Laudator Temporis Acti

[M]y advice to you is—read only such books as have long been sealed with the universal approval of the public and whose reputation is established. They are few: but you will gain much more from reading those few than from all the feeble little works with which we are inundated.

[J]e vous invite à ne lire que les ouvrages qui sont depuis longtemps en possession des suffrages du public, et dont la réputation n'est point équivoque. Il y en a peu, mais on profite bien davantage en les lisant, qu'avec tous les mauvais petits livres dont nous sommes inondés.

I have not read any of the books of which you tell me, my dear philosopher: I keep to old works, which teach me something: from the new I learn very little.

Je n'ai lu aucun des livres dont vous me parlez, mon cher philosophe; je m'en tiens aux anciens ouvrages qui m'instruisent; les modernes m'apprennent peu de chose.

His father was described to me, by Coleridge himself, as a sort of Parson Adams, being distinguished by his erudition, his inexperience of the world, and his guileless simplicity. I once purchased in London, and, I suppose, still possess, two elementary books on the Latin language by this reverend gentleman; one of them, as I found, making somewhat higher pretensions than a common school grammar. In particular, an attempt is made to reform the theory of the cases; and it gives a pleasant specimen of the rustic scholar's naiveté, that he seriously proposes to banish such vexatious terms as the accusative; and, by way of simplifying the matter to tender minds, that we should call it, in all time to come, the 'quale-quare-quidditive' case, upon what incomprehensible principle I never could fathom. He used regularly to delight his village flock, on Sundays, with Hebrew quotations in his sermons, which he always introduced as the 'immediate language of the Holy Ghost.' This proved unfortunate to his successor; he also was a learned man, and his parishioners admitted it, but generally with a sigh for past times, and a sorrowful complaint that he was still far below Parson Coleridge—for that he never gave them any 'immediate language of the Holy Ghost.'

And now I wander in the woods
When summer gluts the golden bees,
Or in autumnal solitudes
Arise the leopard-coloured trees;
Or when along the wintry strands
The cormorants shiver on their rocks;
I wander on, and wave my hands,
And sing, and shake my heavy locks.
The gray wolf knows me; by one ear
I lead along the woodland deer;
The hares run by me growing bold.
They will not hush, the leaves a-flutter round me, the beech leaves old.

Then I object to the present arrangement. It ought to be a matter of turn, with the oldest man first, and after him the next oldest, without the slightest change in the order. Your Methuselah shouldn't live on, when he has no more than three teeth still left, and is scarcely able to see, supported by four servants, with his nose always running and his eyes bleary, past knowing any of the pleasures of life, a living tomb laughed at by the young men. He shouldn't live, while handsome lusty young men die. That's as unnatural as "rivers running backwards".

Οὐκοῦν ταύτης αἰτιῶμαι τῆς διατάξεως· ἐχρῆν γὰρ τὸ πρᾶγμα ἑξῆς πως γίνεσθαι, τὸν πρεσβύτερον πρότερον καὶ μετὰ τοῦτον ὅστις καὶ τῇ ἡλικίᾳ μετ΄ αὐτόν, ἀναστρέφεσθαι δὲ μηδαμῶς, μηδὲ ζῆν μὲν τὸν ὑπέργηρων ὀδόντας τρεῖς ἔτι λοιποὺς ἔχοντα, μόγις ὁρῶντα, οἰκέταις γε τέτταρσιν ἐπικεκυφότα, κορύζης μὲν τὴν ῥῖνα, λήμης δὲ τοὺς ὀφθαλμοὺς μεστὸν ὄντα, οὐδὲν ἔτι ἡδὺ εἰδότα, ἔμψυχόν τινα τάφον ὑπὸ τῶν νέων καταγελώμενον, ἀποθνήσκειν δὲ καλλίστους καὶ ἐρρωμενεστάτους νεανίσκους· ἄνω γὰρ ποταμῶν τοῦτό γε.

Then old age creeps upon you unawares, into which flows everything in nature that is mortal and life-threatening. And unless you repay your life quickly, like a debt, nature stands by like a money-lender, taking security, sight from one man, hearing from another, and often both. And if you survive that, you'll be paralyzed, mutilated, and crippled. Some people are physically in their prime in great old age—and their old minds enter a second childhood.

εἶτα λαθὸν ὑπῆλθεν τὸ γῆρας, εἰς ὃ πᾶν συρρεῖ τὸ τῆς φύσεως ἐπίκηρον καὶ δυσαλθές. κἂν μή τις θᾶττον ὡς χρέος ἀποδιδῷ τὸ ζῆν, ὡς ὀβολοστάτις ἡ φύσις ἐπιστᾶσα ἐνεχυράζει τοῦ μὲν ὄψιν, τοῦ δὲ ἀκοήν, πολλάκις δὲ ἄμφω. κἂν ἐπιμείνῃ τις, παρέλυσεν, ἐλωβήσατο, παρήρθρωσεν. ἄλλοι πολυγήρως ἀκμάζουσιν, καὶ τῷ νῷ δὶς παῖδες οἱ γέροντες γίγνονται.

Our goal is not to make the learner rattle off λύω, -εις, -ει or translate speeches by Gladstone or Jefferson into Demosthenian idiom; nor would his effort be sufficiently rewarded if, in the end, he were able, now and then, to take his eyes off the right-hand page of his Loeb and to ascertain that, here and there, the left contains an exotic equivalent of what he is reading (I apologize for mentioning, as among friends and under my breath, a serial publication the very existence of which no scholar would care publicly to admit; I had to mention it here because its subcutaneous impact, like that of other vices, may well be as widespread and pernicious as it is clandestine).

Our learner, then, is entitled to expect that our teaching will bring him to the point where the Greek speaks to him with its own voice; we shall have failed if we have not so attuned him that the Greek Homer, Euripides, Plato and the New Testament will convey to him what no translation could convey (and this, I hold, can only be done by using exclusively original Greek); he is entitled, moreover, to expect our teaching to be efficient and, in itself, to constitute an experience worth his time and effort.

Learning Greek is difficult; far more difficult than we, who are living with it, can easily realize. The beginner is faced with a new script; with words of unfamiliar sound; with an overwhelming variety of forms and their uses. It is one thing to hear and read about all this; it is quite another thing to make it really your own.

If it had been some other who ordered me, one of the mortals,
one of those who are soothsayers, or priests, or diviners,
I might have called it a lie and we might rather have rejected it.
But now, for I myself heard the god and looked straight upon her,
I am going, and this word shall not be in vain.

εἰ μὲν γάρ τίς μ᾽ ἄλλος ἐπιχθονίων ἐκέλευεν,
ἢ οἳ μάντιές εἰσι θυοσκόοι ἢ ἱερῆες,
ψεῦδός κεν φαῖμεν καὶ νοσφιζοίμεθα μᾶλλον·
νῦν δ᾽, αὐτὸς γὰρ ἄκουσα θεοῦ καὶ ἐσέδρακον ἄντην,
εἶμι, καὶ οὐχ ἅλιον ἔπος ἔσσεται.

He had no patience with incompetence or pretension and was often victim of his own integrity. Epigraphy was clean and straightforward. One could control all the evidence available, read all the secondary literature, and make an irrefutable conclusion that carried knowledge forward. It did not allow fraud.

The other side was his detestation of literary criticism, which he considered the pursuit of incompetents who in the end did little more than impose personal prejudices under the guise of scholarship. His contempt for his literary colleagues was undisguised and requited.

As regards our debate, you hold to your opinions and I shall hold to the opposite.

                          τῶν μὲν ἠγωνισμένων
σοὶ μὲν δοκείτω ταῦτ᾽, ἐμοὶ δὲ τἀντία.

There are two of the inscriptions at Delphi which are most indispensable to living. They are: "Know thyself" and "Avoid extremes," for on these two commandments hang all the rest.

δύ᾽ ἐστὶ τῶν Δελφικῶν γραμμάτων τὰ μάλιστ᾽ ἀναγκαιότατα πρὸς τὸν βίον, τὸ "γνῶθι σαυτὸν" καὶ τὸ "μηδὲν ἄγαν"· ἐκ τούτων γὰρ ἤρτηται καὶ τἄλλα πάντα.

Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

καὶ ἐπηρώτησεν εἷς ἐξ αὐτῶν [νομικὸς] πειράζων αὐτόν, Διδάσκαλε, ποία ἐντολὴ μεγάλη ἐν τῷ νόμῳ; ὁ δὲ ἔφη αὐτῷ "Ἀγαπήσεις Κύριον τὸν θεόν σου ἐν ὅλῃ καρδίᾳ σου καὶ ἐν ὅλῃ τῇ ψυχῇ σου καὶ ἐν ὅλῃ τῇ διανοίᾳ σου"· αὕτη ἐστὶν ἡ μεγάλη καὶ πρώτη ἐντολή. δευτέρα ὁμοία αὐτῇ, "Ἀγαπήσεις τὸν πλησίον σου ὡς σεαυτόν." ἐν ταύταις ταῖς δυσὶν ἐντολαῖς ὅλος ὁ νόμος κρέμαται καὶ οἱ προφῆται.

There is no ill that men should not expect;
in a short space of time God
reshuffles everything.

οὐκ ἔστιν κακὸν
ἀνεπιδόκητον ἀνθρώποις· ὀλίγῳ δὲ χρόνῳ
πάντα μεταρρίπτει θεός.

Heaven overturns all things.

ὁ γὰρ θεὸς πάντ᾽ ἀναστρέφει πάλιν.

A remark for philologists.—That some books are so valuable and so royal that whole generations of scholars are well employed if their labors to preserve these books in a state that is pure and intelligible—philology exists in order to fortify this faith again and again. It presupposes that there is no lack of those rare human beings (even if one does not see them) who really know how to use such valuable books—presumably those who write, or could write, books of the same type. I mean that philology presupposes a noble faith—that for the sake of a very few human beings, who always "will come" but are never there, a very large amount of fastidious and even dirty work needs to be done first: all of it is work in usum Delphinorum.

Ein Wort für die Philologen.—Dass es Bücher giebt, so werthvolle und königliche, dass ganze Gelehrten-Geschlechter gut verwendet sind, wenn durch ihre Mühe diese Bücher rein erhalten und verständlich erhalten werden,—diesen Glauben immer wieder zu befestigen ist die Philologie da. Sie setzt voraus, dass es an jenen seltenen Menschen nicht fehlt (wenn man sie gleich nicht sieht), die so werthvolle Bücher wirklich zu benutzen wissen:—es werden wohl die sein, welche selber solche Bücher machen oder machen könnten. Ich wollte sagen, die Philologie setzt einen vornehmen Glauben voraus,—dass zu Gunsten einiger Weniger, die immer "kommen werden" und nicht da sind, eine sehr grosse Menge von peinlicher, selbst unsauberer Arbeit voraus abzuthun sei: es ist Alles Arbeit in usum Delphinorum.

I explained to my classes that learning vocabulary is often a process of looking up the same word over and over until one remembers it out of sheer irritation. I used to tell of my own frequent frustration in looking up a strange word occurring in the text, finding it in the dictionary or vocabulary, then turning back to the text only to discover that I had already forgotten the meaning. This revelation of preceptorial weakness always brought bright smiles of response from the class.

It is an interesting comment upon American education and what ails it that I should never have been allowed a full-time contract to teach in the public schools of Massachusetts even with my Harvard doctorate and over 40 years of classroom experience, but should have had to yield precedence to someone just out of college with the statutory hours in EDUCATION.

He then joked upon the difficulty of reading, and the presumption of many people, who, without any previous study and preparatory knowledge, would at once read every philosophical and scientific work, as if it were nothing but a romance.

"The good people," continued he, "know not what time and trouble it costs to learn to read. I have been employed for eighteen years on it, and cannot say that I have reached the goal yet."

Er scherzte darauf über die Schwierigkeit des Lesens und den Dünkel vieler Leute, die ohne alle Vorstudien und vorbereitende Kenntnisse sogleich jedes philosophische und wissenschaftliche Werk lesen möchten, als wenn es eben nichts weiter als ein Roman wäre.

"Die guten Leutchen," fuhr er fort, "wissen nicht, was es einem für Zeit und Mühe gekostet, um lesen zu lernen. Ich habe achtzig Jahre dazu gebraucht und kann noch jetzt nicht sagen, daß ich am Ziele wäre."

Labels: typographical and other errors

A thatched hut is home for a country man;
Horse or carriage seldom pass my gate:
Forests so still all the birds come to roost,
Broad valley streams always full of fish.
I pick wild fruit in hand with my child,
Till the hillside fields with my wife.
And in my house what do I have?
Only a bed piled high with books.

A thatched hut, the place where a rustic lives;
In front of his gate, horses and carts are few.

The woods are secluded and dark—'specially suited for birds to collect;
The valley streams, wide and broad—from the beginning meant to hold fish.

Mountain fruits, hand in hand my son and I pick;
Marshy fields, together with my wife I plow.

And in our house what do you find?
Nothing more than a bed full of books.

A mountain man lives under thatch
before his gate carts and horses are rare
the forest is quiet but partial to birds
the streams are wide and home to fish
with his son he picks wild fruit
with his wife he hoes between rocks
what does he have at home
a shelf full of nothing but books

Maraud, you who are a marauder in name only, he who calls you wise speaks the truth. But your countenance gives the lie to him who says that care to avoid poverty gnaws at your mind.

He is truly rich and lives happily who, distancing himself from either extreme, places a limit on his desires. For true wealth is contentment.

Then up, my dear Maraud, while our master, whom nature brought into the world for the public good, torments his mind with the business of others.

Lead the way to the vineyard to prepare the salad. Who knows who will be dead or sick tomorrow? He alone lives who lives today.

Maraud, you are not, despite your name's implication,
a marauder—you're a philosopher, serene,
not knocking your brains out every day in the keen
contest for money. And if your situation

were different, you'd look the same and behave the same
with money to burn. But you keep to the middle way,
allowing yourself restrained desires. They say
that always to be at ease is to win the game.

Come then, Maraud, and while our master scurries
on the public business, burdened with public worries,
and other people's affairs that crease his brow,

let us go out to the arbor and together
prepare a salad to eat in this pleasant weather,
for this is the place to live, and the time is now.

Maraud, qui n'es maraud que de nom seulement,
Qui dit que tu es sage, il dit la vérité:
Mais qui dit que le soin d'éviter pauvreté
Te ronge le cerveau, ta face le dément.

Celui vraiment est riche et vit heureusement
Qui, s'éloignant de l'une et l'autre extrémité,
Prescrit à ses désirs un terme limité:
Car la vraye richesse est le contentement.

Sus donc, mon cher Maraud, pendant que notre maître,
Que pour le bien public la nature a fait naître,
Se tourmente l'esprit des affaires d'autrui,

Va devant à la vigne apprêter la salade:
Que sait-on qui demain sera mort ou malade?
Celui vit seulement, lequel vit aujourd'hui.

From October 1865 until February 1969, i.e. nearly nine semesters, Nietzsche stayed in Leipzig.

By now he has already received (from Leiden) the handwritten transcription of the time by Stephanus from the Florentine Codex Laurentianus.

Labels: typographical and other errors

Intolerance is of all periods. There is no Religion but has had its Fanatics. We are all prone to unreasoning admiration. Everything seems excellent to us in what we love, and it angers us when we are shown the clay feet of our idols. Men find it very hard to apply a little criticism to the sources of their beliefs and the origin of their faith. It is just as well; if we looked too close into first principles, we should never believe at all.

L'intolérance est de tous les temps. Il n'est point de religion qui n'ait eu ses fanatiques. Nous sommes tous enclins à l'adoration. Tout nous semble excellent dans ce que nous aimons, et cela nous fâche quand on nous montre le défaut de nos idoles. Les hommes ont grand' peine à mettre un peu de critique dans les sources de leurs croyances et dans l'origine de leur foi. Aussi bien, si l'on regardait trop aux principes, on ne croirait jamais.

It is far more to the point that the ancient poet speak, not some modern professor. We perform our task correctly only when we don't force our own mind into every ancient book that falls into our hands; but rather read out of it what is already there. That is precisely the specifically philological task of comprehending a different individual. It is a matter of one's sinking into another mind, whether that of an individual or of a people. In the self-sacrifice of our own individuality lies our strength. We philologists as such have nothing of the poet nor of the prophet, both of which to a certain degree the historian should have. On the other hand we ought to carry something of the actor in ourselves, not of the virtuoso who sets his own idiosyncratic touches onto the role; but of the true artist, who gives life to the dead words through his own heart's blood.

es kommt vielmehr darauf an, dass der alte dichter zu werte komme, nicht ein moderner professor. wie wir unser geschäft nur dann recht besorgen, wenn wir in jedes alte buch, das wir unter den händen haben, nicht unsern geist hineintragen, sondern das herauslesen, was darin steht, so liegt überhaupt die specifisch philologische aufgabe in dem erfassen einer fremden individualität. es gilt sich in eine fremde seele zu versenken, sei es die eines einzelnen, sei es die eines volkes. in der aufopferung unserer eigenen individualität liegt unsere stärke. wir philologen als solche haben nichts vom dichter noch vom propheten, was beides bis zu einem gewissen grade der historiker sein muss. dagegen müssen wir etwas vom schauspieler in uns tragen, nicht vom virtuosen, der seiner rolle eigene lichter aufsetzt, sondern vom echten künstler. der dem toten werte durch das eigene herzblut leben gibt.

On an afternoon a decade ago a rather unusual spectacle might have been observed on lower Yonge Street. Two figures emerged from Britnell's old bookshop and strode northward. I say "strode," but the word applies to only one of the two, a tall and more than substantial man of about sixty, with a full, ruddy face and bright blue eyes, who progressed with long and stately steps, verus incessu patuit deus. He carried his massive head a little on one side, and a small soft hat rode buoyantly on the waves of his white hair. His sober topcoat, restrained by only one button, floated behind him in the breeze; and while one hand rested in the small of his back the other rhythmically brandished a furled umbrella in the manner of Mr. Stokowski. Beside him a shorter and slighter young man of twenty kept more or less in step, by means of a stride alternated with a brief trot. The latter was saying nothing, having no breath anyhow, but he was listening ecstatically, for from the heights above him rolled a continuous stream of thunderous music. The older man, whose imagination was far away, and whose waving umbrella caused an occasional astonished pedestrian to leap off the curb, was chanting Kipling with royal gusto. On they went, the St. Bernard and the terrier, through Queen's Park, up to Avenue Road, and the glorious recital—from Kipling to Heine, Lucretius to Gautier—never ceased until the pair reached the old scholar's home.

That home had become a familiar place to the young man, a Zion where one could be happily at ease, and he knew how to thread his way dexterously over floors almost covered with tall piles of books which frequently tottered but by a miracle never fell. The two settled down in the study—there was still room to sit, for two—and talk began. In that room somehow talk never failed to lead, in five minutes or less, to Virgil and Horace. One crux after another was brought up, and tried on the dog, as it were. The young man was only becoming initiated into the subtleties of Latin style, but if his learning was slight his admiration and affection for his preceptor were infinite, and he was equally ready to share in the ceremonies as either junior priest or sacrificial victim. Leaning back in his capacious chair, his eyes shining with mirth and triumph, the old scholar would toss and gore Sidgwick and Page and Munro and Postgate. Those editors, they would never trust the manuscripts, they thought they knew more than Servius—if they read Servius—and they had that incurable disease, the cacoethes emendandi! Then he would dive into a corner for his first edition of Bentley's Horace, or perhaps some linguistic hare would be started, the verb "to be," say, in Umbrian and Oscan dialects, in Gothic, in the modern languages, with forays into Lithuanian and Old Norse. The young man would shiver slightly, for all his ecstasies, since he had been born without a trace of philological instinct.

But when the prey had been run to earth, and the young man's pallor perhaps become evident, that voice, which had stripped commentators to the bone, and chased vowels over Europe, would begin again to recite poetry. "Do you know so and so?" he would say. In the early days of their acquaintance the young man would eagerly answer "Yes," but he soon learned that "to know," to this man of Macaulayesque memory, meant "to know by heart," and he became more cautious. This was always the radiant part of the evening, when that voice, becoming warm, deep, sonorous, poured forth golden cadences. Sometimes he would reach for a book, and sometimes he would find it—happily for one's self-respect he did not know everything by heart—and the melodious chant would go on. Most people who recite poetry confirm one's habit of absorbing through the eye, but when this white-haired classic put on his singing-robes —to wit, carpet slippers and an old coat—a familiar poem became a new one.

And of course there was talk, roaming back and forth from Homer to Shaw, Virgil to Pepys, Scott, Chaucer, Burns, Rossetti, Balzac, Shakespeare. When the young man expressed opinions a sixty-year-old head was courteously inclined to receive them—to straighten up, perhaps, with a vigorous word of agreement, or vigorous but jovial dissent. Many old names were remembered and saluted. To ardent youth there seemed nothing greater than scholars, and the life of the scholar, perpetual saturation in fine letters; surely in a lifetime one could pick up more than a few shells on the shore of the boundless ocean ... The life so short, the craft so long to learn ... Then a hand might fall suddenly upon one's knee, and upon one's ear the sound of an inward, reverberating chuckle which sought egress, and ended in "Scholar, my boy, does not rhyme with dollar." But the thud of descent to earth was softened by a gesture, at once complacent and modest, towards the walls, or the place where invisible walls presumably stood—"Still, I've been able to get a few books." Indeed, he had; they numbered twenty-four thousand at the last count, and college tradition, for once authentic, told how a possible collapse of the house had necessitated the summoning of an engineer. "I have more incunabula than anyone in Canada," he went on, with that consciousness of achievement pardonable in epic heroes and book collectors of limited means. Unlike most book collectors, however, he had read his books; he knew all the literary (not to mention nonliterary) languages except Hebrew, and what human frailty the omission suggests he never avowed, though he did express the intention of mastering it shortly, and doubtless he has done so. "I know about as much English literature as the average professor of English," he once observed, and it was a prodigious understatement; his knowledge made one feel, in the words of George Eliot's villager, "no better nor a hollow stalk."

Then he might produce some Baxter prints, or some faded but precious letters from the hands of Pitt, and Burns, and others. The latter name reminds one that perhaps nothing could have increased his devotion to Virgil except the discovery that he had been born in Scotland; in fact, when in the classroom he rendered the Bucolics into smoothly flowing English one had the feeling that in private he translated all the Virgilian plants and flowers into heather. Contemporary pacifism left him cold, or rather warm. "Rev. Dr. X," he exclaimed, "who ought to have known better, stood there and said nothing had ever really been won by battles. But," he sat up, gripping the arms of his chair with boyish glee, "I floored him with Bannockburn!"

How many generations of young men in that same room had seen visions and dreamed dreams! His home, he used to say (when the class had arrived at a certain spot in Horace), did not need to be measured with a decempeda, a foot-rule would do—and there would follow that rumbling, heart-easing chuckle. But no four walls could contain more shadowy guests from the Elysian fields, and after such high converse with the mighty dead, young men left that house, in Horatian phrase, striking the stars with their exalted heads, wishing they could conquer all literature in one Gargantuan gulp. And the glow had not vanished before another invitation or chance meeting would come to renew it. Even Latin composition became a spiritual experience, and one could never be sure how far one's toil aimed at disinterested mastery of ancient idiom, how far at the not quite ignoble winning of an approving word from the master, who himself wrote as if his voluminous trailing gown were a toga made by Cicero's tailor.

How his mannerisms of speech and gesture were treasured in amused and reverent memory—that extended finger, rigid as a Roman javelin, which seemed to impale the luckless victim; that opening of the office door, precisely as the bell rang, then the slow advance, with head forward, and a little on one side, while the small group of students wished they had been somewhat more rigorous in preparation ... The young man whose acquaintance has been sketched had occasional special shivers, for he seemed to be regularly called upon to translate the more doubtful bits of Catullus and other free-spoken ancients not appreciated by pre-war females ...

He was not altogether a recluse. One day our young man met him near his home—it is to be feared that the young man sometimes strolled out of his way with certain possibilities in mind—and he walked with bent head and meditative mien, as if he had just come from the Library, or a meeting of the Caput. As a matter of fact he had just come from the Island, whither he had repaired by himself to witness a nonintellectual conflict between Toronto and Baltimore. And one of the most refreshing phrases in that austere work, Who's Who, lists under Recreations "Used to play golf." Nor can anyone who attended college social functions forget his elaborate old-fashioned courtesy toward the young women, who would rather have a greeting from him (along with a merry quip which bowled one over) than from their most dashing contemporaries. Now and then a brief excursus upon ancient Umbrian might disconcert a stranger, but after all is not a little Umbrian a pleasant change from the tedious small talk of receptions?

Like all men of learning and wisdom, he had, and has, some strong prejudices, though his most explosive utterances were generally accompanied by a twinkle of those keen blue eyes. Only one prejudice or conviction it was perhaps really dangerous to touch upon, and our young man never felt quite intimate enough to hazard the remark that some persons consider Latin inferior to Greek. University lore does indeed tell of a colleague who hinted at some such dark infamy, but the versions of his fate are so conflicting that possibly, as with some ancient heroes, a protecting deity carried him away in a mist. And it was just as well if one testified, early in conversation, to sound principles in the matter of the Latin dual.

He reminds one, in his single-hearted love of learning for its own sake and not for the sake of kudos, of some of the best Renaissance scholars. He has quietly gone his own way, without practising or even understanding the arts of publicity, and the influence he has wielded for forty years has been almost wholly personal. Nor, like some famous academic characters, has he ever been a conscious influence, with an eye on the gallery. But simply by being himself he has made young men want to be like him. He reminds one, too, of a man who had no special Scottish sentiments, one Samuel Johnson, in his immense acquisitiveness, his honesty and sincerity, his downright and yet courtly manner, his devotion to literature, his freedom from all cant and humbug, his generous interest in aspiring youth, his stout prejudices and his hearty laughter. Such rich and mellow personalities have never been very numerous in universities—not so numerous in the past as sentimentalists like to think—and successors are hard to find. Meanwhile, scholars old and young, all over America, rekindle the memory of some of their happiest undergraduate hours when they think of that majestic figure, with one hand resting in the small of his back, still pacing through Queen's Park, murmuring (with a mental bow to Servius, that trusty guide), Non ignara mali miseris succurrere disco.

I'll drink my fill, ignore soul-grinding poverty
    and hateful fellows that speak ill of me;
but I lament my lovely youth that's running out,
    and weep at the approach of grim old age.

ἐμπίομαι· πενίης θυμοφθόρου οὐ μελεδαίνω,
    οὐδ᾽ ἀνδρῶν ἐχθρῶν οἵ με λέγουσι κακῶς.
ἀλλ᾽ ἥβην ἐρατὴν ὀλοφύρομαι, ἥ μ᾽ ἐπιλείπει,
    κλαίω δ᾽ ἀργαλέον γῆρας ἐπερχόμενον.

This law is a Spartan one. The wording is as follows: no Spartan is to be seen with an effeminate complexion or a heavier body than exercise will produce — the one was a confession of idleness, the other of effeminacy. It was also provided in the law that every ten days the ephebes should without fail appear naked before the ephors. If they were well-built and strong, emerging from the gymnasium as if they had been sculpted or chiselled, they were complimented. But if there was anything flabby or soft in their limbs, any swelling of fat arising from idleness, they were beaten and punished on the spot. The ephors also made a point of reviewing their dress every day, to ensure that in each detail the proper style was maintained. Spartan cooks were expected to know about meat only; anyone with other skills was banished from Sparta, as if this were the purging of a sick element.

The same authorities brought Nauclides son of Polybiades before the assembled inspectors. He was overweight and had become fat through luxurious living. They threatened him with the additional punishment of exile if he did not for the future change his habits, which were the subject of criticism and Ionian rather than Spartan. They claimed his appearance and physical condition brought disgrace on Sparta and its laws.

The same authority [Agatharchides], on the other hand, records in the twenty-seventh book [Fragmente der griechischen Historiker 86 F 10] that among the Lacedaemonians it was accounted no ordinary disgrace to a man if he was seen to have either a figure somewhat lacking in virility or a corpulence that made his belly prominent; hence, every ten days, the young warriors were made to stand naked before the ephors. The ephors also closely observed every day both the clothing worn by the young men and also the bedding they used; and with good reason. There were, it is true, cooks in Sparta who were skilled in the preparation of meat, but of nothing else whatever.

Again, in the twenty-seventh book Agatharchides [Fragmente der griechischen Historiker 86 F 11] has said that the Lacedaemonians summoned Naucleides the son of Polybiades, whose body was overlaid with excessive flesh, having become obese through luxurious indulgence, to come before the assembly; there Lysander in open meeting reviled him so bitterly as a wanton profligate that the Lacedaemonians almost ejected him from the city, and warned him that they would certainly do so if he did not reform his manner of life...

• Hail, Hail, Plump Paunch!
• Slim
• Let Me Have Men About Me That Are Fat

Choose a narrowly defined subject where you can control all previous work. The need to do this makes an epigraphical or papyrological subject peculiarly attractive, or a single crux, textual or exegetical, in a literary work. At age 24 you are not experienced enough nor have you read enough to tell the world what Antigone means.

The "narrow specialist," whether in linguistics or papyrology or numismatics or in any other subject, if he has life, will have more interesting things to say, and will make a more lasting impression, than a barrel of "critico-interpretive" "scholar-teachers" broadly communicating overall concepts. The lively specialist, in contrast, will eventually read a great deal: in the nature of things, he has to. No one who lacks wide knowledge can be a good specialist. This fact is not realized by the overall communicators, who too often have never tried really to master anything. Bunk has no future.

For every lively scholar, every happy day must include some kind of progress, must witness the acquisition of some nugget of new truth or understanding, however limited. If there is time for only ten minutes of research a day, it is still essential. "You do it," W.O. Van Quine said to me, "for its therapeutic value."

Many people in the world today, especially in America, are in a silly, shallow mood about learning. They speak of "relevancy," which "luxury scholarship" neglects. They have forgotten the old toast: "Here's to Mathematics—may it never do any good to anyone!" They would not understand (I do not say imitate) Lord Cavendish, the famous physicist, who, it is said, performed important experiments, wrote out the results, and then tore up the papers: enough for him that one mind had known the truth. Deplorable; but the point is that above all else the scholar is a disinterested seeker after truth. He seeks truth because he loves truth and the pursuit of it. His love gives him life. Communities everywhere, not least in America, need such seekers, such mystical lovers of truth: not fewer but far more.

I regard it as nothing less than a catastrophe that the control of appointments of the Department of Classics should be so distinctly in the hands of one single man, W.L. Westermann, a competent historian, indeed, but only in an extremely narrow and unimportant aspect of ancient history, he is utterly without understanding of or taste for the aesthetic, literary, philosophical, and linguistic aspects of Greek and Roman culture. He systematically decries and belittles those humanistic values, which alone justify the continued existence of the Classics at all, in comparison with the trivial minutiae of the price of pigs, and the methods of writing fractions, or the barbarous bookkeeping in some wholly obscure and damnable village in decadent Egypt. Such narrow-visioned specialists there must be, & of course, they must be fanatical about the value of their own work, or else nothing could possibly induce them to do it, but to allow a man of such domineering temper and such utter lack of cultural interests to control the entire future of the Classics, whose values are surely cultural if they possess any values at all, is just a kind of tragedy.

Your health, Master Willow. Contrive me a bat
To strike a red ball; apart from that
In the last resort I must hang my harp on you.

Your health, Master Oak. You emblem of strength,
Why must your doings be done at such length?
Beware lest the ironclad ages catch up with you.

Your health, Master Blackthorn. Be live and be quick,
Provide the black priest with a big black stick
That his ignorant flock may go straight for the fear of you.

Your health, Master Palm. If you brew us some toddy
To deliver us out of by means of the body,
We will burn all our bridges and rickshaws in praise of you.

Your health, Master Pine. Though sailing be past
Let you fly your own colours upon your own mast
And rig us a crow's nest to keep a look out from you.

Your health, Master Elm. Of giants arboreal
Poets have found you the most immemorial
And yet the big winds may discover the fault in you.

Your health, Master Hazel. On Hallow-e'en
Your nuts are to gather but not to be seen
Are the twittering ghosts that perforce are alive in you.

Your health, Master Holly. Of all the trees
That decorate parlour walls you please
Yet who would have thought you had so much blood in you?

Your health, Master Apple. Your topmost bough
Entices us to come climbing now
For all that old rumour there might be a snake in you.

Your health, Master Redwood. The record is yours
For the girth that astounds, the sap that endures,
But where are the creatures that once came to nest in you?

Your health, Master Banyan, but do not get drunk
Or you may not distinguish your limbs from your trunk
And the sense of Above and Below will be lost on you.

Your health, Master Bo-Tree. If Buddha should come
Yet again, yet again make your branches keep mum
That his words yet again may drop honey by leave of you.

Your health, Master Yew. My bones are few
And I fully admit my rent is due,
But do not be vexed, I will postdate a cheque for you.

• A Catalogue of Irish Trees
• A Poem by William Morris
• Oak, and Ash, and Thorn (Rudyard Kipling)
• A Catalogue of Trees in Ovid
• A Catalogue of Trees (Edmund Spenser)
• A Greek Botanical Catalogue

My mistakes are partly due to the fact that I never make the final version of a translation with the text in front of me; my object is to create an English equivalent which reads like an original poem. A translation can only be judged as a poem away from the original text, and I can never finish a translation while I am looking at the text. This is no excuse for inaccuracy, merely a statement of method. It is not enough to see what Storm wrote; one must also ask what he would have written in English.

It could be said that European civilization — and Chinese civilization too — has been founded on the pig. Easily domesticated, omnivorous household and village scavenger, clearer of scrub and undergrowth, devourer of forest acorns, yet content with a sty — and delightful when cooked or cured, from his snout to his tail. There has been prejudice against him, but those peoples — certainly not including the French — who have disliked the pig and insist that he is unclean eating, are rationalizing their own descent and past history: they were once nomads, and the one thing you can't do with a pig is to drive him in herds over vast distances.

• Nulla Dies Sine Suilla
• Ham
• Sausage and Mash
• Bacon and Eggs

παράπεισον δὲ σόν, ὤ, λισσόμαι, ἐλθεῖν τέκνον Ἰσμη-
νὸν ἐμάν τ᾽ ἐς χέρα θεῖναι νεκύων
θαλερῶν σώματ᾽ ἀλαίνοντ᾽ ἄταφα.

60 λισσόμαι Stinton: λισσόμ' Tr
62 σώματ᾽ ἀλαίνοντ᾽ ἄταφα Murray: σώματα λάινον τάφον L

Prevail on your son, I beg you, to go to the Ismenus River
and put into my hands the bodies
of the young dead who are unburied.

Ah dear husband,
you wander in death
unburied and with no lustral water...

ὦ φίλος ὦ πόσι μοι,
σὺ μὲν φθίμενος ἀλαίνεις
ἄθαπτος ἄνυδρος...

Let thy Library lie in thy Head, and in thy Heart. Thou hast no more Learning than what what thou carriest about thee. That which lies only in thy Books, is thy Author's, not thine.

1. Du sollst nicht nachbeten.
Thou shalt not parrot.
2. Du sollst nicht stehlen.
Thou shalt not steal.
3. Du sollst nicht vor Handschriften niederfallen.
Thou shalt not bow down before manuscripts.
4. Du sollst den Namen Methode nicht unnütz im Munde fuhren.
Thou shalt not take the name Method in vain.
5. Du sollst lesen lernen.
Thou shalt learn to read.
6. Du sollst nicht Sanskritwurzeln klauben und mein Manna verschmähen.
Thou shalt not pick at Sanskrit-roots and reject my manna.
7. Du sollst lernen die Geister unterscheiden.
Thou shalt learn to distinguish intellects.
8. Du sollst nicht glauben, dass Minerva ein blauer Dunst sei: sei ist Dir gesetzet zur Weisheit.
Thou shalt not believe that Minerva is blue haze and a humbug; she has been ordained Wisdom for you.
9. Du sollst nicht glauben, dass zehn schlechte Gründe gleich sind einem guten.
Thou shalt not believe that ten bad reasons are equal to one good one.
10. Du sollst nicht glauben was einige von den Heiden gesagt haben, Wasser sei das Beste.
Thou shalt not believe what several of the pagans have said: Water is the best.

Governments like expanding the numbers of the educated because it is the kind of goal they can set themselves and are more or less certain of reaching. All you have to do is pass a law saying children must attend school for such and such a length of time, and in the case of tertiary education, to lower standards of entry to university and of graduation therefrom. Furthermore, governments can present the expanded numbers as a triumph of their own policy and evidence of their own benevolence, for everyone knows that, if education is a good thing, the more of it the better.

That this results in a bad fit between the education that the young receive and what they will be called upon to do in adult life concerns governments far less. When graduates, however, discover that they will be lucky if they can get an ill-paying job that they would have been able to do by the age of sixteen at the latest, they are likely to be disillusioned and angry; they will feel that they have been deprived of something that they were promised. No group is more dangerous than the disgruntled literate, and if jobs cannot be invented for them, some of them will invent jobs of their own, among them saving the world by means of an idiotic general idea. What in youth is called idealism is more often resentment.

[....]

[T]here is now often little connection between the market in education and the market in employment. The economic value of a university degree has correspondingly declined (of its intellectual or cultural value I dare not speak, for the vast majority of students now regard their education merely as a means to an end, and not as an end in itself), and it has become obvious to more and more students that the main purpose of their tertiary education is to lower the rate of youth unemployment for the propaganda benefit of government. In many countries, worse still, students are now being made to pay, by means of indebtedness, for their own unemployment. But while the economic value of a degree has declined, it is something they cannot do without, for without it they have no chance even of a job for which they would have been overqualified a few decades ago. Thus they are on a treadmill from which they cannot alight.

Tolkien once remarked to me that the feeling about home must have been quite different in the days when a family had fed on the produce of the same few miles of country for six generations, and that perhaps this was why they saw nymphs in the fountains and dryads in the woods—they were not mistaken for there was in a sense a real (not metaphorical) connection between them and the countryside. What had been earth and air & later corn, and later still bread, really was in them. We of course who live on a standardised international diet (you may have had Canadian flour, English meat, Scotch oatmeal, African oranges, & Australian wine to day) are really artificial beings and have no connection (save in sentiment) with any place on earth. We are synthetic men, uprooted. The strength of the hills is not ours.

But as for merchants, their holdings are increased by false oaths, and the art of becoming rich is to show contempt toward the gods, and they sail to every city, doing this evil, lying, deceiving, and misleading. And whoever knows how to do this best will come away richest.

τοῖς δὲ γε ἐμπόροις ἐν ταῖς ἐπικορίαις τὰ ὄντα αὔξεται καὶ ἡ τέχνη πρὸς τὸ πλουτεῖν τὸ καταφρονεῖν τῶν θεῶν, καὶ ἐπὶ πᾶσαν πόλιν πλέουσι τοῦτο τὸ κακὸν ἐργαζόμενοι, ψευδόμενοι, παράγοντες, παρακρουόμενοι. καὶ ὅστις ἄριστα οἴδε τοῦτο ποιεῖν, οὕτος εὐπορώτατος ἄπεισιν.

Do not, my soul, long for an immortal life,
but make the most of what you can realistically achieve.

μή, φίλα ψυχά, βίον ἀθάνατον
σπεῦδε, τὰν δ' ἔμπρακτον ἄντλει μαχανάν.

"Exhaust all practicable means," "drain each resource."

[O]bscenity has been so long all the rage that it is becoming as big a bore as prudery was a century ago...

A commentary on a fragmentary work normally requires much more space than a commentary on a fully surviving author. In a surviving author the context for every piece of information is automatically provided; for fragments the historical and literary context of each piece has to be divined by a modern commentator.

It was a strange apartment; full of books and tattered papers, and miscellaneous shreds of all conceivable substances, 'united in a common element of dust.' Books lay on tables, and below tables; here fluttered a sheet of manuscript, there a torn handkerchief, or nightcap hastily thrown aside; ink-bottles alternated with bread-crusts, coffee-pots, tobacco-boxes, Periodical Literature, and Blücher Boots.

Before listening to the way, do not fail to wash your ears.
Otherwise it will be impossible to listen clearly.
What is washing your ears?
Do not hold onto your view.
If you cling to it even a little bit,
you will lose your way.
What is similar to you but wrong, you regard as right.
What is different from you but right, you regard as wrong.
You begin with ideas of right and wrong.
But the way is not so.
Seeking answers with closed ears is
like trying to touch the ocean bottom with a pole.

Again, there is the Greek nation—the common blood, the common language; the temples and religious ritual; the whole way of life we understand and share together—indeed, if Athens were to betray all this it would not be well done.

αὖτις δὲ τὸ Ἑλληνικὸν ἐὸν ὅμαιμόν τε καὶ ὁμόγλωσσον καὶ θεῶν ἱδρύματά τε κοινὰ καὶ θυσίαι ἤθεά τε ὁμότροπα, τῶν προδότας γενέσθαι Ἀθηναίους οὐκ ἂν εὖ ἔχοι.

Literary critics sometimes think of their own studies as occupying a position of lofty elevation over the niggling work of textual critics, and of textual criticism as involving excessive worry about whether to read δέ, τε, or γε, to the neglect of weightier issues. Likewise, some text-critics speak as if their subject were somehow exempt from the vagaries of opinion and subjective judgment that beset literary criticism. Both these views are mistaken. Even the choice between δέ, τε, and γε is sometimes fraught with important questions of interpretation editors themselves may be unaware of. And if the literary interpreters compound the editors' omissions by not considering all the textual evidence for themselves, they may never learn that some of the questions they bring to the text have already been answered—perhaps incorrectly—before they themselves even began to consider them.

If these discussions carry conviction, certain general conclusions are suggested. First, progress in the establishment or interpretation of the text can be made only by those who relinquish prejudices and predispositions about how sound the text is. At one time the readings of the manuscripts must be defended against misguided criticism, and at another they must be attacked and their misguided defenses exploded. There is no room for parti pris, and the consistent conservative, prepared to defend the mss. at all costs, and the thorough-going skeptic, indulging his prurigo emendandi in season and out, are equally likely to miss the truth. Second, neither the literary critic who cannot be bothered with the small print at the foot of the page nor the textual critic who thinks he can leave literary questions to others is well fitted to advance our understanding of classical antiquity's imperfectly transmitted remains. What is needed is the ability to see and weigh all the relevant evidence, to be neither a textual nor a literary critic but a critic simpliciter.

When there is no Recreation or Business for thee abroad, then may'st thou have a Company of honest old Fellows, in leathern Jackets in thy Study, which may find thee excellent Divertisement at home.

It is a sound methodological principle never to begin at the beginning, for in history the beginning is more often than not a product of ancient or modern fantasy.

There are readers—and I am one of them—whose reading is rather like a series of intoxications. We fall in love with a book; it is our book, we feel, for life; we shall not need another. We cram-throat our friends with it in the cruellest fashion; make it a Gospel, which we preach in a spirit of propaganda and indignation, putting a woe on the world for a neglect of which last week we were equally guilty.

I am not at all sorry that I have never been cured of this form of youthful susceptibility; one may after all become the victim of more inadvisable forms of folly.

Unlucky, injurious, adverse, unfavorable, ill, bad, etc.

With respect to auspices and divination, acc. to the Roman notions, lucky, favorable, auspicious (because the Romans on these occasions turned the face towards the south, and so had the eastern or fortunate side on the left; while the Greeks, turning to the north, had it on their right...)

Labels: auto-antonyms

It is an ordinary thing in these days to see a base impudent ass, illiterate, unworthy, insufficient, to be preferred before his betters, because he can put himself forward, because he looks big, can bustle in the world, hath a fair outside, can temporise, collogue, insinuate, or hath good store of friends or money, whereas a more discreet, modest, and better deserving man shall lie hid, or have a repulse. 'Twas so of old, and ever will be, and which Tiresias adviseth Ulysses in the ¹Poet,

——Accipe quâ ratione queas ditescere, &c.

is still in use; lie, flatter and dissemble: if not, as he concludes,

——Ergo pauper eris,²

then go like a beggar as thou art. Erasmus, Melancthon, Lipsius, Budaeus, Cardan, lived and died poor. Gesner was a silly old man, baculo innixus,³ amongst all those huffing Cardinals, swelling Bishops that flourished in his time, and rode on foot-clothes. It is not honesty, learning, worth, wisdom, that prefers men. The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but as the wise man said, ⁴chance, and sometimes a ridiculous chance. ⁵Casus plerumque ridiculus multos elevavit.

¹ Hor. lib. 2. Sat. 5.[10. Learn how you may grow rich.]
[² Hor. Sat. ii.5.19, 20.]
[³ Ovid, Met. viii.218. leaning on his staff.]
⁴ Solomon, Eccles. ix.11.
⁵ Sat. Menip.

But the praise is mixed: it is magniloquent if we regard the book as a work of informed, and yes, inspired scholarship aimed at a broad readership, but muted if we reckon it as a work of pure Wissenschaft. For all excerpts are in translation; Latin and Greek are not allowed to speak for themselves. The educated public perhaps gains. Scholars lose. There is a middle way (though more expensive): to provide both original texts and translations. No scientific study of any topic in history or the humanities can proceed without the engagement of original sources, their textual analysis, investigation of the idiom, phrases, and terms.

But in order not to be accused of blatant partisanship, we hasten to add that the study of Roman religion has been bedeviled not only by those Christian believers who cannot bring themselves to take seriously any "pagan" creed; it has no less been bedeviled by those adherents of the Enlightenment whose rationalism is so fierce that they cannot take seriously any religion.

Let us confess: the real object of education is the diploma.

I never hesitate to declare that the diploma is the deadly enemy of culture. As diplomas have become more important in our lives (and their importance has done nothing but grow as a result of economic conditions), the less has education had any real effect. As regulations have multiplied, the results have grown worse.

Worse in their effect on the public mind and on the mind generally. Worse because a diploma creates hopes and the illusion that certain rights have been acquired. Worse because of the stratagems and subterfuges it gives rise to: the recommendations, the strategic "cramming," and, indeed, the use of every expedient for crossing the redoubtable threshold. That, we must admit, is a strange and detestable preparation for intellectual and civic life.

The aim of education being no longer the development of the mind but the acquisition of the diploma, the required minimum becomes the goal of study. It is no longer a matter of learning Latin, Greek, or geometry. It is a matter of borrowing—not of acquiring—of borrowing what is needed to get the baccalauréat.

That is not all. The diploma grants to society a phantom guarantee; and to the diploma-holders, phantom rights. The diploma-holder is officially considered to know; all his life he keeps that certificate of some momentary and purely expedient knowledge. Moreover, the holder of a diploma is led in the name of the law to believe that something is owed to him. No practice ever instituted was more fatal for everyone, the State and the individual (and, in particular, for culture). It is with a view to the diploma, for example, that the reading of authors has been replaced by the use of summaries, manuals, absurd digests of knowledge, ready-made collections of questions and answers, extracts, and other abominations. The result is that nothing in this adulterated form of culture can be helpful or suitable to the life of a developing mind.

Let us not go into the question of Greek and Latin; the vicissitudes in the history of these studies is a mockery. By ebb and flow, a little Greek, a little Latin, is added to or withdrawn from the program. But what Greek and what Latin! The quarrel about the so-called "humanities" is merely a fight over the semblances of culture. When we see the use to which those unhappy, twice-dead languages are put, we have the impression of some strange fraud. They are no longer dealt with as real languages or literatures; these tongues seem never to have been spoken but by ghosts. For the immense majority of those who make a pretense of studying them, they are bizarre conventions that have no function but to make up the difficult part of an examination. No doubt Latin and Greek have greatly changed within the past century. Antiquity, nowadays, is no longer at all what it was for Rollin, any more than the "Apollo Belvedere" and the "Laocoön" have been considered, for the past hundred years, the masterpieces of ancient sculpture; nor is there any doubt that no one now knows the Latin of the Jesuits or that of the doctors of philology. Some know a sort of Latin, or rather make a pretense of knowing a sort of Latin, whose final and only use is in the translation required for the baccalauréat. For my part, I believe it would be better to make the teaching of dead languages entirely optional, with no examination required, and to give only a few students a solid knowledge of them rather than force all of them to swallow indigestible scraps of languages that never existed....I shall believe in the teaching of ancient languages when, in a railway carriage, I see one passenger out of a thousand take a small Thucydides or a charming Virgil from his pocket and become absorbed in it, trampling under foot the newspapers and the more or less pulp stories.

To polish commonplaces and give them a new lustre: to express in a few words the obvious principles of conduct, and to give to clear thoughts an even clearer expression: to illuminate dimmer impressions and bring their faint rays to a focus: to delve beneath the surface of consciousness to new veins of precious ore, to name and discover and bring to light latent and unnamed experience; and finally to embody the central truths of life in the breadth and terseness of memorable phrases—all these are the opportunities of the aphorist; and to take advantage of these opportunities, he must be a thinker, an accurate observer, a profound moralist, a psychologist, and an artist as well. Above all an artist! So great are the difficulties of his task, so numerous are the pitfalls which beset him, so repellent the pompous attitude which his tedious, stilted and oracular mode of expression forces upon him, that it is only by the greatest care that he can escape these perils; and Lord Morley's admonition to the would-be aphorist—'beware of cultivating this delicate art'—is no doubt a sound one. For the aphorist's pills, if we are to swallow them, must be gilded pills; his coins, if they are to be added to the currency of thought, must be minted of precious metal; many grains must be sifted from the sands of life to compose them, many thoughts and observations melted and fused together to give them weight. Each aphorism should contain, as Hazlitt said, the essence or groundwork of a separate essay; it should be the concentration or residuum of much meditation, and it must glitter with the finest sheen; for 'weight,' as one of our masters of this art has expressed it—'weight without lustre is lead.'

I do not know whether I can infect any reader with my taste (which I am proud to share with Coleridge) for these coins of aphoristic thought—these penny and often golden pieces, stamped as they are with the image of the Master of Thought from whose mint they issue. The search for them through old books, old letters, old volumes of Table-Talk, I find a fascinating one; I enjoy it as the archaeologist delights, as he digs in the soil of ancient cities, to discover coins engraved with the busts of the princes of antiquity, each with his own expression—the strength and energy of Alexander the Great, the ferocity of Mithridates, the assured power of Augustus, the philosophic calm of Antoninus, or the truculence of Nero.

We are told that when Jehovah created the world he saw that it was good. What would he say now?

Bibliography appended to the book is haphazard, avoiding the difficult and the technical, and it is infested by the belief "the newer the better," a tendency as pernicious as it is ahistorical: for it consigns to neglect great minds of the previous generations, and loses sight of the historical progression of our investigations. Frequently the book draws its information from the tepid tap of recent distillations, and not from the spring of the original masters. Unfortunately it is a familiar disease—for it also thrives in American graduate programs, together with another pest, the scholarly oligoglottism. Bergemann adduces modern literature only in German and English, one solitary entry in French, and none in Italian: not even a tiniest article.

Some of us again are too dear, as we think, more divine and sanctified than others, of a better metal, greater gifts, and with that proud Pharisee, contemn others in respect of ourselves, we are better Christians, better learned, choice spirits, inspired, know more, have special revelation, perceive God's secrets, and thereupon presume, say and do many times which is not fitting to be said or done.

[9] And he spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others: [10] Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. [11] The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. [12] I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess. [13] And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner. [14] I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.

But, when it comes to the practical realities, what exactly are the "rules" for word order in ancient Greek? A number of attempts have been made over the years; until now the most successful effort has been that of Sir Kenneth Dover, whose Greek Word Order of 1960, however, has not been as influential among classicists as it might have been, in part, perhaps, because of the presence in it of statements like the following (47): "Here FASI/N is strictly speaking M^q in character, and the word-group which I have analysed as N Cq C is therefore on the borderline of the category 'C group'; it admits of the analysis N M^qq C." It was in order to avoid having to read sentences like this that many classicists became classicists in the first place.

Grasping our great shields and wearing our hide armour,
Wheel-hub to wheel-hub locked, we battle hand to hand.
Our banners darken the sky, the enemy teem like clouds:
Through the hail of arrows the warriors press forward.
They dash on our lines; they trample our ranks down.
The left horse has fallen, the right one is wounded.
Bury the wheels in; tie up the horses!
Seize the jade drumstick and beat the sounding drum!
The time is against us: the gods are angry.
Now all lie dead, left on the field of battle.
They went out never more to return:
Far, far away they lie, on the level plain,
Their long swords at their belts, clasping their elmwood bows.
Head from body sundered: but their hearts could not be vanquished.
Both truly brave and also truly noble;
Strong to the last, they could not be dishonoured.
Their bodies may have died, but their souls are living:
Heroes among the shades their valiant souls will be.

We take up the halberds of Wu,
    put on rhino hide armor.
Chariots clash, hub against hub,
    short swords parry.
Banners blot out the sun,
    the enemy come on like clouds.
Arrows fall in answering volleys,
    warriors vie for the lead.
They have broken through our formations,
    trampled over our lines.
The trace-horse on the left has fallen,
    the right one is slashed with knives.
The chariot wheels are dug in,
    teams of four horses entangled.
We seize our jade drumsticks,
    beat a call on the drums.
But Heaven's season frowns on us,
    the awesome gods are angry.
Our stalwart ones are all slaughtered,
    cast away on field and plain.
They set out, never to come back;
    went, never to return.
The level plains are distant,
    the road stretches on and on.
They buckled on their long swords,
    shouldered the bows of Ch'in.
Though heads are parted from bodies,
    their hearts have no regret.
Truly they were courageous,
    true men of arms as well.
To the end fierce and unyielding,
    they could never be cowed.
Though in body they have died,
    their spirits take on divinity.
Valiant are their souls,
    they are heroes in the realm of ghosts.

The opus of Bonnefond-Coudry will be immensely useful; yet when we proceed to details (and the book will be used as an encyclopedia) doubts emerge. There are often too many words and too few facts (morbus thesarum Franco-Gallicarum). And the facts are not always the right facts, and if they are right they are not always presented in a right way.

Be not of any Faction: A wise Man is always free.

Engage not so far in any Party, as to make its Quarrels thine.

[T]o the more secular-minded, the old divines, whose severe brows and square faces meet our eyes when we open their great folios, seem, with their imposed dogmas, their heavy and obsolete methods of exposition and controversy, almost as if they belonged to some remote geological era of human thought. We are reminded of Taine's image of them as giant saurians, slowly winding their scaly backs through the primeval slime, and meeting each other, armed with syllogisms and bristling with texts, in theological battle, to tear the flesh from one another's flanks with their great talons, and cover their opponents with filth in their efforts to destroy them.

Book-collectors should by the way be warned against collecting old books for their bindings; there are sometimes dangerous spirits imprisoned in these leather bottles.

A preacher or moralist often betrays himself indirectly, for he is apt to see his own faults in others, and to dwell, in his exhortations, on the temptations and weaknesses to which he is especially exposed.

"I cannot remember the time when I did not know a great deal that she has not the least notion of yet. How long ago it is, aunt, since we used to repeat the chronological order of the kings of England, with the dates of their accession, and most of the principal events of their reigns!"

"Yes," added the other; "and of the Roman emperors as low as Severus; besides a great deal of the heathen mythology, and all the metals, semi-metals, planets, and distinguished philosophers."

"Very true indeed, my dears, but you are blessed with wonderful memories, and your poor cousin has probably none at all. There is a vast deal of difference in memories, as well as in everything else, and therefore you must make allowance for your cousin, and pity her deficiency. And remember that, if you are ever so forward and clever yourselves, you should always be modest; for, much as you know already, there is a great deal more for you to learn."

"Yes, I know there is, till I am seventeen."

Is it progress if a cannibal uses knife and fork?

To share with one or two people, with perhaps a little group of people, a hobby or special and intense interest, to know all about something of which others know and care nothing—door-knockers, perhaps, jade, or shoe-buckles, fifteenth-century editions of the Bible, or monastic tiles—to collect the finest specimens, to boast of them to fellow-collectors; to dispute and quarrel over them with the subtlest shades of depreciation and discrimination—this is the sort of thing that forms a bond between people which is capable of outlasting many other ties. It will chafe them sometimes, but they cannot break it—they cannot get on without each other. Delicate hoops of steel grapple their souls together; and the fewer there are who share their interest, the more they love to correspond and perhaps to meet. They are often far apart in age, place and social standing; great abysses, moral, political or religious, may yawn between them; they may most strongly disapprove of, and even dislike, each other, but when they gather in a little group to discuss their special subject all other considerations seem of no importance—all seem, indeed, as that great nobleman in The Young Visiters, the Earl of Clincham, said to Mr. Salteena, 'as piffle before the wind.' Language being never adequate to describe all the relationships of people to each other, I have invented the word milver to describe those who share a fad in common. I find it both a useful and a pretty word; it fills a gap in my vocabulary, and provides, moreover, an echo for the word silver, which is otherwise without a rhyme.

I have said that Miss Jekyll did not like our modern ways of speech: I think, indeed, that her plain, old, aristocratic face was firmly set against all new fashions and innovations; that if they were ever forced upon her attention an immense Disapproval would be the expression which would settle on her features. One felt with her that one was in the presence of another and now vanished generation, with standards of its own, discriminations, exclusions, niceties of speech and behaviour, which would be almost incomprehensible to young people now.