Laudator Temporis Acti

Les Murray, Noonday Axeman, from his Collected Poems (2006), pp. 3-6:

Axe-fall, echo and silence. Noonday silence.
Two miles from here, it is the twentieth century:
cars on the bitumen, powerlines vaulting the farms.
Here, with my axe, I am chopping into the stillness.

Axe-fall, echo and silence. I pause, roll tobacco,
twist a cigarette, lick it. All is still.
I lean on my axe. A cloud of fragrant leaves
hangs over me moveless, pierced everywhere by sky.

Here, I remember all of a hundred years:
candleflame, still night, frost and cattle bells,
the draywheels' silence final in our ears,
and the first red cattle spreading through the hills

and my great-great-grandfather here with his first sons,
who would grow old, still speaking with his Scots accent,
having never seen those highlands that they sang of.
A hundred years. I stand and smoke in the silence.

A hundred years of clearing, splitting, sawing,
a hundred years of timbermen, ringbarkers, fencers
and women in kitchens, stoking loud iron stoves
year in, year out, and singing old songs to their children

have made this silence human and familiar
no farther than where the farms rise into foothills,
and, in that time, how many have sought their graves
or fled to the cities, maddened by this stillness?

Things are so wordless. These two opposing scarves
I have cut in my red-gum squeeze out jewels of sap
and stare. And soon, with a few more axe-strokes,
the tree will grow troubled, tremble, shift its crown

and, leaning slowly, gather speed and colossally
crash down and lie between the standing trunks.
And then, I know, of the knowledge that led my forebears
to drink and black rage and wordlessness, there will be silence.

After the tree falls, there will reign the same silence
as stuns and spurns us, enraptures and defeats us,
as seems to some a challenge, and seems to others
to be waiting here for something beyond imagining.

Axe-fall, echo and silence. Unhuman silence.
A stone cracks in the heat. Through the still twigs, radiance
stings at my eyes. I rub a damp brow with a handkerchief
and chop on into the stillness. Axe-fall and echo.

The great mast murmurs now. The scarves in its trunk
crackle and squeak now, crack and increase as the hushing
weight of the high branches heels outward, and commences
tearing and falling, and the collapse is tremendous.

Twigs fly, leaves puff and subside. The severed trunk
slips off its stump and drops along its shadow.
And then there is no more. The stillness is there
as ever. And I fall to lopping branches.

Axe-fall, echo and silence. It will be centuries
before many men are truly at home in this country,
and yet, there have always been some, in each generation,
there have always been some who could live in the presence of silence.

And some, I have known them, men with gentle broad hands,
who would die if removed from these unpeopled places,
some again I have seen, bemused and shy in the cities
you have built against silence, dumbly trudging through noise

past the railway stations, looking up through the traffic
at the smoky halls, dreaming of journeys, of stepping
down from the train at some upland stop to recover
the crush of dry grass underfoot, the silence of trees.

Axe-fall, echo and silence. Dreaming silence.
Though I myself run to the cities, I will forever
be coming back here to walk, knee-deep in ferns,
up and away from this metropolitan century,

to remember my ancestors, axemen, dairymen, horse-breakers,
now coffined in silence, down with their beards and dreams,
who, unwilling or rapt, despairing or very patient,
made what amounts to a human breach in the silence,

made of their lives the rough foundation of legends—
men must have legends, else they will die of strangeness—
then died in their turn, each, after his own fashion,
resigned or agonized, from silence into great silence.

Axe-fall, echo and axe-fall. Noonday silence.
Though I go to the cities, turning my back on these hills,
for the talk and dazzle of cities, for the sake of belonging
for months and years at a time to the twentieth century,

the city will never quite hold me. I will be always
coming back here on the up-train, peering, leaning
out of the window to see, on far-off ridges,
the sky between the trees, and over the racket
of the rails to hear the echo and the silence.

I shoulder my axe and set off home through the stillness.

Hat tip: Eric Thomson.

Labels: arboricide

Samuel Johnson, quoted in Boswell's Life (May 17, 1778):

He said, 'The lyrical part of Horace never can be perfectly translated; so much of the excellence is in the numbers and the expression. Francis has done it best; I'll take his, five out of six, against them all.'

Francis is Philip Francis (1708–1773). Karl Maurer sent me a copy of Francis' translation of Horace's second epode, not "the lyrical part of Horace," but a splendid poem nonetheless, from A Poetical Translation of the Works of Horace. With the Original Text, and Critical Notes collected from his best Latin and French Commentators. By the Revd Mr. Philip Francis...The third edition, Vol. 1, p. 422 ff.:

Epode II. The Praises of a Country-Life.

        Like the first Mortals blest is He,
From Debts, and Mortgages, and Business free,
        With his own Team who plows the Soil,
Which grateful once confess'd his Father's Toil.
        The Sounds of War nor break his Sleep,
Nor the rough Storm that harrows up the Deep;
        He shuns the Courtier's haughty Doors,
And the loud Science of the Bar abjures.
        Sometimes his marriageable Vines
Around the lofty Bridegroom Elm he twines,
        Or lops the vagrant Boughs away,
Ingrafting better as the old decay;
        Or in the lengthening Vale surveys
His lowing Herd safe-wandering as they graze;
        Or careful stores the flowing Gold
Prest from the Hive, or sheers his tender Fold;
        Or when with various Fruits o'erspread
The mellow Autumn lifts his beauteous Head,
        His grafted Pears or Grapes that vye
With the rich Purple of the Tyrian Dye,
        Grateful he gathers, and repays
His Guardian Gods on their own festal Days.
        Sometimes beneath an ancient Shade,
Or careless on the matted Grass he's laid,
        While glide the Mountain Streams along,
And Birds in Forests chaunt their plaintive Song;
        Murmuring the lucid Fountain flows,
And with its Murmurs courts him to Repose.
        But when the Rain and Snows appear,
And wintry Jove loud thunders o'er the Year,
        With Hounds he drives, into the Toils,
The foaming Boar, and triumphs in his Spoils:
        Or for voracious Thrushes lays
His Nets, and with delusive Baits betrays;
        Or artful sets the springing Snare,
To catch the stranger Crane, or timorous Hare.
        Thus happy, who would stoop to prove
The Pains, the Wrongs, and Injuries of Love?
        But if a chaste and virtuous Wife
Assist him in the tender Cares of Life,
        Of Sun-burnt Charms, but honest Fame
(Such as the Sabine, or Apulian Dame)
        If, ere her wearied Spouse return,
The sacred Fire with good old Timber burn;
        Or if she milk her swelling Kine,
Or in their Folds his happy Flocks confine;
        If unbought Dainties crown their Feast,
And luscious Wines from this Year's Vintage prest;
        No more should curious Oysters please,
Or Fish, the Luxury of foreign Seas,
        (If Eastern Tempests, thundering o'er
The wintry Wave, shall drive them to our Shore)
        Nor Wild-Fowl of delicious Taste,
From distant Climates brought to crown the Feast,
        Shall e'er so grateful prove to me,
As Olives gather'd from their unctuous Tree,
        Or Herbs, that love the flowery Field,
And chearful Health with pure Digestion yield;
        Or Fatling, on the festal Day,
Or Kid just rescued from some Beast of Prey.
        Amid the Feast how joys he to behold
His well-fed Flocks home hasting to their Fold!
        Or see his labour'd Oxen bow
Their languid Necks, and drag th'inverted Plow,
        At Night his numerous Slaves to view
Round his domestic Gods their Mirth pursue!
        The Usurer spoke; determin'd to begin
A Country-Life, he calls his Money in,
        But, ere the Moon was in her Wane,
The Wretch had put it out to Use again.

It's worth a few minutes to read or re-read the Latin text, together with the appreciation of W.Y. Sellar, The Roman Poets of the Augustan Age: Horace and the Elegaic Poets (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1892), pp. 126-129.

In his email Karl Maurer remarked:

It is amazing, isn't it, how universally beloved this poem is? It's very hard to imagine any human creature not liking it. During the 20th century it became fashionable to say that the poem's meaning is in its last 4 lines, and Horace is actually mocking our longing for the country. But I doubt this; the usurer is 'a Wretch', as this translator says.

Telemaco Signorini (1835-1901),
Pascoli a Castiglioncello

Jean-Henri Fabre (1823-1915), The Life of the Fly, with which are interspersed some Chapters of Autobiography, tr. Alexander Teixera de Mattos (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1913), pp. 459-460:

The principal of the school, the soul of kindness, has grasped my passion for knowledge. He encourages me in my determination; he proposes to make me renew my acquaintance with Horace and Virgil, so long since forgotten. He knows Latin, he does; he will rekindle the dead spark by making me translate a few passages. He does more: he lends me an Imitation with parallel texts in Latin and Greek. With the first text, which I am almost able to read, I will puzzle out the second and thus increase the small vocabulary which I acquired in the days when I was translating Aesop's Fables. It will be all the better for my future studies. What luck! Board and lodging, ancient poetry, the classical languages, all the good things at once!

Théophile Gautier, Gastronomical Melancholy, from Paris Beseiged (tr. F.C. DeSumichrast):

Who among us has not stopped, on his way through the Palais-Royal, before Chevet's windows? It was a pleasure which the most spiritual-minded could not deny himself, for putting aside all ideas of good cheer, the splendid grouping of provisions could be admired just like a painting by Snyders, Weenincx or de Fyt. Outside hung roebucks, their black muzzles touching the heads of wild boars, stuffed with pistachios, and turning up their lips in grim fashion. On the white marble slabs, the great sea fish, laid on their sides, shimmered with silvery and pearly hues; lobsters marked with brown and yellow waved their formidable claws, and turtles gambolled awkwardly on the edge of the basin fringed with moss, in which, under the light splashing of a thin jet of water, swam Chinese carps. Close by, delicate pullets of le Mans, and turkeys of extraordinary size swelled out their breasts, distended and marbled of a blue tint by the truffles that showed through their thin skins. Grouse, pheasants in golden bronze plumage, Scotch ptarmigans, Russian hazel grouse, partridges with legs prettily gaitered with pink, seemed to be posing purposely for the pleasure of painters as much as for that of gourmets.

I shall not speak of the pâtés de foie gras, of the Corsican blackbird pasties, of the brochettes of ortolans, and other " gallantries," as they say in Hamburg, but I cannot help recalling the Thommery grapes, golden as amber, the Montreuil peaches, which were not cheap two-penny half-penny peaches, despised by Alexandre Dumas the younger, but veritable virgin peaches that had lost none of their velvety bloom; the pomegranates, the bursting skin of which allowed a casket of rubies to show; the pears, so perfect that they seemed carved out of Florentine alabaster and intended to be served upon the tables of precious stones of the former Grand Dukes of Tuscany; in a word, the whole of that lovely assemblage of shapes and colours, that savoury Pantagruelian bouquet arranged with such consummate art.

Some paintings by Frans Snyders:

Fish Stall
Fruit and Vegetable Stall
Game Stall

Anthony Trollope, from one of a series of essays on London tradesmen, published in 1880 in the Pall Mall Gazette, quoted by Richard Mullen, Anthony Trollope: A Victorian in His World (London: Duckworth, 1990; rpt. Savannah: Frederic C. Beil, 1992), p. 632:

What is there in the world equal to a pair of well-fitting trousers!

Richard Mullen, Anthony Trollope: A Victorian in His World (London: Duckworth, 1990; rpt. Savannah: Frederic C. Beil, 1992), p. 187:

The only sure way to avoid grammatical error is to write nothing.

John Updike (1932-2009), The Angels:

They are above us all the time,
the good gentlemen, Mozart and Bach,
Scarlatti and Handel and Brahms,
lavishing measures of light down upon us,
telling us, over and over, there is a realm
above this plane of silent compromise.
They are around us everywhere, the old seers,
Matisse and Vermeer, Cézanne and Piero,
greeting us echoing in subway tunnels,
springing like winter flowers from postcards,
Scotch-taped to white kitchen walls,
waiting larger than life in shadowy galleries
to whisper that edges of color
lie all about us as innocent as grass.
They are behind us, beneath us,
the abysmal books, Shakespeare and Tolstoy,
the Bible and Proust and Cervantes,
burning in memory like leaky furnace doors,
minepits of honesty from which we escaped
with dilated suspicions. Love us, dead thrones:
sing us to sleep, awaken our eyes,
comfort with terror our mortal afternoons.

In line 16, "abysmal" of course means "of, pertaining to, or resembling an abyss; fathomless; deep-sunken" (OED, sense 1), not "of an exceptionally poor standard or quality; extremely bad" (OED, sense 2).

"I'd sooner, except the penalties, kill a man than a hawk," wrote Robinson Jeffers in his poem Hurt Hawks, although by the end of the poem the injured hawk is dead, killed by Jeffer's bullet.

This line came to mind when I read the following passage from MacKinlay Kantor, Andersonville (1955), chapter IX:

Strangers came to the mill—new people, usually, who had just taken up land in the vicinity—and they heard that Eben was by way of being an ornithologist. That's interesting, boy. Have you got a lot of them stuffed? Eben stared, horrified at the idea. He thought that he might be able to shoot a human being if Fate required it of him, but was positive that he could kill no bird.

Yet in chapter XXII the would-be ornithologist, Eben Dolliver, now starving in a prisoner-of-war camp, catches, kills, and devours a swallow.

Philip Larkin (1922-1985), Going, Going:

I thought it would last my time—
The sense that, beyond the town,
There would always be fields and farms,
Where the village louts could climb
Such trees as were not cut down;
I knew there'd be false alarms

In the papers about old streets
And split level shopping, but some
Have always been left so far;
And when the old part retreats
As the bleak high-risers come
We can always escape in the car.

Things are tougher than we are, just
As earth will always respond
However we mess it about;
Chuck filth in the sea, if you must:
The tides will be clean beyond.
—But what do I feel now? Doubt?

Or age, simply? The crowd
Is young in the M1 cafe;
Their kids are screaming for more—
More houses, more parking allowed,
More caravan sites, more pay.
On the Business Page, a score

Of spectacled grins approve
Some takeover bid that entails
Five per cent profit (and ten
Per cent more in the estuaries): move
Your works to the unspoilt dales
(Grey area grants)! And when

You try to get near the sea
In summer...
                It seems, just now,
To be happening so very fast;
Despite all the land left free
For the first time I feel somehow
That it isn't going to last,

That before I snuff it, the whole
Boiling will be bricked in
Except for the tourist parts—
First slum of Europe: a role
It won't be hard to win,
With a cast of crooks and tarts.

And that will be England gone,
The shadows, the meadows, the lanes,
The guildhalls, the carved choirs.
There'll be books; it will linger on
In galleries; but all that remains
For us will be concrete and tyres.

Most things are never meant.
This won't be, most likely; but greeds
And garbage are too thick-strewn
To be swept up now, or invent
Excuses that make them all needs.
I just think it will happen, soon.

Larkin's poem reminds me of John Betjeman's The Planster's Vision, George Orwell's On a Ruined Farm near the His Master's Voice Gramophone Factory, and C.S. Lewis' The Future of Forestry.

Apparently the poem was commissioned by the Department of the Environment for How Do You Want to Live? A Report on the Human Habitat (London: HMSO, 1972), where it appeared in censored form on pp. x-xi with the title "Prologue." Supposedly the unexpurgated version first appeared in Larkin's collection High Windows (1974). Both of these publications are unavailable to me. See Mark Storey, "Larkin's Going, Going," The Explicator 64.4 (2006) 243-245.

For a recording of Larkin reading this poem, go here.

Labels: arboricide

Tobias Smollett (1721-1771), The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (London, May 4):

'Suppose I was inclined to take you into my service (said he) what are your qualifications? what are you good for?' 'An please your honour (answered this original) I can read and write, and do the business of the stable indifferent well — I can dress a horse, and shoe him, and bleed and rowel him; and, as for the practice of sow-gelding, I won't turn my back on e'er a he in the county of Wilts — Then I can make hog's puddings and hob-nails, mend kettles and tin sauce-pans.' — Here uncle burst out a-laughing; and inquired what other accomplishments he was master of — 'I know something of single-stick, and psalmody (proceeded Clinker); I can play upon the Jew's-harp, sing Black-ey'd Susan, Arthur-o'Bradley, and divers other songs; I can dance a Welsh jig, and Nancy Dawson; wrestle a fall with any lad of my inches, when I'm in heart; and, under correction, I can find a hare when your honour wants a bit of game.'

He got the job.

Alexander Brome (1620-1666), Song XXXIV (The Reformation), stanza 11:

'Tis a madness then to make
  Thriving our employment,
And lucre love, for Lucres sake,
  Since we've possession, not enjoyment;
Let the times run on their course,
For opposition makes them worse,
  We ne'r shall better find 'um;
Let Grandees wealth and power engross,
And honour too, while we sit close,
And laugh and take our plenteous dose
  Of Sack, and never mind 'um.

Richmond Lattimore, Themes in Greek and Latin Epitaphs (1935; rpt. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1962), p. 184:

It emerges from all this that the chief cause of complaint against death, in fact the chief cause of any extravagance in lamentation, was that it was too likely to strike the very young who had had no chance to enjoy life. It is no very unnatural transition from this state of mind to the feeling that behind such inscrutable accidents rests a power which positively enjoys upsetting human lives in this manner; and such a feeling is followed by an equally natural one, that this sort of thing is not fair.

A character named Terpsion, in Lucian's Dialogues of the Dead (6.2, tr. M.D. Macleod), proposed a more equitable scheme:

Then I object to the present arrangement. It ought to be a matter of turn, with the oldest man first, and after him the next oldest, without the slightest change in the order...

Οὐκοῦν ταύτης αἰτιῶμαι τῆς διατάξεως· ἐχρῆν γὰρ τὸ πρᾶγμα ἑξῆς πως γίνεσθαι, τὸν πρεσβύτερον πρότερον καὶ μετὰ τοῦτον ὅστις καὶ τῇ ἡλικίᾳ μετ΄ αὐτόν, ἀναστρέφεσθαι δὲ μηδαμῶς...

Austin Dobson, A Bookman's Budget (London: Oxford University Press, 1917), p. 32:

'Brave, honest' William Cobbett has somewhere said that 'foot-notes' ought to be written 'fool-notes,' while Isaac d'Israeli has defended them. For myself, I prefer to distinguish. Where a foot-note reveals its writer's incapacity to incorporate all he has to say with the body of his text, I am with Cobbett; but as regards illustrative or detachable notes (by which mere references are not intended) I am with the author of the Curiosities of Literature. Indeed, I could almost go as far as Leigh Hunt in his high-pitched enthusiasm for Warton's Minor Poems of Milton. Of this he says: 'His edition of the minor poems of Milton is a wilderness of sweets. It is the only one in which a true lover of the original can pardon an exuberance of annotation; though I confess I am inclined enough to pardon any notes that resemble it, however numerous. The "builded rhyme" stands at the top of the page, like a fair edifice with all sorts of flowers and fresh waters at its foot. The young poet lives there, served by the nymphs and fauns.' (Indicator, lxiii.)

A page from Thomas Warton's edition of
Milton's Poems upon Several Occasions
(London: James Dodsley, 1785)
Related post: The Sauce and the Fish.

Jeremy Collier (1650—1726), Of the Entertainment of Books, from his Essays upon Several Moral Subjects, 4th ed. (London: Printed for Richard Sare..., 1700), Part II, pp. 97-100:

The Diversions of Reading, though they are not always of the strongest Kind, yet they generally Leave a better Effect than the grosser Satisfactions of Sense: For if they are well chosen, they neither dull the Appetite, nor strain the Capacity. On the contrary, they refresh the Inclinations, and strengthen the Power, and improve under Experiment: And which is best of all, they Entertain and Perfect at the same time; and convey Wisdom and Knowledge through Pleasure. By Reading a Man does as it were Antedate his Life, and makes himself contemporary with the Ages past. And this way of running up beyond ones Nativity, is much better than Plato's Preexistence; because here a Man knows something of the State, and is the wiser for it; which he is not in the other.

In conversing with Books we may chuse our Company, and disengage without Ceremony or Exception. Here we are free from the Formalities of Custom, and Respect: We need not undergo the Penance of a dull Story, from a Fop of Figure; but may shake off the Haughty, the Impertinent, and the Vain, at Pleasure. Besides, Authors, like Women, commonly Dress when they make a Visit. Respect to themselves makes them polish their Thoughts, and exert the Force of their Understanding more than they would, or can do, in ordinary Conversation: So that the Reader has as it were the Spirit and Essence in a narrow Compass; which was drawn off from a much larger Proportion of Time, Labour, and Expence. Like an Heir, he is born rather than made Rich, and comes into a Stock of Sense, with little or no Trouble of his own. 'Tis true, a Fortune in Knowledge which Descends in this manner, as well as an inherited Estate, is too often neglected, and squandered away; because we do not consider the Difficulty in Raising it.

Books are a Guide in Youth, and an Entertainment for Age. They support us under Solitude, and keep us from being a Burthen to our selves. They help us to forget the Crossness of Men and Things; compose our Cares, and our Passions; and lay our Disappointments asleep. When we are weary of the Living, we may repair to the Dead, who have nothing of Peevishness, Pride, or Design, in their Coversation. However,

To be constantly in the Wheel has neither Pleasure nor Improvement in it. A Man may as well expect to grow stronger by always Eating, as wiser by always Reading. Too much over-charges Nature, and turns more into Disease than Nourishment. 'Tis Thought and Digestion which makes Books serviceable, and gives Health and Vigour to the Mind. Neither ought we to be too Implicit or Resigning to Authorities, but to examine before we Assent, and preserve our Reason in its just Liberties. To walk always upon Crutches, is the way to lose the Use of our Limbs. Such an absolute Submission keeps us in a perpetual Minority, breaks the Spirits of the Understanding, and lays us open to Imposture.

But Books well managed afford Direction and Discovery. They strengthen the Organ, and enlarge the Prospect, and give a more universal Insight into Things, than can be learned from unlettered Observation. He who depends only upon his own Experience, has but a few Materials to work upon. He is confined to narrow Limits both of Place, and Time: And is not fit to draw a large Model, and to pronounce upon Business which is complicated and unusual. There seems to be much the same difference between a Man of meer Practice, and another of Learning, as there is between an Empirick and a Physician. The first may have a good Receipt, or two; and if Diseases and Patients were very scarce, and all alike, he might do tolerably well. But if you enquire concerning the Causes of Distempers, the Constitution of human Bodies, the Danger of Symptoms, and the Methods of Cure, upon which the Success of Medicine depends, he knows little of the Matter. On the other side: To take Measures wholly from Books, without looking into Men and Business, is like travelling in a Map, where though Countries and Cities are well enough distinguished, yet Villages and private Seats are either Over-looked, or too generally Marked for a Stranger to find. And therefore he that would be a Master, must Draw by the Life, as well as Copy from Originals, and joyn Theory and Experience together.

Albert Josef Franke (1860-1924), Die Schriftgelehrten

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 2.1 (tr. Gregory Hays):

When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly.

Ἕωθεν προλέγειν ἑαυτῷ: συντεύξομαι περιέργῳ, ἀχαρίστῳ, ὑβριστῇ, δολερῷ, βασκάνῳ, ἀκοινωνήτῳ.

Sebastien-Roch Nicolas de Chamfort, Products of the Perfected Civilization. Selected Writings, tr. W.S. Merwin (New York: Macmillan, 1969), p. 231:

M. de Lassay, a very gentle man but with a great knowledge of society, said that one must swallow a toad every morning, when one had to go out into the world, so as not to find anything more disgusting during the day.

M. de Lassay, homme très doux, mais qui avait une grande connaissance de la société, disait qu'il faudrait avaler un crapaud tous les matins, pour ne trouver plus rien de dégoûtant le reste de la journée, quand on devait la passer dans le monde.

C.S. Lewis, Spenser's Images of Life, ed. Alastair Fowler (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), p. 95 (footnotes omitted):

In sum, then, evil is solemn, good is gay. Evil means starvation, good glows with what Blake calls 'the lineaments of gratified desire'. Evil imprisons, good sets free. Evil is tired, good is full of vigour. The one says, Let go, lie down, sleep, die; the other, All aboard! kill the dragon, marry the girl, blow the pipes and beat the drum, let the dance begin.

A.E. Housman, The Confines of Criticism. The Cambridge Inaugural, 1911 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), p. 21:

But the definition of a scholar is vir bonus discendi peritus, and that conception was personified in Munro.

Cato defined the orator as vir bonus dicendi peritus, the good man skilled in speaking, and a slight twist to the expression gives us the definition of a scholar as vir bonus discendi peritus, the good man skilled in learning. I like this definition better than others which could be devised, such as vir bonus scribendi peritus (the good man skilled in writing) or vir bonus docendi peritus (the good man skilled in teaching). The true scholar, unmoved by "publish or perish," doesn't rush into print. William M. Calder III, in Gnomon 51 (1979) 207, recalled a remark by Benedict Einarson: "He told me aged 25 that I must write nothing until 40 for I would not know enough." And what scholar worth his salt wouldn't rather spend time reading in the library than teaching in the classroom?

William M. Calder III, "Vir Bonus Discendi Peritus," American Journal of Philology 108 (1987) 168–171, tracked down the source of this definition, to a speech which Wilamowitz delivered on September 27, 1877. Here is the relevant passage from the speech, as found in Verhandlungen der 32. Versammlung deutscher Philologen und Schulmänner in Wiesbaden vom 26. September bis 29. September 1877 (Leipzig: B.G. Teubner, 1878), p. 41:

Wir Philologen von heute haben eine andere, eine weit bescheidenere Stellung, denn da J.J. Scaliger die ganze Welt der Wissenschaft umspannte, oder die unbeschreibliche Herrlichkeit der griechischen Kunst sich Winckelmann und G. Hermann erschloss; den heutigen Philologen mag man definieren als den vir bonus discendi peritus, dem vor der Wucht des zu Lernenden das freudige Gefühl des Wissens und des Könnens erstirbt, dem mancher Tag des Suchens nicht bloss mit dem Geständniss schliesst, dass er das Gesuchte noch nicht gefunden habe, sondern dass es sich überhaupt noch nicht finden lasse. Doch wir konnen nicht über unsern Schatten springen, wir müssen den Weg gehen, den die Wissenschaft uns und unserer Zeit gestellt hat, und lassen wir uns der Mühe nicht verdriessen, so blüht eine Blume wohl auch hie und da an unserm Wege.

Inspired by Roger Pearse, who recently described his success in using Google Translate to produce a translation of some Russian text, I thought I would see how Google Translate rendered Wilamowitz's German. Here is the result:

We philologists today have a different, far more modest position, because as JJ Scaliger spanned the entire world of science, or the indescribable glory of Greek art, Winckelmann and G. Hermann opened up, the philologist might define it today as the vir bonus discendi Peritus, which, before the brunt of the learner to the joyous feeling of knowing and abilities dies out, the many days of searching includes not only the confession that he had not yet found what you're looking, but that it can not leave at all. But we can not jump over our shadow, we must walk the path that has made ​​us and the science of our time, and let us grieve not the trouble, a flower blooms well here and there on our way.

I used to tell students, "This passage makes sense in Latin, and your English translation has to make sense, too. It isn't nonsense in Latin, and it can't be nonsense in English." Google Translate's version of Wilamowitz's German seems to fail the "intelligibility" test. Does Microsoft's Bing Translator do any better? Let's see:

We philologists of today have a different, a far more modest position, because j.j. Scaliger which spanned all over the world of science, or Winckelmann and G. Hermann opened up the indescribable glory of Greek art; one may define the modern philologists as the vir bonus discendi peritus, before the force of dies to learners the joyful feeling of knowledge and the skills which includes some day of searching not just with the Geständniss that he still not found what you want, but that it is ever still not find leave. But we don't have our shadow jump can, we must go the way science has shown us and our time, and let not disgruntling us trouble, so flowers a flower probably also here and there on our way.

My knowledge of German (based on two semesters' tuition at the elementary level many decades ago) was never very good, and it has grown rusty with disuse. I may be fundamentally misunderstanding the German [I am, see below], but this is what I think it means:

We philologists of today occupy a different, a far more modest position, than when J.J Scaliger embraced the entire world of knowledge, or when the indescribable magnificence of Greek art revealed itself to Winckelmann and to Gottfried Hermann; one might define the contemporary philologist as the vir bonus discendi peritus, for whom the joyful feeling of knowledge and skill has succumbed to the power of the pedant, for whom many a day of searching ends not merely with the confession that he hasn't found what he was seeking, but that it doesn't even allow itself be found at all. But we cannot jump over our shadow, we must travel down the road which science and our time have laid down, and not allow the effort to trouble us, provided that a flower might bloom here and there on our way.

The phrase which stymies me the most is "Wucht des zu Lernenden." I think that "des...Lernenden" is a "substantiviertes Partizip Präsens Aktiv" ("the learning [man]") and that "zu" is adverbial ("too" or "excessively"), and so I translate the phrase as "the power of the pedant". [Wrong! See below.] Corrections on this or any other point are welcome.

---

Thanks very much to Dr. J.L.H. Krans for the following:

This is your translation, with my few remarks between [ ]:

We philologists of today occupy a different, a far more modest position, than when J.J. Scaliger embraced the entire world of knowledge, or when the indescribable magnificence of Greek art revealed itself to Winckelmann and to Gottfried Hermann; one might define the contemporary philologist as the vir bonus discendi peritus, for whom the joyful feeling of knowledge and skill has succumbed to the power of the pedant [to the power of what is to be learned], for whom many a day of searching ends not merely with the confession that he hasn't found what he was seeking, but that it doesn't even allow itself be found [to be found] at all. But we cannot jump over our shadow, we must travel down the road which science and our time have laid down [which science has laid down for us and our time], and not allow the effort to trouble us, provided that a flower [and if we do not allow ourselves to be put off by the effort, then a flower] might bloom here and there on our way.

•"Wucht" = "power", but (here) with a nuance of effort to attain something; so maybe "the powerful desire to ...”
•"das zu Lernende" = "that which has/is to be learned"
•"Wissenschaft" = "science", but also "scholarship", which might be more appropriate when philology is concerned
•the inversion "lassen wir ..." signals a conditional phrase; the following "so" equals "then"

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Thanks also to Arsen Darnay, who writes:

"Die Wucht des zu Lernenden" might be rendered as "the weight of that still to be learned."

My Langenscheid's renders Wucht as weight; force; impetus. For me the first meaning that came to mind was force, but in the sense of a pressure, thus as of a massive weight pressing down on me. It holds a kind of dynamic, that word, because it is also described, in reference to physics, as inertia force (methinks that should be inertial force), momentum, and kinetic energy. In my rendition above, I've inserted the "still" to give voice to the real intent behind the German phrasing in English--obeying an urge all good translators resist at their peril.

---

A corrected translation:

We philologists of today occupy a different, a far more modest position, than when J.J. Scaliger embraced the entire world of knowledge, or when the indescribable magnificence of Greek art revealed itself to Winckelmann and to Gottfried Hermann; one might define the contemporary philologist as the vir bonus discendi peritus, for whom the joyful feeling of knowledge and skill has succumbed to the weight of that still to be learned, for whom many a day of searching ends not merely with the confession that he hasn't found what he was seeking, but that it doesn't even allow itself to be found at all. But we cannot jump over our shadow, we must travel down the road which scholarship has laid down for us and our time, and if we do not allow ourselves to be put off by the effort, then a flower might bloom here and there on our way.

William Shakespeare, Merry Wives of Windsor 4.4.29-42:

Mrs Page.
There is an old tale goes that Herne the hunter,
Sometime a keeper here in Windsor forest,     30
Doth all the winter-time, at still midnight,
Walk round about an oak, with great ragg'd horns;
And there he blasts the tree and takes the cattle
And makes milch-kine yield blood and shakes a chain
In a most hideous and dreadful manner:     35
You have heard of such a spirit; and well you know
The superstitious idle-headed eld
Received, and did deliver to our age,
This tale of Herne the hunter for a truth.
Page.
Why, yet there want not many that do fear     40
In deep of night to walk by this Herne's oak:
But what of this?

James Orchard Halliwell, ed., The First Sketch of Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor (London: Shakespeare Society, 1842), pp. 70-71:

The following decisive evidence that the tree was destroyed is extracted from a contemporary newspaper, communicated to me by Mr. Wright:—

Upon Herne's Oak being cut down, in the spring of 1796.

Within this dell, for many an age,
  Herne's Oak uprear'd its antique head:—
Oh! most unhallow'd was the rage
  Which tore it from its native bed!

The storm that stript the forest bare
  Would yet refrain this tree to wrong,
And Time himself appear'd to spare
  A fragment he had known so long.

'Twas mark'd with popular regard,
  When famed Elizabeth was queen;
And Shakespere, England's matchless bard,
  Made it the subject of a scene.

So honour'd when in verdure drest,
  To me the wither'd trunk was dear;
As, when the warrior is at rest,
  His trophied armour men revere.

That nightly Herne walk'd round this oak,
  "The superstitious eld received;"
And what they of his outrage spoke
  The rising age in fear believ'd.

The hunter, in his morning range,
  Would not the tree with lightness view:
To him Herne's legend, passing strange,
  In spite of scoffers still seem'd true.

Oh, where were all the fairy crew
  Who revels kept in days remote,
That round the oak no spell they drew,
  Before the axe its fibres smote?

Could wishes but ensure the power,
  The tree again its head should rear;
Shrubs fence it with a fadeless bower,
And these inscriptive lines appear:—

"Here, as wild Avon's poet stray'd"—
Hold!—let me check this feeble strain—
The spot by Shakspere sacred made,
A verse like mine would but profane!

Wright is Thomas Wright, and the newspaper was the Whitehall Evening Herald.

John Stoughton, Notices of Windsor in the Olden Time (London: David Bogue, 1844), pp. 156-157 (footnotes omitted):

Mr. Charles Knight considers that the real Herne's Oak was cut down some fifty or sixty years ago, not by order of George III., but to his deep and lasting regret; and, in support of this opinion, relates the following anecdote. — About the year 1800, Mr. Nicholson, the eminent landscape draftsman, was on a visit to the Dowager Countess of Kingston, at Old Windsor; and his mornings were chiefly employed in sketching, or rather making studies of, the old trees in the forest. This circumstance one day led the conversation of some visiters at Lady Kingston's to Herne's Oak. Mrs. Boufoy and her daughter, Lady Ely, were present; and they were very much with the royal family. Mr. Nicholson requested Lady Ely to procure for him any information that she could from the king, respecting Herne's Oak, which, considering his majesty's tenacious memory and familiarity with Windsor, the king could probably give better than any one else. In a few days, Lady Ely informed Mr. Nicholson that she had made the inquiry he wished of the king; who told her that, when he (George III.) was a young man, it was represented to him that there were a number of old oaks in the park, which had become unsightly objects, and that it would be desirable to take them down. He gave immediate directions that such trees as were of this description should be removed; but he was afterwards sorry that he had given such an order inadvertently, because he found that among the rest the remains of Herne's Oak had been destroyed.

There is much dispute as to whether the tree felled in 1796 really was Herne's Oak. See, e.g., Robert Richard Tighe and James Edward Davis, Annals of Windsor, Vol. I (London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, and Roberts, 1858) pp. 682-705, and W. Perry, A Treatise on the True Identity of Herne's Oak (London: L. Booth, 1867).

Benjamin West (1738-1820), Woodcutters in Windsor Park
John Linnell (1792-1882), Woodcutters in Windsor Forest
Related post: Gothick Barbarity.

Labels: arboricide

Edward Gibbon (1737-1794), Memoirs of My Life and Writings:

In my French and Latin translations I adopted an excellent method, which, from my own success, I would recommend to the imitation of students. I chose some classic writer, such as Cicero and Vertot, the most approved for purity and elegance of style. I translated, for instance, an epistle of Cicero into French; and after throwing it aside, till the words and phrases were obliterated from my memory, I re-translated my French into such Latin as I could find; and then compared each sentence of my imperfect version, with the ease, the grace, the propriety of the Roman orator. A similar experiment was made on several pages of the Revolutions of Vertot; I turned them into Latin, re-turned them after a sufficient interval into my own French, and again scrutinized the resemblance or dissimilitude of the copy and the original. By degrees I was less ashamed, by degrees I was more satisfied with myself; and I persevered in the practice of these double translations, which filled several books, till I had acquired the knowledge of both idioms, and the command at least of a correct style. This useful exercise of writing was accompanied and succeeded by the more pleasing occupation of reading the best authors. The perusal of the Roman classics was at once my exercise and reward. Dr. Middleton's History, which I then appreciated above its true value, naturally directed me to the writings of Cicero. The most perfect editions, that of Olivet, which may adorn the shelves of the rich, that of Ernesti, which should lie on the table of the learned, were not in my power. For the familiar epistles I used the text and English commentary of Bishop Ross: but my general edition was that of Verburgius, published at Amsterdam in two large volumes in folio, with an indifferent choice of various notes. I read with application and pleasure all the epistles, all the orations, and the most important treatises of rhetoric and philosophy; and as I read, I applauded the observation of Quintilian, that every student may judge of his own proficiency, by the satisfaction which he receives from the Roman orator. I tasted the beauties of language, I breathed the spirit of freedom, and I imbibed from his precepts and examples the public and private sense of a man. Cicero in Latin, and Xenophon in Greek, are indeed the two ancients whom I would first propose to a liberal scholar; not only for the merit of their style and sentiments, but for the admirable lessons, which may be applied almost to every situation of public and private life. Cicero's Epistles may in particular afford the models of every form of correspondence, from the careless effusions of tenderness and friendship, to the well guarded declaration of discreet and dignified resentment. After finishing this great author, a library of eloquence and reason, I formed a more extensive plan of reviewing the Latin classics, under the four divisions of, 1. historians, 2. poets, 3. orators, and 4. philosophers, in a chronological series, from the days of Plautus and Sallust, to the decline of the language and empire of Rome: and this plan, in the last twenty-seven months of my residence at Lausanne (January 1756—April 1758), I nearly accomplished. Nor was this review, however rapid, either hasty or superficial. I indulged myself in a second and even a third perusal of Terence, Virgil, Horace, Tacitus, etc., and studied to imbibe the sense and spirit most congenial to my own. I never suffered a difficult or corrupt passage to escape, till I had viewed it in every light of which it was susceptible: though often disappointed, I always consulted the most learned or ingenious commentators, Torrentius and Dacier on Horace, Catrou and Servius on Virgil, Lipsius on Tacitus, Meziriac on Ovid, etc., and in the ardour of my inquiries, I embraced a large circle of historical and critical erudition. My abstracts of each book were made in the French language: my observations often branched into particular essays; and I can still read, without contempt, a dissertation of eight folio pages on eight lines (287-294) of the fourth Georgic of Virgil. M. Deyverdun, my friend, whose name will be frequently repeated, had joined with equal zeal, though not with equal perseverance, in the same undertaking. To him every thought, every composition, was instantly communicated; with him I enjoyed the benefits of a free conversation on the topics of our common studies.

But it is scarcely possible for a mind endowed with any active curiosity to be long conversant with the Latin classics, without aspiring to know the Greek originals, whom they celebrate as their masters, and of whom they so warmly recommend the study and imitation;

            "Vos exemplaria Graeca
Nocturna versate manu, versate diurna."

It was now that I regretted the early years which had been wasted in sickness or idleness, or mere idle reading; that I condemned the perverse method of our schoolmasters, who, by first teaching the mother-language, might descend with so much ease and perspicuity to the origin and etymology of a derivative idiom. In the nineteenth year of my age I determined to supply this defect; and the lessons of Pavilliard again contributed to smooth the entrance of the way, the Greek alphabet, the grammar, and the pronunciation according to the French accent. As he had possessed only such a stock as was requisite for an ecclesiastic, our first book was St. John's gospel, and I should probably have construed the whole of the New Testament, had I not represented the absurdity of adhering to the corrupt dialect of the Hellenist Jews. At my earnest request we presumed to open the Iliad; and I had the pleasure of beholding, though darkly and through a glass, the true image of Homer, whom I had long since admired in an English dress. After my tutor had left me to myself, I worked my way through about half the Iliad, and afterwards interpreted alone a large portion of Xenophon and Herodotus. But my ardour, destitute of aid and emulation, was gradually cooled, and, from the barren task of searching words in a lexicon, I withdrew to the free and familiar conversation of Virgil and Tacitus. Yet in my residence at Lausanne I had laid a solid foundation, which enabled me, in a more propitious season, to prosecute the study of Grecian literature.

Albert Josef Franke (1860-1924),
Aufmerksame Lectüre
Hat tip: Karl Maurer.

John Burroughs, Ways of Nature (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1905), p. 238:

The power to see straight is the rarest of gifts; to see no more and no less than is actually before you; to be able to detach yourself and see the thing as it actually is, uncolored or unmodified by your own sentiments or prepossessions.