Laudator Temporis Acti

Though our modern dictators entertain us by their bombast and vulgarity, and maintain the high traditions of their class in other less engaging vices, they fall short, alas!, of the exorbitant pleasures, the outrageous, shameless orgies of debauchery, which are so endearing a feature of the more ancient and authentic tyrants. Hitler and Mussolini neither smoke nor drink, and although Musso sometimes allows himself a mild infusion of lime-flowers, for his stomach’s sake, tea and coffee (those poisonous drugs!) he rigorously eschews. As for Hitler, cream-éclairs are said to be the limit of his indulgence; but of these, it is whispered, he has sometimes, when in convivial mood, been known to take one over the eight. When these two miserable creatures met in Venice, that city of ancient and exotic debauchery, did they feast with Lucullus and romp with Cleopatra? No: two plates of scrambled eggs, and early and alone to bed. O tempora, o mores! Shades of Sardanapalus and Semiramis! Where’s Caligula, where’s Nero, where’s Elagabalus? Has the long catalogue of luxurious Popes and Caesars tapered down to this, and the Seven glorious Deadly Sins shrunk to an inhibition?

More problematic is the Aeneid, which reverses the proportions: the Dido episode, and the journey into the underworld that succeeds it, add up to an oasis in a carefully landscaped desert, and it takes a lot of thirstily summoned dedication to convince yourself that those parched miles of dunes, elegantly arranged though they might be, are worth crossing just for the prospect of getting to Troy and watching it burn. The Orpheus and Eurydice episode in Georgics IV shows the intensity of dramatic talent that lay within Virgil's reach, but that only makes things worse when we find out how little drama the Aeneid has, compared with the long swathes of beautiful language with nothing in particular to be beautiful about. As it has come down to us, epic poetry in Latin is a misfire. The great classical historian Ronald Syme spoke the truth in passing, when he said that Tacitus wrote the Roman epics that the poets didn't.

Poor old Rowse says somewhere in his autobiography that he regards the old ideal of Mens sana in corpore sano as arrant nonsense and a contradiction in terms, or words to that effect; for when he rides his hobby-horses he does ride them with whips and spur. He prefers to believe that bodily health and intellectual force are incompatible things, and that art springs from the limitation of experience. Well, I suppose it's a tenable view for such as want to hold it, and for sure, since Flaubert and Leopardi were invalids, there's something to give a smack of taste to the weak, insipid soup of Wackenroder and Proust. But I'm on the side of the Elizabethans, and Goethe, and St Aristophanes, my patron saint, and all whose philosophy is founded on experience, or, at least, on a bottom of common sense which presupposes experience. I'm for Gibbon and Surtees, not these etiolated continentals. Why even style depends on experience and observation, since style needs imagery, and imagery must be drawn from life, from wild beasts in the forest, and storms at sea, and low life in taprooms and circuses and at earthstoppers' dinners, and a relish and recollection of these things, and a sympathy with them. But who can draw a good image from private wards and clinking bedpans and cut flowers and demure white sheets and undertones, an unillumined world, without seasons, without laughter, where even a fart is an austere medical symptom only?

Lord, of your grace all that I hope is this—
keep the realm of my pleasure prosperous
avert from me the calamity of chastity
and keep far from me the doom of repentance.

                                        I am so tired,
And sick, and sicker even than that; for ah,
The worst of sicknesses is life itself;
And only death can cure it. This is sure
The medicine that is bitterest, but the last,
And everywhere available, and cheap.

                                        Ich bin recht müd'
Und krank, und kranker noch als krank, denn ach!
Die allerschlimmste Krankheit ist das Leben;
Und heilen kann sie nur der Tod. Das ist
Die bitterste Arznei, doch auch die letzte,
Und ist zu haben überall, und wohlfeil.

Though it can be overdone, there is nothing like a trading of quotations for bringing cultivated people together, or for making you feel uncultivated if you have nothing to trade. Nowadays very few people can quote from the Greek or would think to impress anyone if they could, and even quoting from the Latin — still a universal recognition system in the learned world when I was young — is now discouraged.

                     Where men burn books,
They will burn people also in the end.

                                                     [W]o man Bücher
Verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen.

You may read it, an you will, because I am sending it to you herewith. It seemeth to me that the author and the book ought to be burned together, for it is a monstrous scandal that anybody should compile such a volume.

Vos potestis eum legere si vultis, quia mitto hic eum vobis. Mihi videtur quod autor ille cum suo libro debet comburi, quia est maxime scandalosum quod aliquis debet talem librum compilare.

• A Pungent Smell of Smoke
• Burning Books Written by Epicurus
• An Official Book Burning
• Burn Me!
• A Curse

Reading is a mere makeshift for original thinking. When we read, we allow another to guide our thoughts in leading strings. Moreover, many books merely serve to show how many false paths there are and how seriously we could go astray if we allowed ourselves to be guided by them. But whoever is guided by genius, in other words thinks for himself; thinks freely and of his own accord and thinks correctly; he has the compass for finding the right way. We should, therefore, read only when the source of our own ideas dries up, which will be the case often enough even with the best minds. On the other hand, to scare away our own original and powerful ideas in order to take up a book, is a sin against the Holy Ghost. We then resemble the man who runs away from free nature in order to look at a herbarium, or to contemplate a beautiful landscape in a copper engraving.

Lesen ist ein bloßes Surrogat des eigenen Denkens. Man läßt dabei seine Gedanken von einem Andern am Gängelbande führen. Zudem taugen viele Bücher bloß, zu zeigen, wie viel Irrwege es giebt und wie arg man sich verlaufen könnte, wenn man von ihnen sich leiten ließe. Den aber der Genius leitet, d. h. der selbst denkt, freiwillig denkt, richtig denkt, der hat die Boussole, den rechten Weg zu finden. Lesen soll man also nur dann, wann die Quelle der eigenen Gedanken stockt; was auch beim besten Kopfe oft genug der Fall seyn wird. Hingegen die eigenen, urkräftigen Gedanken verscheuchen, um ein Buch zur Hand zu nehmen, ist Sünde wider den heiligen Geist. Man gleicht alsdann Dem, der aus der freien Natur flieht, um ein Herbarium zu besehn, oder um schöne Gegenden im Kupferstiche zu betrachten.

The truth that has been merely learnt sticks to us like an artificial limb, a false tooth, a nose of wax, or at best like a rhinoplastic nose formed from someone else's flesh. On the other hand, the truth acquired through our own thinking is like the natural limb; it alone really belongs to us. On this rests the distinction between the thinker and the mere scholar. The intellectual gain of the man who thinks for himself is, therefore, like a beautiful painting that vividly stands out with correct light and shade, sustained tone, and perfect harmony of colours. The intellectual acquisition of the mere scholar, on the other hand, is like a large palette full of bright colours, systematically arranged perhaps, but without harmony, sequence, and significance.

Die bloß erlernte Wahrheit klebt uns nur an, wie ein angesetztes Glied, ein falscher Zahn, eine wächserne Nase, oder höchstens wie eine rhinoplastische aus fremdem Fleische; die durch eigenes Denken erworbene aber gleicht dem natürlichen Gliede: sie allein gehört uns wirklich an. Darauf beruht der Unterschied zwischen dem Denker und dem bloßen Gelehrten. Daher sieht der geistige Erwerb des Selbstdenkers aus, wie ein schönes Gemälde, das lebendig hervortritt, mit richtigem Lichte und Schatten, gehaltenem Ton, vollkommener Harmonie der Farben. Hingegen gleicht der geistige Erwerb des bloßen Gelehrten einer großen Palette, voll bunter Farben, allenfalls systematisch geordnet, aber ohne Harmonie, Zusammenhang und Bedeutung.

After a few sentences exchanged at long intervals in the manner of rustic courtesy, I inquired casually what was the name of the town. The old lady answered that its name was Stilton, and composedly continued her needlework. But I had paused with my mug in air, and was gazing at her with a suddenly arrested concern. 'I suppose,' I said 'that it has nothing to do with the cheese of that name.' 'Oh, yes,' she answered, with a staggering indifference, 'they used to make it here.'

I put down my mug with a gravity far greater than her own. 'But this place is a Shrine!' I said. 'Pilgrims should be pouring into it from wherever the English legend has endured alive. There ought to be a colossal statue in the market-place of the man who invented Stilton cheese. There ought to be another colossal statue of the first cow who provided the foundations of it. There should be a burnished tablet let into the ground on the spot where some courageous man first ate Stilton cheese, and survived. On the top of a neighbouring hill (if there are any neighbouring hills) there should be a huge model of a Stilton cheese, made of some rich green marble and engraven with some haughty motto: I suggest something like "Ver non semper viret; sed Stiltonia semper virescit."' The old lady said, 'Yes, sir,' and continued her domestic occupations.

After a strained and emotional silence, I said, 'If I take a meal here tonight can you give me any Stilton?'

'No, sir; I'm afraid we haven't got any Stilton,' said the immovable one, speaking as if it were something thousands of miles away.

'This is awful,' I said: for it seemed to me a strange allegory of England as she is now; this little town that had lost its glory; and forgotten, so to speak, the meaning of its own name. And I thought it yet more symbolic because from all that old and full and virile life, the great cheese was gone; and only the beer remained. And even that will be stolen by the Liberals or adulterated by the Conservatives. Politely disengaging myself, I made my way as quickly as possible to the nearest large, noisy, and nasty town in that neighbourhood, where I sought out the nearest vulgar, tawdry, and avaricious restaurant.

There (after trifling with beef, mutton, puddings, pies, and so on) I got a Stilton cheese. I was so much moved by my memories that I wrote a sonnet to the cheese. Some critical friends have hinted to me that my sonnet is not strictly new; that it contains 'echoes' (as they express it) of some other poem that they have read somewhere. Here, at least, are the lines I wrote:

Stilton, thou shouldst be living at this hour
And so thou art. Nor losest grace thereby;
England has need of thee, and so have I—
She is a Fen. Far as the eye can scour,
League after grassy league from Lincoln tower
To Stilton in the fields, she is a Fen.
Yet this high cheese, by choice of fenland men,
Like a tall green volcano rose in power.

Plain living and long drinking are no more,
And pure religion reading Household Words,
And sturdy manhood sitting still all day
Shrink, like this cheese that crumbles to its core;
While my digestion, like the House of Lords,
The heaviest burdens on herself doth lay.

Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
Oh! raise us up, return to us again;
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.
Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart:
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea:
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,
So didst thou travel on life's common way,
In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on herself did lay.

Courage is the very best gift of all; courage stands before everything, it does, it does! It is what maintains and preserves our liberty, safety, life, and our homes and parents, our country and children. Courage comprises all things: a man with courage has every blessing.

virtus praemium est optumum;
virtus omnibus rebus anteit profecto:
libertas salus vita res et parentes,        650
patria et prognati
tutantur, servantur:
virtus omnia in sese habet, omnia assunt
bona quem penest virtus.

I want always to dance, I want always to play the lyre. I strike up my lyre to praise the solemn festival with my words. The Bacchae have cast a spell on me. . . . When I drink wine, my cares go to sleep. What do I care for pains and groans, what do I care for troubles? I love a young soldier, a Herakles with longing eyes, a lion tamer; ever one to save our cities.

ἀεὶ θέλω χορεύειν,
ἀεὶ θέλω λυρίζμιν.
γεραρὴν λόγοις ἑορτήν
ἀνα[βάϊλλομαι λυρίζειν.

θέλγουσίν με αἷ Βά<κ>χαι
α...υ[
[

ὅταν πίννω τὸν οἶνον,
εὕδουσιν αἵ μέριμναι·
τί μοι πόνων, τί μοι γόων,
τί μοι μέλει μεριμνῶν;

στρατηγὸν νέον ἔραμαι,
ποθοβλήτην Ἡρακλέα,
δαμάζοντα τοὺς λέοντας·
ἀεὶ τὰς πόλεις σαῶσαι.

Mithras, God of the Morning, our trumpets waken the Wall!
'Rome is above the Nations, but Thou art over all!'
Now as the names are answered, and the guards are marched away,
Mithras, also a soldier, give us strength for the day!

Mithras, God of the Noontide, the heather swims in the heat,
Our helmets scorch our foreheads; our sandals burn our feet.
Now in the ungirt hour; now ere we blink and drowse,
Mithras, also a soldier, keep us true to our vows!

Mithras, God of the Sunset, low on the Western main,
Thou descending immortal, immortal to rise again!
Now when the watch is ended, now when the wine is drawn,
Mithras, also a soldier, keep us pure till the dawn!

Mithras, God of the Midnight, here where the great bull dies,
Look on Thy children in darkness. Oh take our sacrifice!
Many roads Thou hast fashioned: all of them lead to the Light,
Mithras, also a soldier, teach us to die aright!

A true philologist is what friends will call a careful reader and enemies a pedant: someone who uses deep and broad knowledge and minimal prejudice to try to understand, down to the nuts and bolts, the commas and the words in italics, what a document is trying to tell us.

Wherefore friends, though absent, are at hand; though in need, yet abound; though weak, are strong; and—harder saying still—though dead, are yet alive; so great is the esteem on the part of their friends, the tender recollection and the deep longing that still attends them.

quocirca et absentes adsunt et egentes abundant et imbecilli valent et, quod difficilius dictu est, mortui vivunt; tantus eos honos, memoria, desiderium prosequitur amicorum.

ἐντεῦθεν ἐξελαύνει διὰ Συρίας σταθμὸν ἕνα παρασάγγας πέντε εἰς Μυρίανδον, πόλιν οἰκουμένην ὑπὸ Φοινίκων ἐπὶ τῇ θαλάττῃ...

Thence Cyrus marched one stage, five parasangs, to Myriandus, a city on the sea coast, inhabited by Phoenicians...

The next leg was a one-day march of five parasangs that brought him to Myriandus, a coastal city inhabited by Phoenicians.

From here Cyrus marched through Syria one stage, five parasangs, to Myriandus, a city inhabited by Phoenicians and on the sea.

Labels: typographical and other errors

Professor Arthur Gibson, who has died aged 83, was a polymath widely recognised as one of the last century’s greatest minds and, measured by IQ, the cleverest man in Britain, despite growing up in poverty in Bradford and dropping out of school aged 14.

....

It was in this climate that Gibson stubbornly developed intellectual passions: for maths — despite his father stubbing out cigarettes on his hand when he got answers wrong — and for books, although he once received a Bible to the head after being caught reading it by his anti-literate father.

The dyslexic Gibson read everything he could — Bradford Library became a refuge — but he could not translate his instinctive passions into formal academic success. He left school at 14, with no O-levels and unable to recite the alphabet beyond the letter L.

....

His friend and fellow Cambridge mathematician Imre Leader recalled that: "If you quoted a passage from the Bible, Gibson could tell you exactly where it was from, and also which other verses shared the same words."

Cranium and Brain.—Lesions of the head and brain are very frequent among men of genius. The celebrated Australian novelist, Marcus Clarke, when a child, received a blow from a horse’s hoof which crushed his skull. The same is told of Vico, Gratry, Clement VI., Malebranche, and Cornelius, hence called a Lapide. The last three are said to have acquired their genius as a result of the accident, having been unintelligent before..

• Bible Thumpers
• Samuel Johnson as Bible Thumper
• Gagged with the Gospel
• Books as Weapons

The difference between the effect that thinking for oneself has on the mind, versus that of reading is incredibly large, which is why it constantly magnifies the original difference between minds, by virtue of which we are driven to one or the other. Reading, that is, forces thoughts on the mind that are as foreign and heterogeneous to its momentary direction and mood as is the seal to the wax on which it presses its imprint. The mind here experiences a total external compulsion to think this or that at random, for which it simply has no inclinationb or mood. — On the other hand, with thinking for oneself it follows its own peculiar drive, as this for the moment was more specifically determined by either the external environment or some recollection. For the intuitive environment does not force one specific thought on the mind, like reading; instead, it provides the mind with material and occasion to think what is in accordance with its nature and present mood. — Now this is why much reading deprives the mind of all elasticity, like a continually pressing weight bearing down on a spring; and the surest way to have no thoughts of one's own is to immediately grab a book in every free moment. This practice is the reason why erudition makes most people even more stupid and simple than they already are by nature, and also deprives their writing of all success.

Die Verschiedenheit zwischen der Wirkung, welche das Selbstdenken, und der, welche das Lesen auf den Geist hat, ist unglaublich groß; daher sie die ursprüngliche Verschiedenheit der Köpfe, vermöge welcher man zum Einen, oder zum Andern getrieben wird, noch immerfort vergrößert. Das Lesen nämlich zwingt dem Geiste Gedanken auf, die der Richtung und Stimmung, welche er für den Augenblick hat, so fremd und heterogen sind, wie das Petschaft dem Lack, welchem es sein Siegel aufdrückt. Der Geist erleidet dabei totalen Zwang von außen, jetzt Dies, oder Jenes zu denken, wozu er so eben gar keinen Trieb, noch Stimmung hat. — Hingegen beim Selbstdenken folgt er seinem selbsteigenen Triebe, wie diesen für den Augenblick entweder die äußere Umgebung, oder irgend eine Erinnerung näher bestimmt hat. Die anschauliche Umgebung nämlich dringt dem Geiste nicht einen bestimmten Gedanken auf, wie das Lesen; sondern giebt ihm bloß Stoff und Anlaß zu denken was seiner Natur und gegenwärtigen Stimmung gemäß ist. Daher nun nimmt das viele Lesen dem Geiste alle Elasticität wie ein fortdauernd drückendes Gewicht sie einer Springfeder nimmt; und ist, um keine eigenen Gedanken zu haben, daß sicherste Mittel, daß man in jeder freien Minute sogleich ein Buch zur Hand nehme. Diese Praxis ist der Grund, warum die Gelehrsamkeit die meisten Menschen noch geistloser und einfältiger macht, als sie schon von Natur sind, und auch ihrer Schriftstellerei allen Erfolg benimmt.

And where can I go to escape death? Show me the country, show me the people to whom I may go, upon whom death does not come; show me a magic charm against it. If I have none, what do you wish me to do? I cannot avoid death.

καὶ ποῦ φύγω τὸν θάνατον; μηνύσατέ μοι τὴν χώραν, μηνύσατε ἀνθρώπους, εἰς οὓς ἀπέλθω, εἰς οὓς οὐ παραβάλλει, μηνύσατε ἐπαοιδήν· εἰ μὴ ἔχω, τί με θέλετε ποιεῖν; οὐ δύναμαι τὸν θάνατον ἀποφυγεῖν.

The appreciation of Burton is a test of bookishness, and although he has never lacked readers, even during the dark age, 1677-1799, when no edition of the Anatomy appeared, there have not been lacking those who have belittled and misrepresented him. I am not concerned at the moment with his defence, even if it were necessary, which it is not, for there is no reason why any one should read him unless he wishes to do so. Burton is for the Burtonian. But it is necessary to refer to the misrepresenters, both ancient and modern, because many of them have sinned ignorantly. Critics and commentators have not always taken the trouble to read, still less understand the book, hence much popular nonsense, of which Hallam's description of the Anatomy as "a sweeping of the miscellaneous literature from the Bodleian Library," and Lowell's

A mire ankle-deep of deliberate confusion,
Made up of old jumbles of classic allusion.

are typical specimens.

Burton has been oftener damned with faint praise than scoffed at by the ignorantly learned. I know of only one downright depreciator, the Manx poet, T. E. Brown. In a vigorous and humourless essay, contributed to the New Review in 1895, this minor poet and major schoolmaster can find no good word for our good Burton. His learning is but a "parade," the "product of omnivorous folio-bolting and quarto-gulping, urged on and sustained by inordinate vanity"; his method naught but a "pseudo-method," a mere "affectation of method and order." Brown concedes, however, that Burton has "slanging power . . . a wondrous hurly-burly of invective"; and his conclusion reveals a sneaking, if slightly priggish regard. Like Charles Lamb, he is opposed to reprints of the Anatomy. "I do not know a more heartless sight than the reprint of the Anatomy of Melancholy," says Lamb. "What need was there of unearthing the bones of that fantastic old great man, to expose them in a winding-sheet of the newest fashion to modern censure? What hapless stationer could dream of Burton ever becoming popular?" Brown is not so generous or so romantic. An old Burton has a charm, he admits, but only "in an old library; old dust embalms it, old memories haunt it. It is worth seeking there": and he thinks it ought to be read there in situ. "Neglect, decay," he admonishes, "must be the fate of all such ponderous eccentricities. And to smarten them up, and turn them out spick-and-span, radiant and raw, into the form of literature, is a doubtful sort of proceeding. They belong to the cave, and scholars are their natural friends and custodians. Leave them to the scholars."