Laudator Temporis Acti

J.B. Bury (1861-1927), "The British and the Roman Empire," Saturday Review, No. 2122, Vol. 81 (27 June, 1896) 645:

The Romans of the Empire had not a trace of that highest order of mental faculty which creates and originates. Their intelligence was solid and commonplace, moving rigidly on old lines; they were incapable of striking a new vein or of conceiving a new idea. From the days of Augustus to the triumph of Christianity they invented absolutely nothing in political science or in finance, in warfare or in mechanics, in religion or in literature or art. Their greatest achievement was the brilliant development of law in the second and third centuries, but that was merely the able elaboration of ideas which had been formulated in the days of Roman vigour. In literature they merely imitated either the Greeks or their own ancestors; their merits are purely merits of form. We must not let their notable instinct for administrative details, or their equally notable instinct for literary style, blind us to their poverty in ideas. Problems of many kinds in the practical world invited solution; they were all dealt with by traditional means and antiquated machinery. In fact, under the early Roman Empire the human mind sluggishly vegetated on its own past.

D.S. Carne-Ross (1921-2010), "Three Preludes for Pindar," Arion 2.2 (1975) 160-193 (at 166):

In great poetry a word is like a stone thrown into a pool; it is very difficult to cut off its spread of meaning at a predetermined point.

Id. (at 174):

Let us suppose we are reading the passage with a beginner.*

* I play this game (as it must seem) quite seriously because I think it the best way not perhaps, quite, of learning Greek but of discovering that you very much want to learn Greek.

Id. (at 180):

He has the reputation of being "difficult" and no doubt he is; one should add that he is also, sometimes, simply very odd, author of some of the queerest Greek in the canon.

Id. (at 182):

We all learn to read Greek by looking up words in the lexicon. We know or think we know what Greek words mean because the Greeks themselves seem quite soon to have had trouble understanding their classical literature and needed the help of the commentaries which the learning of Alexandria provided. Our own tradition of scholarship is built up from that base. What this means is that almost from the beginning the difficult Greek of the great writers was faced by the easy explanatory Greek of the commentator.

Id. (at 184):

Greek literature has of course been studied with enormous care for centuries but one sometimes suspects that too often it has been the object of the wrong kind of attention. There are things in the ancient poets which a quite ignorant reader could catch and enjoy but which the learned seem not to notice.

Id. (at 185-186):

Greek scholarship, it sometimes seems, is almost over, its long task nearly done. There is also a sense in which the understanding of Greek literature and of the Greek language has hardly begun. Or needs beginning again, along different lines. I do not dare to say that we should begin by throwing away the lexica and commentaries and libraries of learned studies—while jealously preserving the concordances. What we should try to do is risk as direct a confrontation with the words of the texts as we can, resolutely setting aside everything that stands between those texts and ourselves.

Pindar, Olympian Odes 2.30-34 (tr. John Sandys):

Verily, for mortal men at least, the time when their life will end in the bourne of death is not clearly marked; no, nor the time when we shall bring a calm day, the Sun's own child, to its close amid happiness that is unimpaired. But diverse are the currents that at divers times come upon men, either with joys or with toils.

    ἤτοι βροτῶν γε κέκριται
πεῖρας οὔ τι θανάτου,
οὐδ᾿ ἡσύχιμον ἁμέραν ὁπότε παῖδ᾿ ἀελίου
ἀτειρεῖ σὺν ἀγαθῷ τελευτάσομεν·
    ῥοαὶ δ᾿ ἄλλοτ᾿ ἄλλαι
εὐθυμιᾶν τε μέτα καὶ πόνων ἐς ἄνδρας ἔβαν.

Boeckh's Latin translation:

Profecto mortalium quidem fati nequaquam terminus apertus est, nec tranquillam quando diem, solis filiam, illibata cum felicitate obituri simus: undaeque alias aliae gaudiorum laborumque in homines incurrere solent.

M.M. Willcock ad loc.:

E.M. Cioran (1911-1995), The New Gods, tr. Richard Howard (1974; rpt. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), p. 85:

You are done for—a living dead man—not when you stop loving but stop hating. Hatred preserves: in it, in its chemistry, resides the "mystery" of life. Not for nothing is hatred still the best tonic ever discovered, for which any organism, however feeble, has a tolerance.

On est fini, on est un mort-vivant, non quand on cesse d'aimer mais de haïr. La haine conserve: c'est en elle, dans sa chimie, que réside le «mystère de la vie». Ce n'est pas pour rien qu'elle est encore le meilleur fortifiant qu'on ait jamais trouvé, toléré de plus par n'importe quel organisme, si débile soit-il.

Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), "Literature and Science," Works, Vol. IV: Essays in Criticism, Second Series, Contributions to the 'Pall Mall Gazette', and Discourses in America (London: Macmillan and Co., Limited, 1903), pp. 317-348 (at 324-325):

But when we talk of knowing Greek and Roman antiquity, for instance, which is the knowledge people have called the humanities, I for my part mean a knowledge which is something more than a superficial humanism, mainly decorative. 'I call all teaching scientific,' says Wolf, the critic of Homer, 'which is systematically laid out and followed up to its original sources. For example: a knowledge of classical antiquity is scientific when the remains of classical antiquity are correctly studied in the original languages.' There can be no doubt that Wolf is perfectly right; that all learning is scientific which is systematically laid out and followed up to its original sources, and that a genuine humanism is scientific.

When I speak of knowing Greek and Roman antiquity, therefore, as a help to knowing ourselves and the world, I mean more than a knowledge of so much vocabulary, so much grammar, so many portions of authors in the Greek and Latin languages. I mean knowing the Greeks and Romans, and their life and genius, and what they were and did in the world; what we get from them, and what is its value. That, at least, is the ideal; and when we talk of endeavouring to know Greek and Roman antiquity, as a help to knowing ourselves and the world, we mean endeavouring so to know them as to satisfy this ideal, however much we may still fall short of it.

Id. (at 345):

Even if literature is to retain a large place in our education, yet Latin and Greek, say the friends of progress, will certainly have to go. Greek is the grand offender in the eyes of these gentlemen. The attackers of the established course of study think that against Greek, at any rate, they have irresistible arguments. Literature may perhaps be needed in education, they say; but why on earth should it be Greek literature? Why not French or German? Nay, 'has not an Englishman models in his own literature of every kind of excellence?' As before, it is not on any weak pleadings of my own that I rely for convincing the gainsayers; it is on the constitution of human nature itself, and on the instinct of self-preservation in humanity. The instinct for beauty is set in human nature, as surely as the instinct for knowledge is set there, or the instinct for conduct. If the instinct for beauty is served by Greek literature and art as it is served by no other literature and art, we may trust to the instinct of self-preservation in humanity for keeping Greek as part of our culture. We may trust to it for even making the study of Greek more prevalent than it is now. Greek will come, I hope, some day to be studied more rationally than at present; but it will be increasingly studied as men increasingly feel the need in them for beauty, and how powerfully Greek art and Greek literature can serve this need.

E.M. Cioran (1911-1995), The New Gods, tr. Richard Howard (1974; rpt. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), p. 114:

When I spend days and days among texts concerned with nothing but serenity, contemplation, and ascesis, I am filled with a longing to rush out into the street and break the skull of the first person I meet.

Quand je passe des jours et des jours au milieu de textes où il n'est question que de sérénité, de contemplation et de dépouillement, l'envie me prend de sortir dans la rue et de casser la gueule au premier passant.

Euripides, Medea 645-653 (tr. David Kovacs):

O fatherland, O house, may I never
be bereft of my city,
never have a life of helplessness,
a cruel life,
most pitiable of woes!
In death, O in death may I be brought low ere that,        650
bringing my life's daylight to an end!
Of troubles none is greater than
to be robbed of one's native land.

ὦ πατρίς, ὦ δώματα, μὴ
δῆτ᾿ ἄπολις γενοίμαν
τὸν ἀμηχανίας ἔχουσα
δυσπέρατον αἰῶ,
οἰκτρότατόν <γ᾿> ἀχέων.
θανάτῳ θανάτῳ πάρος δαμείην        650
ἁμέραν τάνδ᾿ ἐξανύσασα· μό-
χθων δ᾿ οὐκ ἄλλος ὕπερθεν ἢ
γᾶς πατρίας στέρεσθαι.

648 αἰῶ Stinton: αἰῶν᾿ C

Scholia:

Albert Camus, Notebooks 1951-1959, tr. Ryan Bloom (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2008), pp. 129-130 (from Notebook VIII: August 1954-July 1958):

December 10.
Follow-up. We leave, nevertheless, and a few hours later, Pompeii. Interested of course, but never touched. The Romans are sometimes refined, never civilized. Lawyers and soldiers whom we confuse, God knows why, with the Greeks. They are the first, the true burglars of the Greek mind. Alas, conquered Greece did not conquer them in turn. Even though they borrowed the themes and forms of the grand art, they never understood the cold approximations that they would have been better off not making, such that the Greek naiveté and splendor would have appeared to us without intermediary. Compared with Hera of Paestum's temple, all the antiquity that covers Rome and Italy shatters to pieces and with it a comedy of false grandeur. By instinct, my heart has always known this, my heart which has never beaten for a single Latin poem (not even Virgil is admired, nor loved) and which has always ached for the flash of a tragic stanza or lyric hailing from Greece.

10 décembre.
Suite. Nous partons cependant et quelques heures plus tard Pompéi. Intéressé bien sûr mais jamais touché. Les Romains parfois raffinés jamais civilisés. Avocats et soldats qu'on confond Dieu sait pourquoi avec les Grecs. Ils sont les premiers, les vrais casseurs de l'esprit grec. La Grèce vaincue ne les a pas vaincus hélas à son tour. Car s'ils lui ont emprunté les thèmes et les formes du grand art, ils n'ont jamais réalisé que des approximations froides dont il aurait mieux valu qu'elles ne fussent pas, afin que la naïveté et la splendeur grecques nous apparaissent sans intermédiaire. Auprès du temple de Héra de Paestum, toute l'antiquité qui jonche Rome et l'Italie vole en éclats et avec elle une comédie de fausse grandeur. Mon cœur d'instinct a toujours su cela qui n'a jamais battu pour un seul poème latin (ni même Virgile admiré, non aimé) et qui s'est toujours serré à l'éclair d'une stance tragique ou lyrique venue de Grèce.

"Alas, conquered Greece...": cf. Horace, Epistles 2.1.156-157 (Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit et artes / intulit agresti Latio).

Antal Szerb (1901-1945), "Solitude," The Third Tower: Journeys in Italy, tr. Len Rix (London: Pushkin Press, 2014), pp. 69-70:

Among the truly lonely I class those who are alone very seldom, and then perhaps only in moments set aside for reading or writing. My profession, schoolteaching, by its very nature forces even the most highly strung person into contact with others; and then, in the evening, a certain anxiety verging on panic drives him back into company.

I have been alone here for several days now. Apart from seeking information and making arrangements, I have exchanged not a word with anyone. It is the first time in my life that I have been on my own for so long.

It quite astonishes me how little I miss human company. I would never have thought how well I would get by without conversation and companionship. For advice I go to Baedeker. He serves as my real friend. He thinks of everything, tells me where I should go. Anything I really want to say is committed to a notepad.

I can feel the good this solitude is doing me. My thoughts arrange themselves in longer sequences. My feelings are more intense, and I see their outlines more clearly. Chaotic thoughts are reduced to order, and almost everything welling up inside me spills out and ripens toward form and expression.

It is a comfort to know that I have discovered this panacea, even if it won't always be part of my life.

Hat tip: Ian Jackson.

James J. O'Donnell, Augustine: A New Biography (New York: Ecco, 2005), p. 174:

If repeatedly we feel on reading stories of his life that we understand the issues, concerns, and attitudes he and his contemporaries shared, that's not because we have seen and understood them and made a serious historical attempt to compare them to our own, but because they (and their modern translators) use names and labels that elide the gaps that separate us and them and make their issues and their affiliations seem relevant.

Dear Mike,

I was intrigued the other day by two consecutive entries in the Index to Jürgen Leonhardt's Latin: Story of a World Language (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2013), first published as Latein: Geschichte einer Weltsprache (Munich: Verlag C.H. Beck, 2009) and translated by Kenneth Kronenburg:

Livius, 63
Livy, 43, 45, 54-55

Could this first entry refer to Livius Andronicus, I wondered? No. Livius Andronicus is found under Andronicus just as Central Italy is found under C for Central. The reference to this Livius on p. 63 reads "Livius's relationship to the Greeks is looser still: Quintilian (10.1.100) places him alongside Herodotus (490–ca. 420 BCE)", yet there is no reference to any Livius in Institutio oratoria 10.1.100. There is, however, another mention of the author, unrecorded in the Index. On p. 56, Livius's dates are given as 59 BCE-17 CE, which would make him an almost exact contemporary of "The Roman historian Livy (59 BCE–16 CE)" mentioned on p. 43. I wonder if they were related?

Just as intriguing is a Greek poet called "Theocrites" (p. 62), who inspired Virgil's Eclogues. On that same page and the following there are mentions of Greek "Apollonios Rhodios" and "Archilochos" but Latinized "Alcaeus" and "Herodotus", while "Callimachos" is neither "Kallimachos" nor "Callimachus" but a hybrid of the two; μέγα κακόν, or mega cock-up in the vernacular, would be the poet-librarian's verdict.

Best wishes,
Eric [Thomson]

Labels: typographical and other errors

Perry Link, "The Mind: Less Puzzling in Chinese?" New York Review of Books Daily (June 30, 2016):

Wanting to test my intuition that classical Chinese was more verb-heavy than its Indo-European counterparts, I opened Confucius's Analects and an English translation of Plato's Apology of Socrates and counted nouns and verbs. Confucius uses slightly more verbs than nouns. Plato uses about 45 percent more nouns than verbs.

It may well be that "Plato uses about 45 percent more nouns than verbs," but I wouldn't rely on an English translation for evidence.

At the Carnival Masque in Part II of Goethe's Faust, Mephistopheles dresses up as Zoilo-Thersites. In a short speech (lines 5457-5470), he says the following (lines 5465-5470; tr. David Luke):

But where there's honour and success,
They raise my hackles, I confess.
I'd lift what's low, put down what's high,
Make wry things straight and straight things wry:
That's the one thing that comforts me,
That's how I want the world to be!

Doch, wo was Rühmliches gelingt,
Es mich sogleich in Harnisch bringt.
Das Tiefe hoch, das Hohe tief,
Das Schiefe grad, das Grade schief,
Das ganz allein macht mich gesund,
So will ich's auf dem Erdenrund.

Translation of P. Oxy. 215 from A.J. Festugière, Epicurus and His Gods, tr. C.W. Chilton (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1956), pp. 64-65 ("The additions inside the oblique brackets are due to Diels, in his German translation facing the text. These additions are, of course, only intended to indicate the sequence of thought and make no claim to certainty." Other endnotes omitted.):

<It is no proof of piety to observe the customary religious obligations — though the offering of sacrifices> on suitable occasions may be, as I have said, in keeping with nature — nor is it, by Zeus, when someone or other goes about repeating, "I fear all the gods, and honour them, and want to spend all my money in making sacrifices and consecrating offerings to them." Such a man is perhaps more praiseworthy than other individuals, but still it is not thus that a solid foundation for piety is laid. You, my friend, must know that the most blessed gift is to have a clear perception of things; that is absolutely the best thing that we can conceive of here below. Admire this clear apprehension of the spirit, revere this divine gift. After that, <you should not honour the gods because you think thus to gain their favour>, as people will think when they see you performing acts of piety, but only because, in comparison with your own happiness, you see how the condition of the gods is infinitely more august, according to our doctrine. And certainly, by Zeus, <when you practise> this doctrine — the doctrine most worthy of belief, <as your reason should tell you — it is of course open to you to offer sacrifices to the gods. By doing so you perform> an act which gives confidence and is a pleasure to see, if it is done at the proper time, because you honour your own doctrine by enjoying those pleasures of the senses which befit such occasions and besides you conform in some sense to religious traditions. Only be careful that you do not permit any admixture of fear of the gods or of the supposition that in acting as you do you are winning the favour of the gods.

For indeed, in the name of Zeus (as men affect to say) what have you to fear in this matter? Do you believe that the gods can do you harm? Is not that, on any showing, to belittle them? How then will you not regard the Divinity as a miserable creature if it appears inferior in comparison to yourself? Or will you rather be of the opinion that by sacrificing thousands of oxen you can appease God if you have committed some evil deed? Can you think that he will take account of the sacrifice and, like a man, remit at some time or another a part of the penalty?

No doubt men tell each other that they should fear the gods and honour them with sacrifices so that, restrained by the tribute they receive, the gods will not attack them; as a result they think that if their surmise is correct they will altogether escape injury and if it is not, all will be well because they pay homage to the power of the gods. But if these close relations <between gods and men were really to exist it would be a great misfortune, for the effect would make itself felt even beyond the grave>, after the funeral ceremonies, as soon as a man was cremated. For then men would suffer injury even beneath the earth and everyone would have to expect punishment. Moreover, I need not describe how men would have to beg for signs of favour from the gods in their fear of being neglected by them (for they would think to induce the gods in this way to communicate with them more readily and come down into their temples), any more than I can tell of the diversity and number of the methods they would employ because of their fear of harm and so as to guard against punishment. For to speak the truth all this seems a pure illusion of these people when compared with the doctrine of those who think that a life of happiness exists for us in this world and do not admit that the dead live again — a marvel not less unlikely than those which Plato imagined.

Image of the Greek text from H. Diels, "Ein epikureisches Fragment über Götterverehrung (Oxyrhynch. Pap. II n. 215)," Sitzungsberichte der Königlich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (1916) 886-909 (at 902-904):


Unfortunately I couldn't find the Greek text in Unicode format on the World Wide Web, and I'm too lazy to type it out myself.

Bibliography:

• Wilhelm Schmid, "Götter und Menschen in der Theologie Epikurs," Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 94 (1951) 97-156 (at 133-140)
• Wilhelm Schmid, "Textprobleme eines epikureischen Fragments über Götterverehrung (Pap. Oxy. 215)," Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 105 (1962) 368-376
• Dirk Obbink, "POxy. 215 and Epicurean Religious ΘΕΩΡΙΑ," in Atti del XVII Congresso Internazionale di Papirologia, Vol. II (Naples: Centro internazionale per lo studio dei papiri ercolanesi, 1984), pp. 607-619 (non vidi)

Simon Goldhill, Who Needs Greek? Contests in the Cultural History of Hellenism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002; rpt. 2003), p. 188:

Two years later, in 1818, Keats wrote to Reynolds 'I long to feast on old Homer ... If you understood Greek and would read me passages, now and then, explaining their meaning, 'twould be, from its mustiness, perhaps a greater luxury than reading the thing one's self.'<sup>31

31</sup> Keats Letters I, 239, Feb. 1818.

Goldhill doesn't identify which edition of Keats' Letters he's using.

From the Look Inside! feature on amazon.com, I find a slightly different version of the quotation in Hyder Edward Rollins, ed., The Letters of John Keats, Vol. I: 1814-1818 (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1958; rpt. 2011), p. 274 (dated April 27, 1818; footnote omitted):

I long to feast upon old Homer, as we have upon Shakespeare, and as I have lately upon Milton.—if you understood Greek, and would read me passages, now and then, explaining their meaning, 't would be, from its mistiness, perhaps a greater luxury than reading the thing one's self.—I shall be happy when I can do the same for you.

The quotation in Maurice Buxton Forman's edition is close to that in Rollins' edition (upon and mistiness, versus Goldhill's on and mustiness), and the date is the same, April 27, 1818 (not Goldhill's Feb. 1818).

Thanks to Ian Jackson for help.

Labels: typographical and other errors

E.E. Bowen (1836-1901), "On Teaching by Means of Grammar," in F.W. Farrar, ed., Essays on a Liberal Education (London: Macmillan and Co., 1867), pp. 179-204 (at 188-189):

Lexicons, by what we have said, are to beginners almost as noxious as grammars. Every one who knows Greek in the end, must remember well how dreary have been the hours which he has spent upon the simply mechanical exercise of turning over leaves, with his eye fixed upon the heading of the page. It is monotonous, it is unintellectual, it is distasteful in the highest degree; and there is not a public schoolmaster in the kingdom who has the courage and the benevolence to dispense with it. Lexicons must no doubt exist, for they are needed in many ways; but there is no worse way of discovering the English equivalent of a simple word than looking it out in a dictionary. It is better to have a glossary; it is better to ask a teacher; it is better even to have a literal translation: better, simply because these methods do not waste the time of the learner, and do not spoil his temper. In his first book of Homer, an average boy will look out somewhere between two and three thousand words in his lexicon, and spend, on a moderate computation, from forty to fifty hours in the search. Grievous, however, as his waste of time in this direction is, it is work of the fingers alone; the lessons of Grammar that he learns will torture his brains as much, and will not even give him the satisfaction of feeling in the end that he has gained his grain of knowledge. He will have done something, it is true; he will not have been idle; he will have done as hard work as people do who turn a treadmill.

Woodrow Wilson, Address at Pueblo, Colorado (September 25, 1919), in Addresses of President Wilson (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1919), pp. 359-370 (at 359):

I want to say — and I cannot say too often — any man who carries a hyphen about with him, carries a dagger that he is ready to plunge into the vitals of this Republic whenever he gets ready. If I can catch any man with a hyphen in this great contest I will know that I have got an enemy of the Republic.

Id., Address at St. Paul, Minnesota (September 9, 1919), pp. 107-116 (at 108-109):

For my part, I think the most un-American thing in the world is a hyphen. I do not care what it is that comes before the word "American." It may be a German-American, or an Italian-American, a Swedish-American, or an Anglo-American, or an Irish-American. It does not make any difference what comes before the "American," it ought not to be there, and every man who comes to take counsel with me with a hyphen in his conversation I take no interest in whatever. The entrance examination, to use my own parlance, into my confidence is, "Where do you put America in your thoughts? Do you put it first, always first, unquestionably first?" Then we can sit down together and talk, but not otherwise.

Id., Address at San Francisco (September 17, 1919), pp. 219-229 (at 228):

That settles that matter, and even some of my fellow countrymen who insist upon keeping a hyphen in the middle of their names ought to be satisfied with that. Though I must admit that I do not care to argue anything with a hyphen. A man that puts anything else before the word "American" is no comrade of mine, and yet I am willing even to discomfit him with a statement of fact.

Update from Dave Berg:

You might be interested to know that Roosevelt, who greatly disliked Wilson, held the same opinions on hyphenation.

We welcome the German or the Irishman who becomes an American. We have no use for the German or Irishman who remains such. We do not wish German-Americans and Irish-Americans who figure as such in our social and political life; we want only Americans, and, provided they are such, we do not care whether they are of native or of Irish or of German ancestry. We have no room in any healthy American community for a German-American vote or an Irish-American vote, and it is contemptible demagogy to put planks into any party platform with the purpose of catching such a vote. We have no room for any people who do not act and vote simply as Americans and nothing else. Forum, April 1894, found in Theodore Roosevelt Cyclopedia, CD edition, pp. 15-16.

I do not believe in hyphenated Americans. I do not believe in German-Americans or Irish-Americans; and I believe just as little in English-Americans. Metropolitan, October 1915, TR Cyclopedia, p. 16.

Joshua Whatmough (1897-1964) "'Quid Expedivit Psittaco?' or The Soul of Grammar," Classical Journal 39.2 (November, 1943) 105-113 (at 111):

If you want to learn some Latin, you will have to read Latin authors, not little bits of Latin in some textbook.

Jerome, Letters 107.1.4 (to Laeta; tr. W.H. Fremantle et al.):

Every temple in Rome is covered with soot and cobwebs.

fuligine et aranearum telis omnia Romae templa cooperta sunt.

Id., 107.2.2:

Even in Rome itself paganism is left in solitude. They who once were the gods of the nations remain under their lonely roofs with horned-owls and birds of night.

solitudinem patitur et in urbe gentilitas, dii quondam nationum cum bubonibus et noctuis in solis culminibus remanserunt.

John Buchan (1875-1940), The Three Hostages, chapter V:

He opened a door and ushered me into an enormous room, which must have occupied the whole space on that floor. It was oblong, with deep bays at each end, and it was lined from floor to ceiling with books. Books, too, were piled on the tables, and sprawled on a big flat couch which was drawn up before the fire. It wasn't an ordinary gentleman's library, provided by the bookseller at so much a yard. It was the working collection of a scholar, and the books had that used look which makes them the finest tapestry for a room. The place was lit with lights on small tables, and on a big desk under a reading lamp were masses of papers and various volumes with paper slips in them. It was workshop as well as library.