Laudator Temporis Acti

Henry David Thoreau, Natural History of Massachusetts:

Books of natural history make the most cheerful winter reading. I read in Audubon with a thrill of delight, when the snow covers the ground, of the magnolia, and the Florida keys, and their warm sea-breezes; of the fence-rail, and the cotton-tree, and the migrations of the rice-bird; of the breaking up of winter in Labrador, and the melting of the snow on the forks of the Missouri; and owe an accession of health to these reminiscences of luxuriant nature.

....

In society you will not find health, but in nature. Unless our feet at least stood in the midst of nature, all our faces would be pale and livid. Society is always diseased, and the best is the most so. There is no scent in it so wholesome as that of the pines, nor any fragrance so penetrating and restorative as the life-everlasting in high pastures. I would keep some book of natural history always by me as a sort of elixir, the reading of which should restore the tone of the system.

Ivan Shishkin, Pine Trees Lit Up By the Sun

From an exchange of emails with a friend:

Amicus: "Only a hazy recollection remains of what books I bought in London. All I know is that the binge required recourse to an old ploy at the airport. Heaviest volumes in the hand-luggage; two overcoats – i.e. eight pockets - all stuffed. This time round it was G. M. Young's Early Victorian England volume 1 in the left pocket of outer overcoat, volume 2 in the right. Check-in counter to be approached with hands in trouser pockets so displacing the vast bulk behind the back and cutting down on the tent-like profile."

Ego: "Thanks be to the inventor of pockets. I bought two pairs of walking shorts a while ago, with large pockets to accommodate tree and bird and mushroom and insect identification books, hand lens, etc. I will no doubt look foolish on the trail, but such is the privilege of age."

Amicus: "Since you're always on the prowl for suitable fodder, I was thinking a fine subject for a blog-post might be the hand-in-glove relationship between book and pocket. I've got in front of me some scuffed and weathered well-travelled favourites (boards warped): Bridges' The Spirit of Man, Palgrave's Golden Treasury, Huxley's Text & Pretext, and Herbert Read's The Knapsack. And of course there is too the whole Everyman tribe, 'to be thy guide, in thy most need to go by thy side'."

Several English words for books emphasize their portability. In the following list, the dates refer to the first occurrences of the words in English, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED):

• enchiridion (1541), from Greek ἐγχειρίδιον ("that which fits in the hand," such as a dagger or a little book), defined by OED as "A handbook or manual; a concise treatise serving as a guide or for reference."
  
• handbook (900), "A small book or treatise, such as may conveniently be held in the hand; a manual" (OED).
  
• manual (1445), related to the Latin word for hand (manus).
  
• pocketbook (1617), defined by OED as "A small book, adapted so as to be conveniently carried in a person's pocket."
  
• vade-mecum (1629), literally "go with me," defined by OED as "A book or manual suitable for carrying about with one for ready reference; a handbook or guidebook."

Also of interest are the Latin words pugillares (sc. libelli) and pugillaria, both substantives meaning "writing-tablets" and both formed from the adjective pugillaris = "of or belonging to the fist or hand, that can be held in the hand" (Lewis and Short, A Latin Dictionary). In his famous letter on the ascent of Mount Ventoux (Epistulae Familiares 4.1) Petrarch calls his copy of St. Augustine's Confessions a "pugillare opusculum" (a little work that can be held in the hand).

According to Sir John Hawkins,

Dr. Johnson used to say, that no man read long together with a folio on his table. "Books," said he, "that you may carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are the most useful after all." He would say, "such books form the mass of general and easy reading." He was a great friend to books like the French "Esprits d'un tel;" for example, "Beauties of Watts," &c. &c.: "at which," said he, "a man will often look and be tempted to go on, when he would have been frightened at books of a larger size, and of a more erudite appearance."

Tolstoy, Childhood, Boyhood, Youth (Youth, XII: The Latin Examination, tr. unknown):

From the very first examination, everybody had been talking with terror of the Latin professor, who was represented as a kind of wild beast who took delight in the destruction of young men, especially of such as lived at their own homes, and as speaking only in the Latin or Greek tongue. St. Jérôme, who was my instructor in the Latin language, encouraged me; and it really seemed to me that, since I could translate from Cicero and several odes of Horace without a lexicon, and since I knew Zumpt very well indeed, I was no worse prepared than the rest. But it turned out otherwise.

....

"Ah, yes! Are you still there? Well, translate something," said he, handing me a book. "But no; better take this one." He turned over the leaves of a copy of Horace, and opened it at a passage which it seemed to me nobody ever could translate. "I have not prepared this," said I. "And you want to recite what you have learned by heart? Very good! No; translate this."

I managed to get the sense of it after a fashion; but the professor only shook his head at each of my inquiring glances, and merely answered "No," with a sigh. At last he closed his book with such nervous quickness that he pinched his own finger between the leaves. He jerked it out angrily, gave me a card in grammar, and, flinging himself back in his chair, he continued to preserve the most malicious silence. I was on the point of answering; but the expression of his countenance fettered my tongue, and everything which I said appeared to me to be wrong.

"That's not it! that's not it! that's not it at all he suddenly broke out with his horrible pronunciation, as he briskly changed his attitude, leaned his elbows on the table, and played with the gold ring which clung weakly to a thin finger of his left hand. "It's impossible, gentlemen, to prepare for the higher educational institutions in this manner. All you want is to wear the uniform, with its blue collar, and brag of being first, and think that you can be students. No, gentlemen; you must be thoroughly grounded in your subject;" and so forth, and so forth.

Related posts:

• A Slippery Slope
  
• Plagosus Orbilius

David Norton writes in an email:

Have you seen Dancing at Lughnasa? If not, I recommend it strongly. But I mention it now because of the appearance in it of the song "Down by the Salley Gardens", using the words of the Yeats poem but with a melody that I hadn’t heard before but liked. The melody is available at this URL: http://www.contemplator.com/midimusic/sallygar.mid.

I haven't seen the movie, and Yeats' poem was also unfamiliar to me:

Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet;
She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet.
She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree;
But I, being young and foolish, with her would not agree.

In a field by the river my love and I did stand,
And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white hand.
She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs;
But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.

Salley is a variant of sallow, which the Oxford English Dictionary defines as "A plant of the genus Salix, a willow; chiefly, in narrower sense, as distinguished from 'osier' and 'willow', applied to several species of Salix of a low-growing or shrubby habit." Sallow is etymologically related to Latin salix and French saule, both of which mean "willow," and some detect the same root in the English place names Selborne, Selwood, and Silchester. For a foolish moment I thought that perhaps the adjective sallow might be connected with the noun, from the color of the leaves, but a look at the dictionary set me straight. The two words have different origins.

Other English poets have mentioned sallow in passing (e.g. Keats in his Ode to Autumn), but John Clare devoted an entire poem, entitled The Sallow, to the tree:

Pendant o'er rude old ponds, or leaning o'er
The woodland's mossy rails, the sallows now
Put on their golden liveries, and restore
The Spring to splendid memories, ere a bough
Of whitethorn shows a leaf to say 'tis come;
And through the leafless underwood rich stains
Of sunny gold show where the sallows bloom,
Like sunshine in dark places, and gold veins
Mapping the russet landscape into smiles
At Spring's approach; nor hath the sallow palms
A peer for richness: ploughmen in their toils
Will crop a branch, smit with its golden charms,
While at its root the primrose' brimming eye
Smiles in his face and blooms delicious by.

Alfred Sisley, Saules au bord de l'Orvanne
In Sisley's painting, it looks like the man in the white shirt is doing more than just cropping a branch; he seems to be pollarding the tree.

---

Update: Chris Dodge draws my attention to Thoreau, Journal (May 14, 1852), on the yellowish hue of the willow:

Ah! willow, willow! These willows have yellow bark, bear yellow flowers and yellowish-green leaves, and are now haunted by the summer yellowbird [goldfinch] and Maryland yellow-throat. . . . Single large willows at distance are great nosegays of yellow.

Related post: Willows.

I was reading Joseph Addison's essay in The Spectator on clubs (March 10, 1711), and found there a reference to Ben Jonson's Leges Conviviales, "in Four and Twenty Latin sentences engraven in marble over the chimney, in the Apollo or Old Devil Tavern at Temple Bar; that being his club room." The marble engraving doesn't survive, but the rules do. Here are the rules, first in a rather free English translation and then in the original Latin, both from The Works of Ben Jonson. With Notes Critical and Explanatory and a Biographical Memoir by W. Gifford Esq. With Introduction and Appendices by Lieut.-Col. F. Cunningham, Vol. IX (London: Bickers and Son, 1875), pp. 69-72:

---

Rules for the Tavern Academy or, Laws for the Beaux Esprits

I.
1 As the fund of our pleasure, let each pay his shot,
Except some chance friend, whom a member brings in.
2 Far hence be the sad, the lewd fop, and the sot;
For such have the plagues of good company been.

II.
3 Let the learned and witty, the jovial and gay,
The generous and honest, compose our free state;
4 And the more to exalt our delight whilst we stay,
Let none be debarr'd from his choice female mate.

III.
5 Let no scent offensive the chamber infest.
6 Let fancy, not cost, prepare all our dishes.
7 Let the caterer mind the taste of each guest,
And the cook, in his dressing, comply with their wishes.

IV.
8 Let's have no disturbance about taking places,
To shew your nice breeding, or out of vain pride.
9 Let the drawers be ready with wine and fresh glasses,
Let the waiters have eyes, though their tongues must be ty'd.

V.
10 Let our wines without mixture or stum, be all fine,
Or call up the master, and break his dull noddle.
11 Let no sober bigot here think it a sin,
To push on the chirping and moderate bottle.

VI.
12 Let the contests be rather of books than of wine.
13 Let the company be neither noisy nor mute.
14 Let none of things serious, much less of divine,
When belly and head's full, profanely dispute.

VII.
15 Let no saucy fidler presume to intrude,
Unless he is sent for to vary our bliss.
16 With mirth, wit, and dancing, and singing conclude,
To regale every sense, with delight in excess.

VIII.
17 Let raillery be without malice or heat.
18 Dull poems to read let none privilege take.
19 Let no poetaster command or intreat
Another extempore verses to make.

IX.
20 Let argument bear no unmusical sound,
Nor jars interpose, sacred friendship to grieve.
21 For generous lovers let a corner be found,
Where they in soft sighs may their passions relieve.

X.
22 Like the old Lapithites, with the goblets to fight,
Our own 'mongst offences unpardon'd will rank,
Or breaking of windows, or glasses, for spight,
And spoiling the goods for a rakehelly prank.

XI.
23 Whoever shall publish what's said, or what's done,
Be he banish'd for ever our assembly divine.
24 Let the freedom we take be perverted by none,
To make any guilty by drinking good wine.

---

LEGES CONVIVIALES, QUOD FOELIX FAUSTUMQUE CONVIVIS IN APOLLINE SIT

1 Nemo asymbolus, nisi umbra, huc venito.
2 Idiota, insulsus, tristis, turpis, abesto.
3 Eruditi, urbani, hilares, honesti adsciscuntor,
4 Nec lectae foeminae repudiantor.
5 In apparatu quod convivis corruget nares nil esto.
6 Epulae delectu potius quam sumptu parantor.
7 Obsonator et coquus convivarum gulae periti sunto.
8 De discubitu non contenditor.
9 Ministri a dapibus, oculati et muti,
A poculis auriti, et celeres sunto.
10 Vina puris fontibus ministrentor aut vapulet hospes.
11 Moderatis poculis provocare sodales fas esto.
12 At fabulis magis quam vino velitatio fiat.
13 Convivae nec muti nec loquaces sunto.
14 De seriis aut sacris poti et saturi ne disserunto.
15 Fidicen, nisi accersitus, non venito.
16 Admisso risu, tripudiis, choreis, salibus,
Omni gratiarum festivitate sacra celebrantor.
17 Joci sine felle sunto.
18 Insipida poemata nulla recitantor.
19 Versus scribere nullus cogitor.
20 Argumentationis totius strepitus abesto.
21 Amatoriis querelis ac suspiriis liber angulus esto.
22 Lapitharum more, scyphis pugnare, vitrea collidere,
Fenestras excutere, supellectilem dilacerare ne fas esto.
23 Qui foras dicta vel facta eliminet, eliminator.
24 Neminem reum pocula faciunto.
Focus perennis esto.

Heinrich Heine, The Harz Journey (Die Harzreise, tr. Ritchie Robinson):

Before the Weender Gate I met two little schoolboys, Göttingen born and bred, one of whom said to the other: 'I don't want anything more to do with that Theodor, he's a good-for-nothing scamp, for yesterday he didn't even know the genitive of mensa.' Trifling though these words may sound, I cannot but record them, indeed I should like to have them inscribed on the gate as the town's motto; for the child is father to the man, and these words convey all the narrow, desiccated, pedantic pride of the erudite Georgia Augusta University.

Vor dem Weender Thore begegneten mir zwei eingeborne kleine Schulknaben, wovon der eine zum andern sagte: "Mit dem Theodor will ich gar nicht mehr umgehen, er ist ein Lumpenkerl, denn gestern wußte er nicht mal, wie der Genitiv von mensa heißt." So unbedeutend diese Worte klingen, so muß ich sie doch wieder erzählen, ja, ich möchte sie als Stadt-Motto gleich auf das Thor schreiben lassen; denn die Jungen piepsen, wie die Alten pfeifen, und jene Worte bezeichnen ganz den engen, trocknen Notizenstolz der hochgelahrten Georgia Augusta.

Do you know the genitive of mensa, or are you too a good-for-nothing scamp?

The day before yesterday was the birthday of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. I am drawn to Longfellow for a couple of reasons. First, we are fellow countrymen, both natives of the Pine Tree State. Second, my contrarian bent leads me to champion those who were once popular but have now fallen out of favor.

Here is a sonnet by Longfellow,with the title My Cathedral:

Like two cathedral towers these stately pines
  Uplift their fretted summits tipped with cones;
  The arch beneath them is not built with stones,
  Not Art but Nature traced these lovely lines,
And carved this graceful arabesque of vines;
  No organ but the wind here sighs and moans,
  No sepulchre conceals a martyr's bones.
  No marble bishop on his tomb reclines.
Enter! the pavement, carpeted with leaves,
  Gives back a softened echo to thy tread!
  Listen! the choir is singing; all the birds,
In leafy galleries beneath the eaves,
  Are singing! listen, ere the sound be fled,
  And learn there may be worship with out words.

The comparison of a forest to a cathedral occurs often, and a couple of examples, also from 19th century American literature, will suffice to illustrate. The first comes from William Cullen Bryant, A Forest Hymn:

The groves were God's first temples. Ere man learned
To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave,
And spread the roof above them,—ere he framed
The lofty vault, to gather and roll back
The sound of anthems; in the darkling wood,
Amidst the cool and silence, he knelt down,
And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks
And supplication. For his simple heart
Might not resist the sacred influences,
Which, from the stilly twilight of the place,
And from the gray old trunks that high in heaven
Mingled their mossy boughs, and from the sound
Of the invisible breath that swayed at once
All their green tops, stole over him, and bowed
His spirit with the thought of boundless power
And inaccessible majesty. Ah, why
Should we, in the world's riper years, neglect
God's ancient sanctuaries, and adore
Only among the crowd, and under roofs,
That our frail hands have raised?

The second example comes from Washington Irving, A Tour on the Prairies, chap. VII:

We were overshadowed by lofty trees, with straight smooth trunks, like stately columns; and as the glancing rays of the sun shone through the transparent leaves, tinted with the many-coloured hues of autumn, I was reminded of the effect of sunshine among the stained windows and clustering columns of a Gothic cathedral. Indeed, there is a grandeur and solemnity in some of our spacious forests of the West, that awakens in me the same feeling that I have experienced in those vast and venerable piles, and the sound of the wind sweeping through them supplies, occasionally, the deep breathings of the organ.

Sanford Robinson Gifford, Autumn, a Wood Path

To previously collected examples of bumf, add this, from Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Schubert's Songs: A Biographical Study, tr. Kenneth S. Whitton (New York: Limelight Editions, 1984), p. 231:

Since 1816 a group of poets, journalists, musicians, painters and academics had been meeting almost every evening, at first in an inn 'Zum Blumenstöckl', and later in the 'Pfuntneresche Bierhaus'. The group took its name 'Ludlams-Höhle' ("Ludlam's Cave') from a fairy-tale by the Dane, Adam Oehlenschläger, being performed at the time at the Theater an der Wien....The members produced periodicals in the inn which were read out on certain days of the week and which bore titles like 'Fliegende Blätter für Magen und Herz' ('Fly-sheets for stomach and heart'), 'Der Wachter' ('The Observer') and 'Die Arschwische'('The Arse-Wiper').

Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi, Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson:

Though thus uncommonly ready both to give and take offence, Mr. Johnson had many rigid maxims concerning the necessity of continued softness and compliance of disposition: and when I once mentioned Shenstone's idea that some little quarrel among lovers, relations, and friends was useful, and contributed to their general happiness upon the whole, by making the soul feel her elastic force, and return to the beloved object with renewed delight: "Why, what a pernicious maxim is this now," cries Johnson, "All quarrels ought to be avoided studiously, particularly conjugal ones, as no one can possibly tell where they may end; besides that lasting dislike is often the consequence of occasional disgust, and that the cup of life is surely bitter enough without squeezing in the hateful rind of resentment."

Heinrich Heine, Lyrisches Intermezzo 33 (tr. Hal Draper):

A pine is standing lonely
In the North on a bare plateau.
He sleeps, a bright white blanket
Enshrouds him in ice and snow.

He's dreaming of a palm tree
Far away in the Eastern land
Lonely and silently mourning
On a sunburnt rocky strand.

Ein Fichtenbaum steht einsam
  Im Norden auf kahler Höh.
Ihn schläfert; mit weißer Decke
  Umhüllen ihn Eis und Schnee.

Er träumt von einer Palme,
  Die, fern im Morgenland,
Einsam und schweigend trauert
  Auf brennender Felsenwand.

Ivan Shishkin (1832-1898), In the Wild North

William Cowper, The Task, Book III, lines 352-360:

How various his employments, whom the world
Calls idle, and who justly in return
Esteems that busy world an idler, too!
Friends, books, a garden, and perhaps his pen,
Delightful industry enjoyed at home,
And nature in her cultivated trim
Dressed to his taste, inviting him abroad—
Can he want occupation who has these?
Will he be idle who has much to enjoy?

Related posts:

• Darling Laziness
  
• Archilochus on the Idle Life
  
• Idleness
  
• More on Idleness
  
• Futile Work
  
• Otium Cum Dignitate

Joseph Wood Krutch, The Forgotten Peninsula: A Naturalist in Baja California (New York: William Sloane Associates, 1961), p. 201:

Your amateur, on the other hand, is delightfully if perhaps almost sinfully free of responsibility and can spread himself as thin as he likes over the vast field of nature. There are few places not covered with concrete or trod into dust where he does not find something to look at. Best of all, perhaps, is the fact that he feels no pressing obligation to "add something to the sum of human knowledge." He is quite satisfied when he adds something to his knowledge. And if he keeps his field wide enough he will remain so ignorant that may do exactly that at intervals very gratifyingly short. A professional field botanist, for instance, has done very well if in the course of a lifetime he adds a dozen new species to the flora of the region he is studying. Even a hitherto unrecognized variety is enough to make a red-letter day. But to the amateur, any flower he has never seen is a new species as far as he is concerned and on a short trip into a new area he can easily find a dozen "new species."

Last week I heard an announcer on Minnesota Public Radio say, "She took umbrance with that." There are over a thousand examples of the solecism umbrance on Google. Not only was the radio announcer's noun incorrect, but so was his preposition. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, you can give umbrage (displeasure, annoyance, offence, resentment) to and take umbrage at, but you can't take umbrage with.

There are also hundreds of examples of umbrance in Google Books, most of them due to faulty optical character recognition of encumbrance. I did note among the Google Books examples "in the semblance of the substance for the membrance of the umbrance with the remnance of the emblence," from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake. Joyce was obviously playing with words, but just as obviously Rand B. Evans in Thomas Carlyle Dalton and Rand B. Evans, edd. The Life Cycle of Psychological Ideas: Understanding Prominence and the Dynamics of Intellectual Change (Springer, 2004), p. 30, was serious:

Even today one criticizes James with care lest some of his present day admirers take umbrance.

I take umbrage at umbrance.

Plato, Republic 6.494e, is an example of interlocking chiasmus:

...every deed, every word saying and doing...

...πᾶν μὲν ἔργον, πᾶν δ’ ἔπος λέγοντάς τε καὶ πράττοντας...

The same words in the following order would be an example of reflecting chiasmus:

...every deed doing and saying every word...

...πᾶν ἔργον πράττοντας καὶ λέγοντας πᾶν ἔπος...

A normal, non-chiastic arrangement of the same words would be:

...every deed doing and every word saying...

...πᾶν ἔργον πράττοντας καὶ πᾶν ἔπος λέγοντας...

Other examples of interlocking chiasmus in Plato's Republic are 2.370e, 3.390d, 6.500a, 7.536b, and 10.604d.

There is another set of examples involving ὁ μέν ... ὁ δέ. According to J.D. Denniston in his Greek Particles, "In ὁ μέν ... ὁ δέ, ὁ μέν normally refers to the first, ὁ δέ to the second substantive. But occasionally the order of reference is reversed." Denniston cites Thucydides 1.68.4, 3.82.7, and 4.62.2 and Xenophon, Anabasis 1.10.4 from Kühner-Gerth⁹ (who compare hic ... ille in Latin). This order being normal, deviation from it can reasonably be regarded as a variety of interlocking chiasmus. Plato has an interesting example at Republic 9.576d:

"What, then, as regards virtue, is a city ruled by a tyrant in comparison to a city ruled by a king such as we discussed at first?"
"Completely the opposite," he said. "For the one is best, the other worst."
"I will not ask," I said, "which of the two you mean. For it is clear."

Τί οὖν ἀρετῇ τυραννουμένη πόλις πρὸς βασιλευομένην οἵαν τὸ πρῶτον διήλθομεν;
Πᾶν τοὐναντίον, ἔφη· ἡ μὲν γὰρ ἀρίστη, ἡ δὲ κακίστη.
Οὐκ ἐρήσομαι, εἶπον, ὁποτέραν λέγεις· δῆλον γάρ.

Plato here defines the necessary condition for the employment of chiastic ὁ μέν ... ὁ δέ: this use is permissible whenever there is no possibility of error or doubt as to what each of the two refers to. Other examples of chiastic ὁ μέν ... ὁ δέ in the Republic are 2.360e-361a, 2.360d, 2.367b, 3.410b-c, 3.413b, 5.458b-c, and 7.518a-b.

Related posts:

• Chiasmus, Part I
  
• Chiasmus, Part II

Joseph Wood Krutch, The Forgotten Peninsula: A Naturalist in Baja California (New York: William Sloane Associates, 1961), p. 109:

Of the minor difficulties of Father Juan de Ugarte, a former professor of philosophy who was sent to take charge at San Javier, Clavijero writes: "At the beginning [the natives] were very restless at the time of the Catechism. Often bursting out into loud laughter. He noticed that the principal reason for the mockery was his mistakes in speaking the language, and that some of the Indians, when he consulted them about the words or pronunciation, intentionally answered him with absurdities in order to have something to laugh at in the Catechism and for that reason, from then on, he asked only children about the language, for they were more sincere."

The Micmac Indians played the very same trick on the missionary Father Biard. Francis Parkman, Pioneers of France in the New World, part II (Champlain and His Associates), chap. VI (Jesuits in Acadia), tells the story:

Biard's greatest difficulty was with the Micmac language. Young Biencourt was his best interpreter, and on common occasions served him well; but the moment that religion was in question he was, as it were, stricken dumb, the reason being that the language was totally without abstract terms. Biard resolutely set himself to the study of it, a hard and thorny path, on which he made small progress, and often went astray. Seated, pencil in hand, before some Indian squatting on the floor, whom with the bribe of a mouldy biscuit he had lured into the hut, he plied him with questions which he often neither would nor could answer. What was the Indian word for Faith, Hope, Charity, Sacrament, Baptism, Eucharist, Trinity, Incarnation? The perplexed savage, willing to amuse himself, and impelled, as Biard thinks, by the Devil, gave him scurrilous and unseemly phrases as the equivalent of things holy, which, studiously incorporated into the father's Indian catechism, produced on his pupils an effect the reverse of that intended.

See also Francis Parkman, The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century, chap. IV (Le Jeune and the Hunters):

At the outset, he had proffered his aid to Le Jeune in his study of the Algonquin; and, like the Indian practical jokers of Acadia in the case of Father Biard, palmed off upon him the foulest words in the language as the equivalent of things spiritual. Thus it happened, that, while the missionary sought to explain to the assembled wigwam some point of Christian doctrine, he was interrupted by peals of laughter from men, children, and squaws.

Robert Frost's poem To a Moth Seen in Winter opens thus:

Here's first a gloveless hand warm from my pocket,
A perch and resting place 'twixt wood and wood,
Bright-black-eyed silvery creature, brushed with brown,
The wings not folded in repose, but spread.
(Who would you be, I wonder, by those marks
If I had moths to friend as I have flowers?)
And now pray tell what lured you with false hope
To make the venture of eternity
And seek the love of kind in wintertime?

No one could answer Frost's second question, but I wonder if it is possible to answer his first question. From the description given, is it possible to identify the species of moth?

There is a species familiarly named winter moth, scientifically named Operophtera brumata. It's hard to see bright black eyes in this photograph of the moth, although by wishful thinking one could perhaps call it a "silvery creature, brushed with brown."


Operophtera brumata (©Entomart)
However Operophtera brumata is a comparatively new arrival in North America, first appearing in the 1940's or thereabouts. Frost's poem was first published in 1942, but a note attached to its publication says "Circa 1900." So either the composition of the poem or the event that gave rise to it antedates the appearance of the winter moth in North America. It occurred to me that Frost may have seen the moth when he lived in England, but he lived there too late also, from 1912 to 1915.

I don't know if an entomologist could identify the moth in Frost's poem from the description, but I'm fairly confident that it isn't Operophtera brumata.

Frost was interested in such matters. He was friendly enough with flowers, at least, to know their names. In my collection of Frost's poems, immediately preceding To a Moth Seen in Winter, is a poem entitled Time Out, in which the poet mentions the scientific plant name Maianthemum (May lily).

Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac (December):

Pines have earned the reputation of being ‘evergreen’ by the same device that governments use to achieve the appearance of perpetuity: overlapping terms of office. By taking on new needles on the new growth of each year, and discarding old needles at longer intervals, they have led the casual onlooker to believe that needles remain forever green.

Each species of pine has its own constitution, which prescribes a term of office for needles appropriate for its way of life. Thus the white pine retains its needles for a year and a half; the red and the jackpines for two years and a half. Incoming needles take office each June and outgoing needles write their farewell addresses in October. All write the same thing, in the same tawny yellow ink, which by November turns brown. Then the needles fall, and are filed in the duff to enrich the wisdom of the stand. It is this accumulated wisdom that hushes the footsteps of whoever walks under pines.

It is in midwinter that I sometimes glean from my pines something more important than woodlot politics, and the news of the wind and weather. This is especially likely to happen on some gloomy evening when the snow has buried all irrelevant detail, and the hush of elemental sadness lies heavy upon every living thing. Nevertheless, my pines, each with his burden of snow, are standing ramrod-straight, rank upon rank, and in the dusk beyond I sense the presence of hundreds more. At such times I feel a curious transfusion of courage.

Isaak Levitan, Forest

Ancient frog was as big as a bowling ball (Associated Press, Feb. 18, 2008):

A frog the size of a bowling ball, with heavy armor and teeth, lived among dinosaurs millions of years ago — intimidating enough that scientists who unearthed its fossils dubbed the beast Beelzebufo, or Devil Toad....The name comes from the Greek word for devil, Beelzebub, and Latin for toad, bufo (pronounced boo-foe).

Of course Beelzebub, although it occurs in Greek, is not a "Greek" word, any more than it is an "English" word merely because it occurs in English. But the clever portmanteau word Beelzebufo is an appropriate name, an aptronym, for a type of frog.

Beelzebub was originally the name of a Philistine deity. I'm out of my league here, but some authorities, e.g. Bauer-Arndt-Gingrich-Danker, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, say that the name means "Lord of Flies." Such a name is appropriate for frogs, which eat flies.

Frogs have also been traditionally associated with devils. "Paddock calls," says one of the witches in Shakespeare's Macbeth. A paddock is a frog or toad.

Hat tip: Jim K.

Other posts on aptronyms:

• Don Imus: Aptronym?
  
• Cowboy Aptronyms
  
• An Aptronym
  
• Slattery
  
• Aptronyms
  
• Fell

Eric Thomson writes in an email:

Between 'Sin against the Holy Ghost' and 'Nosegay', there's a snippet of connective tissue, also from the P&P - 'Mere acquired knowledge belongs to us only like a wooden leg or a wax nose', which leaves me (and you too I imagine) without a leg to stand on. Guilty as charged, M'Ludd. Never having been visited by an 'original and powerful thought' in my life (and if I had been it would have scared me away rather than the opposite), I've always been happy to poach them, so the bucketful of Schopenspleen is water off a duck's back.

I found the wax nose quote ... in a delightful book (recently acquired) – the Book-Lover's Enchiridion by Alexander Ireland (enlarged edition 1888). I wonder if you know it?

I don't know Ireland's enchiridion, but it's available in its entirety on Google Books, so I'll be looking at it soon and poaching from it myself.

Ireland's quotation from Schopenhauer's Parerga and Paralipomena comes after the same passage I quoted in A Sin Against the Holy Ghost (II, Kap. XXII, § 260). Here is E.F.J. Payne's translation, followed by the original German:

The truth that has been merely learnt sticks to us like an articifial 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.

Hingegen klebt die bloß erlernte Wahrheit 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 Wahrheit aber gleicht dem natürlichen Gliede: sie allein gehört uns wirklich an.

Or to put it another way, the truth that you have merely learned through reading is like Michael Jackson's nose, and the truth that you have acquired through your own thinking is like your own nose. Follow your own nose.

Another post on Michael Jackson: Umbrellas.

Henry David Thoreau, Journal (Oct. 24, 1857):

I get a couple of quarts of chestnuts by patiently brushing the thick beds of leaves aside with my hand in successive concentric circles till I reach the trunk; more than half under one tree. I believe I get more by resolving, where they are reasonably thick, to pick all under one tree first. Begin at the tree and brush the leaves with your right hand in toward the stump, while your left holds the basket, and so go round and round it in concentric circles, each time laying bare about two feet in width, till you get as far as the boughs extend. You may presume that you have got about all then. It is best to reduce it to a system. Of course you will shake the tree first, if there are any on it. The nuts lie commonly two or three together, as they fell.

....

I find my account in this long-continued monotonous labor of picking chestnuts all the afternoon, brushing the leaves aside without looking up, absorbed in that, and forgetting better things awhile. My eye is educated to discover anything on the ground, as chestnuts, etc. It is probably wholesomer to look at the ground much than at the heavens. As I go stooping and brushing the leaves aside by the hour, I am not thinking of chestnuts merely, but I find myself humming a thought of more significance. This occupation affords a certain broad pause and opportunity to start again afterward, — turn over a new leaf.