Laudator Temporis Acti

James Howell (1594?–1666), Epistolae Ho-elianae: The Familiar Letters of James Howell, Historiographer Royal to Charles II, ed. Joseph Jacobs, Books II.-IV. (London: David Nutt, 1892), letter IV.31 (February 3, ?), "To Mr. W. Price, at Oxon.", pp. 609-611 (at 609-610):

There could hardly better news be brought to me, than to understand that you are so great a Student, and that having pass'd through the briars of Logic, you fall so close to Philosophy: Yet I do not like your method in one thing, that you are so fond of new Authors, and neglect the old, as I hear you do. It is the ingrateful Genius of this Age, that if any Sciolist can find a hole in an old Author's coat, he will endeavour to make it much more wide, thinking to make himself somebody thereby; I am none of those; but touching the Ancients, I hold this to be a good moral Rule, Laudandum quod bene, ignoscendum quod aliter dixerunt: The older an Author is, commonly the more solid he is, and the greater teller of Truth.

Id., letter IV.43 (August 30, ?), "To the truly honoured the Lady Sibylla Brown, at her House near Sherburn", pp. 629-634 (at 629):

Madam, in these peevish times, which may be call'd the Rust of the Iron Age, there is a race of cross-grain'd People, who are malevolent to all Antiquity. If they read an old Author, it is to quarrel with him, and find some hole in his coat; they slight the Fathers of the primitive Times, and prefer John Calvin, or a Casaubon before them all.

John Mennes (1599-1671), "To a friend upon a journey to Epsam Well," Musarum Deliciae: or, The Muses Recreation. Conteining Severall Pieces of Poetique Wit. The second Edition. By S^r J.M. and Ja: S. (London: Henry Herringman, 1656), pp. 3-7 (lines 30-57 on pp. 4-5):

Close by the Well, you may discerne        30
Small shrubs of Eglantine and Fern,
Which shew the businesse of the place;
For here old Ops her upper face
Is yellow, not with heat of summer,
But safroniz'd with mortall scumber.        35
But then the pity to behold
Those antient Authors, which of old
Wrote down for us, Philosophy,
Physick, Music, and Poetry,
Now to no other purpose tend,        40
But to defend the fingers end.
Here lyes Romes Naso torn and rent,
New reeking from the Fundament;
Galens old rules could not suffice,
Nor yet Hippocrates the wise.        45
Not teaching, how to clense, can doe,
Themselves must come and wipe it too.
Here did lye Virgil, there lay Horace,
Which newly had wip'd his, or her Arse.
Anacreon reeled too and fro,        50
Vex'd, that they us'd his papers so.
And Tully with his Offices,
Was forc'd to doe such works as these.
Here lies the Letter of a Lover,
Which piece-meale did the thing discover.        55
Sonnets halfe written would not stay,
But must necessity obey.

33 Ops: Mother Earth
35 scumber: "The dung of a dog or fox. Hence dial., filth, dirt" (Oxford English Dictionary, citing this verse; surprisingly, there is no entry in the dictionary for saffronize, although there is for saffron as a verb = "To dye with saffron; also, to give a saffron-yellow colour to")

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Hat tip: Eric Thomson.

Labels: noctes scatologicae

James Howell (1594?–1666), Epistolae Ho-elianae: The Familiar Letters of James Howell, Historiographer Royal to Charles II, ed. Joseph Jacobs, Books II.-IV. (London: David Nutt, 1892), letter IV.44 (n.d.), "To Sir L.D., in Paris", pp. 634-636 (at 634-635):

Concerning the posture of things here, we are still involv'd in a cloud of Confusion, 'specially touching Church-matters: A race of odd crack-brain'd Schismatiques do croak in every corner; but, poor things, they rather want a Physician to cure cure them of their madness, than a Divine to confute them of their errors. Such is the height of their spiritual pride, that they make it nothing to interpret every tittle of the Apocalypse; they make a shallow rivulet of it, that one may pass over and scarce wet his ankles; whereas the greatest Doctors of the Church compar'd it to a deep Ford wherein an Elephant might swim. They think they are of the Cabinet-Council of God, and not only know his Attributes, but his Essence...

James Howell (1594?–1666), Epistolae Ho-elianae: The Familiar Letters of James Howell, Historiographer Royal to Charles II, ed. Joseph Jacobs, Books II.-IV. (London: David Nutt, 1892), letter III.21 (March 25, 1646), "To Sir Paul Neale, Kt.", pp. 544-545:

Or I may say, Translations are like the wrong side of a Turkey Carpet, which useth to be full of thrums and knots, and nothing so even as the right side: Or one may say (as I spake elsewhere), that Translations are like Wines ta'en off the lees, and poured into other vessels, that must needs lose somewhat of their first strength and briskness, which in the pouring, or passage rather, evaporates into Air.

Moreover, touching Translations, it is to be observ'd, that every Language hath certain Idioms, Proverbs, and peculiar Expressions of its own, which are not rendible in any other, but paraphrastically; therefore he overacts the office of an Interpreter who doth enslave himself too strictly to Words or Phrases. I have heard of an excess among Limners, call'd too much to the Life, which happens when one aims at Similitude more than Skill: So in version of Languages, one may be so over-punctual in words, that he may mar the matter. The greatest fidelity that can be expected in a Translator, is to keep still a-foot and entire the true genuine sense of the Author, with the main design he drives at...

Here are some excerpts from Nicetas Paphlagon, Oratio XIX = "Laudatio S. Hyacinthi Amastreni," Patrologia Graeca 105, cols. 417-440, also in Acta Sanctorum, Julii Tomus IV (1868), die 17, pp. 222-231, in my rough translation.

§ 4, on the inhabitants of Amastris (PG cols. 421-424 = AS p. 223):

They turned their attention to a certain one of the trees in their vicinity, called "lotos," naturally beautiful to look at and flourishing in its condition. Enchanted beyond measure in their silly minds and overcome by its beauty, they considered it a god and thought it should be propitiated with priests and sacrifices.

δένδρῳ δέ τινι τῶν παρ᾽ αὐτοῖς, λωτῷ μὲν καλουμένῳ, ὡραίῳ δὲ τὴν θέαν, ὡς εἰκὸς, καὶ εὐθαλεῖ τὴν κατασκευὴν προσχόντες, καὶ τὸν ἀνόητον νοῦν ἀμέτρως καταθελχθέντες, καὶ ἡττηθένθες τῆς αὐτοῦ καλλονῆς, τοῦτο Θεὸν νενομήκασιν· ἱερεῦσί τε καὶ θυσίαις ἐξιλάσκεσθαι ᾤοντο δεῖν.

§ 9, Hyacinth addressing the inhabitants of Amastris (PG cols. 427-428 = AS p. 225):

This is full of much foolishness and excessive obtuseness, to devote oneself to a little, weak, absolutely senseless tree and to offer worship to it as to God.

πολλῆς τοῦτο γέμει ἀλογίας, ὑπερβαλλούσης ἀναισθησίας βραχεῖ καὶ ὑποσάθρῳ ξύλῳ, καὶ ἀνονήτῳ πάντα προσανέχειν τε καὶ λατρεύειν ὡς Θεῷ.

§ 10, Hyacinth addressing the inhabitants of Amastris (PG cols. 427-428 = AS p. 225):

Therefore, if you place any trust in me, citizens, if you care at all about your own salvation, cut down this tree and throw it into the fire...

εἴ τι οὖν ἐμοὶ πείθεσθε, ὦ ἄνδρες πολῖται, εἴ τι μέλει τῆς οἰκείας σωτηρίας ὑμῖν, τὸ μὲν δένδρον τοῦτο ἐκκόψατε, καὶ εἰς πῦρ βάλλετε...

§ 12 (PG cols. 429-430 = AS p. 227):

Previously, as has been said, he persisted with his words, but when he could not restrain them from this error, next he shows the power that lies in deeds. Girding the loins of his mind and drawing power from Jesus Christ in prayer, he takes a sharp axe in his hand and, at noon in summer, unseen by anyone, he chops the tree of error down root and branch.

ἀλλὰ τοῖς λόγοις, ὡς εἴρηται, πρότερον ἐγκείμενος, ἐπεὶ μὴ οἷός τ᾽ ἦν ἐν τούτοις τῆς πλάνης ἐκείνης ἐπισχεῖν, ἑπομένως λοιπὸν τὴν ἐπὶ τῶν ἔργων δύναμιν ἐκδείκνυται, καὶ τὰς τῆς διανοίας ὀσφῦς ἀναζωσάμενος, καὶ τὴν ἀπὸ τοῦ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ τῇ προσευχῇ δύναμιν ἐπισπασάμενος, εἶτα πέλεκυν ὀξὺν λαβὼν τῇ χειρὶ, καὶ θερινῆς μεσημβρίας πάντας διαλαθὼν, πρόῤῥιζον ἐκκόπτει τὸ τῆς πλάνης φυτόν.

§ 13 (PG cols. 431-432 = AS p. 227):

The priests came to make their customary sacrifice to the tree. When they saw that it had been cut down and was shamefully broken to pieces down to the ground, they were at first stunned, naturally overcome by great amazement.

ἐπεὶ γὰρ ἧκον οἱ ἱερεῖς τὴν νενομισμένην τῷ δένδρῳ θυσίαν ἀποδώσοντες, ἐκκοπὲν δὲ τοῦτο, καὶ κατὰ γῆς ἀτίμως εἶδον καταῤῥαγὲν, πρῶτον μὲν ἀπηνεοῦντο, θάμβει πολλῷ, κατὰ τὸ εἰκὸς, περιεχόμενοι.

§ 14 (PG cols. 431-432 = AS p. 227):

First they considered who could be responsible for this disaster. Then they gradually called to mind the admonitions of Hyacinth. They understood that the deed could be attributed to no one else except the one who loathed the communal sacrifice as accursed and who repeatedly criticized and tried to hinder those who offered it. With one impulse they attacked him....Leaping on him with kicks and punches, they dragged him by the hair; they pulled him this way and that on the ground, striking him with sticks and pelting him with stones. Having tortured him thus in all kinds of ways, they brought him before the leader of the city.

πρῶτον μὲν τὸν αἴτιον αὐτοῖς ταύτης ἀνεσκοποῦντο τῆς συμφορᾶς· ἔπειτα τῶν Ὑακίνθου κατὰ μικρὸν εἰς ἀνάμνησιν ἥκοντες νουθεσιῶν· καὶ κατανενοηκότες ὡς οὐδενὸς ἂν εἴη ἄλλου τὸ ἔργον, ἢ τοῦ καὶ τῶν θυσιῶν τὴν μετάληψιν ὡς ἐναγῆ μυσαττομένου, καὶ τοῖς θυσιάζουσιν ἐπιτιμῶντος ἢ προσωχθηκότος, ὁρμῶσι μὲν ὁμόσε κατ᾽ αὐτοῦ πάντες....καὶ τοῖς ποσὶ μὲν λὰξ, ταῖς χερσὶ δὲ πὺξ ἐναλλόμενοι, εἷλκον τῶν τριχῶν· ἐσπάρασσον κατὰ γῆς, τοῖς ξύλοις παίοντες, τοῖς λίθοις βάλλοντες, καὶ οὕτω παντοδαπῶς αὐτὸν αἰκισάμενοι, τῷ τῆς πόλεως ἡγεμόνι παρεστήσαντο.

§ 17 (PG cols. 433-436 = AS p. 228):

When the leader heard these words, first he ordered Hyacinth to be stretched out on the ground and beaten with rods. For a long time his flesh was mangled and his bones were pounded. He moistened the ground with his blood. He uttered no sound. In silence he was transported to Lord Jesus. Praying to Him with soundless pleas and supplications, he easily endured the torture. The crowd kept shouting, "Leader, call the executioner, call the one who'll pull his teeth out. In the same way that he cut down our god, let his teeth be cut out, let them be dug out by the roots with iron pincers." As this deadly sentence was carried out on him, the maddened crowds still didn't let go of their insanity. They shouted at him as he was bound again like a bundle of faggots*, rent asunder, pulled along the ground, and dragged out of the city to be stabbed with sharp reeds and pelted with rocks. When all the murderous attack on him and punishment had reached its end, and they had tortured him so pitilessly, they dragged him up to the top of a mountain. Having made him a single wound from head to foot and having put him to death, as evening had already arrived, they left his body as food for wild beasts.

Ἐπεὶ τούτων ἀκοῦσαι τὸν ἡγεμόνα τῶν ῥημάτων, πρῶτον μὲν κατὰ γῆς αὐτὸν ἐκταθέντα, ξύλοις ἀγρίοις μαστιγοῦσθαι διετάξατο. Ἐπὶ πολὺ δὲ τὰς σάρκας ξαινομένου, καὶ τὰ ὀστᾶ θλωμένου, καὶ τῷ αἵματι βάπτοντος τὴν γῆν· οὐδεμίαν δὲ φωνὴν ἀφιέντος· ἡσυχῆ δὲ πρὸς τὸν Κύριον ἐξεστῶτος Ἰησοῦν, καὶ ἀνεκλαλήτοις αὐτῷ προσευχαῖς ἐντυγχάνοντος· καὶ εὐμαρῶς τὰς αἰκίας ὑποφέροντος, ὁ δῆμος ἐπεφώνει· Κάλει τὸν δήμιον, ὦ ἡγεμὸν, κάλει τὸν τοὺς ὀδόντας ἐκριζώσοντα· ὥσπερ οὗτος ἐξεκοψε τὸν ἡμέτερον Θεὸν, οὔτως αὐτοῦ οἱ ὀδόντες ἐκκοπτέσθωσαν, σιδηρᾷ λαβίδι ῥιζόθεν ὀρυττέσθωσαν· καὶ ταύτης ἐπ᾽ αὐτῷ πέρας τῆς ἀποφάσεως λαβούσης, οὐδ᾽ οὕτως οἱ ἐμβρόντητοι δῆμοι τῆς μανίας καθυφίεσαν· αὖθις δὲ τοῦτον δεσμούμενον, τρόπον δένδρου κοπεντος, σπαράσσεσθαί τε καὶ σύρεσθαι κατὰ τῆς γῆς ἐβόων· ἐξελκόμενόν τε τῆς πόλεως, ἐκκεντᾶσθαι καλάμοις ὀξέσι, καὶ λίθοις καταλεύεσθαι. Ἐπεὶ δὲ πᾶσα τέλος ἐπ᾽ αὐτῷ ἡ μιαιφόνος εἴληφεν ὁρμὴ καὶ βουλὴ, τὸν μὲν οὕτως ἀνηλεῶς καταικίσαντες, καὶ ἄχρις ὀφρύος τοῦ ὄρους ἐξελκύσαντες, ἀπὸ κεφαλῆς δὲ μέχρι ποδῶν ἓν τραῦμα τοῦτον ἀποδείξαντες καὶ θανατώσαντες, ἑσπέρας ἤδη φθασάσης, θηρσὶ τὸ σῶμα κατέλιπον βοράν.

* I translated τρόπον δένδρου κοπίντος as "like a bundle of faggots," but perhaps the phrase refers to a rope around a felled tree.

Obverse of a lead seal of Michael Stryphnos, grand doux and husband of Theodora, sister of the Empress Euphrosyne Doukaina, wife of Alexios III Angelos (1195-1203), Dumbarton Oaks Collection 33.1.3651:


The seal is described as follows by Nicolas Oikonomides, A Collection of Dated Byzantine Lead Seals (Washington: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1986), pp. 119-120 (seal no. 126):

St. Theodore (at left) and St. Hyakinthos standing. St. Theodore holds an inclined spear (right hand) and a shield, both resting on the ground. In the center there is an (elm) tree. St. Hyakinthos, beardless, swings an ax with both hands to fell the tree....This image seems to have a Paphlagonian source of inspiration since it depicts St. Theodore and, especially, St. Hyakinthos of Amastris, who is not a very commonly represented saint and who suffered martyrdom for cutting down an elm tree venerated by the pagans (18 July).

I'm not sure what basis there is for Oikonomides' identification of the tree as an elm. The tree most associated with the neighborhood of Amastris is the box. See e.g. Catullus (4.13: Amastri Pontica et Cytore buxifer = "Pontic Amastris and box-wood-bearing Cytorus"), Pliny the Elder (Natural History 16.28.71: buxus Pyrenaeis ac Cytoriis montibus plurima et Berecyntio tractu = "the box abounds in the Pyrenees and the Kidros mountains and in the Berecyntus district," tr. H. Rackham), and Strabo (12.3.10: πλείστη δὲ καὶ ἀρίστη πύξος φύεται κατὰ τὴν Ἀμαστριανήν, καὶ μάλιστα περὶ τὸ Κύτωρον = "The most and the best box‑wood grows in the territory of Amastris, and particularly round Cytorum," tr. H.L. Jones).

St. Hyacinth lived in the fourth century, his encomiast Nicetas Paphlagon in the ninth.

I haven't seen François Halkin, ed., "Martyre de saint Hyacinthe," Hagiographica Inedita Decem (Turnhout: Brepols, 1989 = Corpus Christianorum, Series Graeca, 21).

Hat tip: Eric Thomson.

Labels: arboricide

Richard F. Burton (1821-1890), Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah & Meccah (London: Tylston and Edwards, 1893), p. 9:

And this is the Arab's Kayf. The savouring of animal existence; the passive enjoyment of mere sense; the pleasant languor, the dreamy tranquillity, the airy castle-building, which in Asia stand in lieu of the vigorous, intensive, passionate life of Europe. It is the result of a lively, impressible, excitable nature, and exquisite sensibility of nerve; it argues a facility for voluptuousness unknown to northern regions, where happiness is placed in the exertion of mental and physical powers; where Ernst ist das Leben; where niggard earth commands ceaseless sweat of face, and damp chill air demands perpetual excitement, exercise, or change, or adventure, or dissipation, for want of something better. In the East, man wants but rest and shade: upon the banks of a bubbling stream, or under the cool shelter of a perfumed tree, he is perfectly happy, smoking a pipe, or sipping a cup of coffee, or drinking a glass of sherbet, but above all things deranging body and mind as little as possible; the trouble of conversations, the displeasures of memory, and the vanity of thought being the most unpleasant interruptions to his Kayf. No wonder that "Kayf" is a word untranslatable in our mother-tongue!<sup>1

1</sup> In a coarser sense "kayf" is app1ied to all manner of intoxication. Sonnini is not wrong when he says, "the Arabs give the name of Kayf to the voluptuous relaxation, the delicious stupor, produced by the smoking of hemp."

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James Howell (1594?–1666), Epistolae Ho-elianae: The Familiar Letters of James Howell, Historiographer Royal to Charles II, ed. Joseph Jacobs, Books II.-IV. (London: David Nutt, 1892), letter III.8 (March 3, 1646), "To the Rt. Hon. my Lord of D.", pp. 523-527 (at 524):

But under Favour this Word Learning is taken in a narrower Sense among us than among other Nations; we seem to restrain it only to the Book; whereas, indeed, any Artisan whatsoever (if he know the Secret and Mystery of his Trade) may be called a learned Man: A good Mason, a good Shoemaker, that can manage St. Crispin's Lance handsomely, a skilful Yeoman, a good Shipwright, &c., may be all called learned Men; and indeed the usefullest sort of learned Men; for without the two first we might go barefoot, and lie abroad as Beasts, having no other Canopy than the wild Air; and without the two last we might starve for Bread, have no Commerce with other Nations, or ever be able to tread upon a Continent. These, with such-like dextrous Artisans, may be termed learned Men, and the more behoveful for the Subsistence of a Country, than those Polymathists that stand poring all Day in a Corner upon a Moth-eaten Author, and converse only with dead Men.

Id., p. 525:

The extravagant Humour of our Country is not to be altogether commended, that all Men should aspire to Booklearning: There is not a simpler Animal, and a more superfluous Member of State, than a mere Scholar, than only a self-pleasing Student; he is—Telluris inutile pondus.

Id., pp. 526-527:

There is an odd opinion among us, that he who is a contemplative Man, a Man who weds himself to his study, and swallows many books, must needs be a profound Scholar, and a great learned Man, tho' in reality he be such a dolt, that he hath neither a retentive faculty to keep what he hath read, nor wit to make any useful Application of it in common discourse; what he draws in lieth upon dead Lees, and never grows fit to be broach'd. Besides, he may want Judgment in the choice of his Authors, and knows not how to turn his hand either in weighing or winnowing the soundest opinions. There are divers who are cried up for great Clerks who want discretion. Others, tho' they wade deep into the causes and knowledge of things, yet they are subject to screw up their wits, and soar so high, that they lose themselves in their own Speculations; for thinking to transcend the ordinary pitch of Reason, they come to involve the common Principles of Philosophy in a Mist; instead of illustrating things, they render them more obscure; instead of a plainer and shorter way to the Palace of Knowledge, they lead us thro' briery, odd uncouth paths, and so fall into the fallacy call'd ignotum per ignotius. Some have the hap to be term'd learned Men, tho' they have gathered up but the scraps of Knowledge here and there, tho' they be but but smatterers, and mere sciolists, scarce knowing the Hoties of things; yet, like empty casks, if they can make a Sound, and have a Gift to vent with Confidence what they have suck'd in, they are accounted great Scholars.

Hoties, plural of hoti, i.e. "A cause, a reason; a statement introduced by ‘because’, or the fact denoted by such a statement" (Oxford English Dictionary), from Greek ὅτι.

Simon Leys, The Hall of Uselessness: Collected Essays (© 2011; rpt. New York: New York Review Books, 2013), p. 399:

Then, the Sino-Soviet split ended the intellectual importations from the USSR, and it was conveniently decided that Mao Zedong Thought represented the highest development of Marxist-Leninist philosophy; therefore, in order to fill the ideological vacuum, Mao’s Thought suddenly expanded and acquired polyvalent functions; its study became a reward for the meritorious, a punishment for the criminal, a medicine for the sick; it could answer all questions and solve all problems; it even performed miracles that were duly recorded; its presence was felt everywhere: it was broadcast in the streets and in the fields, it was put to music, it was turned into song and dance; it was inscribed everywhere—on mountain cliffs and on chopsticks, on badges, on bridges, on ashtrays, on dams, on teapots, on locomotives; it was printed on every page of all newspapers. (This, in turn, created some practical problems: in a poor country, where all paper is recycled for a variety of purposes, one had always to be very careful when wrapping groceries or when wiping one’s bottom, not to do it with Mao’s ubiquitous Thought—which would have been a capital offence.)

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Labels: noctes scatologicae

Ryōkan (1758-1831), tr. Kazuaki Tanahashi in Sky Above, Great Wind: The Life and Poetry of Zen Master Ryokan (Boston: Shambhala, 2012), p. 124:

With little desire, all is sufficient;
with grabbing mind, myriad things are confined.
Light vegetables satisfy my hunger.
A patched robe wraps my body.
Walking alone, I am accompanied by deer.
Singing aloud, I play with village children.
I wash my ears in a creek under the boulder,
delighted by pine trees on a ridge.

The same, tr. Ryūichi Abé and Peter Haskel in Great Fool: Zen Master Ryōkan: Poems, Letters, and Other Writings (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1996), p. 196:

Desire nothing, and you're content with everything
Pursue things, and you're thwarted at every turn
Wild greens can stave off hunger
A simple robe serves to cover the skin
Going for a solitary stroll
  I fall in with the deer
When the children from the village sing, I join
  right in at the top of my lungs
I cleanse my ears in the sound of water
  tumbling over rocks
And gladden my heart with the whisper of pines
  high on the mountains' peaks

The same, tr. Misao Kodama and Hikosaku Yanagishima in The Zen Fool Ryōkan (Rutland: Tuttle, 1999), pp. 89-90:

Without a craving
I crave nothing
With a craving
I crave everything
Among the mountains
I can feed myself on herbs
And get along
Wearing only one robe.
Rambling alone
I make friends
With deer and others.
I can join the village children
Singing loudly with them.
To wash my soiled ears clean,
I go to the stream
Under the rocks
And on the peaks I make friends
With the pines standing there.

For the Chinese see Kodama and Yanagishima, p. 90.

James Howell (1594?–1666), Epistolae Ho-elianae: The Familiar Letters of James Howell, Historiographer Royal to Charles II, ed. Joseph Jacobs, Books II.-IV. (London: David Nutt, 1892), letter III.23 (February 20, 1647), "To the Hon. Sir Edward Spencer, Kt., at his House near Branceford", pp. 547-551 (at 548):

But there are some men that are of a mere negative genius, like Johannes ad oppositum, who will deny, or at least cross and puzzle anything, tho' never so clear in itself, with their but, yet, if, &c.; they will flap the lye in Truth's teeth, tho' she visibly stand before their face without any vizard: Such perverse cross-grain'd spirits are not to be dealt withal by arguments, but palpable proofs; as if one should deny that the fire burns, or that he hath a nose on his face; there is no way to deal with him, but to pull him by the tip of the one, and put his finger into the other.

This reminds me of a famous passage from Boswell's Life of Johnson (aetat. 54, A.D. 1763):

After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the non-existence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it, 'I refute it thus.'

James Howell (1594?–1666), Epistolae Ho-elianae: The Familiar Letters of James Howell, Historiographer Royal to Charles II, ed. Joseph Jacobs, Books II.-IV. (London: David Nutt, 1892), letter II.29 (March 26, 1643), "To Sir Edw. Sa., Knight", pp. 421-423 (at 422-423):

This little sackful of bones, I thought to bequeath to Westminster-Abbey, to be interred in the Cloyster within the South-side of the Garden, close to the Wall, where I would have desir'd Sir H.F. (my dear Friend) to have inlay'd a small piece of black Marble, and cause this Motto to have been insculped on it, Hucusque peregrinus, heic domi; or this, which I would have left to his Choice, Hucusque Erraticus, heic Fixus: And instead of strewing my grave with Flowers, I would have desir'd him to have grafted thereon some little Tree of what sort he pleas'd, that might have taken root downward to my dust, because I have been always naturally affected to woods and groves, and those kind of vegetables, insomuch, that if there were any such thing as a Pythagorean Metempsychosis, I think my soul would transmigrate into some Tree, when she bids this body farewell.

According to D.R. Woolf, "Howell, James (1594?–1666)," Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, "Howell died in the parish of St Andrew's, Holborn, and was buried on 3 November 1666 outside the Temple Church. A monument of Howell's design was erected in the Temple Church at a cost of £30." The inscription on the monument (destroyed in World War II) read:

Jacobus Howell Cambro-Britannus, Regius Historiographus (in Anglia primus), qui post varias peregrinationes, tandem naturae cursum peregit, satur annorum & famae, domi forisque huc usque erraticus, hic fixus 1666.

Related posts:

• Disregard of Funeral Instructions
• My Bed of Death
• Funeral of a Lover of Horace
• Cactus Ed's Funeral Instructions
• Kierkegaard's Tomb

Tom Stoppard, Arcadia, Scene 3:

THOMASINA: Oh, Septimus! — can you bear it? All the lost plays of the Athenians! Two hundred at least by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides — thousands of poems — Aristotle's own library brought to Egypt by the noodle's ancestors! How can we sleep for grief?

SEPTIMUS: By counting our stock. Seven plays from Aeschylus, seven from Sophocles, nineteen from Euripides, my lady! You should no more grieve for the rest than for a buckle lost from your first shoe, or for your lesson book which will be lost when you are old. We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it. The missing plays of Sophocles will turn up piece by piece, or be written again in another language. Ancient cures for diseases will reveal themselves once more. Mathematical discoveries glimpsed and lost to view will have their time again. You do not suppose, my lady, that if all of Archimedes had been hiding in the great library of Alexandria, we would be at a loss for a corkscrew? I have no doubt that the improved steam-driven heat-engine which puts Mr Noakes into an ecstasy that he and it and the modern age should all coincide, was described on papyrus. Steam and brass were not invented in Glasgow.

Guy Davenport (1927-2005), Introduction to Burton Raffel, tr., Pure Pagan: Seven Centuries of Greek Poems and Fragments (New York: The Modern Library, 2004), pp. xiii-xxii (at xiv):

Given the kinship of the ancient lyre, or barbitos, to the autoharp, Sappho's cunningly woven assonances and consonances probably sounded like Mother Maybelle Carter.

James Howell (1594?–1666), Epistolae Ho-elianae: The Familiar Letters of James Howell, Historiographer Royal to Charles II, ed. Joseph Jacobs, Books II.-IV. (London: David Nutt, 1892), letter III.26 (July 28, 1648), "To R.K., Esq., at St. Gile's", pp. 553-554 (at 553):

Difference in Opinion, no more than a differing Complexion, can be cause enough for me to hate any. A differing Fancy is no more to me than a differing Face. If another hath a fair Countenance, tho' mine be black; or if I have a fair Opinion, tho' another have a hard-favour'd one, yet it shall not break that common league of Humanity which should be betwixt rational creatures, provided he corresponds with me in the general offices of Morality and civil uprightness: This may admit him to my acquaintance and conversation, tho' I never concur with him in opinion; He bears the Image of Adam, and the Image of the Almighty, as well as I; he had God for his Father, tho' he hath not the same Church for his Mother. The omniscient Creator, as he is only Kardiognostic, so he is the sole Lord of the whole inward Man: It is he who reigns o'er the faculties of the soul, and the affections of the Heart: 'Tis he who regulates the Will, and rectifies all obliquities in the Understanding by special illuminations, and oftentimes reconciles Men as opposite in Opinions, as Meridians and Parallels are in point of extension, whereof the one draws from East to West, the other from North to South.

James Howell (1594?–1666), Epistolae Ho-elianae: The Familiar Letters of James Howell, Historiographer Royal to Charles II, ed. Joseph Jacobs, Books II.-IV. (London: David Nutt, 1892), letter II.50 (March 17, 1639), "To my Hon. Friend, Sir C.C.", pp. 443-445 (at 445):

I fell also to think what advantage those innocent Animals had of Man, who, as soon as Nature cast them into the world, find their Meat dress'd, the Cloth laid, and the Table cover'd; they find their Drink brew'd, and the Buttery open, their Beds made, and their Cloaths ready: and tho' Man hath the faculty of Reason to make him a compensation for the want of those advantages, yet this Reason brings with it a thousand perturbations of mind and perplexities of spirit, griping cares and anguishes of thought, which those harmless silly creatures were exempted from. Going on, I came to repose myself upon the trunk of a Tree, and I fell to consider further what advantage that dull Vegetable had of those feeding Animals, as not to be so troublesome and beholden to Nature, nor to be subject to starving, to diseases, to the inclemency of the weather, and to be far longer-liv'd. Then I spied a great Stone, and sitting a-while upon't, I fell to weigh in my thoughts that that Stone was in a happier condition, in some respects, than either of those sensitive Creatures or Vegetables I saw before; in regard that that Stone, which propagates by assimilation, as the Philosophers say, needed neither grass nor hay, or any aliment for restauration of nature, nor water to refresh its roots, or the heat of the Sun to attract the moisture upwards, to increase growth, as the other did. As I directed my pace homeward, I spied a Kite soaring high in the Air, and gently gliding up and down the clear Region so far above my head, that I fell to envy the Bird extremely, and repine at his happiness, that he should have a privilege to make a nearer approach to Heaven than I.

James Howell reposing himself upon the trunk of a tree, as depicted by Abraham Bosse:

Libero de Libero (1903-1981), Borrador, Diario 1933-1955 (Torino: ERI, 1994), pp. 70-71 (May 3, 1941; tr. Eric Thomson):

There was a eucalyptus beneath my window, an ancient one, with timid foliage; and there for a season a nightingale had its nocturnal forest home, and I talked to the nightingale, which used to come at night to sing for me. The other day I came across workmen who were cutting it down; and already felled the trunk revealed the bloody laceration of the roots as the workmen were cutting it up into transportable blocks. For no reason, they cut it down and the eucalyptus was bleeding there butchered. They've killed my tree and a round scar is left behind in its place like the lid of an abyss.

C'era un eucalipto sotto la mia finestra, antico, con una timida fronda: e là un usignuolo per una stagione ebbe la sua foresta notturna, e io parlai all'usignuolo che veniva di notte a cantare per me. L'altro giorno ho trovato operai che l'abbattevano; e già caduto il tronco mostrava lo strappo sanguigno delle radici e gli operai lo segavano per farne ciochi trasportabili. Senza un perché, l'hanno tagliato, e l'eucalipto sanguinava sgozzato. Hanno ucciso il mio albero, e sul luogo è rimasta una cicatrice rotonda come il coperchio d'un abisso.

Hat tip: Eric Thomson.

Labels: arboricide

Patrick Leigh Fermor (1915-2011), "Sash Windows Opening on the Foam" (1986), rpt. in Words of Mercury (London: John Murray, 2003), pp. 126-130 (at 126):

'Where a man’s Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica is, there shall his heart be also'; and, of course, Lemprière, Fowler, Brewer, Liddell and Scott, Dr Smith, Harrap and Larousse and a battery of atlases, bibles, concordances, Loeb classics, Pléiade editions, Oxford Companions and Cambridge histories; anthologies and books on painting, sculpture, architecture, birds, beasts, fishes, trees and stars; for if one is settling in the wilds, a dozen reference shelves is the minimum; and they must be near the dinner table where arguments spring up which have to be settled then or never.

Photograph of a bookshelf in Fermor's house, from Maggie Rainey-Smith, "Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor," A Curious Half-Hour (June 11, 2011):


Hat tip: Eric Thomson.

Austin Dobson (1840-1921), "On the Hurry of This Time," in his Collected Poems, 5th ed. (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co. Ltd, 1902), p. 472:

                    (To F.G.)

With slower pen men used to write,
        Of old, when "letters" were "polite;"
    In ANNA'S, or in GEORGE'S days,
    They could afford to turn a phrase
Or trim a straggling theme aright.

They knew not steam; electric light
Not yet had dazed their calmer sight;—
    They meted out both blame and praise
        With slower pen.

Too swiftly now the Hours take flight!
What's read at morn is dead at night:
    Scant space have we for Art's delays,
    Whose breathless thought so briefly stays,
We may not work—ah! would we might!—
        With slower pen.

Ebenezer Elliott (1781-1849), "Will It Rain?" in his Poetical Works, Vol. II (London: Henry S. King, 1876), p. 209:

"Bread!" the starver faintly sigheth;
"I have none!" the robb'd replieth;
Doall loseth, Starveall winneth;
Cheatall laugheth, while he sinneth;
Work grim-gaspeth o'er spare diet;
And the Million-Tongued is quiet.

When the forest breatheth deeply,
Darkèd sun down shining steeply;
When the noon-night scarcely shifteth;
And the windy cloud uplifteth
Not a leaf the mute heav'ns under;
Then, the thoughtful look for thunder!

For a polytheist, who believes in the existence of many gods, a question naturally arises. To which of the gods in particular should he pray and sacrifice to achieve a specific goal? In ancient Greece, one way to answer this question was to consult an oracle. On this question posed to oracles see H.S. Versnel, Coping With the Gods: Wayward Readings in Greek Theology (Leiden: Brill, 2011 = Religions in the Graeco-Roman World, 173), pp. 46-49.

Jon D. Mikalson, Ancient Greek Religion (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2005), p. 109, provides a translation of a private inquiry of this type on a lead tablet from the oracle of Zeus at Dodona:

Gods. May I have good fortune.
Evandros and his wife consult Zeus Naios and Dione. To whom of the gods or heroes or divinities should they pray and sacrifice so that they themselves and their household may fare better both now and for all time?

Mikalson cites H.W. Parke, The Oracles of Zeus (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), and I don't know whether the translation is Mikalson's or Parke's.

Here is the Greek text, from The Packard Humanities Institute's Searchable Greek Inscriptions, where it is dated "ca. 300-167 BC":

θεοί. τύχαν ἀγαθάν. ἐπικοινῆται Εὔβαν-
δρος {Εὔανδρος} καὶ ἁ γυνὰ τῶι Διεὶ τῶι Νάωι καὶ τᾶι Δι-
ώναι τίνι κα φεῶν {θεῶν} ἢ ἡρώων ἢ δαιμόνων
εὐχόμενοι καὶ φύοντες {θύοντες} λῶιον καὶ ἄμεινο-
ν πράσσοιεν καὶ αὐτοὶ καὶ ἁ οἴκησις καὶ νῦν
καὶ ἰς τὸν ἅπαντα χρόνον.

Some elementary notes to myself on the Greek:

• Liddell-Scott-Jones, s.v. ἐπικοινάομαι (consult an oracle), cite only this and one other inscription from Dodona; cf. the middle of κοινόω (LSJ, sense II.2 = take counsel with, consult, esp. an oracle or god), although the middle of χράω seems more common in this sense.
• In the English translation there is only one comparative adverb (better), whereas there are two in the Greek (λῶιον καὶ ἄμεινον).

The text of the lead tablet was first published in Constantin Carapanos, Dodones et ses ruines (Paris: Librarie Hachette et C^ie, 1878), [T.I:] Texte, p. 71, and [T. II:] Planches, pl. XXXIV, no. 3. There is also a text with notes by August Fick in Sammlung der griechischen Dialekt-Inschriften, II.1 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1885), pp. 120-121, no. 1582. The most recent edition is in Éric Lhôte, Les lamelles oraculaires de Dodone (Genève: Droz, 2006 = Hautes Études du Monde Gréco-romain, 36), Corpus, N^o 8, which I haven't seen, because the relevant pages are hidden in Google Books.