Laudator Temporis Acti

Quotations and notes to myself after reading Shakespeare's Richard III.

1.1.66 (gynecocracy):

Why, this it is when men are ruled by women.

1.1.109 (pun on subjects):

We are the Queen's abjects and must obey.

1.2.15-17:

O, cursèd be the hand that made these holes;
Cursèd the heart that had the heart to do it;
Cursèd the blood that let this blood from hence.

1.3.48-51 (what becomes of one who can't kiss arse):

Because I cannot flatter and look fair,
Smile in men's faces, smooth, deceive, and cog,
Duck with French nods and apish courtesy,
I must be held a rancorous enemy.

1.3.147-148 (insult):

Hie thee to hell for shame and leave this world,
Thou cacodemon! There thy kingdom is.

1.3.225 (another insult):

Thou hateful, withered hag ...

1.4.91-92 (brevity):

What, so brief?
'Tis better, sir, than to be tedious.

1.4.139-149 (could be a riddle, except answer occurs a few lines before):

I'll not meddle with it. It makes a man coward: a man cannot steal but it accuseth him; a man cannot swear but it checks him; a man cannot lie with his neighbour's wife but it detects him. 'Tis a blushing shamefaced spirit that mutinies in a man's bosom. It fills a man full of obstacles. It made me once restore a purse of gold that by chance I found. It beggars any man that keeps it. It is turned out of towns and cities for a dangerous thing, and every man that means to live well endeavours to trust to himself and live without it.

2.1.107-108 (thought crimes):

My brother killed no man; his fault was thought,
And yet his punishment was bitter death.

2.2.35-39 (heauton timoroumenos):

Ah, who shall hinder me to wail and weep,
To chide my fortune and torment myself?
I'll join with black despair against my soul
And to myself become an enemy.

2.2.124 (lectio difficilior for fetcht):

fet

2.3.13 (paedocracy):

Woe to that land that's governed by a child.

2.4.35-41 (expect and be prepared for the worst):

When clouds are seen, wise men put on their cloaks;
When great leaves fall, then winter is at hand;
When the sun sets, who doth not look for night?
Untimely storms make men expect a dearth.
All may be well; but if God sort it so,
'Tis more than we deserve or I expect.

2.4.60-61 (life):

Accursèd and unquiet wrangling days,
How many of you have mine eyes beheld?

3.1.45-46 (description of myself):

You are too senseless obstinate, my lord,
Too ceremonious and traditional.

3.4.11-13 (strangers to each other):

We know each other's faces; for our hearts,
He knows no more of mine than I of yours,
Or I of his, my lord, than you of mine.

3.5.6-12:

Tut, I can counterfeit the deep tragedian,
Speak, and look back, and pry on every side,
Tremble and start at wagging of a straw,
Intending deep suspicion. Ghastly looks
Are at my service, like enforcèd smiles,
And both are ready in their offices,
At any time to grace my stratagems.

3.5.90-94 (children resembling fathers):

My princely father then had wars in France
And, by true computation of the time,
Found that the issue was not his begot,
Which well appearèd in his lineaments,
Being nothing like the noble Duke my father.

3.6.9 (asyndetic, privative adjectives):

Untainted, unexamined ...

3.7.4-14 (children resembling fathers):

Touch'd you the bastardy of Edward's children?
I did; with his contract with Lady Lucy,
And his contract by deputy in France;
Th' unsatiate greediness of his desire
And his enforcement of the city wives;
His tyranny for trifles; his own bastardy,
As being got, your father then in France,
And his resemblance, being not like the Duke.
Withal, I did infer your lineaments,
Being the right idea of your father,
Both in your form and nobleness of mind.

4.1.102-103 (teen = grief, woe):

Eighty-odd years of sorrow have I seen,
And each hour's joy wracked with a week of teen.

4.2.76 (what to say about noisy neighbors):

Foes to my rest, and my sweet sleep's disturbers ...

4.3.121 (what to say to those who solicit charitable contributions):

I am not in the giving vein today.

4.4.1-2 (wheel of fortune):

So now prosperity begins to mellow
And drop into the rotten mouth of death.

4.4.28-30 (oxymorons):

Dead life, blind sight, poor mortal living ghost,
Woe's scene, world's shame, grave's due by life usurped,
Brief abstract and record of tedious days...

4.4.83 (insult):

That bottled spider, that foul bunch-backed toad!

4.4.88 (wheel of fortune):

One heaved a-high to be hurled down below.

4.4.130-135 (advantage of emotional incontinence):

Why should calamity be full of words?
Windy attorneys to their clients' woes,
Airy succeeders of intestate joys,
Poor breathing orators of miseries,
Let them have scope, though what they will impart
Help nothing else, yet do they ease the heart.

4.4.204:

Bloody thou art; bloody will be thy end.

4.4.323-324 (apology):

I cannot make you what amends I would;
Therefore accept such kindness as I can.

4.4.344 (underneath the bedcovers):

The sweet silent hours of marriage joys ...

5.3.6-7 (life's troubles are inevitable):

Norfolk, we must have knocks, ha, must we not?
We must both give and take, my loving lord.

5.3.78-79 (what to reply when asked "How are you?"):

I have not that alacrity of spirit
Nor cheer of mind that I was wont to have.

5.3.183 (rhetorical device ladder):

Fainting, despair; despairing, yield thy breath!

5.3.254-256 (cf. Lincoln's second inaugural address):

God and our good cause fight upon our side;
The prayers of holy saints and wronged souls,
Like high-reared bulwarks, stand before our faces.

5.5.268-269 (cf. Lincoln's second inaugural address):

Then if you fight against God's enemy,
God will, in justice, ward you as his soldiers.

William Butler Yeats, The Lamentation of the Old Pensioner:

Although I shelter from the rain
Under a broken tree,
My chair was nearest to the fire
In every company
That talked of love or politics,
Ere Time transfigured me.

Though lads are making pikes again
For some conspiracy,
And crazy rascals rage their fill
At human tyranny,
My contemplations are of Time
That has transfigured me.

There's not a woman turns her face
Upon a broken tree,
And yet the beauties that I loved
Are in my memory;
I spit into the face of Time
That has transfigured me.

Labels: eheu fugaces labuntur anni

Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy:

Nay, if you come to that, Sir, have not the wisest of men in all ages, not excepting Solomon himself, -- have they not had their Hobby-Horses; -- their running horses, -- their coins and their cockle-shells, their drums and their trumpets, their fiddles, their pallets, -- their maggots and their butterflies? -- and so long as a man rides his Hobby-Horse peaceably and quietly along the King's highway, and neither compels you or me to get up behind him, -- pray, Sir, what have either you or I to do with it?

I don't collect maggots or butterflies, but I do collect examples of asyndetic privative adjectives. Here's my latest catch, from Arrian, Discourses of Epictetus 3.3.10: ἀκώλυτον ἀνανάγκαστον ἀπαραπόδιστον = unhindered, unconstrained, unentangled.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals (1828):

It is a peculiarity (I find upon observation of others) of humour in me, my strong propensity for strolling. I deliberately shut up my books in a cloudy July noon, put on my old clothes and old hat and slink away to the whortleberry bushes and slip with the greatest satisfaction into a little cowpath where I am sure I can defy observation. The point gained, I solace myself for hours with picking blueberries and other trash of the woods, far from fame, behind the birch-trees. I seldom enjoy hours as I do these. I remember them in winter; I expect them in spring. I do not know a creature that I think has the same humour, or would think it respectable.

In selecting excerpts on crowds from Seneca's 7th Moral Epistle, I omitted his denunciation of gladiatorial games (7.2-4, tr. Richard M. Gummere):

But nothing is so damaging to good character as the habit of lounging at the games; for then it is that vice steals subtly upon one through the avenue of pleasure.

What do you think I mean? I mean that I come home more greedy, more ambitious, more voluptuous, and even more cruel and inhuman, because I have been among human beings. By chance I attended a mid-day exhibition, expecting some fun, wit, and relaxation, - an exhibition at which men's eyes have respite from the slaughter of their fellow-men. But it was quite the reverse. The previous combats were the essence of compassion; but now all the trifling is put aside and it is pure murder. The men have no defensive armour. They are exposed to blows at all points, and no one ever strikes in vain.

Many persons prefer this programme to the usual pairs and to the bouts "by request." Of course they do; there is no helmet or shield to deflect the weapon. What is the need of defensive armour, or of skill? All these mean delaying death. In the morning they throw men to the lions and the bears; at noon, they throw them to the spectators. The spectators demand that the slayer shall face the man who is to slay him in his turn; and they always reserve the latest conqueror for another butchering. The outcome of every fight is death, and the means are fire and sword.

Phil Flemming writes in an email:

Thank you for reminding me of Seneca’s On Crowds.

For many years I’ve had a problem with listening to the moralizing of Seneca Hypocrites, but On Crowds is an especially powerful piece of writing. It is very curious that there is nothing remotely comparable in the rest of the Imperial Stoa. In vain, we look for other denunciation of the recreational butchery practiced in the arena. Epictetus, Musonius, Dio, Marcus — all offer us only the mildest reproofs of enjoying “spectacles”. So too St. Augustine!

I cannot imagine the depraving effect of regularly watching the blood sports practiced for entertainment in the arena. It is bad enough to be exposed to the carnage of war, but to see the same things offered as entertainments!

Gibbon pointed to the Games as a clear symptom of the degeneracy of the Empire and I agree. Cultures addicted to recreational savagery have no moral claim to survival, and perhaps this was a central tension of Gibbon's great work. Rome was at once the repository of all that was valuable in classical civilization, but it was also a degenerate society that deserved its end.

I shall forbear to offer comparisons with our culture and the American Empire, but I think we will live to see things offered on our television as entertainments that would excite the most jaded Roman spectator.

Phil's email prompted me to search the index to Epictetus, which led me to this passage in his Discourses as reported by Arrian (4.4.26-27, tr. W.A. Oldfather), in which the philosopher takes a much more benign view of crowds than Seneca:

"I don't like a crowd, it is turmoil." Say not so, but if circumstances bring you to spend your life alone or in the company of few, call it peace, and utilize the condition for its proper end; converse with yourself, exercise your sense-impressions, develop your preconceptions. If, however, you fall in with a crowd, call it games, a festival, a holiday, try to keep holiday with the people. For what is pleasanter to a man who loves his fellow-men than the sight of large numbers of them? We are glad to see herds of horses or cattle; when we see many ships we are delighted; is a person annoyed at the sight of so many human beings?

On the other hand, nothing causes more annoyance to a man who hates his fellow-men than the sight of large numbers of them. I recently happened on a humorous poem by Morris Bishop entitled The Complete Misanthrope:

I love to think of things I hate
  In moments of mopishness;
I hate people who sit up straight,
  And youths who smirk about their "date,"
And the dates who smirk no less.

I hate children who clutch and whine,
  And the arrogant, virtuous poor;
And critical connoisseurs of wine,
And everything that is called a shrine,
  And Art and Literature.

I hate eggs and I hate the hen;
  I hate the rooster, too.
I hate people who wield the pen,
I hate women and I hate men;
  And what's more, I hate you.

Charles d'Orléans (1394-1465), Rondeau (tr. Sir Henry Wotton):

The year has changed his mantle cold
Of wind, of rain, of bitter air,
And he goes clad in cloth of gold
Of laughing suns and season fair;
No bird or beast of wood or wold
But doth in cry or song declare
'The year has changed his mantle cold!'

All founts, all rivers seaward rolled
Their pleasant summer livery wear
With silver studs on broidered vair,
The world puts off its raiment old,
The year has changed his mantle cold.

The same (tr. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow):

Now Time throws off his cloak again
Of ermined frost, and wind, and rain,
And clothes him in the embroidery
Of glittering sun and clear blue sky.
With beast and bird the forest rings,
Each in his jargon cries or sings;
And Time throws off his cloak again.
Of ermined frost, and wind, and rain.

River, and fount, and tinkling brook
Wear in their dainty livery
Drops of silver jewelry;
In new-made suit they merry look;
And Time throws off his cloak again
Of ermined frost, and wind, and rain.

Hilaire Belloc, in Avril: Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance, discusses this and another rondeau of Charles d'Orléans:

These two Rondeaux, of which we may also presume, though very vaguely, that they were written in England (for they are in the manner of his earlier work), are by far the most famous of the many things he wrote; and justly, for they have all these qualities.

First, they are exact specimens of their style. The Roundel should interweave, repeat itself, and then recover its original strain, and these two exactly give such unified diversity.

Secondly: they were evidently written in a moment of that unknown power when words suggest something fuller than their own meaning, and in which simplicity itself broadens the mind of the reader. So that it is impossible to put one's finger upon this or that and say this adjective, that order of the words has given the touch of vividness.

Thirdly: they have in them still a living spirit of reality; read them to-day in Winter, and you feel the Spring. It is this quality perhaps which most men have seized in them, and which have deservedly made them immortal.

A further character which has added to their fame, is that, being perfect lyrics, they are also specimens of an old-fashioned manner and metre peculiar to the time. They are the resurrection not only of the Spring, but of a Spring of the fifteenth century. Nor is it too fantastic to say that one sees in them the last miniatures and the very dress of a time that was intensely beautiful, and in which Charles of Orleans alone did not feel death coming.

Belloc prints the original as follows:

  Le temps a laissié son manteau
De vent, de froidure et de pluye,
Et s'est vestu de brouderie,
De soleil luyant, cler et beau.
Il n'y a beste, ne oyseau,
Qu'en son jargon ne chant ou crie;
Le temps a laissié son manteau
De vent de froidure et de pluye.

  Riviere, fontaine et ruisseau
Portent, en livrée jolie,
Gouttes d'argent d'orfavrerie,
Chascun s'abille de nouveau.
Le temps a laissié son manteau.

In modern orthography:

  Le temps a laissé son manteau
De vent, de froidure et de pluie
Et s'est vêtu de broderie,
De soleil luisant, clair et beau.
Il n'y a bête ni oiseau
Qu'en son jargon ne chante ou crie:
"Le temps a laissé son manteau
De vent, de froidure et de pluie."

  Rivière, fontaine et ruisseau
Portent, en livrée jolie,
Gouttes d'argent, d'orfèvrerie,
Chacun s'habille de nouveau:
Le temps a laissé son manteau.

Here are some recent writings by Theodore Dalrymple:

• Leveling Britain
  
• The Gelded Age
  
• The Terrible Logic of Kids, Drugs and Killing
  
• The Eternal Present
  
• How Not to Do It
  
• Modern Predestination
  
• Off to Prison - You’re a Real Oddball

From Peter Armitage, "Religious Ideology Among the Innu of Eastern Quebec and Labrador", Religiologiques 6 (automne 1992) (PDF format):

Matshishkapeu is the Innu Fart Man, the spirit of the anus who converses with the Innu with great frequency especially when they are in the country hunting, trapping, fishing, and gathering (Armitage, 1987). Matshishkapeu is an important character both in myth and everyday social intercourse. But he is a paradoxical character: on the one hand he is a humorous being and one of the most important sources of laughter to the Innu while they are living in the country; on the other, he is a serious character who is thought of as one of the most powerful beings in the pantheon of Innu spirits -- able to control the animal masters as well as human behaviour.

....

A sudden fart interrupting the tranquillity of camp life calls for an immediate translation. And, the responsibility for providing this falls to specific individuals who have reputations for being able to understand Matshishkapeu. These are usually people in their fifties or older including both men and women.

....

Let me conclude this section by noting that Matshishkapeu's role as a mediator means that farting for the Innu is a form of divination, a method for ascertaining the state of affairs in the realm of animal masters.

....

In addition, the omnipresence of Matshishkapeu makes him an especially unique mythological being: he is everywhere, both inside the tent and outside; he is always with you no matter where you may travel.

Armitage 1987 is a reference to Peter Armitage, "Tshekuan Issishueue Matshishkapeu? The Fart Man in Innu Religious Ideology," Paper presented to the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Ethnology Society in Quebec (May 14, 1987).

Related posts:

• The God Fart
  
• More on the God Fart

Excerpts from Seneca, Moral Epistles 7 (tr. Richard M. Gummere).

7.1:

Do you ask me what you should regard as especially to be avoided? I say, crowds.

Quid tibi vitandum praecipue existimes quaeris? turbam.

7.2:

To consort with the crowd is harmful; there is no person who does not make some vice attractive to us, or stamp it upon us, or taint us unconsciously therewith. Certainly, the greater the mob with which we mingle, the greater the danger.

Inimica est multorum conversatio: nemo non aliquod nobis vitium aut commendat aut inprimit aut nescientibus allinit. Utique quo maior est populus cui miscemur, hoc periculi plus est.

7.8:

Withdraw into yourself, as far as you can. Associate with those who will make a better man of you. Welcome those whom you yourself can improve. The process is mutual; for men learn while they teach.

Recede in te ipse quantum potes; cum his versare qui te meliorem facturi sunt, illos admitte quos tu potes facere meliores. Mutuo ista fiunt, et homines dum docent discunt.

7.10-11:

In order, however, that I may not to-day have learned exclusively for myself, I shall share with you three excellent sayings, of the same general purport, which have come to my attention. This letter will give you one of them as payment of my debt; the other two you may accept as a contribution in advance. Democritus says: "One man means so much to me as a multitude, and a multitude only as much as one man." The following also was nobly spoken by someone or other, for it is doubtful who the author was; they asked him what was the object of all this study applied to an art that would reach but very few. He replied: "I am content with few, content with one, content with none at all." The third saying - and a noteworthy one, too - is by Epicurus, written to one of the partners of his studies: "I write this not for the many, but for you; each of us is enough of an audience for the other."

Sed ne soli mihi hodie didicerim, communicabo tecum quae occurrunt mihi egregie dicta circa eundem fere sensum tria, ex quibus unum haec epistula in debitum solvet, duo in antecessum accipe. Democritus ait, 'unus mihi pro populo est, et populus pro uno'. Bene et ille, quisquis fuit (ambigitur enim de auctore), cum quaereretur ab illo quo tanta diligentia artis spectaret ad paucissimos perventurae, 'satis sunt' inquit 'mihi pauci, satis est unus, satis est nullus'. Egregie hoc tertium Epicurus, cum uni ex consortibus studiorum suorum scriberet: 'haec' inquit 'ego non multis, sed tibi; satis enim magnum alter alteri theatrum sumus'.

On June 27, 1813 Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) prefaced a letter to John Adams (1735-1826) with three lines of Greek from Theocritus 17.9-11 (which I can't find on the World Wide Web and am too lazy to transcribe). Here is Andrew Lang's translation, slightly altered:

When the wood-cutter hath come up to tree-filled Ida, he glances around, so many are the trees, to see whence he should begin his labour. Where first shall I begin the tale, for there are countless things ready for the telling?

Adams replied to Jefferson in a letter dated July 19, 1813:

Lord! Lord! What can I do with so much Greek? When I was of your age, young man, i.e, seven, or eight, or nine years ago, I felt a kind of pang of affection for one of the flames of my youth, and again paid my addresses to Isocrates, and Dionysius Hallicarnassensis, &c., &c. I collected all my Lexicons and Grammars, and sat down to περὶ συνθέσεως ὀνομάτων, &c. In this way I amused myself for some time; but I found, that if I looked up a word to-day, in less than a week I had to look it up again. It was to little better purpose than writing letters on a pail of water.

Adams was being modest. He was a good classical scholar. In the catalog of Adams' personal library I find Dionysius of Halicarnassus but not Isocrates. Another United States president, James Garfield, once taught Greek and Latin at Western Reserve Eclectic Institute (later Hiram College).

You can still study classics at Hiram College, but American presidents of late haven't been too interested in Greek or Latin. Tracy Lee Simmons, "Greek Ruins," National Review (Sept. 14, 1998) told this anecdote about Yale-educated Bush XLI:

A speechwriter for Vice President George Bush once prepared a stump speech peppered with a bit of Thucydides, a Greek historian of the fifth century B.C. But after the Vice President tripped over the name one time too many, another staffer decided to avoid further embarrassment by drawing a line through the word and writing in "Plato." One dead Greek was as good as another, and who would know the difference?

Hector Hugh Munro (Saki), The Schartz-Metterklume Method:

"I teach history on the Schartz-Metterklume method," said the governess loftily.

"Ah, yes," said her listeners, thinking it expedient to assume an acquaintance at least with the name.

"What are you children doing out here?" demanded Mrs. Quabarl the next morning, on finding Irene sitting rather glumly at the head of the stairs, while her sister was perched in an attitude of depressed discomfort on the window-seat behind her, with a wolf-skin rug almost covering her.

"We are having a history lesson," came the unexpected reply. "I am supposed to be Rome, and Viola up there is the she-wolf; not a real wolf, but the figure of one that the Romans used to set store by - I forget why. Claude and Wilfrid have gone to fetch the shabby women."

"The shabby women?"

"Yes, they've got to carry them off. They didn't want to, but Miss Hope got one of father's fives-bats and said she'd give them a number nine spanking if they didn't, so they've gone to do it."

A loud, angry screaming from the direction of the lawn drew Mrs. Quabarl thither in hot haste, fearful lest the threatened castigation might even now be in process of infliction. The outcry, however, came principally from the two small daughters of the lodge-keeper, who were being hauled and pushed towards the house by the panting and dishevelled Claude and Wilfrid, whose task was rendered even more arduous by the incessant, if not very effectual, attacks of the captured maidens' small brother. The governess, fives-bat in hand, sat negligently on the stone balustrade, presiding over the scene with the cold impartiality of a Goddess of Battles. A furious and repeated chorus of "I'll tell muvver" rose from the lodge-children, but the lodge-mother, who was hard of hearing, was for the moment immersed in the preoccupation of her washtub.

After an apprehensive glance in the direction of the lodge (the good woman was gifted with the highly militant temper which is sometimes the privilege of deafness) Mrs. Quabarl flew indignantly to the rescue of the struggling captives.

"Wilfrid! Claude! Let those children go at once. Miss Hope, what on earth is the meaning of this scene?"

"Early Roman history; the Sabine Women, don't you know? It's the Schartz-Metterklume method to make children understand history by acting it themselves; fixes it in their memory, you know. Of course, if, thanks to your interference, your boys go through life thinking that the Sabine women ultimately escaped, I really cannot be held responsible."

A few months before his death, Samuel Johnson translated Horace's Ode 4.7:

The snow dissolv'd no more is seen,
The fields, and woods, behold, are green,
The changing year renews the plain,
The rivers know their banks again,

The sprightly Nymph and naked Grace
The mazy dance together trace.
The changing year's successive plan,
Proclaims mortality to Man.

Rough Winter's blasts to Spring give way,
Spring yields to Summer's sovereign ray,
Then Summer sinks in Autumn's reign,
And Winter chills the world again.

Her losses soon the Moon supplies,
But wretched Man, when once he lies
Where Priam and his sons are laid,
Is nought but Ashes and a Shade.

Who knows if Jove who counts our Score
Will toss us in a morning more?
What with your friend you nobly share
At least you rescue from your heir.

Not you, Torquatus, boast of Rome,
When Minos once has fix'd your doom,
Or Eloquence, or splendid birth,
Or Virtue shall replace on earth.

Hippolytus unjustly slain
Diana calls to life in vain,
Nor can the might of Theseus rend
The chains of hell that hold his friend.

English poet and classical scholar A.E. Housman (1859-1936) regarded this ode of Horace as "the most beautiful poem in ancient literature", in sharp contrast to his contemporary Wilamowitz, who dismissed Odes 4.7 and 4.12 as "insignificant spring poems". Housman's translation is beautiful in its own right:

The snows are fled away, leaves on the shaws
And grasses in the mead renew their birth,
The river to the river-bed withdraws,
And altered is the fashion of the earth.

The Nymphs and Graces three put off their fear
And unapparelled in the woodland play.
The swift hour and the brief prime of the year
Say to the soul, Thou wast not born for aye.

Thaw follows frost; hard on the heel of spring
Treads summer sure to die, for hard on hers
Comes autumn with his apples scattering;
Then back to wintertide, when nothing stirs.

But oh, whate'er the sky-led seasons mar,
Moon upon moon rebuilds it with her beams;
Come we where Tullus and where Ancus are
And good Aeneas, we are dust and dreams.

Torquatus, if the gods in heaven shall add
The morrow to the day, what tongue has told?
Feast then thy heart, for what thy heart has had
The fingers of no heir will ever hold.

When thou descendest once the shades among,
The stern assize and equal judgment o'er,
Not thy long lineage nor thy golden tongue,
No, nor thy righteousness, shall friend thee more.

Night holds Hippolytus the pure of stain,
Diana steads him nothing, he must stay;
And Theseus leaves Pirithous in the chain
The love of comrades cannot take away.

Samuel Johnson, Rambler 106 (Saturday, March 23, 1751):

No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a publick library; for who can see the wall crouded on every side by mighty volumes, the works of laborious meditation, and accurate enquiry, now scarcely known but by the catalogue, and preserved only to encrease the pomp of learning, without considering how many hours have been wasted in vain endeavours, how often imagination has anticipated the praises of futurity, how many statues have risen to the eye of vanity, how many ideal converts have elevated zeal, how often wit has exulted in the eternal infamy of his antagonists, and dogmatism has delighted in the gradual advances of his authority, the immutability of his decrees, and the perpetuity of his power?

--Non unquam dedit
Documenta fors majora, quàm fragili loco
Starent superbi.--

                        Seneca, TROADES, ll. 4-6.

Insulting chance ne'er call'd with louder voice,
On swelling mortals to be proud no more.

Of the innumerable authors whose performances are thus treasured up in magnificent obscurity, most are forgotten, because they never deserved to be remembered, and owed the honours which they once obtained, not to judgment or to genius, to labour or to art, but to the prejudice of faction, the stratagem of intrigue, or the servility of adulation.

Nothing is more common than to find men whose works are now totally neglected, mentioned with praises by their contemporaries, as the oracles of their age, and the legislators of science. Curiosity is naturally excited, their volumes after long enquiry are found, but seldom reward the labour of the search. Every period of time has produced these bubbles of artificial fame, which are kept up a while by the breath of fashion, and then break at once, and are annihilated. The learned often bewail the loss of ancient writers whose characters have survived their works; but, perhaps, if we could now retrieve them, we should find them only the Granvilles, Montagues, Stepneys, and Sheffields of their time, and wonder by what infatuation or caprice they could be raised to notice.

St. Paul, Letter to the Philippians 3.18-19:

For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.

πολλοὶ γὰρ περιπατοῦσιν οὓς πολλάκις ἔλεγον ὑμῖν, νῦν δὲ καὶ κλαίων λέγω, τοὺς ἐχθροὺς τοῦ σταυροῦ τοῦ Χριστοῦ, ὧν τὸ τέλος ἀπώλεια, ὧν ὁ θεὸς ἡ κοιλία καὶ ἡ δόξα ἐν τῇ αἰσχύνῃ αὐτῶν, οἱ τὰ ἐπίγεια φρονοῦντες.

Epicurus, fragment 409 Usener = Athenaeus 12.546f:

The beginning and root of every good thing is the pleasure of the belly; both wise things and refined things have reference to this.

ἀρχὴ καὶ ῥίζα παντὸς ἀγαθοῦ ἡ τῆς γαστρὸς ἡδονή· καὶ τὰ σοφὰ καὶ τὰ περιττὰ ἐπὶ ταύτην ἔχει τὴν ἀναφοράν.

Ben Jonson, Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue (1641):

Room! room! make room for the bouncing belly,
First father of sauce, and deviser of jelly;
Prime master of arts, and the giver of wit,
That found out the excellent engine the spit,
The plow and the flail, the mill and the hopper,
The hutch and the bolter, the furnace and copper,
The oven, the bavin, the mawkin, the peel,
The hearth and the range, the dog and the wheel.
He, he first invented the hogshead and tun,
The gimlet and vice too, and taught them to run.
And since with the funnel and hippocras bag
He has made of himself, that now he cries swag!
Which shows, though the pleasure be but of four inches,
Yet he is a weasel, the gullet that pinches
Of any delight, and not spares from the back
Whatever to make of the belly a sack!
Hail, hail, plump paunch! O the founder of taste,
For fresh meats, or powdered, or pickle, or paste;
Devourer of broiled, baked, roasted, or sod,
And emptier of cups, be they even or odd;
All which have now made thee so wide i' the waist
As scarce with no pudding thou art to be laced;
But eating and drinking until thou dost nod,
Thou break'st all thy girdles, and break'st forth a god.

Excerpts from Albert Jay Nock, The Disadvantages of Being Educated:

Education deprives a young person of one of his most precious possessions, the sense of co-operation with his fellows.

....

Education, in a word, leads a person on to ask a great deal more from life than life, as at present organized, is willing to give him; and it begets dissatisfaction with the rewards that life holds out.

....

An educated young man likes to think; he likes ideas for their own sake and likes to deal with them disinterestedly and objectively. He will find this taste an expensive one, much beyond his means, because the society around him is thoroughly indisposed towards anything of the kind.

....

The educated lad also likes to cultivate a sense of history. He likes to know how the human mind has worked in the past, and upon this knowledge he instinctively bases his expectations of its present and future workings. This tends automatically to withdraw him from many popular movements and associations because he knows their like of old, and knows to a certainty how they will turn out. In the realm of public affairs, for instance, it shapes his judgment of this-or-that humbugging political nostrum that the crowd is running eagerly to swallow; he can match it all the way back to the policies of Rome and Athens, and knows it for precisely what it is.

....

Again, while education does not make a gentleman, it tends to inculcate certain partialities and repugnances which training does not tend to inculcate, and which are often embarrassing and retarding. They set up a sense of self-respect and dignity as an arbiter of conduct, with a jurisdiction far outreaching that of law and morals; and this is most disadvantageous.

....

Again, education tends towards a certain reluctance about pushing oneself forward; and in a society so notoriously based on the principle of each man for himself, this is a disadvantage.

Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer (1934), p. 280:

Every man with a bellyful of the classics is an enemy to the human race.

Andrew MacGillivray passes on a quotation from the Prolegomenon to Michael Bywater's Lost Worlds (Granta, 2004), p. 9:

If this is - as indeed it is - a salmagundi of transience, a pot-pourri of the Vanished, a taxonomy of loss and the vanity of human wishes, does that therefore mean that it is sad, gloomy, a lowering of the spirits? No. We can leave that task to government and international politics.

Andrew cites the Online Etymology Dictionary entry for salmagundi, from which I learn that Rabelais was the first to use the word:

1674, from Fr. salmigondis, originally "seasoned salt meats" (cf. Fr. salmis "salted meats"), from M.Fr. salmigondin, coined by Rabelais, of uncertain origin, but probably related to salomene "hodgepodge of meats or fish cooked in wine," (early 14c.), from O.Fr. salemine.

There also seems to be a connection between salmagundi and salami:

"salted, flavored It. sausage," 1852, from It. salami, pl. of salame "spiced pork sausage," from V.L. *salamen, from *salare "to salt," from L. sal (gen. salis) "salt" (see salt).

Related post: Rotten Pot.

Samuel Johnson, Rambler 80 (Saturday, Dec. 22, 1750):

The winter therefore is generally celebrated as the proper season for domestick merriment and gaiety. We are seldom invited by the votaries of pleasure to look abroad for any other purpose, than that we may shrink back with more satisfaction to our coverts, and when we have heard the howl of the tempest, and felt the gripe of the frost, congratulate each other with more gladness upon a close room, an easy chair, a large fire, and a smoaking dinner.

Winter brings natural inducements to jollity and conversation. Differences, we know, are never so effectually laid asleep, as by some common calamity. An enemy unites all to whom he threatens danger. The rigour of winter brings generally to the same fire-side those, who, by the opposition of inclinations, or difference of employment, moved in various directions through the other parts of the year; and when they have met, and find it their mutual interest to remain together, they endear each other by mutual compliances, and often wish for the continuance of the social season, with all its bleakness and all its severities.

To the men of study and imagination the winter is generally the chief time of labour. Gloom and silence produce composure of mind, and concentration of ideas; and the privation of external pleasure naturally causes an effort to find entertainment within. This is the time in which those, whom literature enables to find amusements for themselves, have more than common convictions of their own happiness. When they are condemned by the elements to retirement, and debarred from most of the diversions which are called in to assist the flight of time, they can find new subjects of enquiry, and preserve themselves from that weariness which hangs always flagging upon the vacant mind.

Related post: Cold Outside, Cozy Inside.

On the subject of death and books, Eric Thomson draws my attention to this engraving, from Nouveau receuil d'ostéologie et de myologie by Jacques Gamelin (1738-1803), and comments, "If true - Death, where is thy sting?"



Eric also adds another word meaning "miscellany" related to food - smorgasbord. Here is the Online Etymology Dictionary's entry for the word:

1893, from Swed. smörgåsbord "open sandwich table," lit. "butter-goose table," from smörgås, which is said to mean "bread and butter," but is compounded from smör "butter" (related to smear) and gås, lit. "goose" (and from the root of Eng. goose), which is said to have a secondary meaning of "a clump (of butter)." The final element is bord "table" (cf. board (n.1)). Fig. sense of "medley, miscellany" is recorded from 1948.

Joseph Wood Krutch, The Voice of the Desert (New York: William Sloane Associates, 1954):

As man moves in, the larger, more conspicuous and, usually, the most attractive animals begin to disappear. Either they "take to the hills," go into hiding, or are exterminated in one way or another. What remain, and often prodigiously increase, are the creatures which either escape attention or find in the filth which crowds of men bring with them a rich pasture. (p. 187)

....

To almost everything except man the smell of humanity is the most repulsive of all odors, the sight of man the most terrifying of all sights. (p. 191)

....

[M]an is one of those animals which is in danger from its too successful participation in the struggle for existence. He has upset the balance of nature to a point where he has exterminated hundreds of other animals and exhausted soils....From the standpoint of nature as a whole, he is both a threat to every other thing and, therefore, a threat to himself also. If he were not so extravagantly successful it would be better for nearly everything except man and, possibly therefore, better, in the long run, for him also. He has become the tyrant of the earth, the waster of its resources, the creator of the most prodigious imbalance in the natural order which has ever existed. (pp. 201-2)