Laudator Temporis Acti

Dear Mike,

Your latest (on "an old fogey") reminds me of the "rum-soaked club men" of my favorite letter by John Jay Chapman, from M.A. DeWolfe Howe's edition of John Jay Chapman and his letters (Houghton Mifflin 1937). The Rev. Samuel Drury was headmaster of St. Paul's School, Concord, N.H., where Chapman's sons were students.

As ever,

Ian [Jackson]

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To S. S. Drury
                                                                                                                      BARRYTOWN, N.Y.
                                                                                                                      Nov. 26: 1916

MY DEAR DR. DRURY
Do you really think that if I had any ideas on the parent and child question I'd waste them on you? But just now I am taking a loaf and trying to forget the whole subject. Is the education of the young the whole of life? I hate the young — I'm worn out with them. They absorb you and suck you dry and are vampires and selfish brutes at best. Give me some good old rumsoaked club men — who can't be improved and make no moral claims — and let me play chequers with them and look out of the Club window and think about what I'll have for dinner.
                                                                                         Yours faithfully
                                                                                                                     JOHN JAY CHAPMAN

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Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946), Unforgotten Years (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1939), pp. 295-296:

Having thus survived a generation which cared for the things I care for, I find that I now prefer the company of idlers and ne'er-do-wells and scalawags. I like the people who look on at life rather than those who take an active part in its business and affairs. They have plenty of leisure, and no axes to grind, which is pleasant. They don't preach at me, which is still more pleasant; and if they read at all, they read mostly old-fashioned books of the kind I like.

A Protestant controversialist of the seventeenth century once reproved the Catholics for their love of venial sins; they liked, he said, to warm themselves at fantastic fires and to dance in the light of glowworms.

This taste I share with the unreformed, at least in the idle sin of reading. I too like to dance in the light of glowworms, and the earnest and hastily written books of our modern authors are of no interest to me. So I suppose I am an old fogey, after all.

Denys L. Page (1908-1978), History and the Homeric Iliad (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), pp. 301-302:

In most of the transactions of his life Homeric man felt no need to philosophize about causes and effects. It was only in exceptional circumstances, and especially when things went wrong, that questions of responsibility arose; and the question was answered in uncommonly clear and consistent terms. There were obvious reasons why man could not be held accountable for unwise actions, for conduct contrary to his own interest, such as might involve breach of the code of honour or law. Such things are done under the influence of emotions which take possession of the mind, destroying the judgement; and if you ask, who put the madness into the mind, who created those emotions, the answer must be that it was not man who was the creator of his mind. Thoughts and emotions come into the mind, whether suddenly or slowly, as if from outside; man does not acknowledge, because he does not feel, any personal responsibility for their coming. There is therefore no choice but to assign to supernatural agency what cannot be explained in rational terms. There are in the world so many things which man did not create and does not control: in the sphere of human conduct, for example, the results of an action often turn out to be different from what the action was designed to achieve; responsibility for the actual results, in such a case, cannot be assigned to the human agent, whose intention has been frustrated. What no man has done must be ascribed to superman. Man does not create his own madness: nor can he foresee the consequences of what he does, however sane. The creator and foreseer must be outside and beyond him: in the last resort, they are embodied in the supreme power of the universe, in the will of Zeus. It is only Zeus who can foresee the results of all or any actions; and foreknowledge of course implies prearrangement. This is the heart and soul of Homeric thought: that the life of man proceeds in conformity with a prearranged plan; each has his Moira, his share in the scheme of things, his allotted portion. He can only do what destiny has predetermined for him; and only Zeus knows what that is, or whither it will lead. The ultimate responsibility for all actions lies not with man but with the agency which assigned his destiny to him; and the workings of his destiny within the individual may be uncomfortable and inconsistent,—even the wisest is exposed to the sudden access of supernatural passions which invade his understanding and take possession of it.

Denys L. Page (1908-1978), History and the Homeric Iliad (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), p. 300:

Now I have learnt by long experience that what appears feeble and false to me may bear to others the aspect of great and prevalent truth.

Denys L. Page (1908-1978), History and the Homeric Iliad (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), p. 57:

I do not see how this suggestion could be positively refuted. It enjoys a status well known in academic circles and doubtless elsewhere,—that of the Remotely Conceivable Alternative, contrary to the obvious implication of the facts, incapable of proof or disproof.

Simonides, fragment 520 (tr. David A. Campbell):

Men's strength is slight, their plans impossible; within their brief lifetime toil upon toil; and death hangs inescapable over all alike: of death an equal portion is allotted to good men and to bad.

ἀνθρώπων ὀλίγον μὲν
κάρτος, ἄπρακτοι δὲ μεληδόνες,
αἰῶνι δ᾿ ἐν παύρῳ πόνος ἀμφὶ πόνῳ·
ὁ δ᾿ ἄφυκτος ὁμῶς ἐπικρέμαται θάνατος·
κείνου γὰρ ἴσον λάχον μέρος οἵ τ᾿ ἀγαθοὶ
ὅστις τε κακός.

Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930), "The Man with the Twisted Lip," Adventures of Sherlock Holmes:

It is, of course, a trifle, but there is nothing so important as trifles.

Dio Chrysostom, Discourses 34.29 (tr. J.W. Cohoon and H. Lamar Crosby):

For sometimes men without any ability to perceive what is needful, men who have never given heed to their own welfare in the past, incompetent to manage even a village as it should be managed, but recommended only by wealth or family, undertake the task of government; still others undertake that task in the belief that they are displaying diligence if they merely heap up phrases and string them together in any way at all with greater speed than most men can, although in all else they are in no way superior to anybody else. And what is most serious is that these men, not for the sake of what is truly best and in the interest of their country itself, but for the sake of reputation and honours and the possession of greater power than their neighbours, in the pursuit of crowns and precedence and purple robes, fixing their gaze upon these things and staking all upon their attainment, do and say such things as will enhance their own reputations.

Οἱ μὲν γὰρ οὐδὲν δυνάμενοι τῶν δεόντων ἰδεῖν οὐδ᾿ ἐπιμεληθέντες αὑτῶν πρότερον, μηδὲ κώμην ὄντες ἱκανοὶ διοικῆσαι κατὰ τρόπον, ἄλλως δὲ ὑπὸ χρημάτων ἢ γένους συνιστάμενοι προσέρχονται τῷ πολιτεύεσθαι· τινὲς δὲ ταύτην ἐπιμέλειαν εἶναι νομίζοντες, ἂν ῥήματα συμφορῶσι καὶ ταῦτα τῶν πολλῶν ὁπωσδὴ θᾶττον συνείρωσι, μηδενὸς τἄλλα ἀμείνους ὄντες. τὸ δὲ μέγιστον, διὰ μὲν τὸ βέλτιστον καὶ τῆς πατρίδος αὐτῆς ἕνεκεν οὔ, λοιπὸν δὲ διὰ δόξας καὶ τιμὰς καὶ τὸ δύνασθαι πλέον ἑτέρου καὶ στεφάνους καὶ προεδρίας καὶ πορφύρας διώκοντες, πρὸς ταῦτα ἀποβλέποντες καὶ τούτων ἐξηρτημένοι τοιαῦτα πράττουσι καὶ λέγουσιν, ἐξ ὧν αὐτοί τινες εἶναι δόξουσιν.

Dio Chrysostom, Discourses 36.34 (tr. J.W. Cohoon and H. Lamar Crosby):

So, as I was saying, it is reasonable to suppose that not only do those who busy themselves near some ritual, hard by the entrance to the sanctuary, gain some inkling of what is going on within, when either a lone mystic phrase rings out loudly, or fire appears above the enclosure, but also that there comes sometimes to the poets—I mean the very ancient poets—some utterance from the Muses, however brief, some inspiration of divine nature and of divine truth, like a flash of fire from the invisible.

οὐκοῦν, ὡς ἔφην, τούς τε πλησίον ἀναστρεφομένους τελετῆς τινος πρὸς ταῖς εἰσόδοις εἰκὸς τό γε τοσοῦτον τῶν ἔνδοθεν αἰσθάνεσθαί τινος, ἤτοι ῥήματος ἐκβοηθέντος ἑνὸς μυστικοῦ ἢ πυρὸς ὑπερφανέντος, καὶ τοῖς ποιηταῖς ἐνίοτε, λέγω δὲ τοῖς πάνυ ἀρχαίοις, φωνή τις ἐκ Μουσῶν ἀφίκετο βραχεῖα καί πού τις ἐπίπνοια θείας φύσεώς τε καὶ ἀληθείας, καθάπερ αὐγὴ πυρὸς ἐξ ἀφανοῦς λάμψαντος.

"About Cider," All the Year Round: A Weekly Journal, 3rd Series, No. 87 (August 30, 1890) 198-202 (at 200):

There is an old superstition in some parts of the country still, that, if the sun shines on the apple-trees on Christmas Day, there will be a good crop next season.

There is an old custom in the West of England of blessing, or "wassailing," the apple-trees, a custom said to have its origin in the superstition referred to by Herrick in his "Hesperides":

Wassaile the trees that they may beare
You many a Plum and many a Peare;
For more or lesse fruits they will bring
As you do give them wassailing.

The process of "wassailing" consists of the people singing round the tree such verses as these:

Health to thee, great apple-tree!
Well to bear hats full, caps full.
Three-bushel bags full.

Then three cheers are given for the tree, and guns are often fired.

I should try this to improve the health of the scraggly apple-trees on my land.

Hat tip: John Bergmayer.

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Update from Alan Knell:

The Mellstock Band is a small group specialising in traditional English songs and music.

Their album "The Leaves of Life" includes the apple Tree Wassail. The notes with the disk say this.

The custom of "wassailing" apple trees was widespread in the south of England, especially in Somerset, where it persists to the present day.

A group of villagers would go into the orchard at night in wintertime, usually at New Year or Twelfth Night, choose the oldest or best tree to represent the orchard, and drink a formal toast to it, as if it were a living person.

In different places cider might be poured on the roots, the branches decked with sheep's wool or toasted bread dipped in cider, and shotguns fired through the branches while tin trays and buckets were beaten.

Often a ceremonial toast was spoken, and a special song sung.

Cecil Sharp collected this song from William Crockford of Bratten, Somerset, on September 12th, 1906. The toast ran:

Bud, blossom, bloom and bear, ready to tear,
So that we shall have apples and cider next year.
Hat-fulls, cap-fulls, three-bushel-bag-fulls,
Little heap under the stairs,
Cider running out gutter-holes.
Hip, Hip, Hurrah!

[....]

A cider-apple orchard is a beautiful sight. The trees are relatively small, but blossom in spring is abundant, and in autumn the trees are loaded with small dark red apples, too hard and sour to eat. They say that the varieties of cider-apple numbered well into three figures, but most are now rare or extinct.

There was a time in England when you could tell your place by looking at the varieties of live-stock and crops.

Laudamus tempora acta!

St. Jerome, letter 107.4 (to Laeta; tr. F.A. Wright):

Have a set of letters made for her, of boxwood or of ivory, and tell her their names. Let her play with them, making play a road to learning, and let her not only grasp the right order of the letters and remember their names in a simple song, but also frequently upset their order and mix the last letters with the middle ones, the middle with the first. Thus she will know them all by sight as well as by sound. When she begins with uncertain hand to use the pen, either let another hand be put over hers to guide her baby fingers, or else have the letters marked on the tablet so that her writing may follow their outlines and keep to their limits without straying away. Offer her prizes for spelling, tempting her with such trifling gifts as please young children. Let her have companions too in her lessons, so that she may seek to rival them and be stimulated by any praise they win. You must not scold her if she is somewhat slow; praise is the best sharpener of wits. Let her be glad when she is first and sorry when she falls behind. Above all take care not to make her lessons distasteful; a childish dislike often lasts longer than childhood.

Fiant ei litterae vel buxeae vel eburneae et suis nominibus appellentur. Ludat in eis, ut et lusus eius eruditio sit, et non solum ordinem teneat litterarum, ut memoria nominum in canticum transeat, sed ipse inter se crebro ordo turbetur et mediis ultima, primis media misceantur, ut eas non sonu tantum, sed et visu noverit. Cum vero coeperit trementi manu stilum in cera ducere, vel alterius superposita manu teneri regantur articuli vel in tabella sculpantur elementa, ut per eosdem sulcos inclusa marginibus trahantur vestigia et foras non queant evagari. Syllabas iungat ad praemium, et, quibus illa aetas delectari potest, munusculis invitetur. Habeat et in discendo socias, quibus invideat, quarum laudibus mordeatur. Non est obiurganda, si tardior sit, sed laudibus excitandum ingenium; et vicisse se gaudeat et victam doleat. Cavendum in primis, ne oderit studia, ne amaritudo eorum percepta in infantia ultra rudes annos transeat.

Quintilian 1.1.26-27 (tr. Donald A. Russell):

Nor do I rule out the well-known practice of giving ivory letter-shapes to play with, so as to stimulate little children to learn—or indeed anything else one can think of to give them more pleasure, and which they enjoy handling, looking at, or naming.

Once the child has begun to trace the outlines, it will be useful to have these inscribed as neatly as possible on a tablet, so that the stilus is guided by the grooves. In this way, the child will not make mistakes as on wax (for he will be constrained by the edges on both sides, and will not be able to stray beyond the marks), and, by following these well-defined traces so quickly and often, he will strengthen his fingers, and not need the help of a guiding hand placed over his own.

Non excludo autem (id quod est notum) irritandae ad discendum infantiae gratia eburneas etiam litterarum formas in lusum offerre, vel si quid aliud quo magis illa aetas gaudeat inveniri potest quod tractare intueri nominare iucundum sit.

Cum vero iam ductus sequi coeperit, non inutile erit eos tabellae quam optime insculpi, ut per illos velut sulcos ducatur stilus. Nam neque errabit quemadmodum in ceris (continebitur enim utrimque marginibus neque extra praescriptum egredi poterit) et celerius ac saepius sequendo certa vestigia firmabit articulos neque egebit adiutorio manum suam manu super imposita regentis.

The OED Online Word of the Day for today is nuppence, defined as "No money; nothing." The earliest citations are both from Andrew Lang, dated 1883 and 1886, which might lead one to conclude that Lang coined the word. But it can be found in print nearly twenty years earlier. See D'Arcy W. Thompson (1829-1902), Day Dreams of a Schoolmaster, 2nd ed. (Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas, 1864), p. 199:

What could a man do with no pennies or nuppence?

Lang was one of Thompson's pupils. He might have heard the word from his schoolmaster's lips, or read it in this book, or both.

Labels: lexicography

Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946), Unforgotten Years (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1939), pp. 151-152:

I never meet a rich, successful business American without some slight speculation about the bones he has crushed and the wretches he has eaten. These experiences have given me a certain dislike for the whole iron economic system upon which our civilization is founded—a dislike, however, which I must admit is by no means strong enough to make me forgo any of the pecuniary advantages which I derive from it.

St. Jerome, letter 22.17 (to Eustochium; tr. F.A. Wright):

Read often and learn all you can.

Crebrius lege et disce quam plurima.

Id., letter 125.11 (to Rusticus):

Always have a book in your hand and before your eyes.

Numquam de manu et oculis tuis recedat liber.

Alfred Eisenstaedt, Marilyn Monroe Reading at Home

Dear Mr Gilleland,

'Ne tu aliis faciendam trade, factam si quam rem cupis' is not an ancient Latin proverb, but Lindsay's own translation of 'If you want a thing done, do it yourself', which he quotes as 'that golden rule of scientific research' in the preface to Notae Latinae. He seems to have forgotten that an injunction to the world at large, rather than a particular person, should be cast in the present subjunctive: 'tradas' and 'uelis' (since 'cupias' won't scan).

Best wishes

Leofranc Holford-Strevens

St. Jerome, letter 125.18 (to Rusticus; tr. F.A. Wright):

Do not rashly leap into authorship, and be led by light-headed madness. Spend years in learning what you are to teach.

Ne ad scribendum cito prosilias et levi ducaris insania. Multo tempore disce, quod doceas.

Related post: Publish or Perish.

Herodotus 8.45-46 (tr. A.D. Godley):

45. But when he saw the whole Hellespont hidden by his ships, and all the shores and plains of Abydos thronged with men, Xerxes first declared himself happy, and presently he fell a-weeping.

46. Perceiving that, his uncle Artabanus, who in the beginning had spoken his mind freely and counselled Xerxes not to march against Hellas—Artabanus, I say, marking how Xerxes wept, questioned him and said, "What a distance is there, O king, between your acts of this present and a little while ago! Then you declared your happiness, and now you weep." "Ay verily," said Xerxes; "for I was moved to compassion, when I considered the shortness of all human life, seeing that of all this multitude of men not one will be alive a hundred years hence."

45. Ὡς δὲ ὥρα πάντα μὲν τὸν Ἑλλήσποντον ὑπὸ τῶν νεῶν ἀποκεκρυμμένον, πάσας δὲ τὰς ἀκτὰς καὶ τὰ Ἀβυδηνῶν πεδία ἐπίπλεα ἀνθρώπων, ἐνθαῦτα ὁ Ξέρξης ἑωυτὸν ἐμακάρισε, μετὰ δὲ τοῦτο ἐδάκρυσε.

46. Μαθὼν δέ μιν Ἀρτάβανος ὁ πάτρως, ὃς τὸ πρῶτον γνώμην ἀπεδέξατο ἐλευθέρως οὐ συμβουλεύων Ξέρξῃ στρατεύεσθαι ἐπὶ τὴν Ἑλλάδα, οὗτος ὡνὴρ φρασθεὶς Ξέρξην δακρύσαντα εἴρετο τάδε. "Ὦ βασιλεῦ, ὡς πολλὸν ἀλλήλων κεχωρισμένα ἐργάσαο νῦν τε καὶ ὀλίγῳ πρότερον· μακαρίσας γὰρ σεωυτὸν δακρύεις." ὃ δὲ εἶπε "Ἐσῆλθε γάρ με λογισάμενον κατοικτεῖραι ὡς βραχὺς εἴη ὁ πᾶς ἀνθρώπινος βίος, εἰ τούτων γε ἐόντων τοσούτων οὐδεὶς ἐς ἑκατοστὸν ἔτος περιέσται."

St. Jerome, letter 60.18 (to Heliodorus; tr. F.A. Wright):

That mighty king Xerxes, who overthrew mountains and turned the sea into solid ground, when from his high place he looked upon his infinite multitudes and his countless host of men, is said to have wept at the thought that not one of those whom he saw would in a hundred years be alive. Oh, if we could ascend into such a watch-tower as would give us a view of the whole world spread beneath our feet! Then I would show you a universe in ruins, peoples warring against peoples, and kingdoms shattered on kingdoms. You would see some men being tortured, some killed, others drowned at sea, others dragged off to slavery; here a wedding, there lamentation; some being born, others dying; some living in affluence, others begging their bread; not merely Xerxes’ army, but the inhabitants of the whole world now alive destined soon to pass away. Words fail; for language is inadequate to the greatness of this theme.

Xerxes, ille rex potentissimus, qui subvertit montes, maria constravit, cum de sublimi loco infinitam hominum multitudinem et innumerabilem vidisset exercitum, flesse dicitur, quod post centum annos nullus eorum, quos tunc cernebat, superfuturus esset. O si possemus in talem ascendere speculam, de qua universam terram sub nostris pedibus cerneremus! Iam tibi ostenderem totius mundi ruinas, gentes gentibus et regnis regna conlisa; alios torqueri, alios necari, alios obrui fluctibus, alios ad servitutem trahi; hic nuptias, ibi planctum; illos nasci, istos mori; alios affluere divitiis, alios mendicare; et non Xerxis tantum exercitum, sed totius mundi homines, qui nunc vivunt, in brevi spatio defuturos. Vincitur sermo rei magnitudine et minus est omne quod dicimus.

Democritus, fragment 286 Diels (tr. Kathleen Freeman):

He is fortunate who is happy with moderate means, unfortunate who is unhappy with great possessions.

εὐτυχὴς ὁ ἐπὶ μετρίοισι χρήμασιν εὐθυμεόμενος, δυστυχὴς δὲ ὁ ἐπὶ πολλοῖσι δυσθυμεόμενος.

Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946), Unforgotten Years (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1939), pp. 190-191:

If you would save your soul, the voice seemed to whisper, if you would discover that personal and peculiar sense of life which is your most precious endowment, you must practise and perfect a habit of discrimination; amid all you hear and see you must choose whatever is relevant and significant to you, and only that, rejecting with equal sincerity everything that is not really yours—all the interests you catch from others, all the standards and beliefs and feelings which are imposed on you by the society and the age you live in. Watch above all, the voice admonished me in its grave accents, for those special moments of illumination within, or of visible delight from the world around you, which seem to set free the spirit for a moment. Not to discriminate these visitations of beauty, not thus to respond to them, is, the voice admonished me, on this short day of frost and sunshine, to sleep before evening.

St. Jerome, letter 7.2 (to Chromatius, Jovinus, and Eusebius; tr. F.A. Wright):

Now I talk to your letter, I embrace it, it carries on a conversation with me, it is the only thing here that knows Latin. In this place an old man has either to learn a barbarous jargon, or else to hold his tongue. The handwriting I know so well brings your dear faces before my eyes; and then either I am no longer here or else you are here with me. Believe love when it tells you the truth: as I write this letter I see you before me.

Nunc cum vestris litteris fabulor, illas amplexor, illae mecum loquuntur, illae hic tantum Latine sciunt. Hic enim aut barbarus seni sermo discendus est aut tacendum est. Quotiensque carissimos mihi vultus notae manus referunt inpressa vestigia, totiens aut ego hic non sum aut vos hic estis. Credite amori vera dicenti: et cum has scriberem, vos videbam.

J.N.D. Kelly (1909-1997), Jerome: His Life, Writings, and Controversies (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1975), p. 49, n. 15:

The older reading 'barbarus semi-sermo' ( = 'the barbarous gibberish'), which has good MS support, seems preferable to 'barbarus seni sermo' ('at my advanced years I must learn a barbarous speech'), which Hilberg adopted.