Laudator Temporis Acti

Hoard not up the yellow dross,
    Spurn the deadly discs of gold;
Let the miser turn and toss
    Sleepless on his wealth untold.

Life requires a crust of bread,
    A bowl of wine, a dish of meat.
Wilt thou toil thyself half dead
    To pile a heap thou canst not eat?

Who would break his rest to guard
    What a thief can steal away?
Will thy ducats bring reward
    To dim eyes or hair of gray?

Of thy hoard what lust abides,
    When to end thy selfish greed
Comes the bony knight who rides
    Dark upon his steel-white steed?

Will thy money-bags avail,
    Speak him soft and gain reprieve?
Then thy gold will melt and fail
    As Danaid's water thro' the sieve.

Will thy bullion beam as bright
    To palsied grasp and horny eye,
In the horror of the night,
    When Croesus hears the doom to die?

Honest work will bring enough;
    Work, and have no further heed.
Life is made of sterling stuff,
    Love expands a nobler creed.

Purple fleeces scare repose:
    Slumber loves the cabin door:
To sleep exempt from care and foes,—
    'Tis the treasure of the poor.

Fate with blameless mind defy;
    Rest and Labour, wisely blent,
Bring with happy usury
    The increase of a fair content.

Happiest of mortals he who, timely wise,
In the calm walks of truth his bloom enjoys;        85
With books and patrimonial plenty blest,
Health in his veins, and quiet in his breast!
Him no vain hopes attract, no fear appals,
Nor the gay servitude of courts enthrals,
Unknowing how to mask concerted guile        90
With a false cringe, or undermining smile;
His manners pure, from affectation free,
And prudence shines thro' clear simplicity.
Tho' no rich labours of the Persian loom,
Nor the nice sculptor's art, adorn his room,        95
Sleep unprovok'd will softly seal his eyes,
And innocence the want of down supplies;
Health tempers all his cups, and at his board
Reigns the cheap luxury the fields afford:
Like the great Trojan, mantled in a cloud,        100
Himself unseen, he sees the lab'ring crowd,
Where all industrious to their ruin run,
Swift to pursue what most they ought to shun.
Some, by the sordid thirst of gain controll'd,
Starve in their stores, and cheat themselves for gold,        105
Preserve the precious bane with anxious care,
In vagrant lusts to feed a lavish heir:
Others devour Ambition's glitt'ring bait,
To sweat in purple, and repine in state;
Devote their pow'rs to ev'ry wild extreme        110
For the short pageant of a pompous dream;
Nor can the mind to full perfection bring
The fruits it early promis'd in the spring,
But in a public sphere those virtues fade,
Which open'd fair and flourished in the shade:        115
So while the Night her ebon sceptre sways,
Her fragrant blooms the Indian plant* displays;
But the full day the short-liv'd beauties shun,
Elude our hopes, and sicken at the sun.

* The nure-tree.

He best can drink the wine of Life,
    And sweetly crush the grape of Fate,
Who shuts the Janus doors of strife,
    And binds an olive on his gate.

Who needs no victim to atone
    The record of his blameless hour;
Contentment is the corner stone
    On which he builds his arch of power.

He best enjoys who can refrain,
    He least is nimble Fortune's fool,
Who sees his honest Duty plain,
    A scholar in her iron school.

How idle for a spurious fame
    To roll in thorn-beds of unrest:
What matter whom the mob acclaim,
    If thou art master of thy breast?

If sick thy soul with fear and doubt,
    And weary with the rabble din,—
If thou wouldst scorn the herd without,
    First make the discord calm within.

If we are lords in our disdain,
    And rule our kingdoms of despair,
As fools we shall not plough the main
    For halters made of syren's hair.

We need not traverse foreign earth
    To seek an alien Sorrow's face.
She sits within thy central hearth,
    And at thy table has her place.

So with this hour of push and pelf,
    Where nought unsordid seems to last,
Vex not thy miserable self,
    But search the fallows of the past.

In Time's rich tract behind us lies
    A soil replete with root and seed;
There harvest wheat repays the wise,
    While idiots find but charlock weed.

There we can hear the flute of Pan,
    Bewailing down the reedy vales:
There see the tempest-beaten swan
    Sail broken, down the moaning gales.

And larger heroes in that morn
    Stride mist-like thro' the asphodel,
And hoary bards with cheeks unshorn
    Invoke anew the lyric spell.

On me their burning helms they turn,
    Their eagle banners awe the glen,
They, rising from each dusty urn,
    Display their giant limbs again.

A broad cup brimmed with mighty red
    These silent years to us assign;
From old Falernian vineyards shed,
    The Roman sends the Teuton wine.

Old Fauns have breathed against the grapes,
    Old-world aromas haunt the bowl;
Still music of forgotten shapes,
    Dim pathos of a Pagan soul.

There from those dark and glimmering lands,
    From altars wrecked with ivy trail,
Old Flaccus reaches out his hands,
    And bids the mild barbarian hail.

The introduction of parentheses into any form of composition is both improper and unscholarlike; for it is a proof that the writer is not conversant with the art of good writing, or that he writes in a hurry. Unlettered men, and those who are accustomed to speak with little thinking and with much haste, fall into this error. The nominative case, the verb, and its government, will always make a plain and intelligible sentence, and admits of such infinite changes that there seems no necessity for these entanglements of speech. My Lord Clarendon's History is full of them; and they render his composition, with all the good and grand sense of the author, embarrassing. A man before he pretends to be a writer should be a grammarian, and not subject himself, by an obscure or harsh style, to the old sarcasm, "Nomine grammaticus re barbarus."

He lived to the advanced age of nearly ninety and died at Bologna, having so dissipated his property that the furniture of his bedroom and kitchen had to be sold to pay his funeral expenses and his son Mario, himself a distinguished scholar, inherited from his father ability rather than any considerable estate. The family, however, retained possession of the trophy for a triumph of learning which Filelfo won in a famous jest, when with insistent arrogance he had, according to their compact, shaved off the beard of the Greekling Timotheus, whom he had worsted in an argument about the length of a syllable, an incident which Mirteo has wittily recorded in the following verses:

Was it not enough for you, Filelfo, that you had won fame and glory in the Latin tongue, but must you also, after roaming through the Greek cities too, carry off a fresh triumph from Timotheus, as became the husband of a Greek bride? For he made a wager with you about a certain word, agreeing, if he lost, to let his beard be shaved; and, if he won, he was to get the money you had staked. You won and, declaring that you could not buy a beard for the amount of the wager, you whipped out a razor and said you preferred to have his. Now indeed, Filelfo, you may be called the pride not of the Italian but of the Greek palaestra.

Vixit ad exactam aetatem nonagenario proximus, periitque Bononiae adeo dissipatis rei domesticae copiis, vt ad efferendum funus & cubiculi et coquinae instrumenta venierint, & Marius filius egregie doctus, paternae potius virtutis, quam multae substantiae haeres relinqueretur. Sed in familia eruditae victoriae trophaeum permansit, nobili exceptum risu, quum Timotheo Graeculo, de vi syllabae contendenti, victoque, barbam ex pactione inexorabili superbia derasisset, vti lepide Myrteus his carminibus expressit.

                   MYRTEI.
Nunquid sat tibi non fuit Philelphe,
Linguae gloria nobilis Latinae?
Ni Graecas quoque peruagatus vrbes,
Dignus coniuge, nuptiisque Graecis
Ferres Timothei nouum triumphum?
Cui, dum vna semper ille dictione
Tecum pignore certat, atque barbam
Abradi sibi ferre pollicetur,
Victus; aut positam pecuniam abs te
Victor auferat. Abnegasti eadem
Barbam posse pecunia obtinere
Victor: atque nouacula expedita
Barbam illius habere maluisti:
Iam nunc non Italae Philelphe, sed sis
Graecae gloria nobilis palaestrae.

Pan is no cloudy ruler in dim haze,
No king of air-belts delicate afar,
But in the ripening slips and tangled ways
Of the blue cork-woods where the goat-herds are.
And we may find him by the bulrush pits,
Where the hot oxen chin-deep soaking lie;
Or in the mulberry orchard grass he sits
With milky kex and marrowy hemlocks nigh;
Where silken floating under-darnels tie
And mat the herbage of the summer floor.
A god he is, this Pan, content to dwell
Among us, nor disdains the damp and hot wood-smell.
He is a god and more.

He loves the flaky boles of peeling pines
Brown as the sand; he loves the languid vines,
As the fruit darkens in their drooping leaves;
The crumpled poppies garnered among sheaves
Soften his eyes with colour as of dreams.
The first few crisping leaf-falls on his ear
Herald the wasting year.
He feels the ivies push their stem-feet up
Against the beech-bole all in seams between,
And broaden downwards many a rounded cup
In orbed tops of mealy buds white-green.
Pan too will watch in open glare unseen
The quiet locust seething in the blaze
Upon the vine-leaves of the quarry ways.

By broken margins seated of the main
The dog-troop's sour sharp yelping he will hear,
As they go flushing up gull, heron, crane,
And noisy at some stranded carcase tear.
Pan sees some maiden bloom with shining hair
Descending slowly from a temple porch,
Her sandals come in flashes like a torch,
Bound on some service to the image there;
Leaning she holds the myrtle bushes near,
And rinses from the lowest marble stair
Her sacrificial urn in currents clear.
Ay, and this Pan will watch the tillage yield,
The mastich coppice and the millet field.
The brown rough-bearded bondsman sits thereby
To hasten with long goad and urgent cry
The oxen treading barley round and round.
He scoops with eager finger for his meat
A pulpy-headed gourd, and to the ground
Tosses the rind, and watchful from his seat
Cries to his oxen lest they slacken pace.
These sights doth Pan consider, and all ways
Of human toil, all doings, all desire;
Whereby the new gods bend men to obey,
And give them hands of lead and brains of fire;
And crush them with the heel of iron sway,
And weaken them with labour, lest they rise,
In Titan fashion proud against the skies.

I went to knock at Riches' door;
They threw me a farthing the threshold o'er.

To the door of Love did I then repair—
But fifteen others already were there.

To Honour's castle I took my flight—
They opened to none but to belted knight.

The house of Labor I sought to win—
But I heard a wailing sound within.

To the house of Content I sought the way—
But none could tell me where it lay.

One quiet house I yet could name,
Where last of all, I'll admittance claim;

Many the guests that have knocked before,
But still—in the grave—there's room for more.

Where riches dwell I knocked, but knocked in vain,
A copper from the window thrown was all my gain.

I tried to steal into the cot where Love abode,
But, earlier still than I, a dozen were in my road.

I gently tapped at Fame's tall castle bright,
"We only open here to lord and knight."

I sought the roof-tree that protects the poor,
Within were sobs, and wails, and lament sore.

In vain I asked where did Content abide,
But none there was who knew it, far and wide.

But yet, I know a house, for aye secure,
Where at the last I'll lightly tap the door.

Within its bound dwells many a noble guest,
For many a thousand in the grave there's rest.

I have knocked at the door where Riches dwell;
From the window a copper was all that fell.

I have knocked at the door of Love's abode;
Already some fifteen others there stood.

At Honor's palatial home I knocked;
"To all but knight and steed this gate is locked."

I have sought the roof where Labor sweats;
There heard I but woe and vain regrets.

I sought the house where the contented dwell;
None, far and wide, could its presence tell.

But yet an humbler house I know,
To knock at whose door I at last will go.

Within its walls dwells many a guest;
Still for many more in th' grave there's rest.

Ich habe geklopft an des Reichtums Haus;
Man reicht mir 'nen Pfennig zum Fenster heraus.

Ich habe geklopft an der Liebe Thür;
Da standen schon fünfzehn andre dafür.

Ich klopfte leis' an der Ehre Schloß;
"Hier thut man nur auf dem Ritter zu Roß."

Ich habe gesucht der Arbeit Dach;
Da hört' ich drinnen nur Weh und Ach!

Ich suchte das Haus der Zufriedenheit;
Es kannt' es niemand weit und breit.

Nun weiß ich noch ein Häuslein still,
Wo ich zuletzt anklopfen will.

Zwar wohnt darin schon mancher Gast,
Doch ist für Viele im Grab noch Rast.

One after another the most accessible mountains and beaches are turning into Coney Islands of horror to which the hordes come, not to make contact with natural beauty, but to invade it with radios and all the other paraphernalia necessary to transform mountain or beach into a noisy slum so little different from the slums of the city as to make one wonder why they bother to come. At the same time, one after another of the superlatively beautiful but remoter regions of the earth are being taken possession of by the rich and the footloose for whom eager entrepreneurs build luxury hotels and casinos in which the patrons who have come thousands of miles may engage in much the same amusements they might engage in at home—which activity they sometimes call, goodness only knows why, "getting away from it all."

Thou crusty botch of nature, what's the news?

Give me a cottage on some Cambrian wild,
   Where, far from cities, I may spend my days:
And, by the beauties of the scene beguiled,
   May pity man's pursuits, and shun his ways.
While on the rock I mark the browsing goat,
   List to the mountain torrent's distant noise,
Or the hoarse bittern's solitary note,
   I shall not want the world's delusive joys;
But, with my little scrip, my book, my lyre,
   Shall think my lot complete, nor covet more;
And when, with time, shall wane the vital fire,
   I'll raise my pillow on the desert shore,
And lay me down to rest where the wild wave
Shall make sweet music o'er my lonely grave.

For my own part, I submit to years and infirmities. My views in this world are mean and narrow: it is a thing in which I have small share, and which ought to give me small concern. I abhor business, and especially to have to do with great persons and great affairs, which I leave to such as you who delight in them and are fit for them. The evening of life I choose to pass in a quiet retreat. Ambitious projects, intrigues and quarrels of statesmen, are things I have been formerly amused with; but they now seem to me a vain, fugitive dream.

What sort of thing is our family wealth?—
Piles of books arrayed up to the rafters.
In my lofty study at dawn I open a volume,
And alone share in the words of the sages.
Though men superior and wise have lived in every era,
We have all esteemed each other's minds.
But these bookworms I see on my desk
Still far surpass my ordinary companions.

Let's away with study,
    Folly's sweet.
Treasure all the pleasure
    Of our youth:
Time enough for age        5
    To think on Truth.
So short a day,
And life so quickly hasting,
And in study wasting
    Youth that would be gay!        10

'Tis our spring that's slipping,
    Winter draweth near,
Life itself we're losing,
    And this sorry cheer
Dries the blood and chills the heart,        15
    Shrivels all delight.
Age and all its crowd of ills
    Terrifies our sight.
So short a day,
And life so quickly hasting,        20
And in study wasting
    Youth that would be gay!

Let us as the gods do,
    'Tis the wiser part:
Leisure and love's pleasure        25
    Seek the young in heart.
Follow the old fashion,
    Down into the street!
Down among the maidens,
    And the dancing feet!        30
So short a day,
And life so quickly hasting,
And in study wasting
    Youth that would be gay!

There for the seeing        35
    Is all loveliness,
White limbs moving
    Light in wantonness.
Gay go the dancers,
    I stand and see,        40
Gaze, till their glances
    Steal myself from me.
So short a day,
And life so quickly hasting,
And in study wasting        45
    Youth that would be gay!

Omittamus studia,
dulce est desipere,
et carpamus dulcia
iuventutis tenere!
res est apta senectuti        5
seriis intendere,
<res est apta iuventuti
leta mente ludere.>
Velox etas preterit
studio detenta,        10
lascivire suggerit
tenera iuventa.

Ver etatis labitur,
hiems nostra properat
vita damnum patitur,        15
cura carnem macerat,
sanguis aret, hebet pectus,
minuuntur gaudia,
nos deterret iam senectus
morborum familia.        20
Velox etas preterit
studio detenta,
lascivire suggerit
tenera iuventa.

Imitemur superos!        25
digna est sententia,
et amoris teneros
iam venantur retia.
voto nostro serviamus!
mos iste est numinum.        30
ad plateas descendamus,
et choreas virginum!
Velox etas preterit
studio detenta,
lascivire suggerit        35
tenera iuventa.

Ibi, que fit facilis
est videndi copia,
ibi fulget mobilis
membrorum lascivia,        40
dum puelle se movendo
gestibus lasciviunt,
asto videns, et videndo
me michi subripiunt.
Velox etas preterit        45
studio detenta,
lascivire suggerit
tenera iuventa.

We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate. Either is in such a predicament as the man who was earnest to be introduced to a distinguished deaf woman, but when he was presented, and one end of her ear trumpet was put into his hand, had nothing to say. As if the main object were to talk fast and not to talk sensibly.

It is, no doubt, a great advantage to talk to a man at the Antipodes through a telephone; its advantage depends entirely on the value of what the two men have to say to one another. If one merely shrieks slander through a tube and the other whispers folly into a wire, do not think that anybody is very much benefited by the invention.

"But now really, do not you think Udolpho the nicest book in the world?"

"The nicest—by which I suppose you mean the neatest. That must depend upon the binding."

"Henry," said Miss Tilney, "you are very impertinent. Miss Morland, he is treating you exactly as he does his sister. He is forever finding fault with me, for some incorrectness of language, and now he is taking the same liberty with you. The word 'nicest,' as you used it, did not suit him; and you had better change it as soon as you can, or we shall be overpowered with Johnson and Blair all the rest of the way."

"I am sure," cried Catherine, "I did not mean to say anything wrong; but it is a nice book, and why should not I call it so?"

"Very true," said Henry, "and this is a very nice day, and we are taking a very nice walk, and you are two very nice young ladies. Oh! It is a very nice word indeed! It does for everything. Originally perhaps it was applied only to express neatness, propriety, delicacy, or refinement—people were nice in their dress, in their sentiments, or their choice. But now every commendation on every subject is comprised in that one word."

Why should I mention the other innumerable diseases, the tortures that result from high living? Men used to be free from such ills, because they had not yet slackened their strength by indulgence, because they had control over themselves, and supplied their own needs. They toughened their bodies by work and real toil, tiring themselves out by running or hunting or tilling the earth. They were refreshed by food in which only a hungry man could take pleasure. Hence, there was no need for all our mighty medical paraphernalia, for so many instruments and pill-boxes. For plain reasons they enjoyed plain health; it took elaborate courses to produce elaborate diseases.

quid alios referam innumerabiles morbos, supplicia luxuriae? immunes erant ab istis malis qui nondum se deliciis solverant, qui sibi imperabant, sibi ministrabant. corpora opere ac vero labore durabant, aut cursu defatigati aut venatu aut tellure versanda; excipiebat illos cibus qui nisi esurientibus placere non posset. itaque nihil opus erat tam magna medicorum supellectile nec tot ferramentis atque pyxidibus. simplex erat ex causa simplici valetudo: multos morbos multa fericula fecerunt.

If you give me your attention, I will tell you what I am:
I'm a genuine philanthropist—all other kinds are sham.
Each little fault of temper and each social defect
In my erring fellow creatures, I endeavour to correct.
To all their little weaknesses I open people's eyes
And little plans to snub the self sufficient I devise;
I love my fellow creatures—I do all the good I can—
Yet everybody says I'm such a disagreeable man!
            And I can't think why!

To compliments inflated I've a withering reply.
And vanity I always do my best to mortify;
A charitable action I can skilfully dissect;
And interested motives I'm delighted to detect.
I know everybody's income and what everybody earns,
And I carefully compare it with the income tax returns;
But to benefit humanity, however much I plan,
Yet everybody says I'm such a disagreeable man!
            And I can't think why!

I'm sure I'm no ascetic: I'm as pleasant as can be;
You'll always find me ready with a crushing repartee;
I've an irritating chuckle, I've a celebrated sneer,
I've an entertaining snigger, I've a fascinating leer;
To everybody's prejudice I know a thing or two;
I can tell a woman's age in half a minute—and I do—
But although I try to make myself as pleasant as I can,
Yet everybody says I'm such a disagreeable man!
            And I can't think why!

"But you never read novels, I dare say?"

"Why not?"

"Because they are not clever enough for you—gentlemen read better books."

"The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid."

"Pain, who made thee?" thus I said once
To the grim unpitying monster,
As, one sleepless night, I watched him
Heating in the fire his pincers.

"God Almighty; who dare doubt it?"
With a hideous grin he answered:
"I'm his eldest best-beloved son,
Cut from my dead mother's bowels."

"Wretch, thou liest;" shocked and shuddering
To the monster I replied then;
"God is good, and kind, and gracious;
Never made a thing so ugly."

"Tell me then, since thou know'st better,
Whose I am, by whom begotten."
"Hell's thy birth-place, and the Devil
Both thy father and thy mother."

"Be it so; to me the same 'tis
Whether I'm God's son or grandson,
And to thee not great the difference
Once thy flesh between my tongs is."

"Spare me, spare me, Pain;" I shrieked out,
As the red-hot pincers caught me;
"Thou art God's son; aye thou'rt God's self;
Only take thy fingers off me."

This typographical consciousness has disappeared now that books are mass-produced for a mass audience. In the eighteenth century they were made by hand. Every sheet of paper was produced individually by an elaborate procedure and differed from every other sheet in the same volume. Every letter, word, and line was composed according to an art that gave the artisan a chance to express his individuality. Books themselves were individuals, each copy possessing its own character. The reader of the Old Regime approached them with care, for he paid attention to the stuff of literature as well as its message. He would finger the paper in order to gauge its weight, translucence, and elasticity (a whole vocabulary existed to describe the esthetic qualities of paper, which usually represented at least half the manufacturing cost of a book before the nineteenth century.) He would study the design of the type, examine the spacing, check the register, evaluate the layout, and scrutinize the evenness of the printing. He would sample a book the way we might taste a glass of wine; for he looked at the impressions on the paper, not merely across them to their meaning. And once he possessed himself fully of a book, in all its physicality, he would settle down to read it.