds upon which labour-saving devices may be condemned. The common modern objection is that they cause unemployment; but religious leaders (Gandhi, for example) reject them on the ground that they have a degrading effect on those who use them. The Taoist objection was of the latter kind:

Tzu-kung, the disciple of Confucius, after travelling to Ch'u in the south, came back by way of Chin. When he was passing through Han-yin he saw an old man who was engaged in irrigating his vegetable plots. The way this old man did it was to let himself down into the well-pit by footholes cut in the side and emerge clasping a pitcher which he carefully emptied into a channel, thus expending a great deal of energy with very small results.

'There exists,' Tzu-kung said to him, 'a contrivance with which one can irrigate a hundred vegetable plots in a single day. Unlike what you are doing, it demands a very small expenditure of energy but produces very great results. Would you not like me to tell you about it?' The gardener raised his head and gazed at Tzu-kung. 'What is it like?' he asked. 'It is an instrument carved out of wood,' said Tzu-kung, 'heavy behind and light in front. It scoops up the water like a bale, as quickly as one drains a bath-tub. Its name is the well-sweep.' A look of indignation came into the gardener's face. He laughed scornfully, saying, 'I used to be told by my teacher that where there are cunning contrivances there will be cunning performances, and where there are cunning performances there will be cunning hearts. He in whose breast a cunning heart lies has blurred the pristine purity of his nature; he who has blurred the pristine purity of his nature has troubled the quiet of his soul, and with one who has troubled the quiet of his soul Tao will not dwell. It is not that I do not know about this invention, but that I should be ashamed to use it.'

Labels: Luddism

I will tell you what I heard from the god. The lord Phoebus orders us plainly to drive out from the land a pollution, one that has been nourished in this country, and not to nourish it till it cannot be cured.

λέγοιμ᾽ ἂν οἷ᾽ ἤκουσα τοῦ θεοῦ πάρα.
ἄνωγεν ἡμᾶς Φοῖβος ἐμφανῶς, ἄναξ,
μίασμα χώρας, ὡς τεθραμμένον χθονὶ
ἐν τῇδ᾽, ἐλαύνειν μηδ᾽ ἀνήκεστον τρέφειν.

Phoebus, o lord, orders us plainly...

His Golden lockes, Time hath to Siluer turn'd,
  O Time too swift, ô Swiftnesse neuer ceasing:
His Youth gainst Time and Age hath euer spurn'd
But spurn'd in vain, Youth waineth by increasing.
  Beauty Strength, Youth, are flowers, but fading seen,
  Dutie, Faith, Loue are roots, and euer greene.

We are students of words: we are shut up in schools, and colleges, and recitation-rooms, for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bag of wind, a memory of words, and do not know a thing. We cannot use our hands, or our legs, or our eyes, or our arms. We do not know an edible root in the woods, we cannot tell our course by the stars, nor the hour of the day by the sun. It is well if we can swim and skate. We are afraid of a horse, of a cow, of a dog, of a snake, of a spider. The Roman rule was to teach a boy nothing that he could not learn standing. The old English rule was, 'All summer in the field, and all winter in the study.' And it seems as if a man should learn to plant, or to fish, or to hunt, that he might secure his subsistence at all events, and not be painful to his friends and fellow men.

Equally well adapted, with poetry, to the traveller's need, are collections of aphorisms or maxims. If they are good—and they must be very good indeed; for there is nothing more dismal than a Great Thought enunciated by an author who has not himself the elements of greatness—maxims make the best of all reading. They take a minute to read and provide matter upon which thought can ruminate for hours. None are to be preferred to La Rochefoucauld's. Myself, I always reserve my upper left-hand waist-coat pocket for a small sexto-decimo reprint of the Maximes. It is a book to which there is no bottom or end. For with every month that one lives, with every accession to one's knowledge, both of oneself and of others, it means something more. For La Rochefoucauld knew almost everything about the human soul, so that practically every discovery one can make oneself, as one advances through life, has been anticipated by him and formulated in the briefest and most elegant phrases. I say advisedly that La Rochefoucauld knew almost everything about the human soul; for it is obvious that he did not know all. He knew everything about the souls of human beings in so far as they are social animals.

Of the soul of man in solitude—of man when he is no more interested in the social pleasures and successes which were, to La Rochefoucauld, so all-important—he knows little or nothing. If we desire to know something about the human soul in solitude—in its relations, not to man, but to God—we must go elsewhere: to the Gospels, to the novels of Dostoievsky, for example. But man in his social relationships has never been more accurately described, and his motives never more delicately analysed than by La Rochefoucauld. The aphorisms vary considerably in value; but the best of them—and their number is surprisingly large—are astonishingly profound and pregnant. They resume a vast experience. In a sentence La Rochefoucauld compresses as much material as would serve a novelist for a long story, Conversely, it would not surprise me to learn that many novelists turn to the Maximes for suggestions for plots and characters. It is impossible, for example, to read Proust without being reminded of the Maximes, or the Maximes without being reminded of Proust. 'Le plaisir de l'amour est d'aimer, et l'on est plus heureux par la passion que l'on a que par celle que l'on donne.' 'Il y a des gens si remplis d'eux-mêmes, que, lorsqu'ils sont amoureux, ils trouvent moyen d'être occupés de leur passion sans l'être de la personne qu'ils aiment.' What are all the love stories in A la Recherche du Temps Perdu but enormous amplifications of these aphorisms? Proust is La Rochefoucauld magnified ten thousand times.

Knowing several languages affords some greater facility and clarity in the way we formulate our thoughts, for it is through language that we [95] think. Now, perhaps no language has enough words and phrases to correspond to and express all the infinite subtleties of thought. The knowledge of several languages and the ability, therefore, to express in one language what cannot be said in another, or cannot at least be expressed so succinctly or concisely, or which we cannot find as quickly in another language, makes it easier for us to articulate our thoughts and to understand ourselves, and to apply the word to the idea, which, without that application, would remain confused in our mind. Having found the word in whatever language, since we understand its meaning, which is clear and already known through other people's usage, our idea becomes clear and settled and consistent and remains fixed and well-defined in our mind, and firmly determined and circumscribed. I have experienced this on many occasions, and it can be seen in these same thoughts, written with the flow of the pen, where I have fixed my ideas with Greek, French, Latin words, according to how for me they responded more precisely to the thing, and came most quickly to mind. For an idea without a word or a way to express it is lost to us, or roams about undefined in our thoughts, and is imperfectly understood by we who have conceived it. With the word, it takes on body and almost visible, tangible, and distinct form.

Il posseder più lingue dona una certa maggior facilità e chiarezza di pensare seco stesso, perchè noi [95] pensiamo parlando. Ora nessuna lingua ha forse tante parole e modi da corrispondere ed esprimere tutti gl'infiniti particolari del pensiero. Il posseder più lingue e il potere perciò esprimere in una quello che non si può in un'altra, o almeno così acconciamente, o brevemente, o che non ci viene così tosto trovato da esprimere in un'altra lingua, ci dà una maggior facilità di spiegarci seco noi e d’intenderci noi medesimi, applicando la parola all’idea che senza questa applicazione rimarrebbe molto confusa nella nostra mente. Trovata la parola in qualunque lingua, siccome ne sappiamo il significato chiaro e già noto per l'uso altrui, così la nostra idea ne prende chiarezza e stabilità e consistenza e ci rimane ben definita e fissa nella mente, e ben determinata e circoscritta. Cosa ch'io ho provato molte volte, e si vede in questi stessi pensieri scritti a penna corrente, dove ho fissato le mie idee con parole greche francesi latine, secondo che mi rispondevano più precisamente alla cosa, e mi venivano più presto trovate. Perchè un'idea senza parola o modo di esprimerla, ci sfugge, o ci erra nel pensiero come indefinita e mal nota a noi medesimi che l'abbiamo concepita. Colla parola prende corpo, e quasi forma visibile, e sensibile, e circoscritta.

All tourists cherish an illusion, of which no amount of experience can ever completely cure them; they imagine that they will find time, in the course of their travels, to do a lot of reading. They see themselves, at the end of a day's sight-seeing or motoring, or while they are sitting in the train, studiously turning over the pages of all the vast and serious works which, at ordinary seasons, they never find time to read. They start for a fortnight's tour in France, taking with them The Critique of Pure Reason, Appearance and Reality, the complete works of Dante and the Golden Bough. They come home to make the discovery that they have read something less than half a chapter of the Golden Bough and the first fifty-two lines of the Inferno. But that does not prevent them from taking just as many books the next time they set out on their travels.

Long experience has taught me to reduce in some slight measure the dimensions of my travelling library. But even now I am far too optimistic about my powers of reading while on a journey. Along with the books which I know it is possible to read, I still continue to put in a few impossible volumes in the pious hope that some day, somehow, they will get read. Thick tomes have travelled with me for thousands of kilometres across the face of Europe and have returned with their secrets unviolated. But whereas in the past I took nothing but thick tomes, and a great quantity of them at that, I now take only one or two and for the rest pack only the sort of books which I know by experience can be read in a hotel bedroom after a day's sight-seeing.

From Homer onward everything got better, except poetry.

Tutto si è perfezionato da Omero in poi, ma non la poesia.

Epitaphs always fascinated him, and formerly he used to say he should like to be buried at Langar and to have on his tombstone the subject of Handel's Six Great Fugues. He called this 'The Old Man's Fugue,' and said it was like an epitaph composed for himself by one who was very old and tired and sorry for things; and he made young Ernest Pontifex in The Way of All Flesh offer it to Edward Overton as an epitaph for his Aunt Alethea. Butler, however, left off wanting any tombstone. In accordance with his wish his body was cremated, and a week later Alfred and I returned to Woking and buried his ashes under the shrubs in the garden of the crematorium, with nothing to mark the spot.

Entering the churchyard and standing in the twilight of a gusty cloudy evening on the spot close beside old Mrs. Pontifex's grave which I had chosen for Alethea's, I thought of the many times that she, who would lie there henceforth, and I, who must surely lie one day in some such another place though when and where I knew not, had romped over this very spot as childish lovers together.

Next morning I followed her to the grave, and in due course set up a plain upright slab to her memory as like as might be to those over the graves of her grandmother and grandfather. I gave the dates and places of her birth and death, but added nothing except that this stone was set up by one who had known and loved her. Knowing how fond she had been of music I had been half inclined at one time to inscribe a few bars of music, if I could find any which seemed suitable to her character, but I knew how much she would have disliked anything singular in connection with her tombstone and did not do it.

Before, however, I had come to this conclusion, I had thought that Ernest might be able to help me to the right thing, and had written to him upon the subject. The following is the answer I received:

"DEAR GODPAPA, I send you the best bit I can think of; it is the subject of the last of Handel's six grand fugues and goes thus:

It would do better for a man, especially for an old man who was very sorry for things, than for a woman, but I cannot think of anything better; if you do not like it for Aunt Alethea I shall keep it for myself. Your affectionate Godson,
                                                                                      ERNEST PONTIFEX."

• Burial Wishes of Richard Burton
• Burial Wishes of James Howell
• Disregard of Funeral Instructions
• My Bed of Death
• Funeral of a Lover of Horace
• Cactus Ed's Funeral Instructions
• Kierkegaard's Tomb

This Mortal Spoil which so neglected lies,
  Death's sad Memento, now where Spiders weave
  Their Subtil Webs, which Innocence deceive,
Whose Strength to break their Toyls cannot suffice:

Saw it self Crown’d, it self Triumphant saw,
  With Mighty Deeds proclaiming its Renown;
  Its Smiles were Favours, Terrour was its Frown,
The World of its Displeasure stood in Awe.

Where Pride ordaining Laws did once preside,
Which Land should Peace enjoy, which Wars abide,
  There boldly now these little Insects nest;

Then raise not, Kings, your Haughty Plumes so high,
For in Death’s cold Embraces when you lye,
  Your Bones with those of common Subjects rest.

Este mortal despojo, ò Caminante,
  Triste horror de la Muerte, en quien la Araña
  Hilos anuda, i la Inocencia engaña,
  Que à romper lo sutil, no fuè bastante.

Coronado se viò, se viò triunfante
  Con los trofeos de vna, i otra hazaña,
  Fabor su risa fuè, terror su saña,
  Atento el Orbe à su Real semblante.

Donde antes la Sobervia, dando leyes
  A la Paz, i à la Guerra, presidía,
  Se prenden oi los viles animales.

Que os arrogáis ò Príncipes, ò Reyes?
  Si en los vltrajes de la Muerte fria
  Conmunes sois con los demas Mortales.

Homer tells us about some one who made it his business αἰὲν ἀριστεύειν καὶ ὑπείροχον ἔμμεναι ἄλλων—always to excel and to stand higher than other people. What an uncompanionable, disagreeable person he must have been! Homer's heroes generally came to a bad end, and I doubt not that this gentleman, whoever he was, did so sooner or later.

Labels: typographical and other errors

Sweet Content, where dost thou dwell?
In prince's court, or hermit's cell?
In the country, or the town?
Dost thou wear a sword or gown?
Art thou rich, or art thou poor?        5
This I know, thou need'st no more.
Stands a porter at thy gate,
Where the men of business wait?
Who from thy levee date the day,
Not from Aurora's golden ray.        10

I have sought thee far and near;
Thou like my shadow dost appear:
Why so cruel, so unkind,
Still before me or behind?

Sweet Content, O dwell with me,        15
A virtuous wife shall welcome thee;
Not in a palace or a cell,
Where neither wealth nor want doth dwell.
Three olive plants, from Heaven sent,
(As guardian angels innocent)        20
Support our cruse; 'tis open ever,
Though seldom full, tis empty never.
A conscience pure's our constant guest,
This is our continual feast.

¹⁰ So he arose and went to Zarephath. And when he came to the gate of the city, behold, the widow woman was there gathering of sticks: and he called to her, and said, Fetch me, I pray thee, a little water in a vessel, that I may drink.

¹¹ And as she was going to fetch it, he called to her, and said, Bring me, I pray thee, a morsel of bread in thine hand.

¹² And she said, As the Lord thy God liveth, I have not a cake, but an handful of meal in a barrel, and a little oil in a cruse: and, behold, I am gathering two sticks, that I may go in and dress it for me and my son, that we may eat it, and die.

¹³ And Elijah said unto her, Fear not; go and do as thou hast said: but make me thereof a little cake first, and bring it unto me, and after make for thee and for thy son.

¹⁴ For thus saith the Lord God of Israel, The barrel of meal shall not waste, neither shall the cruse of oil fail, until the day that the Lord sendeth rain upon the earth.

¹⁵ And she went and did according to the saying of Elijah: and she, and he, and her house, did eat many days.

¹⁶ And the barrel of meal wasted not, neither did the cruse of oil fail, according to the word of the Lord, which he spake by Elijah.

Being in this world is it not our most obvious business to make the most of it—to observe what things do bona fide tend to long life and comfort, and to act accordingly? All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it—and they do enjoy it as much as man and other circumstances will allow. He has spent his life best who has enjoyed it most; God will take care that we do not enjoy it any more than is good for us.

The higher these roads get, the farther apart and larger are the houses they lead to. The occupants of these higher houses are the owners and rulers of the island. Most of them are well-fed old gentlemen who, the profits they took from the world with both hands in their younger days now stowed away at safe percentages, have bought into the island colony so they may spend what's left of their lives nursing their livers and improving their golf among their kind. They admit to the island only as many storekeepers, working-people, and similar riffraff as are needed to keep them comfortably served.

Some satirists have complained of life inasmuch as all the pleasures belong to the fore part of it and we must see them dwindle till we are left, it may be, with the miseries of a decrepit old age.

To me it seems that youth is like spring, an overpraised season—delightful if it happen to be a favoured one, but in practice very rarely favoured and more remarkable, as a general rule, for biting east winds than genial breezes. Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits. Fontenelle at the age of ninety, being asked what was the happiest time of his life, said he did not know that he had ever been much happier than he then was, but that perhaps his best years had been those when he was between fifty-five and seventy-five, and Dr. Johnson placed the pleasures of old age far higher than those of youth. True, in old age we live under the shadow of Death, which, like a sword of Damocles, may descend at any moment, but we have so long found life to be an affair of being rather frightened than hurt that we have become like the people who live under Vesuvius, and chance it without much misgiving.

Quelqu'un demandait au philosophe Fontenelle, âgé de quatre-vingt quinze ans, quelles étaient les vingt annees de sa vie qu'il regrettait le plus; répondit qu'il regrettait peu de chose, que neanmoins l'âge où il avait été le plus heureux était de cinquante-cinq à soixante-quinze ans; il fit cet aveu de bonne foi, et il prouva son dire par des vérités sensibles et consolantes. A cinquante-cinq ans la fortune est établie, la reputation faite, la consideration obtenue, l'état de la vie fixe, les prétentions évanouies ou remplies, les projets avortés ou mûris, la plupart des passions calmées ou du moins refroidies, la carrière à peu près remplie pour les travaux que chaque homme doit à la société, moins d'ennemis ou plutôt moins d'envieux nuisibles, parce que le contre-poids du mérite est connu par la voix du public; tout concourt dans le moral à l'avantage de l'âge, jusqu'au temps où les infirmités et les autres maux physiques viennent à troubler la jouissance tranquille et douce de ces biens acquis par la sagesse, qui seuls peuvent faire notre bonheur.

• He Would Be a Boy Again
• The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up
• Childhood Retreats
• The Happiest Time of Life?
• The Prime of Life

For if there is no Gaelic left, will not the islander live in a disappearing landscape, as an Englishman would if his language were slowly to die?....If the islander were to speak English and still inhabit the island which he does in fact inhabit, what would he be then but an unreal person in an unreal place? If he were to wake one morning and look around him and see "hill" and not "cnoc", would he not be an expatriate of his own land? What if an Englishman were to waken one morning and see that "tree" had been transformed to "arbre"? He would have the psychology of the exile who on landing in Nova Scotia were to see a Red Indian and hear his strange language which he would be unable to understand. For we are born inside a language and see everything from within its parameters: it is not we who make language, it is language that makes us.

O how Mr M.'s Latin gown
frothed after him like a boat in water.

Raised on grammar, he flushed from these woods
not pheasants but Aeneas and the rest

dressed in the supine and infinitive
ghosts of words, ghosts of innocence, language
beautiful, tough, persistent.

Caesar and the ablative absolute together
harrying barbarous tribes.
The Roman roads undeviating as
an arrow or a sword.

And the wooden desks cut with knives.
Names of children deep in knotted fields
buried like Roman legions.

These fought their own battles
in the lavatories of weeping stone.
Under the taps, inverted heads
sucked at their cold fountains.

And today the holiday planes
ferry them to Italy
on cheap excursions to effeminate
wine and flowering music.

O that school where we were young,
the order's broken. We visit its old stones,
dishonoured consuls visiting Hades
(green field and ponderous doors)

but there are only ghosts there now.
We clutch your ghostly gown like Orpheus
clutching at Eurydice while Pluto
giggles on iron coins.

Leisure nourishes the body, the mind too feeds upon it, but excessive toil impairs both.

otia corpus alunt, animus quoque pascitur illis:
  inmodicus contra carpit utrumque labor.

You see how inactivity spoils an idle body, how water acquires a taint unless it is in motion.

cernis ut ignavum corrumpant otia corpus,
  ut capiant vitium, ni moveantur, aquae.

"Lord help you! You women are always thinking of men's being in liquor. Why, you do not suppose a man is overset by a bottle? I am sure of this—that if everybody was to drink their bottle a day, there would not be half the disorders in the world there are now. It would be a famous good thing for us all."

"I cannot believe it."

"Oh! Lord, it would be the saving of thousands. There is not the hundredth part of the wine consumed in this kingdom that there ought to be. Our foggy climate wants help."

(6.) It betrays a poverty and narrowness of spirit, in the Dogmatical assertors. There are a set of Pedants that are born to slavery. But the more generous spirit preserves the liberty of his judgement, and will not pen it up in an Opinionative Dungeon; with an equal respect he examines all things, and judgeth as impartially as Rhadamanth: When as the Pedant can hear nothing but in favour of the conceits he is amorous of; and cannot see, but out of the grates of his prison; the determinations of the nobler Mind, are but temporary, and he holds them, but till better evidence repeal his former apprehensions. He won't defile his assent by prostituting it to every conjecture, or stuff his belief, with the luggage of uncertainties. The modesty of his expression renders him infallible; and while he only saith, he Thinks so, he cannot be deceiv'd, or ever assert a falshood. But the wise Monseur Charron hath fully discourst of this Universal liberty, and sav'd me the labour of enlarging. Upon the Review of my former considerations, I cannot quarrel with his Motto: in a sense Je ne scay, is a justifiable Scepticism, and not mis-becoming a Candidate of wisdom. Socrates in the judgement of the Oracle knew more than All men, who in his own knew the least of any.

You really are more eaten with angst than almost anyone I know, and usually — though there are plenty of reasons for this, no doubt — without serious cause; just a mass of basic apprehension seeking to settle upon some appropriate subject for worry. For such a state I take a small valium pill — or half a one — and read articles in some encyclopedia, one by one in alphabetical order, until my sense of reality is restored. This was a treatment recommended to me by Aldous Huxley, and in my case it works beautifully. I hope it will in yours.

(5.) Obstinacy in Opinions holds the Dogmatist in the chains of Error, without hope of emancipation. While we are confident of all things, we are fatally deceiv'd in most. He that assures himself he never erres, will always erre; and his presumptions will render all attempts to inform him, ineffective. We use not to seek further for what we think we are possesst of; and when falshood is without suspicion embrac't in the stead of truth, and with confidence retained: Verity will be rejected as a supposed Error, and irreconcilably be hated, because it opposeth what is truly so.

Thracians were indeed barbarians; they ate butter, which showed they were.

The mention of fats brings us to another of the great dividing lines of cookery. We have noted that one boundary is drawn between the realms of two types of cereal—that of flour and that of rice. Rice is dominant, in general, in Asia and North Africa; flour is dominant in Europe. Within this cereal boundary, Europe (disregarding an Oriental infiltration in the southeastern corner) boasts three main schools of cooking, and this time the boundaries are marked in term of fats. The Continent is divided among the domains of butter, of lard, and of olive oil.

Dvm librata suis haeret radicibus ilex
    Nescia vulturnis cedere, firma manet.
Post vbi crudelem sentit diuisa securem,
    Quò placet oblato, mortua fertur, hero:
Arbor & ipse inuersa vocor: dúmque insitus almae        5
    Assideo Matri, robore vinco cedros.
Nunc sorti pateo, expositus sine matre procellis,
    Lubricus, & superans mobilitate salum,
Tu radix, tu petra mihi firmissima, Mater,
    Ceu Polypus, chelis saxa prehendo tenax:        10
Non tibi nunc soli filum abrupere sorores,
    Dissutus videor funere & ipse tuo.
Vnde vagans passim rectè vocer alter Vlysses,
    Alteráque haec tua mors Ilias esto mihi.

As long as, balanced, the live oak clings with its own roots
    Not knowing how to yield to the southeast winds, it stands firm.
When, later, it's split, it experiences the cruel ax, dead, it's borne
    Away to please the lord for whom it happens to be given:
As for me, I too am called a felled tree: as long as, grafted,
    I sit by my sustaining mother, I best the cedars in strength.
Now I lie open to my lot, exposed to blasts and sheers
    Without my mother, as unsteady and driven as the wide sea.
You, Mother, are the root, the firmest rock to me,
    Like a Polypus, I hold fast to the rocks with my claws:
You are not the only one whose thread the sisters have cut,
    I seem to have been unstitched myself by your death. Whence
Wandering from point to point let me be called another Ulysses,
    And let this, your death, be a second Iliad for me.

Herbert does not ask that his mother's death be another set of "sufferings at Ilium," but another "Iliad," the great poem about those grievous sufferings.

Labels: arboricide

(4.) To be confident in Opinions is ill manners and immodesty; and while we are peremptory in our perswasions, we accuse all of Ignorance and Error, that subscribe not our assertions. The Dogmatist gives the lye to all dissenting apprehenders, and proclaims his judgement fittest, to be the Intellectual Standard. This is that spirit of immorality, that saith unto dissenters, Stand off, I am more Orthodox then thou art: a vanity more capital than Error. And he that affirms that things must needs be as he apprehends them, implies that none can be right till they submit to his opinions, and take him for their director.

To be hopelessly behind the times means nothing more to me than the hopelessness of living until the pendulum swings back, until the whirligig comes round.

I wonder to what extent the country at large is aware of what is happening down in Somerset. Centralization has proceded so far and rapaciously in our time that local affairs rouse little or no interest outside their own boundaries, even (which is rare) when they are known. At any rate, a real hullabaloo is taking place in Somerset, and for this reason. Pursuing its customary methods, the Forestry Commission turned up on the Quantocks and, exactly like a foreign invading army, set about felling the hanging woodlands, so exceptionally fine in oak, which drape the flanks of this little range between Bridgewater and Exmoor. It must be one of the smallest in England. But it makes up for its diminutiveness by a wild prolificacy and fertility that stamps it, together with its delicate contours and bold headlands, as one of the most individual and interesting ranges among the hill-lands of western Europe. The Quantocks also, of course, were the scene of the earliest partnership between Wordsworth and Coleridge, of Dorothy Wordsworth's earliest Journals and it was from their association and the inspiration of the Quantock glens and tops and woodlands that the Lyrical Ballads of 1798 was begotten.

You can imagine with what derision this cultural reminder would be greeted by such a body as the Forest Commission, if indeed it has ever heard of Wordsworth and Coleridge. However, the issue has gone far beyond that of trying to defend places of historical or aesthetic memory in our land from the grasp of the barbarian despoiler. The people of Somerset themselves are up in arms. I have beside me a petition of the Whortleberry Pickers, who, "accustomed to pick and sell whortleberries as a regular part of our livelihood, protest against the attack on their hills, which "cannot fail to bring serious harm, and possibly ruin, to the 'worts' industry". I have another petition from the residents of Holford and District, who protest against the destruction of Hodders Combe. "This will destroy the whortleberries, prevent grazing, and the present wild animals, birds and flowers will vanish. Camping, rambling and walking will go." I think of Hodders Combe as I knew it only two years ago, its deer, its pied flycatchers, its sun-drenched glades, its senatorial oaks and beeches, their branches full of bright wings and voices. I have by me yet another petition with a list of signatories which includes the Bishop of Bath and Wells. To crown all, the Somerset County Council has submitted to the Ministry a Tree Preservation Order and through its efforts the devastation has been halted for a couple of months. But 2,000 acres have already been sacrificed to the conifer. The eroded wilderness will step into the place of the wild garden, like Macbeth into the royal seat of Duncan.

One of the most astonishing features of England's war against her own country is the reason given for waging it. Shortage of timber! When Nero butchered his mother and set Rome on fire, he was presumably acting on behalf of the Mothers' Union and the Preservation of Ancient Buildings. If a visitor to the Quantocks, ignorant of their fate, should suddenly come upon what he expected to be a woodland walk and actually was a hillside strewn with trunks like a battlefield, bulldozers tearing up the green paths and new roads in the making, what would be his reaction to the information that it was all because of the shortage of timber? I imagine that he would not "stay upon the order of his going but go at once". There is a passage in Shakespeare's Anthony and Cleopatra—"when we in our viciousness grow hard, the wise gods seal our eyes". Yes, we commit these atrocities against our own country, we lay waste our heritage, we act like baboons let loose in a garden, because understanding has left us. We act like beasts of prey, because the godlike reason has deserted us.

Labels: arboricide

(3.) Dogmatizing is the great disturber both of our selves and the world without us: for while we wed an opinion, we resolvedly engage against every one that opposeth it. Thus every man, being in some of his opinionative apprehensions singular, must be at variance with all men. Now every opposition of our espous'd opinions furrows the sea within us, and discomposeth the minds serenity. And what happiness is there in a storm of passions? On this account the Skepticks affected an indifferent aequipondious neutrality as the only means to their Ataraxia, and freedom from passionate disturbances. Nor were they altogether mistaken in the way, to their design'd felicity, but came short on't, by going beyond it: for if there be a repose naturally attainable this side the Stars, there is no way we can more hopefully seek it in. We can never be at rest, while our quiet can be taken from us by every thwarting our opinions: nor is that content an happiness, which every one can rob us of. There is no felicity, but in a fixed stability. Nor can genuine constancy be built upon rowling foundations. 'Tis true staidness of mind, to look with an equal regard on all things; and this unmoved apathy in opinionative uncertainties, is a warrantable piece of Stoicism. Besides, this immodest obstinacy in opinions, hath made the world a Babel; and given birth to disorders, like those of the Chaos. The primitive fight of Elements doth fitly embleme that of Opinions, and those proverbial contrarieties may be reconcil'd, as soon as peremptory contenders. That hence grow Schisms, Heresies, and anomalies beyond Arithmetick, I could wish were more difficult to be proved. 'Twere happy for a distemper'd Church, if evidence were not so near us. 'Tis zeal for opinions that hath filled our Hemisphear with smoke and darkness, and by a dear experience we know the fury of those flames it hath kindled. 'Tis lamentable that homo homini Daemon, should be a Proverb among the Professors of the Cross; and yet I fear it is as verifiable among them, as of those without the pale of visible Christianity. I doubt we have lost S. John's sign of regeneration: By this we know that we are past from death to life, that we love one another, is I fear, to few a sign of their spiritual resurrection. If our Returning Lord, shall scarce find faith on earth, where will he look for Charity? It is a stranger this side the Region of love, and blessedness; bitter zeal for opinions hath consum'd it. Mutual agreement and indearments was the badge of Primitive Believers, but we may be known by the contrary criterion. The union of a Sect within it self, is a pitiful charity: it's no concord of Christians, but a conspiracy against Christ; and they that love one another, for their opinionative concurrencies, love for their own sakes, not their Lords: not because they have his image, but because they bear one anothers. What a stir is there for Mint, Anise, and Cummin controversies, while the great practical fundamentals are unstudyed, unobserved? What eagerness in the prosecution of disciplinarian uncertainties, when the love of God and our neighbour, those Evangelical unquestionables, are neglected? 'Tis this hath consum'd the nutriment of the great and more necessary Verities, and bred differences that are past any accommodation, but that of the last dayes decisions. The sight of that day will resolve us, and make us asham'd of our petty quarrels.

Thus Opinions have rent the world asunder, and divided it almost into indivisibles. Had Heraclitus liv'd now, he had wept himself into marble, and Democritus would have broke his spleen. Who can speak of such fooleries without a Satyr, to see aged Infants so quarrel at putpin, and the doating world grown child again? How fond are men of a bundle of opinions, which are no better than a bagge of Cherry-stones? How do they scramble for their Nuts, and Apples, and how zealous for their petty Victories? Methinks those grave contenders about opinionative trifles, look like aged Socrates upon his boyes Hobby-horse, or like something more ludicrous: since they make things their seria, which are scarce tolerable in their sportful intervals.

With stedfast eye and carefull care,
  remember every word
Thy Schoole master shall speake to thee,
  as memory shall afford.

Let not thy browse be backward drawn,
  it is a signe of pride,
Exalt them not, it shewes a hart
  most arrogant beside.

Nor let thine eyes be gloting downe,
  cast with a hanging looke:
For that to dreamers doth belong,
  that goodnesse cannot brooke.

Let forehead joyfull be and full,
  it shewes a merry part,
And cheerefulnesse in countenance,
  and pleasantnesse of heart.

Nor wrinckled let thy countenance be,
  still going to and fro:
For that belongs to hedge-hogs right,
  they wallow even so.

Nor imitate with Socrates,
  to wipe thy snivelled nose
Upon thy cap, as he would doe,
  nor yet upon thy clothes.

But keepe it cleane with handkerchiffe,
  provided for the same,
Not with thy fingers or the sleeve,
  therein thou art to blame.

Blow not alowd as thou shalt stand,
  for that is most absurd,
Just like a broken winded horse,
  it is to be abhord.

Nor practize snufflingly to speake,
  for that doth imitate
The brutish Storke and Elephant,
  yea and the wralling cat.

If thou of force doe chance to neeze,
  then backewards turne away
From presence of the company,
  wherein thou art to stay.

Thy cheekes with shamefac't modesty,
  dipt in Dame Natures die,
Not counterfet, nor puffed out,
  observe it carefully.

Keepe close thy mouth, for why, thy breath
  may hap to give offence,
And other worse may be repayd
  for further recompence.

Nor put thy lips out like a foole
  as thou wouldst kisse a horse,
When thou before thy betters art,
  and what is ten times worse.

To gape in such unseemely sort,
  with ugly gaping mouth,
Is like an image pictured,
  a blowing from the south.

Which to avoyd, then turne about,
  and with a napkin hide
That gaping foule deformity,
  when thou art so aside.

To laugh at all things thou shalt heare,
  is neither good nor fit,
It shewes the property and forme
  of one with little wit.

To bite the lip it seemeth base,
  for why, to lay it open,
Most base dissembling doggednesse,
  most sure it doth betoken.

And so to bite the upper lip
  doth most uncomely shew,
The lips set close (as like to kisse)
  in manner seeme not so.

To put the tongue out wantonly,
  and draw it in agen,
Betokens mocking of thy selfe,
  in all the eyes of men.

If spitting chance to move the so
  thou canst it not forbeare,
Remember do it modestly,
  consider who is there.

If filthinesse, or ordure thou
  upon the floore doe cast,
Tread out, and cleanse it with thy foot,
  let that be done with haste.

If in thy tale thou hammering stand,
  or coughing twixt thy words,
It doth betoken a liers smell,
  that's all that it affords.

To belch or bulch like Clitipho,
  whom Terence setteth forth,
Commendeth manners to be base,
  most foule and nothing worth.

If thou to Vomit be constrain'd,
  avoyd from company:
So shall it better be excus'd,
  if not through gluttony.

Keep white thy teeth, & wash thy mouth
  with water pure and cleane,
And in that washing, mannerly
  observe and keep a meane.

Thy head let that be kembd and trimd,
  let not thy haire be long,
It is unseemely to the eye,
  rebuked by the tongue.

And be not like a slothfull wight,
  delighted to hang downe
The head, and lift the shoulders up,
  nor with thy browes to frowne.

To carry up the body faire,
  is decent, and doth shew
A comely grace in any one,
  where ever he doth goe.

To hang the head on any side,
  doth shew hypocrisie:
And who shall use it trust him not,
  he deales with policie.

Let not thy privy members be
  layd open to be view'd,
It is most shamefull and abhord,
  detestable and rude.

Retaine not urine nor the winde,
  which doth thy body vex,
So it be done with secresie,
  let that not thee perplex.

And in thy sitting use a meane,
  as may become thee well,
Not straddling, no nor tottering,
  and dangling like a bell.

(2.) Confidence in Opinions evermore dwells with untamed passions, and is maintained upon the depraved obstinacy of an ungovern'd spirit. He's but a novice in the Art of Autocrasy, that cannot castigate his passions in reference to those presumptions, and will come as far short of wisdom as science: for the Judgement being the leading power, and director of action, if It be swaied by the over-bearings of passion, and stor'd with lubricous opinions in stead of clearly conceived truths, and be peremptorily resolved in them, the practice will be as irregular, as the conceptions erroneous. Opinions hold the stirrup, while vice mount into the saddle.

The poet Mourid Barghouti's I Saw Ramallah (2004) was an acclaimed account of his return to his Palestinian home for the first time in thirty years. He has followed it with I Was Born There, I Was Born Here. We read of how he introduces his Cairo-born son Tamim to his Palestinian family, of coffee-drinking rituals and difficult taxi journeys across the Occupied Territories. He discusses the importance of olives to Palestinians: "Everywhere you look, huge olive trees, uprooted and thrown over under the open sky. I think: these trees have been murdered, and this plain is their open collective grave....The olive in Palestine is not just agricultural property. It is people’s dignity...". The translation by the prolific Humphrey Davies (216pp. Bloomsbury. £14.99. 978 1 4088 1558 8) is commended.

Labels: arboricide

I expect but little success of all this upon the Dogmatist; his opinion'd assurance is paramount to Argument, and 'tis almost as easy to reason him out of a Feaver, as out of this disease of the mind. I hope for better fruit from the more generous Vertuosi, to such I appeal against Dogmatizing, in the following considerations. That's well spent upon impartial ingenuity, which is lost upon resolved prejudice.

(1.) Opinionative confidence is the effect of Ignorance, and were the Sciolist perswaded so, I might spare my further reasons against it: 'tis affectation of knowledge, that makes him confident he hath it; and his confidence is counter evidence to his pretensions to knowledge. He is the greatest ignorant, that knows not that he is so: for 'tis a good degree of Science, to be sensible that we want it. He that knows most of himself, knows least of his knowledge, and the exercised understanding is conscious of its disability. Now he that is so, will not lean too assuredly on that, which hath so frequently deceived him, nor build the Castle of his intellectual security, in the Air of Opinions. But for the shallow passive intellects, that were never engag'd in a thorough search of verity, 'tis such are the confidents that engage their irrepealable assents to every slight appearance. Thus meer sensible conceivers make every thing they hold a Sacrament, and the silly vulgar are sure of all things. There was no Theoreme in the Mathematicks more certain to Archimedes, than the Earth's immovable quiescence seems to the multitude: nor than did the impossibility of Antipodes, to antique ages. And if great Philosophers doubt of many things, which popular dijudicants hold as certain as their Creeds, I suppose Ignorance it self will not say, it is because they are more ignorant. Superficial pedants will swear their controversal uncertainties, while wiser heads stand in bivio. Opinions are the Rattles of immature intellects, but the advanced Reasons have outgrown them. True knowledge is modest and wary; 'tis ignorance that is so bold, and presuming. Thus those that never travail'd beyond one Horizon, will not be perswaded that the world hath any Countrey better than their own: while they that have had a view of other Regions, are not so confidently perswaded of the precedency of that they were bred in, but speak more indifferently of the laws, manners, commodities, and customs of their native soil: So they that never peep't beyond the common belief in which their easie understandings were at first indoctrinated, are strongly assured of the Truth, and comparative excellency of their receptions while the larger Souls, that have travelled the divers Climates of Opinions, are more cautious in their resolves, and more sparing to determine. And let the most confirm'd Dogmatist profound far into his indeared opinions, and I'le warrant him 'twill be an effectual cure of confidence.

No dogma taught by the present civilization seems to form so insuperable an obstacle in the way of a right understanding of the relations which culture sustains to wildness, as that which declares that the world was made especially for the uses of men. Every animal, plant, and crystal controverts it in the plainest terms. Yet it is taught from century to century as something ever new and precious, and in the resulting darkness the enormous conceit is allowed to go unchallenged.

Gustave Lanson (1857-1934) is credited with coining the first three laws of philology: 'Read what the text says, the whole of what it says and nothing but what it says.' However, the fourth, fifth, and sixth laws were contributed by Alan: 'Believe what it says on the frontispiece and not the cover: the author usually sees proofs of the first but not the second', 'Always, I repeat, always check the accuracy of citations rather than relying on the accuracy of someone else', and the closely related, 'Bibliographical accuracy is an obligation, not an option'.

In my interest in Latin and my admittedly mediocre progress in that sphere there lay an element I might call personal. In the apartment building across the road from us there lived a young person, whose full shape, auburn hair, and dimples stirred my senses and gave me vertigo. She was the daughter of a Latin professor—not from our gymnasium, it is true, but known to us as the author of the book of adapted texts over which we labored; he also published articles in the monthly Philomat, to which Grzesio obliged us to subscribe through him. I used to sit on the balcony with my Auerbach & Dąbrowski Latin grammar and pretend that reading this exceptionally dull tome put me in ecstasy.

It was in fact an act of despair. If the object of my passionate feelings appeared on the balcony, it was not for my sake. She sometimes brushed me with a distracted look, as one glances at clouds moving across the sky. She was waiting for an older colleague of mine from the lyceum, a tall youth with a wavy blond crop, undeniably handsome (he was the standard-bearer of our school and wearing a sash and white gloves at celebrations he really did present well)—but I knew he could never make her happy. Every day around five in the afternoon she would leave the house with my mortal enemy and disappear around the corner into a little street shaded by chestnut trees, where (my feverish imagination told me) terrible things happened: he would take her arm (against the severest injunctions of the middle school rules) and perhaps press a fiery kiss on her silken glove. A storm of contradictory feelings in my tormented heart:

Odi et amo. Quare id faciam, fortasse requiris.
Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.

What did I think to achieve, holding my Auerbach & Dąbrowski Latin grammar on the balcony so that its cover would be visible from afar? I thought that one day her father—the classical philologist—would notice me and shout across to me: "I have been observing you for a while now, my boy. Your modesty and industry, your love for the Roman tongue are a warranty that you are a proper candidate for my daughter's husband. I therefore grant you her hand." And from then on things would proceed as in a fairy tale.

They didn't. On the other hand, I learned many examples of the use of the more complicated grammatical forms by heart and was able to shine in class, even winning a cordial look from Grzesio.

We labored in the sweat of our brows. The time to reap drew near: the next year we were to proceed to the poetry of Catullus and Horace. But then the barbarians invaded.

I wish I had been the protagonist in a similar clash between lecturer and student in which the student was less complaisant. He was a graduate of several generations before me but a friend of mine, C.B. Phipps, who held the record number of degrees in College, six in all: B.A., B.Litt., M.A., B.D., H.Dip.Ed., Ph.D., LL.D. As a divinity student he attended classes in biblical Greek in which he knew more Greek than the lecturer. One day the lecturer asked him to parse an irregular verb and then told him, with some glee, that he was wrong. Phipps argued back. Finally the lecturer told him, 'Very well, then, Phipps. You may have heard of a lexicon edited by two scholars called Liddell & Scott. Go to the College Library and check the answer for yourself.' Phipps, certain of his facts, went joyously out of the class and timed his return for the last few minutes of the lecture. He came in with a sad expression. 'Well, what have you discovered by your lengthy researches, Phipps?' 'Liddell & Scott must be wrong, sir.' 'Come now, Phipps, don't try to argue against such an authority.' 'But they agree with me, sir.' It's a story that I have always tried to keep in mind when tempted to assume infallibility in my teaching.

One other clergyman also helped to put me on the path to scholarship. When we were living in Dundrum, the Rector of a neighbouring parish, Canon St. John Drelincourt Seymour, later Archdeacon of Cashel, was a scholar of distinction in Hiberno-Norman history. (He was also an expert on ghosts and demonology as witnessed by his True Irish Ghost Stories and Irish Witchcraft and Demonology.) A quiet, rather frail looking man, with a drooping Edwardian moustache, he would sometimes come out of his study to watch his sons and me playing tennis on their desperately uneven court. He said little to us, and I remember nothing of it. His study is what I remember, book-lined from floor to ceiling and slightly aromatic with the smell of a mild, scholastic pipe tobacco. As I went through it to the dining room in eager expectancy of Mrs Seymour's delicious cakes — she was a Stritch from an old Dublin family with a fine house in North Great George's Street — I would see him reading or writing in contented tranquillity amid the domestic noises round him, the very image of that rare but estimable character, the Parson Scholar with a minuscule congregation and a majuscule library and an international reputation. It seemed a very desirable way of life even to a boy of sixteen.

Did you ever hear of Catherinot? No! Well Catherinot was a French antiquary of the seventeenth century; a very learned one, if learning means to have read many books without understanding. Catherinot printed, whether at his own cost or another's I can't say, a vast number of dissertations on matters of antiquity. David Clément, the curious bibliographer, has collected the titles of one hundred and eighty-two of those dissertations, and adds there were more of them which he had not been able to find. Nobody wanted these dissertations of Catherinot. He wrote them and printed them for his own gratification. As the public would not take his paperasses, as Valesius called them, he had recourse to a device to force a circulation for them. There was then no penny post, so he could not, like Herman Heinfetter, post his lucubrations to all likely addresses, but he used to go round the quais in Paris, where the old bookstalls are, and, while pretending to be looking over the books, slip some of his dissertations between the volumes of the boutiquier. In this way the one hundred and eighty-two or more have come down to us. Catherinot is a bye-word, the typical case of scribbleomania, — of the insanabile scribendi cacoethes — but the malady is not unknown to our time, and accounts for some of our many reams of print.

• Jean-Pierre Niceron, Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire des hommes illustres dans la république des lettres, tome XXX (Paris: Briasson, 1734), pp. 191-217
• David Clément, Bibliothèque curieuse historique et critique ou Catalogue raisonné de livres dificiles à trouver, tome VI (Leipsic: Jean Fred. Gleditsch, 1756), pp. 429-449
• Édouard Laboulaye, "Les axiomes du droit français par le sieur Catherinot," Nouvelle revue historique de droit français et étranger 7 (1883) 41-72 (pp. 41-47 = "Nicolas Catherinot. Sa vie et ses écrits")
• Jacques Flach, "Bibliographie raisonnée des écrits de Nicolas Catherinot," Nouvelle revue historique de droit français et étranger 7 (1883) 73-98
• Gilles Bodin, "Nicolas Catherinot (1628-1688) un berrichon polygraphe convoité des bibliophiles," Cahiers d’Archéologie et d’Histoire du Berry 175 (Sept. 2008) 7-30 (non vidi)
• "Les ouvrages de Nicolas Catherinot, 'parvenus à l’honneur de la reliure' malgré Ménage," Le Blog du Bibliophile, des Bibliophiles, de la Bibliophilie et des Livres Anciens (November 19, 2012)

AUCTOR AD PUBLIUM ET AULUM.

Edo breves libros; vitio mihi vertitis; atqui
    Tu nullos Publi, tu facis, Aule, malos.
Edo breves libros; quia desunt otia; magnos
    Edam aut majores, otia cum fuerint.
Edo breves libros; nobis studiosus Apollo
    Perspicua melius nil brevitate dedit.
Edo breves libros; brevis est insania nostra,
    Et quo fit brevior, fit minus illa mala.
Edo breves libros; quia passim gaudeo ferri,
    Gaudeo tractari, gaudeo saepe teri.
Edo breves libros; tot parvos junge libellos,
    Et tibi non unum grande volumen habes.
Edo breves libros; tales fecisse videntur
    Hippocrates magnus, magnus Aristoteles.
Edo breves libros; quia qualia qualia nempe
    Impensis nostris edimus haec brevia.
Edo breves libros; quia magnus dicitur esse,
    Et vere magnum dicitur esse malum.
Edo breves libros, odio est mihi maxima fama;
    Aut minus, aut minimum cognitus esse volo.

You never need think you can turn over any old falsehood without a terrible squirming and scattering of the horrid little population that dwells under it.

[I]t is a great thing to breathe the same pellucid air with Vergil, to feel Horace playing about the heart-strings, to hear the music of the voiceful sea from which the Iliad and the Odyssey have risen.

omne vafer vitium ridenti Flaccus amico
tangit et admissus circum praecordia ludit.

O! It is pleasant, with a heart at ease,
  Just after sunset, or by moonlight skies,
To make the shifting clouds be what you please,
  Or let the easily persuaded eyes
Own each quaint likeness issuing from the mould
  Of a friend's fancy; or with head bent low
And cheek aslant see rivers flow of gold
'Twixt crimson banks; and then, a traveller, go
From mount to mount through CLOUDLAND, gorgeous land!
  Or list'ning to the tide, with closed sight,
Be that blind bard, who on the Chian strand
  By those deep sounds possessed with inward light
Beheld the ILIAD and the ODYSSEE
  Rise to the swelling of the voiceful sea.

There is a false theory, forever cropping up in the world, that work, busyness, business, means progress.

No opinion should be held with fervour. No one holds with fervour that seven times eight is fifty-six, because it can be known that this is the case. Fervour is only necessary in commending an opinion which is doubtful or demonstrably false.

'I have a place here vacant, if you are qualified for it. I will take you on trial. What can you do? Do you know anything besides that useless trash of college learning—Greek, Latin, and so forth?'

For my own part I reckon being ill as one of the great pleasures of life, provided one is not too ill and is not obliged to work till one is better. I remember being ill once in a foreign hotel myself and how much I enjoyed it. To lie there careless of everything, quiet and warm, and with no weight upon the mind, to hear the clinking of the plates in the far-off kitchen as the scullion rinsed them and put them by; to watch the soft shadows come and go upon the ceiling as the sun came out or went behind a cloud; to listen to the pleasant murmuring of the fountain in the court below, and the shaking of the bells on the horses' collars and the clink of their hoofs upon the ground as the flies plagued them; not only to be a lotus-eater but to know that it was one's duty to be a lotus-eater. "Oh," I thought to myself, "if I could only now, having so forgotten care, drop off to sleep for ever, would not this be a better piece of fortune than any I can ever hope for?"

After I have had something to drink and my ears are beginning to burn, I gaze up at the sky and, thumping on a crock to keep time, I give a great "ya-a!" and sing this song:

I sowed the southern hill
But I could not keep back the weeds.
I planted an acre of beans
But they fell off the vine, leaving empty stems.
Man's life should be spent in joy.
Why wait in vain for wealth and honor?

At such times I flap my robes in delight, waves my sleeves up and down, stamp my feet, and dance about. Indeed it is a wild and unconventional way to behave, and yet I cannot say that I see anything wrong with it.

[C]ompared with Herodotus, Thucydides' book is tendentious in matter, parochial in scope, and difficult to read from the violences it does to the beautiful and perspicuous Greek language.

What is a forest but a city of nature's own, full of hardy and innocuous living things, where there is nothing dead and nothing made with the hands, but the citizens themselves are the houses and public monuments? There is nothing so much alive, and yet so quiet, as a woodland; and a pair of people, swinging past in canoes, feel very small and bustling by comparison.

And surely of all smells in the world, the smell of many trees is the sweetest and most fortifying. The sea has a rude, pistolling sort of odour, that takes you in the nostrils like snuff, and carries with it a fine sentiment of open water and tall ships; but the smell of a forest, which comes nearest to this in tonic quality, surpasses it by many degrees in the quality of softness. Again, the smell of the sea has little variety, but the smell of a forest is infinitely changeful; it varies with the hour of the day, not in strength merely, but in character; and the different sorts of trees, as you go from one zone of the wood to another, seem to live among different kinds of atmosphere. Usually the resin of the fir predominates. But some woods are more coquettish in their habits; and the breath of the forest of Mormal, as it came aboard upon us that showery afternoon, was perfumed with nothing less delicate than sweetbriar.

I wish our way had always lain among woods. Trees are the most civil society. An old oak that has been growing where he stands since before the Reformation, taller than many spires, more stately than the greater part of mountains, and yet a living thing, liable to sicknesses and death, like you and me: is not that in itself a speaking lesson in history? But acres on acres full of such patriarchs contiguously rooted, their green tops billowing in the wind, their stalwart younglings pushing up about their knees: a whole forest, healthy and beautiful, giving colour to the light, giving perfume to the air: what is this but the most imposing piece in nature's repertory? Heine wished to lie like Merlin under the oaks of Broceliande. I should not be satisfied with one tree; but if the wood grew together like a banyan grove, I would be buried under the tap-root of the whole; my parts should circulate from oak to oak; and my consciousness should be diffused abroad in all the forest, and give a common heart to that assembly of green spires, so that it also might rejoice in its own loveliness and dignity. I think I feel a thousand squirrels leaping from bough to bough in my vast mausoleum; and the birds and the winds merrily coursing over its uneven, leafy surface.

I suppose none of us recognise the great part that is played in life by eating and drinking. The appetite is so imperious that we can stomach the least interesting viands, and pass off a dinner hour thankfully enough on bread and water; just as there are men who must read something, if it were only Bradshaw's Guide. But there is a romance about the matter after all. Probably the table has more devotees than love; and I am sure that food is much more generally entertaining than scenery. Do you give in, as Walt Whitman would say, that you are any the less immortal for that? The true materialism is to be ashamed of what we are. To detect the flavour of an olive is no less a piece of human perfection than to find beauty in the colours of the sunset.