Laudator Temporis Acti

E.M. Martin (pseudonym of Edith Lister [1867-1938]), Wayside Wisdom: A Book for Quiet People (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1909), p. 237:

It was thought in those far-away days that quiet meant peace, and that peace was only another and perhaps a more beautiful name for happiness. Now we look at life differently, and, summed up briefly, our ideal of happiness is noise, crowds and constant movement. Only the invalid and the imbecile may take their fill of ease; the rest of us must hurry along the road doing something, no matter how well or how ill, if only so be we are up and doing. Moreover, we must work, as the convicts do, in company, and in full sight of an approving or a disapproving world; because those who live alone and work alone, learn to think alone, and this is a high crime in our active bustling age. But have we not lost, too, the very habit of thinking? for thought needs silence, solitude and leisure; all the conditions of life we have learned to despise, all that is forbidden in the grimy gospel of labour.

Hat tip: Andrew Rickard.

Philip Rosseter (1568-1623), Book of Airs, Part II, No. XXI, in English Madrigal Verse 1588-1632, ed. E.H. Fellowes, 2nd ed. (1929; rpt. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1950), pp. 604-605:

Whether men do laugh or weep,
Whether they do wake or sleep,
Whether they die young or old,
Whether they feel heat or cold,
There is underneath the sun
Nothing in true earnest done.

All our pride is but a jest;
None are worst and none are best,
Grief and joy and hope and fear
Play their pageants everywhere;
Vain opinion all doth sway,
And the world is but a play.

Powers above in clouds do sit
Mocking our poor apish wit,
That so lamely with such state
Their high glory imitate.
No ill can be felt but pain,
And that happy men disdain.

[Addison Peale Russell (1826-1912)], A Club of One: Passages from the Note-book of a Man who Might Have Been Sociable, 9th ed. (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1891), pp. 148-151:

My books! What would my life be without them? They are my meat and my drink. They employ my mind and lift me out of myself. In hours of mental exaltation I forget my miserable body. I have a book for every mood and every condition. When my mind is strongest and clearest and freest, I range the upper fields of philosophy with Plato; when I am most inclined to pure reason, I listen to brave Socrates; when I am in temper for observation, I read Aesop; when I want to realize the power of light over darkness, I tread the dawn with Epictetus; when I want to breathe the atmosphere of the Caesars, I follow Suetonius; then I walk with Cicero and his nomenclator in the streets of the Eternal City, and study the arts of the Roman politician; of moral exaltation, I find a rare example in the heathen emperor Marcus Antoninus; gods, and demigods, and heroes fight for me in Homer; if I want to sup with horrors, I sit down in terror with Aeschylus, witnessing the ghost of Clytemnestra rushing into Apollo's temple, and rousing the sleeping Furies; if I want a refreshing ride in the chariot of the sun, I take a seat with Phaëton, in Ovid; at will, I range paradise with Milton, and explore perdition with Dante; when I hunger for the world, and want to see every type of man and woman perfectly represented, I read Shakespeare; when I want to study human nature, I take Don Quixote, Pilgrim's Progress, and Faust; to feel the inspiration of freedom, I scale the heights and storm the fastnesses with Schiller; I gossip with wise old Montaigne; think with Pascal; moralize with Sir Thomas Browne; quote and comment with Burton; rummage with Disraeli; laugh with Rabelais; enjoy the suggestive experiences of Gil Blas; am always amused and entertained with Tristram Shandy; Tom Jones—who could ever tire of it? or of Humphry Clinker? or of Roderick Random? or Swift's Gulliver? though I am terrified sometimes with its pitiless wisdom; I go a-fishing with Izaak, and participate (the slightest) his meekness and sweet contentment; I listen to sermons from Bourdaloue, and Bossuet, and Massillon, and Barrow, and South, and Chalmers, and Wesley, and Hall; I take down Foster when I want to read a little and think more of times gone by and difficulties overcome; then I philosophize with Souvestre in his Attic; then enjoy the caustic wit and keen satire of Thackeray, and contemplate his immortal creations; then the humanities of Dickens quicken me to tears, and a long procession of the creatures of his teeming brain move before me; Sir Walter, too, who is history enough for me now; and Burns—the one immortal bard of humanity—to be cherished and sung while man is man, ever and ever; and philosophic Wordsworth; and poetic Shelley and Keats; and the moral and wise Sam Johnson; and the gentle and exquisite Goldsmith; and the storming Carlyle,—mighty hater and smiter of cant and shams; then I discourse with Coleridge; pun and turn over rare old books with gentle Elia; luxuriate with abounding Macaulay; dream with De Quincey; expatiate with Hazlitt and Hunt; then to the Brontés—Charlotte especially; then to Miss Austen—so healthy, serene, and pure; then to something more thoughtful again—to Emerson, the reflective, the wise, the exalted—fit society for Plato in the empyrean; then to Hawthorne—dissector, interpenetrator of hearts and lives; to scholarly, witty, shrewd Lowell—critic, poet, ambassador; to Holmes—so acute, humorous, suggestive, and philosophical in the Autocrat and Elsie—altogether unique in literature; and when a taste for something light, and finished, and exquisite, seizes me, I read the Reveries, and Prue and I; and so I go on and on, feasting with the worthies, and banqueting with the celestials, as inclination or whim pleases me—a precious book, as I said, for every mood and every condition.

Ferdinand Hodler (1853-1918), Lesender Mann

Jane Carlyle, letter to Thomas Carlyle (August 5, 1845):

If I were going "at my age and with my cough" to take up a "mission"—it would be the reverse of Fanny Wrights—instead of boiling up individuals into the species—I would draw a chalk circle round every individuality and preach to it to keep within that, and preserve and cultivate its identity at the expense of ever so much lost giltlacker of other people's isms.

giltlacker = gilt lacquer

Related post: Emphasis on Individuality.

The Journal of Sir Walter Scott, ed. W.E.K. Anderson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), p. 50 (December 27, 1825):

Still however, from the earliest time I can remember, I preferd the pleasures of being alone to waiting for visitors, and have often taken a bannock and a bit of cheese to the wood or hill to avoid dining with company. As I grew from boyhood to manhood I saw this would not do and that to gain a place in men's esteem I must mix and bustle with them. Pride and an excitation of spirits often supplied the real pleasure which others seem to feel in society and certainly upon many occasions it was real. Still if the question was eternal company without the power of retiring within yourself or Solitary confinement for life I should say, 'Turnkey, Lock the cell.'

Id., p. 121 (March 28, 1826):

One is tempted to ask himself, knocking at the door of his own heart, Do you love this extreme loneliness? I can answer conscientiously I do. The love of Solitude was with me a passion of early youth when in my teens I used to fly from company to indulge visions and airy Castles of my own, the disposal of ideal wealth and the exercize of imaginary power. This feeling prevaild even till I was eighteen when Love and Ambition awaking with other passions threw me more into society, from which I have however at times withdrawn myself and have been always glad to do so.

Id., p. 535 (March 18, 1829):

I like the hermit life indifferent well nor would, I sometimes think, break my heart, were I to be in that magick mountain where food was regularly supplied by ministering genii and plenty of books were accessible without the least intervention of human society. But this is thinking like a fool. Solitude is only agreeable when the power of having society is removed to a short space and can be commanded at pleasure. It is not good for man to be alone. It blunts our faculties and freezes our active virtues.

‎Edward O. Wilson, Biophilia (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984; rpt. 1996), pp. 13-14:

Think of scooping up a handful of soil and leaf litter and spreading it out on a white ground cloth, in the manner of the field biologist, for close examination. This unprepossessing lump contains more order and richness of structure, and particularity of history, than the entire surfaces of all the other (lifeless) planets. It is a miniature wilderness that can take almost forever to explore.

Related posts:

• Enough for the Study of a Lifetime
• At My Own Doorstep
• Enough of Interest and Beauty
• Microcosms
• It Is All Here

Henry Ford (1863-1947), quoted in Jonathan Norton Leonard, The Tragedy of Henry Ford (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1932), p. 107:

Reading can become a dope habit. Book-sickness is a modern ailment.

W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965), "The Book-Bag," Collected Short Stories, Vol. IV (New York: Penguin Books, 1978), pp. 9-41 (at 9):

Some people read for instruction, which is praiseworthy, and some for pleasure, which is innocent, but not a few read from habit, and I suppose that this is neither innocent nor praiseworthy. Of that lamentable company am I. Conversation after a time bores me, games tire me and my own thoughts, which we are told are the unfailing resource of a sensible man, have a tendency to run dry. Then I fly to my book as the opium-smoker to his pipe. I would sooner read the catalogue of the Army and Navy Stores or Bradshaw's Guide than nothing at all, and indeed I have spent many delightful hours over both these works. At one time I never went out without a second-hand bookseller's list in my pocket. I know no reading more fruity. Of course to read in this way is as reprehensible as doping, and I never cease to wonder at the impertinence of great readers who, because they are such, look down on the illiterate. From the standpoint of what eternity is it better to have read a thousand books than to have ploughed a million furrows? Let us admit that reading with us is just a drug that we cannot do without—who of this band does not know the restlessness that attacks him when he has been severed from reading too long, the apprehension and irritability, and the sigh of relief which the sight of a printed page extracts from him?—and so let us be no more vainglorious than the poor slaves of the hypodermic needle or the pint-pot.

And like the dope-fiend who cannot move from place to place without taking with him a plentiful supply of his deadly balm I never venture far without a sufficiency of reading matter.

Adolf Schrödter (1805-1875), Don Quixote in his Study
Hat tip: Jim K.

Cyrus Redding (1785-1870), Fifty Years' Recollections, Literary and Personal, with Observations on Men and Things, 2nd ed., Vol. II (London: Charles J. Skeet, 1858), p. 100:

He told me, laughingly, that some gentlemen of the Institute had supplied him with a profusion of clothing, and he wore it once or twice, but being in great want of some books, he could not resist the temptation of selling their presents that he might procure the works he wanted.

Id., "Mentellé the Hungarian," The New Monthly Magazine 117 (1859) 91-94 (at 93):

He once gave lessons in the languages at the German Protestant minister's, whose wife used to ask him to dine with the family, and as the clothes he wore were not fit for any one to appear in, she used to send him good ones, but he soon parted with them for books.

Related post: Books or Clothes?

Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866), Gryll Grange, chapter III (on the Reverend Doctor Opimian):

His tastes, in fact, were four: a good library, a good dinner, a pleasant garden, and rural walks.

Henry Fielding (1707-1754), Don Quixote in England (London: J. Watts, 1734), p. 14 (from Act I, Scene VI):

When mighty rost Beef was the Englishman's Food,
It enabled our Hearts, and enriched our Blood;
Our Soldiers were brave, and our Courtiers were good.
    Oh the Rost Beef of Old England,
    And Old England's Rost Beef!

Then, Britons, from all nice Dainties refrain,
Which effeminate Italy, France, and Spain;
And mighty Rost Beef shall command on the Main.
    Oh the Rost Beef, &c.
    Oh the Rost Beef, &c.

7 effeminate: a verb here ("To make womanish or unmanly; to enervate," Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. effeminate, v., sense 2), not an adjective
8 Main: open sea

On different versions and authorship see Edgar V. Roberts, "Henry Fielding and Richard Leveridge: Authorship of 'The Roast Beef of Old England'," Huntington Library Quarterly 27.2 (Feb., 1964) 175-181.


Floris van Schooten, Breakfast
Related posts:

• Bacon and Eggs
• Sausage and Mash

In 1964 Donald Rusk Currey cut down a bristlecone pine that was older than the pyramids of Egypt, so that he could determine its age by counting its rings. Here is another example of arboricide committed in the name of science, from William Gilpin (1724-1804), Remarks on Forest Scenery, Vol. I (London: R. Blamire, 1791), pp. 162-164 (spelling etc. as in the original):

The next tree I shall exhibit from New-forest, is the groaning-tree of Badesly; a village about two miles from Lymington. The history of the groaning-tree is this. About forty years ago, a cottager, who lived near the centre of the village, heard frequently a strange noise, behind his house, like that of a person in extreme agony. Soon after, it caught the attention of his wife, who was then confined to her bed. She was a timorous woman, and being greatly alarmed, her husband endeavoured to persuade her, that the noise she heard, was only the bellowing of the stags in the forest. By degrees, however, the neighbours, on all sides heard it; and the thing began to be much talked of. It was by this time plainly discovered, that the groaning noise proceeded from an elm, which grew at the end of the garden. It was a young, vigorous tree; and to all appearance perfectly sound.

In a few weeks the fame of the groaning tree was spread far and wide; and people from. all parts flocked to hear it. Among others it attracted the curiosity of the late prince, and princess of Wales, who resided, at that time, for the advantage of a sea-bath, at Pilewell, the seat of Sir James Worsley, which stood within a quarter of a mile of the groaning tree.

Tho the country people assigned many superstitious causes for this strange phenomenon, the naturalist could assign no physical one, that was in any degree satisfactory. Some thought, it was owing to the twisting and friction of the roots. Others thought it proceeded from water, which had collected in the body of the tree—or perhaps from pent air. But no cause that was alledged, appeared equal to the effect. In the mean time, the tree did not always groan; sometimes disappointing it's visitants: yet no cause could be assigned for it's temporary cessations, either from seasons, or weather. If any difference was observed; it was thought to groan least, when the weather was wet; and most when it was clear, and frosty: but the found at all times seemed to arise from the root.

Thus the groaning tree continued an object of astonishment, during the space of eighteen, or twenty months, to all the country around; and for the information of distant parts a pamphlet was drawn up, containing a particular account of all the circumstances relating to it.

At length, the owner of it, a gentleman of the name of Forbes, making too rash an experiment to discover the cause, bored a hole in it's trunk. After this it never groaned. It was then rooted up, with a further view to make a discovery: but still nothing appeared, which led to any investigation of the cause. It was universally however believed, that there was no trick in the affair: but that some natural cause really existed, tho never understood.

By the way, the earliest example of the word English word arboricide occurs in the context of counting tree rings. See Asa Gray (1810-1888), "The Longevity of Trees," North American Review, Vol. 59, No. 124 (July 1844) 189-238, rpt. in Scientific Papers of Asa Gray, Vol. II: Essays; Biographical Sketches: 1841-1886 (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1889), pp. 71-124 (at 84):

[T]he age may be directly ascertained by counting the annual rings on a cross section of the trunk. The record is sometimes illegible or nearly so, but it is perfectly authentic; and when fairly deciphered, we may rely on its correctness. But the venerable trunks, whose ages we are most interested in determining, are rarely sound to the centre; and if they were, even the paramount interests of science would seldom excuse the arboricide.

Labels: arboricide

Norman Douglas (1868-1952), Old Calabria (1915; rpt. London: Oxford University Press, 1938), pp. 44-45 (from chapter V):

One is astonished how large a literature has grown up around this small place—but indeed, the number of monographs dealing with every one of these little Italian towns is a ceaseless source of surprise. Look below the surface and you will find, in all of them, an undercurrent of keen spirituality—a nucleus of half a dozen widely read and thoughtful men, who foster the best traditions of the mind. You will not find them in the town council or at the café. No newspapers commend their labours, no millionaires or learned societies come to their assistance, and though typography is cheap in this country, they often stint themselves of the necessities of life in order to produce these treatises of calm research. There is a deep gulf, here, between the mundane and the intellectual life. These men are retiring in their habits; and one cannot but revere their scholarly and almost ascetic spirit that survives like a green oasis amid the desert of 'politics,' roguery and municipal corruption.

James Hurnard (1808-1881), The Setting Sun (London: F. Bowyer Kitto, 1870), p. 168 (Book IV, lines 500-507), rpt. in James Hurnard: A Victorian Character. Being Passages from The Setting Sun. Selected and Arranged by G. Rostrevor Hamilton (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1946), p. 50:

O why should sacred things and holy truth
Be tarnished by the touch of politics,
Dragging consistency knee-deep through mire?
Has not religion strength enough of limb
To walk alone without securely grasping
The strong but baneful arm of temporal power?
And must the secular State convert religion
Into a subtle engine of support?

Related post: I Cannot Gulp It.

Quintilian 3.7.7-8 (tr. Donald A. Russell):

With gods, in general, the first thing will be to show veneration of the majesty of their nature; next to expound the power of each and discoveries of his which have benefited humanity. "Power" will be displayed: for example, in Jupiter, the power of universal rule; in Mars, the power of war; and in Neptune, control of the sea. Inventions will be shown too: the arts for Minerva, letters for Mercury, medicine for Apollo, crops for Ceres, wine for Bacchus. Next we must mention any exploits of theirs known to history. Even gods derive honour from parents—a son of Jupiter for example—and from age—for example, those descended from Chaos—and also from their offspring: Apollo and Diana do credit to Latona.

verum in deis generaliter primum maiestatem ipsius eorum naturae venerabimur, deinde proprie vim cuiusque et inventa quae utile aliquid hominibus attulerint. vis ostendetur, ut in Iove regendorum omnium, in Marte belli, in Neptuno maris: inventa, ut artium in Minerva, Mercurio litterarum, medicinae Apolline, Cerere frugum, Libero vini. tum si qua ab iis acta vetustas tradidit, commemoranda. addunt etiam dis honorem parentes, ut si quis sit filius Iovis, addit antiquitas, ut iis qui sunt ex Chao, progenies quoque, ut Apollo ac Diana Latonae.

Walter Raleigh (1552-1618), in The Phoenix Nest (London: John Jackson, 1593), p. 69:

Praisd be Dianas faire and harmles light,
Praisd be the dewes, wherwith she moists the ground;
Praisd be hir beames, the glorie of the night,
Praisd be hir powre, by which all powres abound.

Praisd be hir Nimphes, with whom she decks the woods,
Praisd be hir knights, in whom true honor liues,
Praisd be that force, by which she moves the floods,
Let that Diana shine, which all these giues.

In heaven Queene she is among the spheares,
In ay she Mistres like makes all things pure,
Eternitie in hir oft chaunge she beares,
She beautie is, by hir the faire endure.

Time weares hir not, she doth his chariot guide,
Mortalitie belowe hir orbe is plaste,
By hir the vertue of the starrs downe slide,
In hir is vertues perfect image cast.

    A knowledge pure it is hir worth to kno,
    With Circes let them dwell that thinke not so.

Ben Jonson (1572-1637), The Fountaine of Selfe-Love. Or Cynthias Revels (London: Walter Burre, 1601), Act V, Scene 1:

Qveene and Huntresse, chaste, and fayre,
Now the Sunne is layde to sleepe,
Seated, in thy siluer Chayre,
State in wonted maner keepe:
    Hesperus intreats thy light,
    Goddesse excellently bright.

Earth, let not thy enuious shade
Dare it selfe to interpose;
Cynthias shining Orbe was made
Heauen to cleare, when day did close:
    Blesse vs then with wished sight,
    Goddesse excellently bright.

Lay thy Bowe of Pearle apart.
And thy Christall-shining Quiuer;
Give vnto the flying Hart,
Space to breath, how short soeuer.
    Thou, that makst a day of night,
    Goddesse excellently Bright.

Cyrus Redding (1785-1870), Fifty Years' Recollections, Literary and Personal, with Observations on Men and Things, 2nd ed., Vol. I (London: Charles J. Skeet, 1858), pp. 45-46:

The superiority of metropolitan society cannot be disputed, and its more enlarged and liberal modes of thinking and acting; but neither then nor now, had I or have I, any affection for blackened brick walls, interminable streets, rattling vehicles, howling costermongers, wretchedness, poverty, and vice, made more deplorable and vicious by close contact with dissipation, wealth, and luxury. The shady side of a wood in summer, a mountain-top, or the ocean-shore, the lodge in some irriguous valley by the dashing stream for me, before the architectual [sic] extravagances of Buckingham House, or the plaistered mansions and empty show of Belgravia. This may be want of taste for what the hour may deem superlative things; I cannot help my bad taste.

Joshua Sylvester (1563-1618), in Orlando Gibbons, The First Set of Madrigals and Mottets (1612), nos. iii-vi, in English Madrigal Verse 1588-1632, ed. E.H. Fellowes, 2nd ed. (1929; rpt. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1950), pp. 97-98 (line numbers added):

I weigh not fortune's frown nor smile,
   I joy not much in earthly joys,
I seek not state, I reck not style,
   I am not fond of fancy's toys.
I rest so pleased with what I have,        5
I wish no more, no more I crave.

I tremble not at noise of war,
   I quake not at the thunder's crack,
I shrink not at a blazing star,
   I sound not at the news of wrack.        10
I fear no loss, I hope no gain,
I envy none, I none disdain.

I see ambition never pleased,
   I see some Tantals starve in store,
I see gold's dropsy seldom eased,        15
   I see each Midas gape for more.
I neither want nor yet abound,
Enough's a feast, content is crowned.

I feign not friendship where I hate,
   I fawn not on the great for grace,        20
I prize, I praise a mean estate,
   Ne yet too lofty nor too base.
This, this is all my choice, my cheer,
A mind content, and conscience clear.

This recalls a poem attributed to Edward Dyer.

Some notes:

2 I joy not much in earthly joys: cf. Dyer 1 (I joy not in no earthly bliss)
3 style: "A legal, official, or honorific title" (Oxford English Dictionary, sense 18.a)
10 sound: swoon, faint (Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. sound, v.⁴)
14 Tantals starve in store: people like Tantalus starve amidst plenty
15 gold's dropsy: Physicians thought that sufferers from dropsy were always thirsty, and that drinking did nothing to alleviate their thirst and in fact made their condition worse. Naturally this led to a comparison between avarice (a disease of the soul) and dropsy (a disease of the body). See Avarice and Dropsy.
17 I neither want nor yet abound: cf. Dyer 18 (I feel no want, nor have too much)
19 I feign not friendship where I hate: cf. Dyer 14 (I feign not love where most I hate)
23 This, this is all my choice: cf. Dyer 23 (This is my choice)

There is a performance of Gibbon's madrigal by Tessa Bonner and the Rose Consort of Viols here.

Quintilian 1.11.10 (tr. Donald A. Russell):

The forehead can go wrong in many ways. I have seen many who raised their eyebrows at every effort of their voice, others whose brows were always bent, others again who could not keep them level, one making its way to the top of the head, and the other almost covering the eye itself.

nam frons pluribus generibus peccat. vidi multos quorum supercilia ad singulos vocis conatus adlevarentur, aliorum constricta, aliorum etiam dissidentia, cum alterum in verticem tenderet, altero paene oculus ipse premeretur.

Euripides, Medea 824-834 (tr. David Kovacs):

From ancient times the sons of Erechtheus have been favored; they are children of the blessed gods sprung from a holy land never pillaged by the enemy. They feed on wisdom most glorious, always stepping gracefully through the bright air, where once, they say, the nine Pierian Muses gave birth to fair-haired Harmonia.

Ἐρεχθεΐδαι τὸ παλαιὸν ὄλβιοι
καὶ θεῶν παῖδες μακάρων, ἱερᾶς        825
χώρας ἀπορθήτου τ᾽ ἄπο, φερβόμενοι
κλεινοτάταν σοφίαν, αἰεὶ διὰ λαμπροτάτου
βαίνοντες ἁβρῶς αἰθέρος, ἔνθα ποθ᾽ ἁγνὰς        830
ἐννέα Πιερίδας Μούσας λέγουσι
ξανθὰν Ἁρμονίαν φυτεῦσαι.

Donald J. Mastronarde on ἀπορθήτου (line 826):

'unconquered' alludes to the claim that unlike almost all other Greek communities the Athenians were never forced by invaders to abandon their original homeland or accept the domination of immigrant groups (Thuc. 1.2.1, 1.2.5).

Patrick Leigh-Fermor (1915-2011), "The Strange Case of the Swabian Poet," Words of Mercury (London: John Murray, 2004), pp. 202-206 (at 205):

After all, not every millionaire was an illiterate philistine.