Laudator Temporis Acti

Thanks to David Norton for pointing out a mistake in my quotation of Abraham Cowley's translation of Martial 10.47:

The first word of the 19th line of the Cowley passage from Martial that you posted yesterday is correctly Ana. Before I looked on the Internet I could detect only that the scansion was wanting; and the Internet gives quite a lively menagerie of errors beginning this line.

See the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), s.v. ana:

Used in recipes in the sense of throughout, of each, of every one alike, in specifying a quantity applicable to every ingredient; hence sometimes in older literature for 'an equal quantity or number.'

One of the OED citations is to this line of Cowley. The couplet should therefore read:

In the same weight Prudence and Innocence take,
Ana of each does the just mixture make.

---

Roger Kuin yesterday posted the French original and his elegant translation of a delightful sonnet (Le Bonheur de ce Monde) by Christophe Plantin. The sonnet reminded me of Martial 10.47. Here is Roger's translation:

THIS WORLD'S GOOD FORTUNE

To have a house convenient, clean and fair;
A wallèd garden lined with fragrant trees;
Fruit and fine wine, few servants and few children;
The only lover of a faithful wife;

No debts, no love-affairs, lawsuits nor feuds,
No wills to haggle out with relatives,
Simply content, dependent on no magnate,
And by a righteous rule to rule one's life;

To live in frankness, from ambition far;
With conscience clear devoted to devotion,
To tame one's passions until they obey,

To keep the spirit free and judgement strong,
Saying one's prayers while looking to one's pear-trees:
A kindly way at home to wait for Death.

---

Along with Cowley's translation of Martial 10.47, I also posted a translation of the same poem by Thomas Randolph (1600-1635). I've been reading more of Thomas Randolph's poetry, and I especially enjoyed his translation of Claudian's Old Man of Verona:

Happy the man that all his dayes hath spent
Within his owne grounds, and no farther went:
Whom the same house that did him erst behold
A little Infant, sees him now grown old,
That with his staffe walkes where he crawl'd before,
Counts th' age of one poore cottage and no more.
Fortune ne're him with various tumult prest,
Nor dranke he unknown streams, a wandring guest.
He fear'd no Merchants stormes, nor drummes of war,
Nor ever knew the strifes of the hoarse Bar.
Who though to th' next Towne he a stranger bee,
Yet heav'ns sweet prospect he injoyes more free.
From fruits, not Consuls, computation brings,
By Apples Autumnes knows, by flowers the springs.
Thus he the day by his owne orbe doth prize;
In the same feild his Sunne doth set and rise.
That knew an oake a twigge, and walking thither
Beholds a wood and he grown up together.
Neighbou'ring Veron he may for India take,
And thinke the red sea is Benacus lake.
Yet is his strength untam'd, and firme his knees,
Him the third age a lusty Grandsire sees.
Goe seeke who s' will the farre Iberian shore,
This man hath liv'd, though that hath travel'd more.

Camille Pissarro, Farmyard
Note to myself: read Maren-Sofie Røstvig, The Happy Man: Studies in the Metamorphoses of a Classical Ideal, 2 vols. (Oslo: Norwegian Universities Press, 1962-1971).

Martial 10.47, tr. Abraham Cowley:

Since, dearest Friend, 'tis your desire to see
A true Receipt of Happiness from Me;
These are the chief Ingredients, if not all;
Take an Estate neither too great nor small,
Which Quantum Sufficit the Doctors call;
Let this Estate from Parents care descend;
The getting it too much of Life does spend.
Take such a Ground, whose gratitude may be
A fair Encouragement for Industry.
Let constant Fires the Winters fury tame;
And let thy Kitchens be a Vestal Flame.
Thee to the Town let never Suit at Law;
And rarely, very rarely Business draw.
Thy active Mind in equal Temper keep,
In undisturbed Peace, yet not in sleep.
Let Exercise a vigorous Health maintain,
Without which all the Composition's vain.
In the same weight Prudence and Innocence take,
And of each does the just mixture make.
But a few Friendships wear, and let them be
By Nature and by Fortune fit for thee.
In stead of Art and Luxury in food,
Let Mirth and Freedome make thy Table good.
If any cares into thy Day-time creep,
At night, without Wines Opium, let them sleep.
Let rest, which Nature does to Darkness wed,
And not Lust, recommend to thee thy Bed,
Be satisfi'd, and pleas'd with what thou art;
Act chearfully and well th' allotted part,
Enjoy the present Hour, be thankful for the Past,
And neither fear, nor wish th' approaches of the last.

The same, tr. Thomas Randolph:

These are things that being possest
Will make a life that's truly blest:
Estate bequeath'd, not got with toyle;
A good hot fire, a gratefull soyle.
No strife, warm clothes, a quiet soule,
A strength intire, a body whole.
Prudent simplicity, equall freinds,
A diet that no Art commends.
A night not drunke, and yet secure;
A bed not sad, yet chast and pure.
Long sleepes to make the nights but short,
A will be to but what thou art.
Naught rather choose; contented lye,
And neither feare, nor wish to dye.

The Latin original:

Vitam quae faciant beatiorem,
iucundissime Martialis, haec sunt:
res non parta labore sed relicta;
non ingratus ager, focus perennis;
lis numquam, toga rara, mens quieta;
vires ingenuae, salubre corpus;
prudens simplicitas, pares amici;
convictus facilis, sine arte mensa;
nox non ebria sed soluta curis;
non tristis torus et tamen pudicus;
somnus qui faciat breves tenebras:
quod sis esse velis nihilque malis;
summum nec metuas diem nec optes.

Other translations of the same poem by:

• Mildmay Fane
  
• Henry Howard
  
• Ben Jonson

---

Update: There is a mistake in the quotation from Cowley. See The Happy Man for a correction.

Last weekend we planted a service tree, Amelanchier canadensis, in the back yard. Nathaniel Lord Britton and Addison Brown, An Illustrated Flora of the Northern United States, Canada and the British Possessions, 2nd ed. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1913; rpt. New York: Dover, 1970), II, 291, give several other common names for this plant, including June-berry, service-berry, May-cherry, sand-cherry, May-pear, juice-pear, wild Indian pear, Indian cherry, shad-bush, etc.

Thoreau often mentions the tree, although it's sometimes difficult to determine which of the six species of Amelanchier he's talking about. I haven't tracked down all of the passages in his Journal, but on June 25, 1853, he praised the fruit of the tree:

To Assabet bathing-place. Found an unusual quantity of Amelanchier berries. I think of the two common kinds, one a taller bush twice as high as my head, with thinner and lighter colored leaves, and larger, or at least somewhat softer, fruit, the other, a shorter bush, with more rigid and darker leaves, and dark, blue berries, with often a sort of wooliness on them. Both these are now in their prime. These are the first berries after strawberries, or the first and, I think, the sweetest bush berries, somewhat like high blueberries, but not so hard. Much eaten by insects, worms, etc., as big as the largest blueberries or peas. These are the "service berries" which the Indians of the north and the Canadians use, "la poire" of the latter. They, by a little, precede the early blueberry (though H—— brought two quarts of the last, day before yesterday), being now in their prime, while blueberries are but just beginning. I never saw nearly so many before. It is a very agreeable surprise. I hear the cherry-birds and others about me, no doubt attracted by this fruit. It is owing to some peculiarity of the season that they bear fruit. I have picked a quart of them for a pudding. I felt all the while I was picking them, in the low, light, waving, shrubby wood they make, as if I were in a foreign country. Several old farmers say, "Well, though I have lived seventy years, I never saw nor heard of them." I think them a delicious berry. No doubt they require only to be more abundant every year to be appreciated.

See also Thoreau's Journal for October 13, 1859:

The shad-bush is leafing again by the sunny swamp-side. It is like a youthful or poetic thought in old age. Several times I have been cheered by this sight when surveying in former years. The chickadee seems to lisp a sweeter note at the sight of it. I would not fear the winter more than the shad-bush which puts forth fresh and tender leaves on its approach. In the fall I will take this for my coat-of-arms. It seems to detain the sun that expands it. These twigs are so full of life that they can hardly contain themselves. They ignore winter. They anticipate spring. What faith! Away in some warm and sheltered recess in the swamp you find where these leaves have expanded. It is a foretaste of spring. In my latter years, let me have some shad-bush thoughts.

The derivation of the generic name is interesting. Here's my rough attempt at a translation of Helmut Genaust, Etymologische Wörterbuch der botanischen Pflanzennamen, 3rd ed. (Basel: Birkhäuser, 1996), p. 56, s.v. Amelanchier:

serviceberry: French amélanchier "wild medlar, serviceberry" (N. Lémery, Dictionnaire des drogues, 1733), which is derived from French amélanche (serviceberry fruit) with the French tree suffix -ier (cf. la pomme > le pommier, apple tree). This word, confined to Savoy and southeast Provence, came into being through a false separation of the article (la mélanche > l'amélanche) and leads back, with southeast Provencal melanko, belanko, melenko, berlenko (alpine medlar, serviceberry), to the pre-Romance form *melanca, *melenka (same meaning) (Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch 9696). These forms (with Ligurian suffix -anka, -enka) are certainly derived from the Indo-European root *mel- with color signification "dingy gray, dark colored, black" (Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch 1, 720f.), to which root Greek mélas (black), Sanskrit maliná- (dingy, black), and Latvian męlns (black) also belong. Hence the genus is named from its dark purple fruits. Cf. Dauzat 27. On erroneous attempts to derive this word (borrowed in botanical nomenclature directly from French) from Greek, see G.C. Wittstein, Etymologisch-botanisches Handwörterbuch 36, and A. Seybold, Lehrbuch der Botanik 1,63.

‹Felsenbirne›: frz. amélanchier ‹néflier sauvage, Felsenbirne› (N. Lémery, Dict. des drogues, 1733), das mit dem frz. Baumnamensuffix -ier (vgl. la pomme > le pommier ‹Apfelbaum>) von frz. amélanche ‹Felsenbirne (Frucht)› abgeleitet ist. Dieses auf Savoyen und die südöstl. Provence beschränkte Wort ist durch falsche Abtrennung des Artikels (la mélanche > l'amélanche) entstanden und führt mit südostprov. melanko, belanko, melenko, berlenko ‹Alpenmispel, Felsenbirne› auf die vorröm. Form *melanca, *melenka ‹ds.› zurück (REW 9696). Diese Formen sind sicher mit dem ligur. Suffix -anka, -enka von der idg. Wz. *mel- in Farbezeichnungen ‹schmutziggrau, dunkelfarbig, schwarz› (IEW 1, 720f.) abgeleitet, zu der auch gr. mélas ‹schwarz›, aind. maliná- ‹schmutzig, schwarz›, lett. męlns ‹schwarz› usw. gehören. Somit ist die Gatt. nach ihren schwarzvioletten Früchten benannt. — Vgl. Dauzat 27. — Über abwegige Versuche, das aus dem Französischen direkt in die bot. Nomenklatur übernommene Wort aus dem Griech. zu denken, s. Wi. 36, A. Seybold 1,63.

Many authorities restrict the range of Amelanchier canadensis to the eastern coast regions of Canada and the United States, but it does seem to be native to Minnesota. See, e.g., Frederic E. Clements et al., Minnesota Trees and Shrubs (1912), p. 151: "Distributed from Newfoundland to Minnesota to Florida and Louisiana." I haven't seen Etlar L. Nielsen, "A Taxonomic Study of the Genus Amelanchier in Minnesota," American Midland Naturalist 22.1 (July 1939) 160-206.

W.S. Merwin, Odysseus:

Always the setting forth was the same,
Same sea, same dangers waiting for him
As though he had got nowhere but older.
Behind him on the receding shore
The identical reproaches, and somewhere
Out before him, the unravelling patience
He was wedded to. There were the islands
Each with its woman and twining welcome
To be navigated, and one to call "home."
The knowledge of all that he betrayed
Grew till it was the same whether he stayed
Or went. Therefore he went. And what wonder
If sometimes he could not remember
Which was the one who wished on his departure
Perils that he could never sail through,
And which, improbable, remote, and true,
Was the one he kept sailing home to?

C.P. Cavafy, Ithaca (tr. George Valassopoulo):

When you start on the way to Ithaca,
wish that the way be long,
full of adventure, full of knowledge.
The Laestrygones and the Cyclopes
and angry Poseidon, do not fear:
such, on your way, you shall never meet
if your thoughts are lofty, if a noble
emotion touch your mind, your body.
The Laestrygones and the Cyclopes
and angry Poseidon you shall not meet
if you carry them not in your soul,
if your soul sets them not up before you.

Wish that the way be long,
that on many summer mornings,
with great pleasure, great delight,
you enter harbours for the first time seen;
that you stop at Phoenician marts,
and procure the goodly merchandise,
mother-of-pearl and corals, amber and ebony,
and sensual perfumes of all kinds,
plenty of sensual perfumes especially;
to wend your way to many Egyptian cities,
to learn and yet to learn from the wise.

Ever keep Ithaca in your mind,
your return thither is your goal.
But do not hasten at all your voyage,
better that it last for many years;
And full of years at length you anchor at your isle
rich with all that you gained on the way;
do not expect Ithaca to give you riches.

Ithaca gave you your fair voyage.
Without her you would not have ventured on the way.
But she has no more to give you.

And if you find Ithaca a poor place,
    she has not mocked you.
You have become so wise, so full of experience
that you should understand already what
    these Ithacas mean.

Logan Pearsall Smith, All Trivia: Trivia, More Trivia, Afterthoughts, Last Words (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1945), p. 181 (from Afterthoughts, V. Art and Letters):

To be an elegant and acrimonious scholar, and make emendations in Greek texts that shall fill the world with wonder;

Or an illustrious Egyptologist, with spectacles and a white beard;

Or a Lord of Thought, and sum up the universe in a single phrase;

And know all about it, whatever it is, and break the teeth of the young lions, break their great teeth in their mouths;

Or to lie in bed day after day like Joubert, in a pink dressing-gown, trying to think nothing and feel no emotion?

Joubert: a selection from his Thoughts. Translated by Katharine Littleton. With a Preface by Mrs. Humphry Ward (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1899), p. xxii:

And in his daily life Joubert was always protecting himself against emotions, keeping out the newspapers, refusing to read or discuss politics when politics became tormenting, withdrawing himself from all the persons and writings that did not yield him pleasure or edification. He would spend whole days in bed, clad in the 'pink silk spenser' that his friends remembered, couched there 'like a horse in its stall,' trying to feel nothing and think of nothing.

Palladas, Greek Anthology 10.51, tr. W.R. Paton:

Envy, says Pindar, is better than pity. Those who are envied lead a splendid life, while our pity is for the excessively unfortunate. I would be neither too fortunate nor too badly off; for the mean is best, since the height of fortune is apt to bring danger, while the depth of misery exposes to insult.

The same, tr. William Cowper:

Pity, says the Theban bard,
From my wishes I discard;
Envy, let me rather be,
Rather far, a theme for thee!
Pity to distress is shown,
Envy to the great alone.
So the Theban: but to shine
Less conspicuous be mine!
I prefer the golden mean,
Pomp and penury between;
For alarm and peril wait
Ever on the loftiest state,
And the lowest,, to the end,
Obloquy and scorn attend.

The original Greek:

Ὁ φθόνος οἰκτιρμοῦ, κατὰ Πίνδαρον, ἐστὶν ἀμείνων·
  οἱ βασκαινόμενοι λαμπρὸν ἔχουσι βίον·
τοὺς δὲ λίαν ἀτυχεῖς οἰκτείρομεν. ἀλλά τις εἴην
  μήτ' ἄγαν εὐδαίμων, μήτ' ἐλεεινὸς ἐγώ.
ἡ μεσότης γὰρ ἄριστον, ἐπεὶ τὰ μὲν ἄκρα πέφυκεν
  κινδύνους ἐπάγειν, ἔσχατα δ' ὕβριν ἔχει.

The reference to Pindar is to Pythian Odes 1.85-86 (tr. William H. Race): "But nevertheless, since envy is better than pity, / do not pass over any noble things." (ἀλλ' ὅμως, κρέσσων γὰρ οἰκτιρμοῦ φθόνος / μὴ παρίει καλά.)

A convenient list, divided into genuine and doubtful epigrams, from Alfred Franke, De Pallada epigrammatographo‎ (diss. Leipzig, 1899), pp. 23-24:

Roman numerals refer to books of the Greek Anthology.

Logan Pearsall Smith, The Age (from More Trivia):

Again, as the train drew out of the station, the old gentleman pulled out of his pocket his great shining watch; and for the fifth, or, as it seemed to me, the five-hundredth time, he said (we were in the carriage alone together) 'To the minute, to the very minute! It's a marvellous thing, the Railway; a wonderful age!'

Now I had been long annoyed by the old gentleman's smiling face, platitudes, and piles of newspapers; I had no love for the Age, and an impulse came on me to denounce it.

'Allow me to tell you,' I said, 'that I consider it a wretched, an ignoble age. Where's the greatness of Life? Where's dignity, leisure, stateliness; where's Art and Eloquence? Where are your great scholars, statesmen? Let me ask you, sir,' I cried glaring at him, 'where's your Gibbon, your Burke or Chatham?'

Excerpts from Leon Wieseltier, Kaddish (New York: Vintage Books, 1998).

I (p. 6):

I don't know what to do. No, I know what to do. I will open a book.

II (p. 39):

I see again that the kaddish is my good fortune. It looks after the externalities, and so saves me from the task of improvising the rituals of my bereavement, which is a lot to ask.

III (p. 59):

A person who has buried a child has a right to raise a fist to the heavens. Anger is not apostasy. Quite the contrary. It is another way of acknowledging God's responsibility for the world.

III (p. 62):

The claim of tradition is that it is a light that does not dim as it travels from its source. This is outrageous.

III (p. 75):

I study the old texts because I hope to be infected by their dimensions, to attain the size of what I read.

III (p. 84):

Back and forth from my desk to my shelves, ten, twenty, thirty times a day. The sources swirl around me. I am drugged by books. The sweet savor rises from the pages. A delirium of study.

III (p. 91):

The opposite of traditionalism is sensationalism, or living merely now.

IV (p. 119):

Self-sufficiency is not only a state of independence. It is also a state of constriction. Only a small soul does not need others. To subsist within oneself is a paltry and prideful subsistence.

IV (p. 123):

When Nietzsche lost his faith, he concluded that God is dead. This is not critical thinking. This is narcissism. I understand the idea that if God exists, then you must believe in him. I do not understand the idea that if you do not believe in him, then God must not exist.

IV (p. 123):

The fact that I spend my entire life in darkness does not prove that there is no light. My experience is not the only philosophical datum that counts.

V (p. 133):

What is the difference, for me, between studying and wallowing, between avidity and morbidity? Sometimes, it is hard to tell. Obsession has many uses. Its intensity sometimes disguises the fact that it is a method of insulation.

V (p. 136):

There are differences between individuals and societies that may be explained by the fact that some fictions are more ennobling than others.

V (p. 138):

On my desk, my books are like my peonies. I am pleased by the sight of them closed and clenched with promise, and then I am pleased by the sight of them opening, until they reveal the fullness that I expect of them.

V (p. 143):

I detest the condescension of the materialist. It is he who has the easy task. Intellectually speaking, the materialist is a man of leisure.

VI (p. 178):

I am disgusted by this bowdlerization of the text. It is cowardly. It is decadence.

VI (p. 210):

Whenever I read Kafka, I wonder: what sort of dejection is this, that leaves one the strength to write, and write, and write? If you can write about the wreckage, the wreckage is not complete. You are intact.

VII (p. 234):

I don't know a more incomprehensible remark about religion than Haydn's remark that the thought of God made him cheerful.

VII (p.236):

Consolations are more frequently false than true. The universe does not owe me edification.

VIII (p. 267):

Science grants absolution more easily than religion.

VIII (p. 268):

Pity the man who can explain everything. The materialist laughs at the difficulties with which the others are beset, but it is his own lack of difficulties that is comic.

VIII (pp. 275-276):

"You are lucky," someone said to me a few months ago, in a mildly envious tone. "You have an anchor." But an anchor is also a weight; and when it doesn't fix you, it pulls you down; and its destination is always the very bottom.

VIII (p. 290):

Give me no gold. Give me no silver. Give me paper. (A prayer.)

VIII (p. 295):

Tradition is not reproduced. It is thrown and it is caught. It lives a long time in the air.

IX (p. 307):

Words as spices, words as perfumes.

IX (p. 323):

As long as there are shuls and churches and mosques, the feeling for philosophy will not be lost. The same cannot be said about universities.

IX (p. 350):

I have always hated happy funerals: we are here to celebrate a life, and so on. No, we are not here to celebrate anything. We are here to bury an imperfect man or an imperfect woman, to regard his or her frailty and therefore to be frail.

IX (p. 355):

My library looked like a graveyard tonight, and every book looked like a grave. But one must open these graves and enter them. Inside these graves, there is life.

X (pp. 377-378):

As the rabbis taught, "it is better that a man throw himself into a fiery furnace than humiliate another man publicly."

X (p. 384):

But it occurs to me that there is something more troubling than the inefficacy of prayer, and it is the efficacy of prayer. Who, really, would want the responsibility? What should be regretted is not our lack of cosmic influence. What should be regretted is our interest in cosmic influence.

XII (p. 472):

In a gathering without grief, human experience is inadequately represented.

XII (p. 475):

The modern reader of medieval texts must beware.

XIV (p. 506):

Custom is lovable in a way that law is not. Custom is so unpristine. It has fingerprints all over it. It asserts the reality of practices against the ideality of principles.

XIV (p. 537):

I cannot imagine anything more revolutionary than to slow things down.

XV (p. 550):

Sometimes "how are you" is a sadistic thing to say.

XVI (p. 576):

What is happening to me now is nothing what like Americans call "closure." What a ludicrous notion of emotional efficiency! Americans really believe that the past is past. They do not care to know that the past soaks the present like the light of a distant star. Things that are over do not end. They come inside us, and seek sanctuary in subjectivity. And there they live on, in the consciousness of individuals and communities.

Thanks to Eric Thomson for drawing my attention to David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Book I, Part IV, section VII:

I am confounded with all these questions, and begin to fancy myself in the most deplorable condition imaginable, inviron'd with the deepest darkness, and utterly depriv'd of the use of every member and faculty.

Most fortunately it happens, that since reason is incapable of dispelling these clouds, nature herself suffices to that purpose, and cures me of this philosophical melancholy and delirium, either by relaxing this bent of mind, or by some avocation, and lively impression of my senses, which obliterate all these chimeras. I dine, I play a game of backgammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends; and when after three or four hours' amusement, I wou'd return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strain'd, and ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them any farther.

Some symptoms:

• A Melancholy Man
  
• Long Have I Been Thy Votary
  
• O Sweetest Melancholy
  
• Black Bile

Some palliatives:

• Pills to Purge Melancholy
  
• Hence Loathèd Melancholy
  
• Sleep and Baths
  
• Solvitur Ambulando
  
• Salve for the Worst Wounds
  
• Gloom, Despair, and Agony On Me
  
• Refuge
  
• The Hermitage
  
• Ecotherapy
  
• Misery and Exhilaration

Samuel Johnson, The Idler, No. 31 (Saturday, November 18, 1758):

Many moralists have remarked, that Pride has of all human vices the widest dominion, appears in the greatest multiplicity of forms, and lies hid under the greatest variety of disguises; of disguises, which, like the moon's veil of brightness, are both its lustre and its shade, and betray it to others, tho' they hide it from ourselves.

It is not my intention to degrade Pride from this pre-eminence of mischief; yet I know not whether Idleness may not maintain a very doubtful and obstinate competition.

There are some that profess Idleness in its full dignity, who call themselves the Idle, as Busiris in the play calls himself the Proud; who boast that they do nothing, and thank their stars that they have nothing to do; who sleep every night till they can sleep no longer, and rise only that exercise may enable them to sleep again; who prolong the reign of darkness by double curtains, and never see the sun but to tell him how they hate his beams; whose whole labour is to vary the posture of indolence, and whose day differs from their night but as a couch or chair differs from a bed.

These are the true and open votaries of Idleness, for whom she weaves the garlands of poppies, and into whose cup she pours the waters of oblivion; who exist in a state of unruffled stupidity, forgetting and forgotten; who have long ceased to live, and at whose death the survivors can only say, that they have ceased to breathe.

But Idleness predominates in many lives where it is not suspected; for, being a vice which terminates in itself, it may be enjoyed without injury to others; and it is therefore not watched like Fraud, which endangers property; or like Pride, which naturally seeks its gratifications in another's inferiority. Idleness is a silent and peaceful quality, that neither raises envy by ostentation, nor hatred by opposition; and therefore nobody is busy to censure or detect it.

As Pride sometimes is hid under humility, Idleness is often covered by turbulence and hurry. He that neglects his known duty and real employment, naturally endeavours to crowd his mind with something that may bar out the remembrance of his own folly, and does any thing but what he ought to do with eager diligence, that he may keep himself in his own favour.

Some are always in a state of preparation, occupied in previous measures, forming plans, accumulating materials, and providing for the main affair. These are certainly under the secret power of Idleness. Nothing is to be expected from the workman whose tools are for ever to be sought. I was once told by a great master, that no man ever excelled in painting, who was eminently curious about pencils and colours.

There are others to whom Idleness dictates another expedient, by which life may be passed unprofitably away without the tediousness of many vacant hours. The art is, to fill the day with petty business, to have always something in hand which may raise curiosity, but not solicitude, and keep the mind in a state of action, but not of labour.

The third paragraph, with the phrase "never see the sun but to tell him how they hate his beams," reminds me of the tribe of daylight-shunners, as described, for example, by Seneca Rhetor, Controversiae 3.1:

So it happens, where men spend the greater part of their life in darkness, that they end up disliking the sun, as something superfluous.

sic fit, ubi homines maiorem vitae partem in tenebris agunt, ut novissime solem quasi supervacuum fastidiant.

See:

• Turba Lucifugarum, or The Tribe of Daylight-Shunners
  
• Turba Lucifugarum
  
• Daylight Shunners

Chapter 5 (pp. 153-177) of Sarah Jordan, The Anxieties of Idleness: Idleness in Eighteenth-Century British Literature and Culture (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2003) is entitled "Driving on the System of Life": Samuel Johnson and Idleness.

Pieter van der Heyden, Desidia (Sloth), after Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Samuel Johnson, The Idler, No. 88 (Saturday, December 22, 1759):

He that in the latter part of his life too strictly enquires what he has done, can very seldom receive from his own heart such an account as will give him satisfaction.

Palladas (Greek Anthology 10.72, tr. J. W. Mackail):

All life is a stage and a game: either learn to play it, laying by seriousness, or bear its pains.

The same, tr. W.R. Paton:

All life is a stage and a play: either learn to play laying your gravity aside, or bear with life's pains.

The same, tr. E.R. Dodds:

The world's a stage, and life's a toy:
  dress up and play your part;
Put every serious thought away—
Or risk a broken heart.

The same, tr. Tony Harrison:

Life's a performance. Either join in
  lightheartedly, or thole the pain.

The same, tr. Robert Bland:

This life a theatre we well may call,
  Where every actor must perform with art,
Or laugh it through, and make a farce of all,
  Or learn to bear with grace his tragic part.

The Greek original:

σκηνὴ πᾶς ὁ βίος καὶ παίγνιον· ἢ μάθε παίζειν
  τὴν σπουδὴν μεταθεὶς, ἢ φέρε τὰς ὀδύνας.

Among my notes is a list of articles on Palladas I've been meaning to read, and this is a good a place as any to keep it:

• Barry Baldwin, "Palladas of Alexandria: a Poet between Two Worlds," L'Antiquité Classique 54 (1985) 267-273
  
• C.M. Bowra, "Palladas and the Converted Olympians," Byzantinische Zeitschrift 53 (1960) 1-7, rpt. in On Greek Margins (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), pp. 245-252
  
• C.W. Bowra, "Palladas and Christianity," Proceedings of the British Academy 45 (1959) 255-267; rpt. in On Greek Margins (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), pp. 253-266
  
• C.M. Bowra, "Palladas on Tyche," Classical Quarterly 10 (1960) 118-128
  
• Alan Cameron, "Palladas and the Fate of Gessius," Byzantinische Zeitschrift 57 (1964) 279-292
  
• Alan Cameron, "Palladas and the Nikai," Journal of Hellenic Studies 84 (1964) 54-62
  
• Alan Cameron, "Palladas and Christian Polemic," Journal of Roman Studies 55 (1965) 17-30
  
• Alan Cameron, "Notes on Palladas," Classical Quarterly 15 (1965) 215-229
  
• William J. Henderson, "Epigrammatic Psogos: Censure in the Epigrams of Palladas," Acta Classica 51 (2008) 91-116
  
• Georg Luck, "Palladas: Christian or Pagan," Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 63 (1958) 455-468

Related posts:

• Palladas
  
• More Palladas
  
• Advice To a Self-Tormentor
  
• A Poem by Palladas
  
• Make Thee Merry
  
• The Descent of Man

Excerpts from Logan Pearsall Smith, All Trivia: Trivia, More Trivia, Afterthoughts, Last Words (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1945):

Pp. 68-69 (Consolation, in Trivia, Book II):

The other day, depressed on the Underground, I tried to cheer myself by thinking over the joys of our human lot. But there wasn't one of them for which I seemed to care a button—not Wine, nor Fame, nor Friendship, nor Eating, nor Making Love, nor the Consciousness of Virtue. Was it worth while then going way up in a lift into a world that had nothing less trite to offer?

Then I thought of reading—the nice and subtle happiness of reading. This was enough, this joy not dulled by Age, this polite and unpunishable vice, this selfish, serene, life-long intoxication.

P. 177 (from Myself, in Afterthoughts):

People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.

P. 192 (from Last Words):

Give me a bed and a book and I'm happy.

Logan Pearsall Smith, Complex Questions (from Trivia):

The Age, the Vicar would remark, was a serious one; Englishmen were met face to face with complex questions. But the questions that had an interest for me at that time, would no doubt have seemed to the Vicar, many of them, old and imaginary. I was often occupied, I am afraid, with the complexities of my own thoughts; their odd travels and changes; their way of peopling English forests with wood-nymphs, or transforming English orchards—seen perhaps at dawn or in the late sunshine—into far Hesperian gardens. Sometimes it was merely names that filled my mind: 'Magalat, Galgalat, Saraïm,' I syllabled to myself; were these the names of the Magi of the East; or Atos, Satos, Paratoras? What were the names of the nymphs Actaeon saw bathing with Diana? The names of the hounds that hunted to his death that intruder; Ladon, Harpyia, Laelaps, Oresitrophos, as some call them; or, as they are given in other authentic books, Boreas, Omelampus, Agreus, Aretusa, Gorgo?

Xenophon, Memorabilia 2.2.13 (tr. E.C. Marchant):

Don't you know that even the state ignores all other forms of ingratitude and pronounces no judgment on them, caring nothing if the recipient of a favour neglects to thank his benefactor, but inflicts penalties on the man who is discourteous to his parents and rejects him as unworthy of office, holding that it would be a sin for him to offer sacrifices on behalf of the state and that he is unlikely to do anything else honourably and rightly? Aye, and if one fail to honour his parents' graves, the state inquires into that too, when it examines the candidates for office.

My brother, tending our father's grave
Related posts:

• Burial of Parents
  
• More on Burial of Parents
  
• Thanatophobia and Thanatopsis

Robert F. Murray (1863-1893), Indolence:

Fain would I shake thee off, but weak am I
  Thy strong solicitations to withstand.
  Plenty of work lies ready to my hand,
Which rests irresolute, and lets it lie.

How can I work, when that seductive sky
  Smiles through the window, beautiful and bland,
  And seems to half entreat and half command
My presence out of doors beneath its eye?

Will not the air be fresh, the water blue,
  The smell of beanfields, blowing to the shore,
    Better than these poor drooping purchased flowers?
Good-bye, dull books! Hot room, good-bye to you!
  And think it strange if I return before
    The sea grows purple in the evening hours.

Related posts:

• Indefeasible Indolence
  
• Weekdays of Unfreedom
  
• The Dreary Vacuum of Idleness
  
• Idleness and Business
  
• Darling Laziness
  
• Archilochus on the Idle Life
  
• Idleness
  
• More on Idleness
  
• Futile Work
  
• Otium Cum Dignitate

The Poems of Thomas Love Peacock, ed. Brimley Johnson (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1906), pp. 396-397 (excerpt from Time):

Death comes to all. His cold and sapless hand
Waves o'er the world, and beckons us away.
Who shall resist the summons? Child of earth!
While yet the blood runs dancing through thy veins,
Impelled by joy and youth's meridian heat,
'Twere wise at times, to change the crowded haunts
Of human splendour, for the woodland realms
Of solitude, and mark, with heedful ear,
The hollow voice of the autumnal wind,
That warns thee of thy own mortality.

Death comes to all. Not earth's collected wealth,
Golcondian diamonds and Peruvian gold,
Can gain from him the respite of an hour.
He wrests his treasure from the miser's grasp,
Dims the pale rose on beauty's fading cheeks,
Tears the proud diadem from kingly brows,
And breaks the warrior's adamantine shield.

Man yields to death; and man's sublimest works
Must yield at length to Time. The proud one thinks
Of life's uncertain tenure, and laments
His transitory greatness. While he boasts
His noble blood, from ancient kings derived,
And views with careless and disdainful eye
The humble and the poor, he shrinks in vain
From anxious thoughts, that teach his sickening heart
That he is like the beings he contemns,
The creature of an hour; that when a few,
Few years have past, that little spot of earth,
That dark and narrow bed, which all must press,
Will level all distinction. Then he bids
The marble structure rise, to guard awhile,
A little while, his fading memory.
Thou lord of thousands! Time is lord of thee:
Thy wealth, thy glory, and thy name are his,
And may protract the blow, but cannot bar
His certain course, nor shield his destined prey.
  The wind and rain assail thy sumptuous domes:
They sink, and are forgotten. All that is
Must one day cease to be. The chiefs and kings,
That awe the nations with their pomp and power,
Shall slumber with the chiefs and kings of old:
And Time shall leave no monumental stone
To tell the spot of their eternal rest.

Edmund Blunden, Forefathers:

Here they went with smock and crook,
Toiled in the sun, lolled in the shade,
Here they mudded out the brook
And here their hatchet cleared the glade:
Harvest-supper woke their wit,
Huntsmen's moon their wooings lit.

From this church they led their brides,
From this church themselves were led
Shoulder-high; on these waysides
Sat to take their beer and bread.
Names are gone - what men they were
These their cottages declare.

Names are vanished, save the few
In the old brown Bible scrawled;
These were men of pith and thew,
Whom the city never called;
Scarce could read or hold a quill,
Built the barn, the forge, the mill.

On the green they watched their sons
Playing till too dark to see,
As their fathers watched them once,
As my father once watched me;
While the bat and beetle flew
On the warm air webbed with dew.

Unrecorded, unrenowned,
Men from whom my ways begin,
Here I know you by your ground
But I know you not within -
There is silence, there survives
Not a moment of your lives.

Like the bee that now is blown
Honey-heavy on my hand,
From his toppling tansy-throne
In the green tempestuous land -
I'm in clover now, nor know
Who made honey long ago.

Logan Pearsall Smith, Last Words:

The denunciation of the young is a necessary part of the hygiene of older people, and greatly assists in the circulation of their blood.

Related posts:

• Censure of the Young by the Old
  
• There Was an Old Man
  
• Old Men
  
• Old Age
  
• Youth and Old Age
  
• Two Views of Old Age