Raul de Saldanha

Renaissance and Baroque Poetry of Spain, Ed. Elias L. Rivers

2011-11-02T16:53:00.000-06:00

Renaissance and Baroque Poetry of Spain, Ed. Elias L. Rivers, Waveland Press, Long Grove, Illinois, 1988.

Garcilaso de la Vega (1503-1536) : Neither death nor prison nor obstacles can keep me from going to see you, one way or another, as a naked spirit or as a man of flesh and blood. (35)

Sonnet XI: Lovely nymphs who, deep in the river, live happily in mansions built of shining stones and upheld by crystal columns: where you are now busily embroidering or weaving fine fabrics, or whether in little groups you are telling one another of your loves and lives, lay aside your work for a moment, raising your golden heads to look at me, and it won’t take you long, in my sad state; for either you’ll be too sorry to listen, or else, changed into water by weeping here, you’ll have plenty of time to console me down there. [pure fancy…] (36)

Gutierre del Cetina (ca. 1516-1555) Sonnet VI: To the mountain where Carthage once stood: Lofty mountain, where Roman destruction will forever eternalize your memory; proud buildings, where the glory still gleams of great Carthage; deserted square, which once was a quiet lake full of triumphal victories; shattered marble, in which one can read the story of the world’s rewards; arches, amphitheaters, baths, temple, which once were famous buildings and of which we can now hardly detect the traces: your example is a great cure for my despair, for if by time you have been destroyed, time will be able to destroy my suffering. [by death. the unsaid.] (85-6)

Fray Luis de Leon (1527-1591) Ode I: What a restful life, that of him who flees from worldly noise and follows the hidden path down which have gone the few wise men who have existed in the world! For his heat is not darkened by the status of the great and proud, … (91)

Ode I: An unbroken sleep, a cloudless happy day of freedom are what I want; I don’t want to see the vainly severe frown of him who is exalted by family or wealth. Let the birds awaken me with their sweet unschooled singing, not the grave worries which always plague him who depends on another’s will. I want to live by myself; I want to enjoy the blessings that I owe to heaven, all alone, without a witness, free from love, from zeal, from hatred, from hope, from fear. On the slope of the hill, with my own hand I have planted an orchard, which in the springtime, covered with lovely blooms, is already giving hopeful signs of sure fruit. And as though desirous of seeing and increasing its beauty, form the airy hilltop a spring of pure water comes hastily running down; and then, more calmly, wending its way among the trees, as it passes, it gradually clothes the ground in green and sprinkles it with different flowers. The breeze flows through the orchard and offers many fragrances to one’s senses; it sways the trees with a gentle sound which makes one forget gold and scepters. (92-3)

Ode VIII, Still Night: When I regard the heavens adorned with innumerable lights, and I look toward the earth, surrounded by night, buried in sleep and oblivion, love and grief awaken within my breast an ardent yearning; my eyes, transformed into a spring, pour out an abundant stream; finally my tongues says, with woeful voice: “Dwelling place of grandeur, temple of brightness and beauty, what curse holds my soul, born for your heights, trapped in this low, dark prison? What mortal error so separates my senses form the truth that, forgetful of your divine treasure, lost, it pursues empty shadows and false treasures? … Alas, raise your eyes to this eternal, celestial sphere: you will thus escape the illusions of this seductive life and all that it hopes for and fears. Is the low and graceless earth more than a mere point when compared to this great transfiguration, … who is he that can look at this and still esteem the lowness of the earth, and not groan and sigh to destroy that which traps the soul and keeps it from these blessings? Here lives happiness, here reigns peace; here, seated on a rich and lofty seat, is sacred love, surrounded by glory and delight. Immense beauty is here fully revealed, and there gleams the brightest purest light, which never turns to night; eternal springtime flowers here. Oh, true fields! Oh, meadows pleasant and sweet with truth! Richest deposits of gold! Oh, hollows of delight! Hidden valleys full of countless blessings!” (99-101)

Baltasar del Alcazar (1530-1606) Song I: Three things have captured my heart with love: lovely Inez, and harm, and eggplant with cheese. A certain Inez, lovers, is the person who exerted upon me such power that she made me hate everything that wasn’t Inez. She kept me madly in love for a year, until one day she gave me, for lunch, ham and eggplant with cheese. (111-12)

Francisco de Aldana (1537-1578) Sonnet XVII: I say a thousand times, while held in Galatea’s arms, that she is more beautiful than the sun; then she, with a sweetly disdainful look, tells me, “Tyrsis mine, don’t say that.” I try to swear it, and she, suddenly inflamed with a rosy color, stops me with a kiss and hastily seeks to cover my mouth with her face. I struggle gently against her to free myself, and she holds me more tightly and then says, “Don’t swear, my love, for I believe you.” Thereupon she so entwines me that Cupid, witnessing our sweet game, causes my desires to be fulfilled. (127)

Sonnet XXXIV, Recognition of the World’s Vanity: At last, at last, after so long a time suffering, after so many changes of life and career, after so many attempts between one madness and another, to seize everything, but catching nothing, after so much coming and going hither and yon like a breathless, useless pilgrim, oh God!, after wandering so often from the right road, I myself being the executor of my own evil, at last I find that to be dead in the world’s memory is the best thing the world has to offer, … (128)

San Juan de la Cruz (1542-1591) : Song I: Spiritual Canticle, Songs of the Soul and the Bridegroom: Bride: 1. Where have you hidden yourself, my love, and left me moaning? Like the stag you have fled, having wounded me; I came out, crying, after you, and you had gone away. … Bridegroom: Come back, dove, for the wounded stag shows himself on the hill, in the breeze of your flight, and cools himself. (130-3)

Bride: Following your footsteps the young maidens run wildly out to the road; at the touch of the spark and the taste of the spiced wine, there are waves of divine balm. 17. In my beloved’s inner wine cellar I drank, and when I came out, all the way down the meadow I was no longer aware of anything, and I lost the sheep that I had been following before. 18. There he gave me his breast, there he taught me very pleasant knowledge, and I gave him myself indeed, holding nothing back; there I promised him to be his wife. 19. My soul and all my possessions have been used in his service; I no longer herd sheep or have any other job, for my only occupation now is love. (133-4)

Bride: 22. with only that hair which you watched being wafted on my neck; you looked at it on my neck, and you became imprisoned in it, and you were wounded by one of my eyes. (135)

Bridegroom: The little white dove has come back to the ark with the branch, and now the little turtledove has found her longed-for mate on the green river banks. 34. In solitude she lived, and in solitude she has laid her nest, and in solitude she is guided all alone by her lover, who was also wounded in solitude by love. (137)

Song II, The Dark Night: Songs of the soul rejoicing at having reached the highest state of perfection, which is union with God, by means of spiritual self-denial. 1. On a dark night, inflamed with the passions of love, oh favoring fortune!, I went out unnoticed, after my house had been set to rest: 2. In the dark and safely sure, … in secret, for no one saw me, nor did I see anything, with no other light or guide than that which was burning in my heart. 4. This light guided me more surely than that of noonday to where he was waiting for me, I know well who, in a place where no one was to be seen. … On my flowery breast, kept wholly for himself alone, there he went to sleep, and I caressed him, and the fanning of the cedars made a breeze. … I stood still and forgot myself, I leaned my face over the lover, everything stopped and I abandoned myself, leaving my cares forgotten among the lilies. (138-9)

Verse I, Verses upon a highly contemplative ecstasy: … I was left without knowing, transcending all knowledge. It was the perfect knowledge of peace and piety, a straight road well understood in deep solitude; it was something so secret that I was left babbling, transcending all knowledge. I was so drawn into it, so absorbed and taken out of myself, that my feeling was left devoid of all feeling, and my mind was endured with an understanding by not understanding, transcending all knowledge. He who really reaches that point faints away from himself; he scorns all that he formerly knew; and his knowledge increases so much that he is left without knowing, transcending all knowledge. … And this highest way of knowing is so completely superior that there is no university or science that can attempt it; … And if you want to listen, this highest knowledge consists of a heightened perception of the Divine Essence; it is a result of His mercy to leave one not understanding, transcending all knowledge. (141-3)

Song, Although It Is Night, Song of the soul which rejoices in knowing God by faith: For I well know the fountain that wells up and flows, although it is night. That eternal fountain is hidden, for I well know where it has its source, although it is night. I don’t know its origin, for it doesn’t have one, but I know that every origin comes from it, although it is night. I know that nothing can be so beautiful, and that heaven and earth drink from it, although it is night. [night ~ faith] (148)

Bartolome L. de Argensola (1562-1631) : Sonnet VI: To a gentleman and a lady who had been raised together since childhood and , being now older, persisted in the same casual relationship: Firmio, at your age no danger is a slight one, for you speak to us now in a husky voice and, although almost invisible, a fuzz breaks the smoothness of your upper lip. And in your case, Drusila, your breast is suddenly revealing the subtle outline of two curves, and on the white summit of each one a living ruby marks a tiny center. Let your friendship be restrained by stricter rules, for Love’s first poison needs only the simplest carelessness. If the sly snake has hidden himself in the pleasantest part of a fertile field, who can be surprised that flowers have lost their good reputation? (156-7)

Luis de Gongora (1561-1627) : Sonnet LIII (Moral), He infers, from the ailments of old age, that death is near, and as a Catholic takes courage (157)

Sonnet LXXXVI (Love): Sacred temple of pure chastity, whose beautiful foundation and refined wall were built, by a divine hand, of white nacre and hard alabaster; small door of precious coral, bright windows of steady gaze, … superb roof, whose golden moldings, while the bright sun revolves around, adorn it with light, crown it with beauty; (160)

Sonnet CIX (Love), Concerning a lady who, taking off a ring, pricked herself with a pin: A shackle for the jointed mother-of-pearl (a gleaming competitor of my own constancy) was a diamond, itself also ingeniously shackled in gold. Clori, then, who does not consent that her finger be oppressed by metal, however precious, one day elegantly, as well as impatiently, redeemed it from the golden bond. But, alas, a little piece of insidious brass among the crystals of her lovely hand sacrilegiously drinks divine blood: purple dye was less brilliant upon Indian ivory; enviously, upon snow the Dawn shattered carnations in vain. [Cf. Crashaw] (162)

Sonnet CLXV: Illustrations and most beautiful Maria, while one may still see at any time in your cheeks and rosy Dawn, Phoebus [the sun] in your eyes and on your forehead the day, and while with gentle discourtesy the wind blows the flying threads which Arabia treasures in its veins and the rich Tagus produces in its sands; before, Phoebus being eclipsed by time and the bright day changed into dark night, the Dawn flees form the deadly cloud; before that which is a golden treasure today vanquishes white snow with its whiteness: enjoy, enjoy, the color, the light, the gold. (163)

Sonnet CLXVI: While, to compete with your hair, gold burnished in the sun gleams in vain; while with scorn, in the midst of the plain, your white brow regards the lily fair; while each lip is pursued by more eyes than follow the early carnation; and while with proud disdain your neck triumphs over bright crystal: enjoy beck, hair, lips and brow, before what was in your golden youth gold, lily, carnation, crystal bright, not only turns into silver or a crushed violet, but you and all of it together into earth, smoke, dust, shadow, nothingness. (163)

Fable of Polyphemus and Galatea, To the Count of Niebla: 1. These resounding rhymes which were dictated to me by the cultured, yet bucolic, Thalia, [the Muse of pastoral poetry]—oh, excellent Count!--, during the purple hours when … 2. Well conditioned, let the noble bird [falcon] preen his feathers upon the master’s hand, or upon his perch, so quietly that he may try, in vain, to belie the bell [tied to his foot] ; by champing, let the Andalusian horse make hoary his golden bit with his idle foam; let the hound whine upon his silken hoary his golden bit with his idle foam; let the hound whine upon his silken leash. And, finally, let the hunter’s horn yield to the poet’s harp. 3. Respite from that robust exercise be your attentive leisure and sweet silence while under august canopy you listen to the brutish song of the musical giant. … that the obscure recess is black night’s caliginous bed is demonstrated to us by an infamous mob of nocturnal fowls, moaning sadly and flying heavily. (165)

Song XLVIII (Burlesque) : Let me be wildly enthusiastic, and let the people laugh. Let others deal with governing the world and its monarchies, while my time is spent on butter and soft bread, and on winter mornings, orangeade and brandy, and let the people laugh. Let the Prince eat on golden plate a thousand cares, like gilded pills; for I at my poor table prefer a black sausage bursting on a spit, and let the people laugh. When January covers the mountains with white snow, let me have my brasier full of acorns and chestnuts, and someone to tell me the old stories of the king who went mad, and let the people laugh. (188)

Ballad XVII (Love), Angelica and Medoro: … His veins almost empty of blood, his eyes full of night, he was found on the field by that life and death of men [a beautiful woman]. 5. She gets down from her palfrey, not because she knows the Moor, but because she sees the grass paying for so much blood with flowers. (190)

A wanton swarm of little Cupids encircle the hut, just as bees do the hollow trunk of the cork-oak (192)

Lope de Vega (1562-1635) : Early Ballads, To Phyllis … Out of the silk clothes that he had once worn at Court [in Madrid] he made for the birds a figtree scarecrow: the big ruffed collar, starched and stiff, and the round hat, that adorn one’s neck and head, and upon a satin blouse the fanciest leather jacket, without forgetting his tights, both Spanish-style and German. One day as he was watering, he saw it in the middle of the figtree, and laughing at the sight, he speaks to it as follows: “Oh rich spoils of my youth, … One holiday I wore you to my village as a display of wealth and the latest fashion. From her balcony a maiden [“Belisa,” Isabel de Urbina] saw me, with her white breast and black eyebrows. She let me seduce her; I married her, for it is well to pay such debts of honor. (200-1)

Sonnets, CXXXVII, To the Night: Oh night, fabricator of deceptions, mad, fantastic, chimeric, causing him who delights in you to see the mountains as flat and the seas as dry; dweller in empty brains, low engineer, natural philosopher, alchemist, foul accomplice, sightless lynx, scared of your own echoes: may you be considered responsible for darkness, fear and evil, your solicitor, poetess, sick and frigid woman, with ruffian’s hands and fugitive’s feet. Whether awake or asleep, half my life belongs to you: if I stay awake, I repay you the following day, and if I sleep, I’m not aware that I am alive. (217)

Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

2011-11-01T20:05:00.001-06:00

Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre, Penguin Classics, London, 1996.

There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had been wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs Reed, when there was no company, dined early) the cold winter had brought with it clouds so somber, and a rain so penetrating, that further out-door exercise was now out of the question. (opening, 13; constriction by propriety)

…until she heard from Bessie, and could discover by her own observation that I was endeavouring in good earnest to acquire a more sociable and childlike disposition, a more attractive and sprightly manner,—something lighter, franker, more natural as it were—she really must exclude me from privileges intended only for contented, happy, little children.’ /
‘What does Bessie say I have done?’ I asked.
‘Jane, I don’t like cavillers or questioners: besides, there is something truly forbidding in a child taking up her elders in that manner. Be seated somewhere; and until you can speak pleasantly, remain silent.’ (13)

Folds of scarlet drapery shut in my view to the right hand to the left were the clear panes of glass, protecting, but not separating me from the drear November day. At intervals, while turning over the leaves of my book, I studied the aspect of that winter afternoon. Afar, it offered a pale blank of mist and cloud; near, a scene of wet lawn and storm-beat shrub, with ceaseless rain sweeping away wildly before a long and lamentable blast. (14)

‘If you had such, would you like to go to them?’
I reflected. Poverty looks grim to grown people; still more so to children: they have not much idea of industrious, working, respectable poverty; they think of the word only as connected with ragged clothes, scanty food, fireless grates, rude manners, and debasing vices: poverty for me was synonymous with degradation.
‘No; I should not like to belong to poor people,’ was my reply.
‘Not even if they were kind to you?’
I shook my head: I could not see how poor people had the means of being kind; and then to learn to speak like them, to adopt the manners, to be uneducated, to grow up like one of the poor women I saw sometimes nursing their children or washing their clothes at the cottage doors of the village of Gateshead: no, I was not heroic enough to purchase liberty at the price of caste. (32)

Bessie, when she heard this narrative, sighed and said, ‘Poor Miss Jane is to be pitied, too, Abbot.’
‘Yes,’ responded Abbot, ‘if she were a nice, pretty child, one might compassionate her forlornness; but one really cannot care for such a little toad as that.’
‘Not a great deal, to be sure,’ agreed Bessie: ‘at any rate a beauty like Miss Georgiana would be more moving in the same condition.’ (34)

From my discourse with Mr Lloyd, and from the above reported conference between Bessie and Abbot, I gathered enough of hope to suffice as a motive for wishing to get well: a change seemed near—I desired and waited it in silence. It tarried, however: (35)

To this crib I always took my doll; human beings must love something, and in the dearth of worthier objects of affectation, I contrived to find a pleasure in loving and cherishing a faded graven image, … (37)

When thus gentle, Bessie seemed to me the best, prettiest, kindest being in the world; and I wished most intensely that she would always be so pleasant and amiable, and never push me about, or scold, or task me unreasonably, … (37)

Mrs Reed occupied her usual seat by the fireside: she made a signal to me to approach: I did so, and she introduced me to the stony stranger with the words: ‘This is the little girl respecting whom I applied to you.’ /
He, for it was a man, turned his head slowly towards where I stood, and having examined me with the two inquisitive-looking grey eyes which twinkled under a pair of bushy brows, said solemnly, and in a bass voice: ‘Her size is small: what is her age?’ (40) [funny]

Do you know where the wicked go after death?’
‘They go to hell,’ was my ready and orthodox answer.
‘And what is hell? Can you tell me that?’
‘A pit full of fire.’
‘And should you like to fall into that pit, and to be burning there for ever?’
‘No, sir.’
‘What must you do to avoid it?’
I deliberated a moment; my answer, when it did come, was objectionable: ‘I must keep in good health, and not die.’ (41)

‘Do you read your bible?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘With pleasure? Are you fond of it?’
‘I like Revelations, and the book of Daniel, and Genesis and Samuel, and a little bit of Exodus, and some parts of Kings and Chronicles, and Job and Jonah.’
‘And the Psalms? I hope you like them.’
‘No, sir.’
‘No? oh, shocking! I have a little boy, younger than you, who knows six Psalms by heart: and when you ask him which he would rather have, a gingerbread nut to eat, or a verse of a Psalm to learn, he says: “Oh! the verse of a Psalm! angels sing Psalm;” says he, “I wish to be a little angel here below;” he then gets two nuts in recompense for him infant piety.’
‘Psalms are not interesting,’ I remarked. (42)

…and I trust she will shew herself grateful for the inestimable privilege of her election.’ (44)

With these words Mr Brocklehurst put into my hand a thin pamphlet sewn in a cover; and having rung for his carriage, he departed. / Mrs Reed and I were left alone: some minutes passed in silence; she was sewing, I was watching her. … Mrs Reed looked up from her work; her eye settled on mine, her fingers at the same time suspended their nimble movements. / ‘Go out of the room; return to the nursery,’ was her mandate. My look or something else must have struck her as offensive, for she spoke with extreme, though suppressed irritation. I got up, I went to the door; I came back again; I walked to the window, across the room, then close up to her. … ‘I am not deceitful: if I were, I should say I loved you; but I declare I do not love you: I dislike you the worst of anybody in the world except John Reed; and this book about the liar, you may give to your girl, Georgiana, for it is she who tells lies, and not I.’ (44-5)

As we passed Mrs Reed’s bedroom, she said, ‘Will you go in and bid Missis good-bye?’ / ‘No, Bessie: she came to my crib last night when you were gone down to supper, and said I need not disturb her in the morning, or my cousins either; and she told me to remember that she had always been my best friend, and to speak of her and be grateful to her accordingly.’ / ‘What did you say, Miss?’ / ‘Nothing: I covered my face with bed-clothes, and turned from her to the wall.’ / ‘That was wrong, Miss Jane.’ / ‘It was quite right, Bessie: your Missis has not been my friend; she has been my foe.’ (50)

‘She had better be put to bed soon; she looks tired: are you tired?’ she asked, placing her hand on my shoulder. / ‘A little, ma’am.’ / ‘And hungry too, no doubt: let her have some supper before she goes to bed, Miss Miller. Is this the first time you have left your parents to come to school, my little girl?’ / I explained to her that I had no parents. She inquired how long they had been dead; then how old I was, what was my name, whether I could read, write, and sew a little: then she touched my cheek gently with her forefinger, and saying, ‘She hoped I should be a good child,’ dismissed me along with Miss Miller. (53)

On the evening of the day on which I had seen Miss Scatcherd flog her pupil, Burns, I wandered as usual among the forms and tables and laughing groups without a companion, yet not feeling lonely: when I passed the windows, I now and then lifted a blind and looked out; it snowed fast, a drift was already forming against the lower panes; putting my ear close to the window, I could distinguish form the gleeful tumult within, the disconsolate moan of the wind outside. / Probably, if I had lately left a good home and kind parents, this would have been the hour when I should most keenly have regretted the separation: that wind would then have saddened my heart; this obscure chaos would have disturbed my peace: as it was I derived form both a strange excitement, and reckless and feverish, I wished the wind to howl more wildly, the gloom to deepen to darkness, and the confusion to rise to clamour. (65)

‘Do you come a long way from here?’
‘I come from a place further north; quite on the borders of Scotland.’
‘Will you ever go back?’
‘I hope so; but nobody can be sure of the future.’
‘You must wish to leave Lowood?’
‘No: why should I? I was sent to Lowood to get an education; and it would be of no use going away until I have attained that object.’
‘But that teacher, Miss Scatcherd, is so cruel to you?’
‘Cruel? Not at all! She is severe: she dislikes my faults.’
‘And if I were in your place I should dislike her: I should resist her; if she struck me with that rod, I should get it from her hand; I should break it under her nose.’
‘Probably you would do nothing of the sort: but if you did, Mr Brocklehurst would expel you from the school; that would be a great grief to your relations. It is far better to endure patiently a smart which nobody feels but yourself, than to commit a hasty action whose evil consequences will extend to all connected with you—and, besides, the Bible bids us return good for evil.’ …
‘You say you have faults, Helen: what are they? To me you seem very good.’
‘Then learn from me, not to judge by appearances: I am, as Miss Scatcherd said, slatternly; I seldom put, and never keep, things in order; I am careless; I forget rules; I read when I should learn my lessons; I have no method; and sometimes I say, like you, I cannot bear to be subjected to systematic arrangements. This is all very provoking to Miss Scatcherd, who is naturally neat, punctual, and particular.’
‘And cross and cruel,’ I added; but Helen Burns would not admit my addition: she kept silence. (66-7) [How for Jane to separate the right from wrong in Burns?]

‘But I feel this, Helen: I must dislike those who, whatever I do to please them, persist in disliking me; I must resist those who punish me them, persist in disliking me; I must resist those who punish me unjustly. It is as natural as that I should love those who show me affection, or submit to punishment when I feel it is deserved.’
‘Heathens and savage tribes hold that doctrine; but Christians and civilized nations disown it.’ …
‘Well,’ I asked impatiently, ‘is not Mrs Reed a hard-hearted, bad woman?’
‘She has been unkind to you, no doubt; because, you see, she dislikes your cast of character, as Miss Scatcherd does mine: but how minutely you remember all she ahs done and said to you! (69)

‘Miss Temple, Miss Temple, what—what is that girl with curled hair? Red hair, ma’am, curled—curled all over? And extending his cane he pointed to the awful object, his hand shaking as he did so.
‘It is Julia Severn,’ replied Miss Temple, very quietly.
‘Julia Severn, ma’am! And why has she, or any other, curled hair? Why, in defiance of every precept and principle of his house, does she conform to the world so openly—here in an evangelical, charitable establishment—as to wear her hair one mass of curls?’
‘Julia’s hair curls naturally,’ returned Miss Temple, still more quietly.
‘Naturally! Yes, but we are not to conform to nature: I wish these girls to be the children of Grace: and why that abundance? I have again and again intimated that I desire the hair to be arranged closely, modestly, plainly. Miss Temple, that girl’s hair must be cut off… (75)

I discovered, too, that a great pleasure, an enjoyment which the horizon only bounded, lay all outside the high and spike-guarded walls of our garden: this pleasure consisted in a prospect of noble summits girdling a great hill-hollow, rich in verdure and shadow; in a bright beck, full of dark stones and sparkling eddies. How different had this scene looked when I viewed it laid out beneath the iron sky of winter, stiffened in frost, shrouded with snow! (88)

But I, and the rest who continued well, enjoyed fully the beauties of the scene and season: they let us ramble in the wood, like gypsies, from morning till night; we did what we liked, went where we liked: we lived better too. Mr Brocklehurst and his family never came near Lowood now: household matters were not scrutinized into; the cross housekeeper was gone, driven away by the fear of infection; her successor, who had been matron at the Lowton Dispensary, unused to the way of her new abode, provided with comparative liberality. Besides, there were fewer to feed: the sick could eat little; our breakfast-basins were better filled: when there was no time to prepare a regular dinner, which often happened, she would give us a large piece of cold pie, or a thick slice of bread and cheese, and this we carried away with us to the wood, where we each chose the spot we liked best, and dined sumptuously. (90)

…I was invested with the office of teacher; which I discharged with zeal for two years: … (98)

Miss Temple, through all changes, had thus far continued superintendent of the seminary: to her instruction I owed the best part of my acquirements; her friendship and society had been my continual solace; she had stood me in the stead of mother, governess, and latterly, companion. At this period she married, removed with her husband (a clergyman, an excellent man, almost worthy of such a wife) to a distant county, and consequently was lost to me. … I had imbibed from her something of her nature and much of her habits: more harmonious thoughts: what seemed better regulated feelings had become the inmates of my mind. I had given in allegiance to duty and order; I was quiet; I believed I was content: … I watched the chaise mount the hill and disappear beyond its brow; and then retired to my own room; and there spent in solitude the greatest part of the half-holiday granted in honour of the occasion. / I walked about the chamber most of the time. I imagined myself only to be regretting my loss, and thinking how to repair it; but when my reflections were concluded, and I looked up and found that the afternoon was gone, and evening far advanced, another discovery dawned on me: namely, that in the interval I had undergone a transforming process; that my mind had put off all it had borrowed of Miss Temple—or rather that she had taken with her the serene atmosphere I had been breathing in her vicinity—and that now I was left in my natural element; and beginning to feel the stirring of old emotions. (98-9) [moving passage…]

‘You’re not grown so very tall, Miss Jane, nor so very stout,’ continued Mrs Leaven. ‘I dare say they’ve not kept you too well at school: Miss Reed is the head and shoulders taller than you are; and Miss Georgiana would make two of you in breadth.’ … I have long wanted to see you, and when I heard that there had been a letter from you, and that you were going to another part of the country, I thought I’d just set off, and get a look at you before you were quite out of my reach.’ / ‘I am afraid you are disappointed in me, Bessie.’ I said this laughing: I perceived that Bessie’s glance, though it expressed regard, did in no shape denote admiration. / ‘No, Miss Jane, not exactly: you are genteel enough; you look like a lady, and it is as much as ever I expected of you: you were no beauty as a child.’ … ‘I dare say you are clever, though,’ continued Bessie, by way of solace. ‘What can you do? Can you play on the piano?’ … can you draw? … have you learnt French? (105-6)

A new chapter in a novel is something like a new scene in a play; and when I draw up the curtain this time, reader, you must fancy you see a room in the George Inn … (108)

‘Is there a place in this neighbourhood called Thornfield?’ I asked of the waiter who answered the summons. / ‘Thornfield? I don’t know, ma’am; I’ll inquire at the bar.’ He vanished, but reappeared instantly:— / ‘Is your name Eyre, Miss?’ / ‘Yes.’ / ‘Person here waiting for you.’ [waiter talk: lack of ‘there is a’] (109)

Again I looked out: we were passing a church: I saw its low broad tower against the sky, and its bell was tolling a quarter; I saw a narrow galaxy of lights too, on a hill-side, marking a village or hamlet. (110)

I’m sure law winter (it was a very severe one, if you recollect, and when it did not snow, it rained and blew), not a creature but the butcher and postman came to the house, from November till February; and I really got quite melancholy with sitting night after night alone; … In spring and summer one got on better: … (112)

When Mrs Fairfax had bidden me a kind good-night, and I had fastened my door, gazed leisurely round, … I remembered that after a day of bodily fatigue and mental anxiety, I was now at last in safe haven. The impulse of gratitude swelled my heart, and I knelt down at the bed-side, and offered up thanks, … My couch had no thorns in it that night; my solitary room no fears. At once weary and content, I slept soon and soundly: when I awoke it was broad day. / The chamber looked such a bright little place to me as the sun shone in… (113)

… I descended the slippery steps of oak; … (114)

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it is a pretty place; but I fear it will be getting out of order, unless Mr Rochester should take it into his head to come and reside here permanently; or, at least, visit it rather oftener: … (115)

…with Sophie I used to talk French, and sometimes I asked her questions about her native country; but she was not of a descriptive or narrative turn, and generally gave such vapid and confused answers as were calculated rather to check than encourage inquiry. (126)

One afternoon in January, Mrs Fairfax had begged a holiday for Adele, because she had a cold; … I accorded it; deeming that I did well in shewing pliability on the point. It was a fine, calm day, though very cold; I was tired of sitting still in the library through a whole long morning: Mrs Fairfax had just written a letter which was waiting to be posted, so I put on my bonnet and cloak and volunteered to carry it to Hay;—the distance, two miles, would be a pleasant winter afternoon walk. … The ground was hard, the air was still, my road was lonely; I walked fast till I got warm, and then I walked slowly to enjoy and analyze the species of pleasure brooding for me in the hour and situation. It was thee o’clock; the church bell tolled as I passed under the belfry: the charm of the hour lay in its approaching dimness, in the low-gliding and pale-beaming sun. I was a mile from Thornfield, in a lane noted for wild roses in summer, for nuts and blackberries in autumn, and even now possessing a few coral treasures in hips and haws; but whose best winter delight lay in its utter solitude and leafless repose. If a breath of air stirred, it made no sound here; for there was not a holly, not an evergreen to rustle, and the stripped hawthorn and hazel bushes were as still as the white, worn stones which causewayed the middle of the path. Far and wide, on each side, there were only fields, where no cattle now browsed; and the little brown birds which stirred occasionally in the hedge, looked like single russet leaves that had forgotten to drop. (126-7)

‘Oh, don’t fall back on over-modesty! I have examined Adele, and fin you to have taken great pains with her: she is not bright, she has no talents; yet in a short time she has made much improvement.’ (138)

Who are your parents?’ / ‘I have none.’ / ‘Nor ever had, I suppose: do you remember them?’ (139)

The old gentleman was fond of money, and anxious to keep the family estate together. He did not like to diminish the property by division, and yet he was anxious that Mr Edward should have wealth, too, to keep up the consequence of the name; … (145)

There was a smile on his lips, and his eyes sparkled, whether with wine or not, I am not sure; but I think it very probable. ( 149)

‘You examine me, Miss Eyre,’ said he: ‘do you think me handsome?’ / I should, if I had deliberated, have replied to this question by something conventionally vague and polite; but the answer somehow slipped from my tongue before I was aware:—‘No, sir.’ [liberating: women are talked of this way.] (149)

‘You look very much puzzled, Miss Eyre; and though you are not pretty any more than I am handsome, yet a puzzled air becomes you; (151)

‘Speak,’ he urged. / ‘What about, sir?’ / ‘Whatever you like. I leave both the choice of subject and the manner of treating it, entirely to yourself.’ / Accordingly I sat and said nothing: [funny. Not accordingly] ‘If he expects me to talk for the mere sake of talking and showing off, he will find he has addressed himself to the wrong person,’ I thought. (152)

…I claim only such superiority as must result from twenty years’ difference in age and a century’s advance in experience. … ‘I don’t think, sir, you have a right to command me, merely because you are older than I, or because you have seen more of the world than I have—your claim to superiority depends on the use you have made of your time and experience. (152-3)

‘And will you consent to dispense with a great many conventional forms and phrases, without thinking that the omission arises from insolence?’ / ‘I am sure, sir, I should never mistake informality for insolence: one I rather like, the other nothing free-born would submit to, even for a salary.’ / ‘Humbug! Most things free-born will submit to anything for a salary; therefore, keep to yourself, and don’t venture on generalities of which you are intensely ignorant. (153)

‘How do you know?—you never tried it. How very serious—how very solemn you look; and you are as ignorant of the matter as this cameo head’ (taking one from the mantle-piece). (155)

My Spring is gone, however: but it has left me that French floweret on my hands; which, in some moods, I would fain be rid of. (159)

‘And, Miss Eyre, so much was I flattered by this preference of the Gallic sylph for her British gnome, that I installed her in an hotel; gave her a complete establishment of servants, a carriage, cashmeres, diamonds, dentelles, &c. In short, I began the process of ruining myself in the received style; like any other spoonie. I had not, it seems, the originality to chalk out a new road to shame and destruction, but trode the old track with stupid exactness… (160)

I, indeed, talked comparatively little; but I heard him talk with relish. It was his nature to be communicative; he liked to open to a mind unacquainted with the world, glimpses of its scenes and ways (I do not mean its corrupt scenes and wicked ways, but such as derived their interest form the great scale on which they were acted, (166)

‘You think too much of your “toilette”, Adele: but you may have a flower.’ And I took a rose from a vase and fastened it in her sash. She sighed a sigh of ineffable satisfaction, as if her cup of happiness were now full. I turned my face away to conceal a smile I could not suppress: there was something ludicrous as well as painful in the little Parisienne’s earnest and innate devotion to matters of dress. (19)

…there was an expression of almost insupportable haughtiness in her bearing and countenance. She had Roman features and a double chin, disappearing into a throat like a pillar: these features appeared to me not only inflated and darkened, but even furrowed pride; and the chin was sustain by the same principle, in a position of almost preternatural erectness. (195)

…she was so good-natured, she would give us anything we asked for.’ / ‘I suppose, now,’ said Miss Ingram, curling her lip sarcastically, ‘we shall have an abstract of the memoirs of all the governesses extant: in order to avert such a visitation, I … (202)

Miss Ingram, who had now seated herself with proud grace at the piano, spreading out her snowy robes in queenly amplitude, commenced a brilliant prelude; talking meantime. She appeared to be on her high horse to-night; (202-3)

appanage: a source of revenue, such as land, given by the sovereign to a member of the royal family; something extra offered or claimed, a perk; a rightful or customary adjunct. (APP-in-ij)

but as to the gentlemen, let them be solicitous to possess only strength and valour: (203)

Mr Rochester, now sing, and I will play for you.’ … ‘Take care, then: if you don’t please me, I will shame you by showing how such things should be done.’ / ‘That is offering a premium on incapacity: I shall now endeavour to fail.’ (203)

Charades: … the stranger fastened the bracelets on her arms, and the rings in her ears. It was Eliezer and Rebecca: the camels only were wanted. (208)

‘A servant has had the nightware; that is all. She’s an excitable, nervous person: she construed her dream into an apparition, or something of that sort, no doubt; and has taken a fit with fright. Now, then, I must see you all back into your rooms; for, till the house is settled, she cannot be looked after. Gentlemen, have the goodness to set the ladies the example. Miss Ingram, I am sure you will not fail in evincing superiority to idle terrors. (233)

‘Well then, Jane, call to aid your fancy:—suppose… (245)

‘I tell you I could not forget it; and I took my revenge: for you to be adopted by your uncle, and placed in a state of ease and comfort was what I could not endure. I wrote him; I said I was sorry for his disappointment, but Jane Eyre was dead: she had died of typhus fever at Lowood. Now act as you please: write and contradict my assertion—expose my falsehood as soon as you like. You were born, I think, to be my torment: my last hour is racked by the recollection of a deed, which, but for you, I should never have been tempted to commit.’ (268)

A strange and solemn object was that corpse to me. I gazed on it with gloom and pain: nothing soft, nothing sweet, nothing pitying, or hopeful, or subduing, did it inspire; only a grating anguish for her woes—not my loss—and a somber tearless dismay at the fearfulness of death in such a form. (269)

‘You are in the right,’ said she: and with these words we each went our separate ways. As I shall not have occasion to refer either to her or her sister again, I may as well mention here, that Georgiana made an advantageous match with a wealthy worn-out man of fashion; and that Eliza actually took the veil, and is at this day superior of the convent where she passed the period of her novitiate: and which she endowed with her fortune. (272)

‘Jane, you look blooming, and smiling, and pretty,’ said he: ‘truly pretty this morning. Is this my pale, little elf? Is this my mustard-seed? This little sunny-faced girl with the dimpled cheek and rosy lips; the satin-smooth hazel hair, and the radiant hazel eyes?’ (I had green eyes, reader; but you must excuse the mistake: for him they were new-dyed, I suppose.) (290)

But wide as pathless was the space /
That lay, our lives, between, (304)

I like you more than I can say; but I’ll not sink into a bathos of sentiment: and with this needle of repartee I’ll keep you from the edge of the gulph too; … He was kept, to be sure, rather cross and crusty: but on the whole I could see he was excellently entertained; and that a lamb-like submission and turtle-dove sensibility, while fostering his despotism more, would have pleased his judgment, satisfied his common-sense, and even suited his taste, less. (306)

My future husband was becoming to me my whole world; and more than the world: almost my hope of heaven. He stood between me and every thought of religion, as an eclipse intervenes between man and the broad sun. I could not, in those days, see God for his creature: of whom I had made an idol. (307)

I had at heart a strange and anxious thought. Something had happened which I could not comprehend; no one knew of or had seen the event but myself: it had taken place the preceding night. Mr Rochester that night was absent from home; … Stay till he comes, reader; and, when I disclose my secret to him, you shall share the confidence. (309)

‘I wish he would come! I wish he would come!’ I exclaimed, seized with hypochondriac foreboding. I had expected his arrival before tea; now it was dark: what could keep him? Had an accident happened? The event of last night again recurred to me. I interpreted it as a warning of disaster. I feared my hopes were too bright to be realized; and I had enjoyed so much bliss lately that I imagined my fortune had passed its meridian, and must now decline. [waiting to be married] (311)

‘Jane, are you ready?’ / I rose. There were no groomsmen, no bridesmaids, no relatives to wait for or marshal: none but Mr Rochester and I. … I know not whether the day was fair or foul; in descending the drive, I gazed neither on sky nor earth: my heart was with my eyes; and both seemed migrated into Mr Rochester’s frame. (322)

I heard him go as I stood at the half open door of my own room, to which I had now withdrawn. … Jane Eyre, who had been an ardent, expectant woman—almost a bride—was a cold, solitary girl again: … My eyes were covered and closed: eddying darkness seemed to swim round me, and reflection came in as black and confused a flow. Self-abandoned, relaxed, and effortless, I seemed to have laid me down in the dried-up bed of a great river; I heard a flood loosened in remote mountains, and felt the torrent come: to rise I had no will, to flee I had no strength. I lay faint; longing to be dead. One idea only still throbbed life-like within me—a remembrance of God: it begot an unuttered prayer: these words went wandering up and down in my rayless mind, as something that should be whispered; but no energy was found to express them:— /
‘Be not far from me, for trouble is near: there is none to help.’ /
It was near: and as I had lifted no petition to Heaven to avert it—as I had neither joined my hands, nor bent my knees, nor moved my lips—it came: in full, heavy swing the torrent poured over me. The whole consciousness of my life lorn, my love lost, my hope quenched, my faith death-struck, swayed full and mighty above me in one sullen mass. That bitter hour cannot be described: in truth, ‘the waters came into my soul; I sank in deep mire: I felt no standing; I came into deep waters; the floods overflowed me’. (329-330) [‘the waters…overflowed me’: Cf. Psalms lxix:2 (the second of two quotations, in a time of agony, form the book of the Bible which Jane did not like as a young girl)]

‘Jane, I am not a gentle-tempered man—you forget that: I am not long-enduring; I am not cool and dispassionate. Out of pity to me and yourself, put your finger on my pulse, feel how it throbs, and—beware!’ [funny, obvious] (342)

‘No, sir, finish it now: I pity you—I do earnestly pity you.’ / ‘Pity, Jane, from some people is a noxious and insulting sort of tribute, which one is justified in hurling back in the teeth of those who offer it; but that is the sort of pity native to callous, selfish hearts: it is a hybrid, egotistical pain at hearing of woes, crossed with ignorant contempt for those who have endured them. But that is not your pity, Jane: (345)

‘One night I had been awakened by her yells—since the medical men had pronounced her mad, she had of course been shut up—it was a fiery West-Indian night; one of the description that frequently precede the hurricanes of those climates; being unable to sleep in bed, I got up and opened the window. The air was like sulphur-steams—I could find no refreshment anywhere. Mosquitoes came buzzing in and hummed sullenly round the room; the sea, which I could hear from thence, rumbled dull like an earthquake—back clouds were casting up over it; the moon was setting in the waves, broad and red, like a hot cannon-ball—she threw her last bloody glance over a world quivering with the ferment of tempest. I was physically influenced by the atmosphere and scene, and my ears were filled with the curses the maniac still shrieked out; wherein she momentarily mingled my name with such a tone of demon-hate, with such language!—no professed harlot ever had a fouler vocabulary than she: though two rooms off, I heard every word—the thin partitions of the West-India house opposing but slight obstruction to her wolfish cries. /
‘ “This life,” said I at last, “is hell! this is the air—those are the sounds of the bottomless pit! I have a right to deliver myself from it if I can. The sufferings of this mortal state will leave me with the heavy flesh that now cumbers my soul. Of the fanatic’s burning eternity I have no fear: there is not a future state worse than this present one—let me break away, and go home to God!” /
‘I said this whilst I knelt down at, and unlocked a trunk which contained a brace of loaded pistols: I meant to shoot myself. I only entertained the intention for a moment; for, not being insane, the [346] crisis of exquisite and unalloyed despair which had originated the wish and design of self-destruction, was past in a second. /
‘A wind fresh from Europe blew over the ocean and rushed through the open casement: the storm broke, streamed, thundered, blazed, and the air grew pure. I then framed and fixed a resolution. (346-7)

Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22

2011-10-25T19:05:00.000-06:00

Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22, Twelve Books, New York, 2010. (Preface Copyright 2011).

“Do note aspire to immortal life but exhaust the limits of the possible.” Pindar: Pythian iii. (Prefae, xi)

I can’t hope to convey the full effect of the embraces and avowals, but I can perhaps offer a crumb of counsel. If there is anybody known to you who might benefit from a letter or a visit, do not on any account postpone the writing or the making of it. (xiii)

…moist devotional literature… (xiii)

I have spent much of the past year registering myself as an experimental subject for various clinical trials and “protocols,” mainly genome-based and aimed at enlarging human knowledge and shrinking the area of darkness and terror where cancer holds dominion. My aim here is obviously not quite disinterested, but many of the experiments are at a stage where any result will be too far in the future to be of help to me. In this book I cite Horace Mann’s injunction: “Until you have done something for humanity you should be ashamed to die.” So this is a modest and slight response to his challenge, to be sure, but my own. The irruption of death into my life has enabled me to express a trifle more concretely my contempt for the false consolation of religion, and belief in the centrality of science and reason. (xiv)

Should the best efforts of my physician friends be unavailing, I possess a fairly clear idea of how Stage Four esophageal cancer harvests its victims. The terminal process doesn’t allow for much in the way of “activity,” or even of composed farewells, let alone Stoic or Socratic departures. This is why I am so grateful to have had, already, a lucid interval of some length, and to have filled it with the same elements, of friendship and love, and literature and the dialectic, with which… (xiv)

Before me is a handsome edition of Face to Face … The page that has caught and held my eye is… (1)

It was decidedly interesting to have become actuarially extinct… (5)

Valletta, the capital of the tiny island-state of Malta and one of the finest Baroque and Renaissance cities of Europe. A jewel set in the sea between Sicily and Libya, … Maltese tongue is a dialect version of the Arabic spoken … If you happen to attend a Maltese Catholic church during Mass, you will see the priest raising the Communion Host and calling on “Allah,” because this after all is the local word for “god.” (10)

…I am standing on the deck of this vessel in company with my mother, who holds my hand when I desire it and also lets me scamper off to explore if I insist. (10)

…elementary phonetic reading-book… This concerned the tedious adventures of… (11)

But she and my father had first been thrown together precisely because of drizzle and austerity, and the grim, grinding war against the Nazis. (12)

…she escorted me to my boarding school at the age of eight. (13)

…from the ages of eight to eighteen I was to be away from home for most of the year and the crucial rites of passage, from the pains of sexual maturity to the acquisition of friends, enemies, and an education, took place outside the bonds of family. (13)

mother… she had two books of finely bound poetry apart from the MacNeice (Rupert Brooke, and Palgrave’s Golden Treasury), which I will die to save even if my house burns down. (16)

…the bogus refulgences of Kahlil Gibran and the sickly tautologies of the The Prophet. (18)

Both he and she were now devotees of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi: the sinister windbag who had brought enlightenment to the Beatles in the summer of love. (19)

A second-to-last piece of wretchedness almost completes this episode. Whenever I hear the dull word “closure,” I am made to realize that I, at least, will never achieve it. This is because the Athens police made me look at a photograph of Yvonne as she had been discovered. I will tell you nothing about this except that the scene was decent and peaceful but that the was off the bed and on the floor, and that the bedside telephone had been dislodged from its cradle. It’s impossible to “read” this bit of forensics with certainty, but I shall always have to wonder if she had briefly regained consciousness, or perhaps even belatedly regretted her choice, and tried at the very last to stay alive. (25)

I have intermittently sunk myself, over the house of the past four decades or so, into dismal attempts to imagine or think or “feel” myself into my mother’s state of mind as she decided that the remainder of her life would simply not be worth living. There is a considerable literature on the subject, which I have made an effort to scrutinize, but all of it has seemed to me too portentous and general and sociological to be of much help. (26)

This is almost exactly what William Styron once told me in a greasy diner in Hartford, Connecticut, about a golden moment in Paris when he had been waiting to be given a large cash prize, an emblazoned ribbon and medal of literary achievement and a handsome dinner to which all his friends had been bidden. “I looked longingly across the lobby at the street. And I mean longingly. I thought, if I could just hurl myself through those heavy revolving doors I might get myself under the wheels of that merciful bus. And then the agony could stop.” (29)

Of the two notes that she left, one (which pardon me, I do not mean to quote) was to me. (31)

Alcohol for me has been an aspect of my optimism: the mood caught by Charles Ryder in Brideshead Revisited when he discourses on aspects of the Bacchic and the Dionysian and claims that he at lest chooses to drink “in the love of the moment, and the wish to prolong and enhance it.” (35)

[apropos of nothing] I do have a heroic memory of him from my boyhood, and it happens to concern water. (39)

The golf game must have taken place when I was about thirteen. … We had a round of nine holes that somehow went well for both of us, and then he treated me to a heavy “tea” in the clubhouse where, if nothing much got said, there was no tension or awkwardness, either. (40)

[for father’s funeral] I was able to see my father in his last repose before the screwing-on of the lid, and later to do for him what he had once done for me, and carry him on my shoulders. … I rather pity those Anglo-American families to whom the “Navy Hymn” is not a part of the emotional furniture: its words and music are impossibly stirring. … My own text was from that same Paul of Tarsus, and form his Epistle to the Philippians, which I select for its non-religious yet high moral character: /
Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things. … Philippians 4:8. (45-6)

I suddenly remembered the most contemptuous word I have ever heard the old man utter. Discovering me lying in the bath with a cigarette, a book, and a perilously perched glass (I must have been attempting some adolescent version of the aesthetic), he almost barked: “What is this? Luxury?” That this was another word for sin, drawn from the repertory of antique Calvinism, I immediately understood. (46)

Meanwhile, and speaking of books, the school possessed its very own library, and several of the masters had private collections of their own, to which one might be admitted (not always without risk to these men’s immortal souls) as a great treat. (52)

Having at that stage only cropped and grazed on the lower slopes of Wordsworthian verse, (58)

Thus I have to be honest and say that the single book that most altered my life was How Green Was My Valley… In the next few years I inhaled and imbibed it dozens of times and could at any moment have sat for an examination on its major and minor themes. (60)

Most English public schools are affiliated with the national absurdity of the Anglican or “Church of England” confession (as if there could be a version of Christianity specifically linked to a group of northerly island), whereas The Leys was Methodist, which put it in the Dissenting or Nonconformist tradition, founded by that admitted maniac and demagogue John Wesley but still better than the alliance between a state church, the monarchy, the armed forces, and the Tory Party. (64)

Oxford-Cambridge… In days gone by, plebian Londoners… loud public disputes every year… Boat Race… one of the great “who cares?” events of any epoch. (64)

Some say that Cambridge is more austere and Oxford more louche and luxurious, … (64)

They used to say that Cambridge was better at “science”; (65)

We were taught the poetry of Owen and Auden at school, and allowed to ruminate on the obsession of Owen with wounded and bleeding young soldiers, as well as on the cunning way in which Auden opened “Lay Your Sleeping Head, My Love/ Human on My Faithless Arm.” … but I don’t think any instructor was sufficiently phlegmatic to break the news that the two great English poets of the preceding two generations had been quite so gay. (74)

I always take it for granted that sexual moralizing by public figures is a sign of hypocrisy or worse, and most usually a desire to perform the very act that is most being condemned. [From King Lear: ‘Thou rascal beadle, holy thy bloody hand! Why dost thou lash that whore? … Thou hotly lust’st to use her in that kind, for which thou whip’st her.” ] / I understand in retrospect that this was my first introduction to a conflict that dominates all our lives: the endless, irreconcilable conflict between the values of Athens and Jerusalem. On the one hand, very approximately, is the world not of hedonism but of tolerance of the recognition that sex and love have their own ironic and perverse dimensions. On the other is the stone-faced demand for continence, sacrifice, and conformity, and the devising of ever-crueler punishments for deviance, all invoked as if this very fanaticism did not give its whole game away. Repression is the problem in the first place. (78)

A bit young to be so cynical and so superior, you may think. My reply is that you should fucking well have been there, and felt it for yourself. (81)

…very striking carriage and appearance… (90)

[‘Chris’] And yet, to that son’s chosen brothers and sisters of the Labour and socialist movement, it was a part of the warmth and fraternity—part of one’s very acceptance—that the informal version be adopted without any further permission or ado. (94)

senescent: Growing old. Characteristic of old age. Related to senile. Senescence refers to changes in the body after it reaches its maturity.

Oxford … At gatherings of the “History Workshop,” held on Ruskin’s grounds and in nearby alehouses, I heard E.P. Thompson deliver an impromptu lecture on the “Enclosures” of common land in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in which he brought an otherwise unsentimental audience to tears with his recitation of the poems of John Clare. (101)

…his meek, modest appearance always made him a special target for the rough attentions of the police. (101)

One evening I was placed next to that great Cornish queen A. L. Rowse, who had only recently unburdened himself of a new gay theory of the origin and dedication of Shakespeare’s Sonnets but mainly wanted to tell me what I already knew, that Hitchens was a Cornish name, and positively demanded to be told whether the Mrs. Hitchens who kept sending him such fervent and unwanted love letters was by any chance my mothers. He was so lost in conceit that he did not, I remember thinking, completely trust my denial. (105)

…Magaziner (later the man to ruin American health care on behalf of Hillary Clinton) (107)

...girls who, principally Sapphic in their interests, …(107)

He left the ministry and quite some time later got married, at which point the Catholic Church excommunicated him because he had violated his vows as a priest! Many people don’t understand that the term “lapsed Catholic” entails the sinister implication that only the Church can decide who leaves it and why, or when. (108)

…it would not of course be possible or desirable to attempt any attacks or satires on the Leader of the Revolution himself. But otherwise, the freedom of conscience and creativity was absolute. … I made the mere observation that if the most salient figure in the state and society was immune from critical comment, then all the rest was detail. (117)

People began to intone the words “The Personal Is Political.” At the instant I heard this deadly expression, I knew as one does form the utterance of any sinister bullshit that it was—cliché is arguably forgivable here—very bad news. From now on, it would be enough to be a member of a sex or gender, or epidermal subdivision, or even erotic “preference,” to qualify as a revolutionary. In order to begin a speech or to ask a question form the floor, all that would be necessary by way of preface would be the words: “Speaking as a…” Then could follow any self-loving description. I will have to say this much for the old “hard” Left: we earned our claim to speak and intervene by right of experience and sacrifice and work. (121)

…if you can give a decent speech in public or cut any kind of figure on the podium, then you need never dine or sleep alone. I was actually a bit more confident on the platform than I was in the sack, and I can remember losing my virginity—a bit later than most of my peers, I suspect—with a girl who, inviting me to tea at one of the then–segregated female colleges, allowed me to notice that her walls were covered with photographs taken of me by an unseen cameraman who’d followed my public career. Since apparently I could do no wrong with this young lady… (124)

“You’re a friend of young Fenton’s, then?” he said gruffly. I allowed as much. (128)

[starting a new paragraph with: ] I can justify this if you like. (142)

A very sudden bang convinced me that a nail bomb had been thrown at a British patrol, … Instead, I nearly ended it as a bloody fool who tested the patience of the British Army. Rising too soon from my semi-recumbent posture, I found myself slammed against the wall by a squad of soldiers with blackened faces, and asked various urgent questions that were larded with terse remarks about the many shortcomings of the Irish. Getting my breath back and managing a brief statement in my cut-glass Oxford tones, I was abruptly recognized as nonthreatening, brusquely advised to fuck off, and off I duly and promptly fucked. (148)

Recumbent: lying down, suggestive of repose, as in a therapy couch.

…a decent if not sumptuous menu. (149)

Driberg developed a fondness for me which I don’t think was especially sexual. He would “try” any male person at least once, on the principle that you never know your luck, … I once had to cancel a dinner engagement with him and, being asked rather querulously why this was, replied that my girlfriend was in the hospital for some tests and that I wanted to visit her after work. “Ah, yes,” said Tom with every apparent effort at solicitude, “there’s a lot to go wrong with them, isn’t there? I do so hope that it isn’t her clitoris or anything ghastly like that.” Not all of this was by any means affectation. For Tom, the entire notion of heterosexual intercourse was gruesome to the last degree. (“That awful wound, my dear Christopher. I just don’t see how you can.” (152-3)

…I was very aware that my roadworthiness (Martin prefers the term “seaworthiness”) in real grown-up company was not to be assumed. (156)

…everybody has at one point seen man standing in front of the pornography section, in either a magazine store or a video emporium, but it was Martin who observed these swaying and muttering figures pulling out and then replacing the contents and compared it to “the Wailing Wall.” (158)

[note] So far from being some jaded Casanova, Martin possesses the rare gift—enviable if potentially time consuming—of being able to find something attractive in almost any woman. If this be misogyny, then give us increase of it. (159)

The words “ruggedly handsome features” appear on the first page of Nineteen Eighty-four and for a while Martin declined to go any further into the book. (“The man can’t write worth a damn.”) (160)

[note] But the more Martin absorbed himself in the man’s work, the more it was borne in on him that the recurrent twelve-year-old-girl theme in Nabokov’s writings was something more alarming and disturbing than a daring literary one-off. See, for his stern register of this disquieting business, the Guardian 14 November 2009. (161)

[Martin] I remember sitting quietly while he talked with authority about why Jane Austen was not all that good. [note: I write this in a week where I have been re-reading Northanger Abbey, and reflecting once again on the sheer justice of Kingsley’s verdict on Miss Austen’s “inclination to take a long time over what is of minor importance and a short time over what is major.”] (163)

…a perfectly foul establishment… (167)

Clive James wrote… “Here is a book so dull that … If it were to be read in the open air, birds would fall stunned from the sky.” (172)

I had also written a shorter piece for the New Statesman, reporting form the Conservative Party conference and saying in passing that I though Mrs. Thatcher was surprisingly sexy. … Almost as soon as we shook hands on immediate introduction, I felt that she knew my name and had perhaps connected it to the socialist weekly that had recently called her rather sexy. While she struggled adorably with this moment of pretty confusion, I felt obliged to seek controversy and picked a fight with her on a denial of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe policy. She took me up on it. I was (as it chances) right on the small point of fact, and she was wrong. Btu she maintained her wrongness with such adamantine strength that I eventually conceded the point and even bowed slightly to emphasize my acknowledgment. “No,” she said. “Bow lower!” Smiling agreeably, I bent forward a bit farther. “No, no,” she trilled. “Much lower!” By this time, a little group of interested bystanders was gathering. I again bent forward, this time much more self-consciously. Stepping around behind me, she unmasked her batteries and smote me on the rear with the parliamentary order-paper that she had been rolling into a cylinder behind her back. I regained the vertical with some awkwardness. As she walked away, she looked back over her shoulder and gave an almost imperceptibly slight roll of the hip while mouthing the words: “Naughty boy!” / I had and have eyewitnesses to this. At the time, though, I hardly believed it myself. (178)

But, if you exempt a solitary trip that I took to express support for the Icelandic socialists who were fighting to stop British trawlers from hovering up all their fish (and Iceland is an exotic locale all of its own, with its moonscape interior and geyser-supplied hot water with the ever-present diabolical whiff of sulphur), (179)

Christmas of 1976. The previous summer I had been very intrigued by reports of a small-scale but suggestive workers’ revolt in Communist Poland, … (187)

…a dingy Russian-backed Communist bureaucracy sitting atop a sullen and strongly Catholic people who perhaps only agreed with their rulers in distrusting Federal Germany. (An old national chestnut asks the question: If the Russians and the Germans both attack again, who do you shoot first? Answer: “The Germans. Business Before Pleasure.” You can also deduce something about a Pole who answers this question the other way around.) (188)

Rabbi Tarfon says somewhere that the task can never be quite completed, yet one has no right to give it up. Of the comrades I met that bleak winter, many of them veterans of the extremely nasty Polish prison system, none really expected to make more than a small dent in the regime. (188)

On the macro scale, it was still officially “true” that the mass graves of Katyn, across the Belarus border, in which the corpses of tens of thousands of Polish officers had been hastily interred in the 1940s, were the responsibility of the Nazis. But there simply wasn’t a single person in the whole of Poland who credited this disgusting untruth. Not even those paid to spread it believed it. (189)

Warsaw… As an interpreter he provided us with the lovely Barbara Kopec, who held down a daytime job in the “Palace of Culture” that dominated the main square of the city. It had been built as a personal gift from Joseph Stalin to the people of Poland, and in its form and shape expressed all the good taste and goodwill that such benevolence might have implied. It wasn’t much fun working inside the building, as Barbara remarked, but at least it meant she didn’t have to look at the damn thing. (189)

Anti-semitism… It would have been even nastier if Jacek Kuron had actually been Jewish, but the fact is that he wasn’t: Polish and other Jew-baiters have been known to operate without possessing the raw material of any actual Jews to “work” with. (190)

…there was heavy snow that Christmas, and I found the icy city rather hypnotizing. We went to the nearby township of Kazimierc, once a center of Jewish life before the nearly “clean” sweep that had been made of Polish Jewry. We attended a midnight Mass in Vilanow, where the congregation was so densely packed that it spilled out of doors, with worshippers kneeling in the drifts. (190)

…one of the strikes in the port city of Strettin had been provoked when the shipyard workers read in the Communist Party paper that they had all “volunteered” to work longer hours in the interests of production. One of the leaders of that strike, a man named Edmund Baluka, later told me that he had been sent as a soldier into Czechoslovakia during the Warsaw Pact aggression of August 1968. He had been told, and had believed, that he was going to repel a West German invasion of Prague. Discovering a complete absence of Germans in the country—except for East Germans soliders who were also taking part in the Russian-sponsored occupation—had destroyed his entire faith in anything the Party ever said. (191)

[Timerman] I borrow Jacobo’s words here because they are crystalline authentic and because my own would be no good: Flaubert was right when he said that our use of language is like a cracked kettle on which we bang out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we need to move the very stars to pity. (197)

Borges: … He stilled my burblings with an upraised finger. “You will remember,” he said, “the lines I will now speak. You will always remember them.” And he then recited the following:
What man has bent o’er his son’s sleep, to brood
How that face shall watch his when cold it lies?
Or thought, as his own mother kissed his eyes,
Of what her kiss was when his father wooed?
The title (Sonnet XXIX of Dante Gabriel Rossetti)—“Inclusiveness”—may sound a trifle sickly but the enfolded thought recurred to me more than once after I became a father and Borges was quite right: I have never had to remind myself of the words. (199)

On top of this, I was becoming increasingly aware that that other old Tory, Dr. Samuel Johnson, had been quite wrong when he pronounced that a man who was tired of London was tired of life. With me, it was if anything the reverse. If I was ever going, it was time for me to go. (203)

Such an impression wasn’t corrected even by reading Mark Twain, who was presented to us as a children’s writer only and who seemed to be depicting conditions of near-primeval backwardness, … (207)

…I had to agree that the picture of New York wasn’t a very alluring one at that. America seemed either too modern, with no castles or cathedrals and no sense of history, or simply too premodern with too much wilderness and unpolished conduct. (208)

A colleague of my father’s had a daughter who got herself married and found that an American friend she had met on holiday had offered to pay the whole cost of the nuptial feast. I forget the name of this paladin, but he had a crew-cut and amputated trouser-bottoms and a cigar stub and he came for ma place called Yonkers, which seemed to me a ridiculous name to give to a suburb. (I, who had survived Crapstone…) Anyway, once again one received a Henry Jamesian impression of brash generosity without overmuch refinement. (208)

Yet when I had been to hear W.H. Auden recite his poems at Great St. Mary’s Church in 1966, I had noticed that he closed with the words “God bless the USA, so large, so friendly, and so rich.” … I couldn’t quite square this at first with my revulsion from the America of drawling and snarling accents, and cheap fizzy softdrinks and turbocharged war and racism. (209)

…made me think for many years—that time spent asleep in New York was somehow time wasted. (212)

…the foul cocktail known as a “Manhattan” … (220)

…I became the tenant of a walk-up on East Tenth Street, on the north side of Tompkins Square, … (228)

Ronald Reagan… I can easily remember…exactly why I found him so rebarbative at the time. There was, first, his appallingly facile manner as a liar. … “The Russian language contains no word for ‘freedom’” was another stupefying pronouncement of his: … (232)

rebarbative : 1890-5, fearsome, forbidding, repelling, unattractive. Derived from an old French word which referred to two bearded men face to face in conflict.

…I came to appreciate that I couldn’t and perhaps shouldn’t afford their leafy neighborhoods of the Northwest. I found a row house in northeast Capitol Hill, where if I wanted to cab it home late at night from Dupont Circle, African-born taxi drivers would sometimes decline to take me (on the unarguable—at least by me with them—grounds that it was “a black area). I have never since beenable to use the word “gentrification” as a sneer: the unavoidable truth is that it’s almost invariably a good symptom. (236)

…the stubborn American belief that “hot tea” is made with lukewarm or formerly boiled water… (239)

Speaking of airplanes… on a day in early September 2001 I got up at a decent hour on a morning that simply had to be described as golden and crisp, went out through the blazingly autumnal Virginia woods to Dulles Airport and boarded a flight to Seattle. … I shook a lot of hands, kissed a few cheeks, signed quite a number of my Kissinger books, and retired (as Lord Rochester once said, as if breaking the rule of a lifetime) “early, sober, and alone.” (241)

…often contented themselves with inexpensive, unserious remarks about American machismo or Bush’s “cowboy” style. (249)

…amendments abolishing the established church, postulating an armed people, opposing the… (252)

…the monstrous birth of a spoiled theocracy in Pakistan… (263)

At the moment when Iran stood at the threshold of modernity, a black-winged ghoul came flapping back form exile on a French jet… (266)

Edward Said… It was Western presumption, he argued, to regard Islam as a problem of backwardness. It led to our first major disagreement, … (267)

Salman… He looked at me and lowered his very heavy lids: these later became so heavy that they needed a slight surgical correction but in those days he could adopt the gaze of what Martin unforgettably called “a falcon looking through a Venetian blind.” This meant his attention was engaged. (275)

At lunch afterward, Salman had talked in an unstoppably poetic way about all matters Shakespearean: unstoppable in the sense that nobody present wanted to stop him. … I soon enough realized when young that did not have the true “stuff” for fiction and poetry. … Now, listening to Salman “compose,” as it were, I suddenly wondered if this was related to my near-total inability with music, itself quite possibly [275] linked with my incapacity in chess and mathematics. Thinking quickly and checking one by one, I noticed that all my poet and novelist friends possessed at the very least some musical capacity: they could either play a little or could give a decent description of a musical event. Could it be this that marked them off from the mere essayist? I hit one iceberg-size objection right away. Vladimir Nabokov, perhaps the man of all men who could make one feel embarrassed to be employing the same language (English being only his third), detested music: “Music, I regret to say, affects me merely as an arbitrary succession of more or less irritating sounds… The concept piano and all wind instruments bore me in smaller doses and flay me in larger ones.” Ah, but that needn’t mean he wasn’t musical. … in the New York Public Library there rests a case of written material—“Nabokov Under Glass”—in which the great lepidopterist attempted a form of notation that could run along the top of his holographs. What is this if not a form of musicality? (276)

Crepuscular: of, pertaining to, or resembling twilight; dim; indistinct. Zoology: appearing or active in the twilight, as certain insects or bats.
Owl Farm in Woody Creek, home of the storied Hunter Thompson. In these booze-fueled and crepuscular surroundings, in the intervals of our own midnight gunplay with rows of empty bottles… (290)

I have never been able to rid myself of the view that Bush was not really surprised to read the first reports from Kuwait—I watched him received them very calmly—and only became upset when he learned that Saddam Hussein has taken the entire country. The whole thing stank of a pre-arranged carve-up gone wrong. It was almost impossible to read the transcript of his envoy’s last meeting with Saddam and to form any other opinion. Ambassador April Glaspie, whom I had known briefly in London, explicitly told the Iraqi dictator that the United States took no position on his quarrel with the Kuwaitis. Had Saddam taken only the Rumaila oil filed and the Bubiyan and Warba islands, there would have been no casus belli. I printed the Glaspie memorandum in Harper’s magazine, along with some highly critical commentary, and made several speeches and media appearances saying that any war would be fought, in effect, on false pretenses. (290)

…the cull continues, and faces and bodies go slack as their owners are pinioned and led away. (296) Cull: to choose from a group (for example to choose the best verses from a poet’s work), to control or reduce the size of a group (as of a herd) by removing (or hunting) the weaker members. Pinion: to bind a person’s arms or cut a bird’s primary feathers to prevent flight.

…the subject of so much lurid invention and paranoid disinformation… (298)

I think of it whenever I hear some fools say, “All right, we agree that Saddam was a bad guy.” Nobody capable of uttering that commonplace has any conception of radical evil. (299)

Purulent: related to pus.

…my nauseating carapace. (316) Carapace (car-uh-pace) : a protective, decorative, or disguising shell.

I don’t intend to make a parade of my own feelings here, … (321)

This made me relax fractionally, … (322)

Everyone was supposed to say something, but when John Daily took the first scoop form the urn and spread the ashes on the breeze, there was something so unutterably final in the gesture that tears seemed as natural as breathing and I wasn’t at all sure that I could go through with it. My idea had been to quote form the last scene of Macbeth, which is the only passage I know that can hope to rise to such an occasion. The tyrant and usurper has been killed, but Ross has to tell old Siward that his boy has perished in the struggle:
/
Your son, my lord, has paid a solider’s debt;
He only lived but till he was a man;
The which no sooner had his prowess confirm’d
In the unshrinking station where he fought,
But like a man he died.
/
This being Shakespeare, the truly emotional and understated moment follows a beat or two later, when Ross adds: /
/
Your cause of sorrow
Must not be measured by his worth, for then
It hath no end. (327)

…with those whose pressing need it is to … (330)

…refrain from pointing out what a breathtakingly insulting and patronizing question this is. (330)

the idea that a human life should be expended in the guilty, fearful, self-obsessed propitiation of supernatural nonentities… (331)

Who are your favorite heroes of fiction? Dennis Barlow, Humebrt Humbert, Horatio Hornblower, Jeeves, Nicholas Salmanovitch Rubashov, Funes the Memorious , Lucifer. (333)

Who are your favorite heroines of fiction? Maggie Tulliver, Dorothea, Becky Sharp, Candy, O, Bertie’s Aunt Dahlia. (333)

Your favorite occupation? Travel in contested territory. Hard-working writing and reading when safely home, in the knowledge that an amusing friend is later coming to dinner. (334)

Who are your favorite poets? Philip Larkin, Robert Conquest, W. H. Auden, James Fenton, W. B. Yeats, Chidiock Tichbourne, G. K. Chesterton, Wendy Cope. (334)

…respect that I could have forfeited if I had missed—as the French so quenchingly say—a perfectly good opportunity for keeping my mouth shut. (336)

I therefore am glad that I waited as long as I did before ingesting and digesting Marcel Proust, because one has to have endured a few decades before wanting, let alone needing, to emark on the project of recovering lost life. (338)

To be the father of growing daughters is to understand something of what Yeats evokes with his imperishable phrase “terrible beauty.” Nothing can make one so happily exhilarated or so frightened: it’s a solid lesson in the limitations of self to realize that your heart is running around inside someone else’s body. It also makes me quite astonishingly calm at the thought of death: I know whom I would die to protect and I also understand that nobody but a lugubrious serf can possible wish for a father who never goes away. (340)

Suicide murderers… About people who set out to lose their lives, then, there seems to hang an air of fanaticism: a gigantic sense of self-importance unattractively fused with a masochistic tendency to self-abnegation. Not wholesome. (344)

…excrement-colored capital city of Kabul, … (345)

…the eerie wretchedness and interstellar frigidity of the place… (349)

At about half past midday, a decent slug of Mr. Walker’s amber restorative, cut with Perrier water (an ideal delivery system) and no ice. At luncheon, perhaps half a bottle red wine: not always more but never less. Then back to the desk, and ready to repeat the treatment at the evening meal. No “after dinner drinks”—most especially nothing sweet and never, ever any brandy. “Nightcaps” depend on how well the day went, but always the mixture as before. No mixing: no messing around with a gin here and a vodka there. /
Alcohol makes other people less tedious, and food less bland, and can help provide what the Greeks called entheos, or the slight buzz of inspiration when reading or writing. The only worthwhile miracle in the New Testament—the transmutation of water into wine during the wedding at Cana—is a tribute to the persistence of Hellenism in an otherwise austere Judaea. The same applies to the seder at Passover, which is obviously modeled on the Platonic symposium: questions are asked (especially of the young) while wine is circulated. No better form of sodality has ever been devised: at Oxford one was positively expected to take wine during tutorials. (351) Sodality: A society or an association, especially a devotional or charitable society for the laity in the Roman Catholic Church.

In what was once German Prussia, in the district of Posen and very near the border of Poland… hour’s drive form the Polish city of Wroclaw, formerly Breslau. A certain Mr. Nathaniel Blumenthal, … one of old Nate’s daughters married a certain Lionel Levin, of Liverpool (the Levins also hailing originally from the Posen/Poznan area), (354)

…always a version of the same cliché about the Jews being over-sharp in business… (358)

Some readers may already have caught their breath, I hope enviously. (360)

It was as easy as breathing to go and have tea near the place where Jane Austen had so wittily scribbled and so painfully died. One of the things that causes some critics to marvel at Miss Austen is the laconic way in which, as a daughter of the epoch that saw the Napoleonic Wars, she contrives like a Greek dramatist to keep it off the stage while she concentrates on the human factor. I think this comes close to affectation on the part of some of her admirers. Captain Frederick Wentworth in Persuasion, for example, is partly of interest to the female sex because of the “prize” loot he has extracted form his encounters with Bonaparte’s navy. Still, as one born after Hiroshima I can testify that a small Hampshire township, however large the number of names of the fallen on its village-green war memorial, is more than a world away form any unpleasantness on the European mainland or the high or narrow seas that lie between. (I used to love detail that Hampshire’s “New Forest” is so called because it was only planted for the hunt in the late eleventh century.) I remember watching with my father and brother through the fence of Stanstead House, the Sussex mansion of the Earl of Bessborough, one evening in the early 1960’s, and seeing an immense golden meadow carpeted carpeted entirely by grazing rabbits. I’ll never keep that quiet, or be that still, again. (360)

…revenant… spirit who comes back from the dead to get revenge or harass specific persons.

I once spoke to someone who had survived the genocide in Rwanda, and she said to me that there was now nobody left on the face of the earth, either friend or relative, who knew who she was. … I think of this every time I hear of the callow ambition to “make a new start” or be “born again”: Do those who talk this way truly wish for the slate to be wiped? (367)

In his view, it is still “Operation Reinhardt,” or the planned destructive of Polish Jewry, that is to be considered as the centerpiece of what we commonly call the Holocaust, in which of the estimated 5.7 million Jewish dead, “roughly three million were prewar Polish citizens.” (371)

I think I have a very good idea why it is that anti-Semitism is so tenacious and so protean and so enduring. … If you meet a devout Christian or a believing Muslim, you are meeting someone who would give everything he owned for a personal, face-to-face meeting with the blessed founder or prophet. But in the visage of the Jew, such ardent believers encounter the very figure who did have such a precious moment, and who spurned the opportunity and turned shrugging aside. Do you imagine for a microsecond that such a vile, churlish transgression will ever be forgiven? (378)

Edward Said. It was impossible not to be captivated by him: of his many immediately seductive qualities I will start by mentioning a very important one. When he laughed, it was as if he was surrendering unconditionally to some guilty pleasure. (385)

I had not particularly liked the way in which he wrote about literature in Beginnings, and I was always on my guard if not outright hostile when any tincture of “deconstruction” or “postmodernism” was applied to my beloved canon of English writing, but when Edward talked about English literature and quoted from it, he passed the test that I always privately apply: Do you truly love this subject and could you bear to live for one moment if it was obliterated? (385-6)

Taking coffee with him once in a shopping mall in Stanford, I saw him suddenly register something over my shoulder. It was a ladies’ dress shop. He excused himself and dashed in, to emerge soon after with some fashionable and costly looking bags. “Mariam,” he said as if by way of explanation, “has never worn anything that I have not bought for her.” (388)

…but Orientalism was a book that made one think. [The best critique of it is Ibn Warraq’s Defending the West] (390)

Rather like our then-friend Noam Chomsky, Edward in the final instance beilved that if the United States was doing something, then that thing could not by definition be a moral or ethical action. (394)

Said: … American arrival in Baghdad as a grand example of “Orientalism” in action. The looting and destruction of the exhibits in the Iraq National Museum had, he wrote, been a deliberate piece of their cultural patrimony and demonstrate to them their new servitude. Even at a time when anything at all could be said and believed so long as it was sufficiently and hysterically anti-Bush, this could be described as exceptionally mendacious. (397)

Anthony Powell’s narrator… The Pilgrim’s Progress that had stuck in both … after his aunt read the book aloud to him as a child, he could never, even after he was grown-up, watch a lone figure draw nearer across a field, without thinking that this was Apollyon come to contend with him. (402)

My younger brother, Peter—aged perhaps eight—has so strongly imbibed John Bunyan’s Puritan classic as almost to have memorized it. (403)

Damascus… Damascene moments. (406)

Susan Sontag… She wanted to have everything at least three ways and she wanted it voraciously: an evening of theater or cinema followed be a lengthy dinner at an intriguing new restaurant, with visitors from at least one new country, to be succeeded by very late-night conversation precisely so that an early start could be made in the morning. I consider myself pretty durable in these same sweepstakes but I once almost fell asleep standing up while preparing her a sofa bed in Washington after a very exhausting day of multiple meals and discussions: she had vanished to begin the next day long before I regained consciousness. (417)

…formally correct noises… (417)

Deracinate: to pull out from the roots, or culture, especially to remove the racial or ethnic characteristics from. (racine: root) uproot.

James Herrick, The History and Theory of Rhetoric

2011-10-20T21:05:00.001-06:00

James Herrick, The History and Theory of Rhetoric, Allyn and Bacon, Boston, 1997.

Aristotle… emphasized a type of argument he called the enthymeme. Though scholars differ on exactly how Aristotle defined an enthymeme most will agree that it is an argument built from values, beliefs, or knowledge held in common by a speaker and an audience. In fact, Aristotle went so far as to claim that the art of rhetoric’s central concern was the enthymeme. Perhaps this was because persuasion—for Aristotle, the principle goal of rhetoric—depends on commonality between a rhetor and an audience. (9)

…in the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. As historian of rhetoric John Poulakos writes, “when the Sophists appeared on the horizon of the Hellenic city-states, they found themselves in the midst of an enormous cultural change: from aristocracy to democracy.” [32] … With democratic reforms, the political life of the polis came to be managed by oratory and debate. (32-33)

An Athenian trial consisted of two speeches—one of prosecution, the other of defense—and the jury of several hundred members did not deliberate but simply voted. Testimonial evidence had to be filed with the court preceding the trial, and was simply read aloud to a gathered citizen-jury during the trial itself. … The presiding judge’s role was more that of a master of ceremonies and timekeeper than a legal expert. There were no attorneys in the modern sense of the term. … Beginning around 430 B.C. speechwriters, or logographers like the Sophist Antiphon, could be hired to write a courtroom speech… (34)

The Sophists were active in Athens and other Greek city-states from about the middle of the fifth century B.C. until the end of the fourth century. Though there never were many Sophists active at any given time, they exercised influence on the development of rhetoric and even the course of Western culture vastly out of proportion with their numbers. (35)

Plato’s influence on fourth-century Athenian culture was relatively slight, whereas oratory was central to the lives of most Athenian citizens, who regularly attended meetings of the courts or the Assembly in some capacity, even if they did not actively engage in legal or political affairs. (35)

Sophists… were also iconoclasts who questioned assumptions at the very foundation of Greek society. Sophists loved to experiment with arguments… the more shocking the better. (36)

Still, to the average Athenian some of the leading Sophists appeared to be eccentrics wrapped up in more or less irrelevant intellectual pursuits. Thus, in his famous play Clouds Aristophanes mocks the Sophists… Interestingly, the great playwright treats Socrates himself as a Sophist, though the philosopher neither presented speeches nor taught rhetoric. (36)

In the dialectical method, speeches and arguments started from statements termed endoxa, or premises that were widely believed or taken to be highly probable. For example… It is better to possess much virtue than much money… One student would develop an argument based on this claim. Another student would then challenge the argument on the basis of other widely accepted notions… The dialectical method was employed in part because the Sophists accepted the notion of dissoi logoi, or contradictory arguments. That is, Sophists believed that strong arguments could be produced for or against any claim. (37)

…epideixis, a word describing a speech prepared for a formal occasion. (37)

…we should note that Western culture has come closer to following the argumentative model set out by Sophists like Protagoras and Gorgias in the actual conduct of its affairs than that suggested by Plato of seeking truth by means of philosophical inquiry. (38)

Athenians in particular were suspicious of foreigners claiming to possess knowledge or skills that superior to those of the Athenians themselves. / The fact that they were form outside the Hellenic world and their habit of travel created a third concern about Sophists for many Greeks. The Sophists had, as the saying goes, been around, and in their travels they noted that people believe rather different things in different places. Their cultural relativism contributed directly to another reason many in Greece were suspicious of these professional pleaders and teachers of rhetoric. The Sophists, not surprisingly, developed a view of truth as relative to places and cultures. (39)

According to Sophists like Gorgias and Protagoras, truth was not to be found in transcendent sources such as gods or a Platonic realm of universal forms. Rather, Sophists believed that truth emerged form a clash of arguments. Plato repudiated such a view of truth, arguing that it was highly dangerous. In fact, the Sophists’ philosophy was even more radical than their moral relativism would suggest. John Poulakos affirms that the Sophists believed “the world could always be recreated linguistically.” That is, reality itself is a linguistic construction rather than an objective fact. … James Murphy and Richard Katula write that “knowledge was subjective and everything is precisely what the individual believes it to be.” This meant that “each of us, not necessarily human beings in the collective, decides what something means to us.” (40)

Gorgias: famous for: 1. Nothing exists. 2. If anything did exist, we could not know it. 3. If we could knot that something existed, we would not be able to communicate it to anyone else. (41)

Gorgias also adhered to a philosophy of language and knowledge that suggested that the only “reality” we have access to “lies in the human psyche, and its malleability and susceptibility” to linguistic manipulation. (Bruce E. Gronbeck, “Gorgias on Rhetoric and Poetic: A Rehabilitation,” Southern Speech Communication Journal 38 (Fall 1972): 27-38). (41)

Gorgias’s interest in the persuasive power of language drew his attention in particular to the sounds of words. … If words do not represent an external reality, then their importance is as a means of shaping a verbal reality in human thought. … florid rhyming style that strikes most modern readers as overdone. But remember, what he is after is a magical incantation to virtually hypnotize his audience, not a tight, logical proof appealing to reason. (42)

As poetry was considered in Greek lore to be of divine origin, the relationship between beautiful words and supernatural power was a more natural one for Gorgias than it is for modern readers. Gorgias believed that words worked their magic most powerfully by arousing human emotions such as fear, pity, and longing. [as opposed to working most powerfully by appeal to aesthetics of music, architecture, etc.] (42)

Gorgias’s interest in antithesis extended beyond his concern for style. Like some of the other Sophists, he held that two antithetical statements can be made on each subject, and that truth emerged from the clash of fundamentally opposed positions. The ides that truth is a product of the clash of views was, as we have seen closely related to the concept of kairos, the belief that truth is relative to circumstances. This view also reflects the Sophists’ commitment to aporia, the effort to place a claim in doubt. Once clouded in doubt, the orator’s goal was to demonstrate that one resolution of the issue was more likely than another. (43)

As we have noted, Sophists were considered less than upright citizens by many Greeks. Nevertheless, some of them had connections with very powerful people in Athens. Protagoras, for instance, was close to Pericles… (44)

Isocrates… was only ten years older than Plato… Both men studied under Socrates, and both claimed him as their model. (45)

Isocrates’ teaching was not aimed at creating clever and entertaining speakers, but rather at improving the political practices of Athens. … Isocrates also insisted on high moral character in students. This concern for ethos, or the speaker’s character, set Isocrates apart form the Sophists whose orientation was decidedly more practical. (45-6)

Heuristic: Discourse’s capacity for discovery, whether of facts, insights, or even of self-awareness. (51)

Kairos: Rhetoric’s search for relative truth rather than absolute certainty; a consideration of opposite points of view, as well as attention to such factors as time and circumstances. An opportune moment or situation. (51)

Plato… attacked the sophistic practice of rhetoric in his dialogue called Phaedrus. Sophists and their philosophy are also mentioned in Plato’s dialogues Sophist and Protagoras. (54)

The Sophists’ rhetoric, according to Plato, aimed only at persuasion about justice through the manipulation of public opinion (doxa), whereas an adequate view of justice must be grounded in true knowledge (episteme) (55)

In the course of his conversation with Gorgias, Socrates has made the surprising assertion that one who truly understands justice could never choose to do injustice. This is because to understand justice is to love it, and at the same time to recognize just how repulsive injustice is. (57)

Has Plato been fair to rhetoric and the Sophists in Gorgias? Some historians of rhetoric, like Brian Vickers, think not. Vickers notes, for instance, that though Socrates says he rejects the rhetorical way of arguing based on probabilities, witnesses, beliefs, and even ridicule, he engages in these tactic when they serve his ends. Similarly, Richard Leo Enos writes that Plato’s case in Gorgias should be viewed as “rhetorical argument of the kind associated with sophistic rhetoric.” … Enos finds the portrayal of Gorgias himself so exaggerated as to be unrecognizable. “The biased characterization of Gorgias of Leontini in Plato’s famous dialogue,” writes Enos, “was a gross misrepresentation…” (62)

Cicero… “What most surprised me about Plato in that work was that it seemed to me that as he was in the process of ridiculing rhetors he himself appeared to be the foremost rehtor.” (63)

The Sophists in Gorgias hold that rhetoric creates truth that is useful for the moment out of doxa, or the opinions of the people, through the process of argument and counterargument. … In some respects, then, Plato’s argument against rhetoric extends to any aspect of democracy (rule by the demos) (63)

If deliberative oratory dealt with questions of expedience [allocation of resources, gov’t], and forensic oratory with justice, ceremonial or epideictic oratory, then, dealt with virtue and vice. This kind of speaking played a more important role in Athens than might be immediately apparent, for it provided opportunities to reinforce important values having to do with right behavior, or to uphold virtues such as courage, honor, or honesty… Martin Luther King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech can be seen as an example of epideictic oratory in which King upholds the values of justice, harmony, and peace. (81)

…when a lawyer makes a case in court, the focus is not on the future, but rather on questions of past fact such as “what was done?” and “who did it?” … Forensic oratory reconstructs the past, rather than arguing about the future good of the city-state. (82)

Emotions, as Aristotle views them, are not irrational impediments to decision making. Rather, they are rational responses to certain kinds of circumstances and arguments. … “it was Aristotle’s contribution to offer a very different view of emotion, so that emotional appeal would no longer be viewed as an extra-rational enchantment.” (84)

He also notes casual fallacies such as the post hoc fallacy. This fallacy suggests that because one event followed another, the former caused the latter. (87)

Above all, a speaker must be clear. “Clearness is secured,” writes Aristotle, “by using words (nouns and verbs alike) that are current and ordinary” (1404b). Thus, a speaker must have a good ear for everyday spoken language. The effective orator should not use so many artistic devices in speaking that the speech takes on an artificial feeling, for “naturalness is persuasive.” It is difficult to escape the conclusion that Aristotle’s advice on style is in many ways a reaction against the highly stylized speaking of the Sophists. (87)

Dialectic: A method of reasoning form common opinions, directed by established principles of reasoning to probable conclusions. A logical method of debating issues of general interest, starting from widely accepted propositions. (90)

Accounts of Roman orators slapping their thighs, stamping their feet, and even ripping open their togas to reveal war wounds suggests that delivery in Rome was quite a different matter form the stolid “talking-head” approach to speaking characteristic of contemporary politicians. (98)

Judicial arguments were often arranged under two headings discussed in Cicero’s De Inventione. The first of these is called “attributes of the person,” while the second is termed “attributes of the act. … in a culture in which personal character was elevated, questions surrounding the accused person’s reputation had to be addressed. Such questions, for the Roman courtroom pleader, included “such straightforward matters as the person’s name, nature, manner of life, and the like.” Cicero writes, “we hold the following to be the attributes of the person: name, nature, manner of life, fortune, habit, feeling, interests, purposes, achievements, accidents, speeches made.” Under these divisions a judicial pleader might consider some issues that modern readers would likely find irrelevant to courtroom pleading. For example, the accused’s place of birth and nationality (nature), or even manner in which he or she was reared (manner of life) might be developed into an argument for accusation of defense. (100)

An individual’s moral character does not emerge from the words of a speech, as Aristotle suggested in making ethos a technical proof in rhetoric. This earlier Greek view suggested that moral character could be studied and used persuasively by the orator. Rather, in keeping with Roman thinking on the subject, character was a natural trait of an individual that gradually revealed itself through the course of a life. James May writes, “The Roman view is succinctly… expressed by Cicero in De Oratore: “Feelings are won over by a man’s dignity (dignitas), achievements (res gestae), and reputation (existimatio).’ Aristotle’s conception of personal character portrayed through the medium of a speech was, for the Roman orator, neither acceptable nor adequate.” (102)

In De Oratore, Cicero blames Plato for separating wisdom and eloquence in the philosopher’s famous attack on the Sophists in Gorgias. “Socrates,” writes Moroever, “this is the source form which has sprung the undoubtedly absurd and unprofitable and reprehensible severance between the tongue and the brain, leading us to have one set of professors to teach us to think and another to teach us to speak.” Cicero sought to reunite “the tongue and the brain,” and in the process to produce great speakers who also were great thinkers. [un-American] (103)

Restricting access to rhetorical training to the select few who possessed particular traits of character and a particular moral perspective (and, we might add, certain political views), Quintillian… (108)

Quintilian taught his students to think of judicial speeches—the type with which he was most concerned—as divided into five parts, … The first part, the exordium, was an introduction designed to dispose the audience to listen to the speech. The second part, the narratio, was a statement of the facts essential to understanding the case, and intended to reveal the essential nature of the subject about which they were to render a decision. / The third part of the judicial speech was the proof or confirmatio, which was a section designed to offer evidences in support of claims advanced during the narratio. Fourth came the confutatio, or the refutation, in which couterarguments were answered. Finally the peroratio or conclusion was presented, a section in which the orator demonstrated again the full strength of the case presented. (110)

Not surprisingly, as the power of the emperors increased over against that of the Senate, the importance of rhetoric as a means of shaping policy declined. (114)

Delectare: To delight; one of Cicero’s three functions or goals of rhetoric. (117)

Docere: To teach; one of Cicero’s three functions or goals of rhetoric. (117)

Movere: To persuade or move an audience’s emotions; one of Cicero’s three functions or goals of rhetoric. (118)

Kathleen Welch writes that “it is interesting to note that On Invention was the only text of Cicero available to most of the medieval period and therefore was frequently cited during this period.” Thus, two works—De Inventione and Rhetorica ad Herennium—were “the major works of Latin antiquity for Middle Ages.” (123)

As educational practices developed over the long course of the Middle Ages, an intellectual movements known as Scholasticism became dominant in parts of Europe. Scholasticism was a closed and authoritarian approach to education centered on a disputation over a fixed body of premises derived largely from the teachings of Aristotle. Scholasticism developed around the medieval tendency to treat ancient sources—both the Bible and certain texts of classical antiquity—as authoritative. So strong was this tendency that individual sentences from a respected source, even when taken our of context, could be employed to secure a point in debate. These isolated statements form ancient sources were called sententiae. Some authors collected large numbers of sententiae into anthologies for educational and disputational purposes. Disputes centered on debatable points suggested by one or more sententiae, these debatable notions being called quaestiones. (124)

…the writer who initially translated classical rhetoric into the language of the Church, Augustine of Hippo … was sent to the great Roman port of Carthage to study rhetoric as a teenage, but fell victim to the temptations of the city. He fathered a child by his mistress before he was eighteen. … The rhetoric Augustine taught was based on works by Cicero [125] … Augustine lived, believed, and taught much like a Sophist of the fifth century B.C. in Athens. Moreover, when he attacks rhetoric, as he does at points in his Confessions, it is a sophistical model of rhetoric he has in mind. “Augustine never abandons rhetoric qua rhetoric in practice,” writes Troup, “but rejects only the abuses of the Second Sophistic.” As we shall see, Augustine thought much in the rhetorical tradition was useful in the Christian church … (126)

Thus, rhetoric posed Augustine a second dilemma: It was useful, even vital to confuting the heretics and teaching his own congregation, but it was also suspect and potential dangerous art. Augustine resolved his dilemma by reasoning that rhetoric should not be at the disposal only of the unbelieving. Moreover, the Bible itself was a model of eloquence for the Christian. He treats these problems in his most important work on rhetoric, De Doctrina Christiana. (127-8)

Christians needed training in reading the Bible, and even in defending it, if the Christian gospel was to be preserved and propagated. “The De Doctrina was written for clergy and highly educated members of the laity,” writes Johnson, “to help them in their efforts to read the Bible and to give them advice about how to go about sharing what they had learned with fellow Christans who were less educated than themselves.” (128)

*** In De Doctrina Augustine sets out a sophisticated theory of the relationship between words or “signs,” and the things they represent. In Book II Augustine divides the world into the broad categories: things, and signs pointing to things. Words are one set of signs, but Augustine also held that the world itself could be understood as a system of signs pointing people to God. Human beings themselves, in fact, are a kind of symbol in that they are created in the image of God. The whole world of physical things, the, is to be used to return us to God, not to be enjoyed for its own sake. /
This distinction between the sign and the thing signified helps the Christian preacher discern two different kinds of meanings in objects encountered in scripture. For example, a rock or a tree in a biblical story are physical objects, signified by the words rock and tree. However, the rock or the tree may also themselves be signs with their own spiritual meaning. The rock may refer to Christ, as St. Paul suggested that a rock in one Mosaic story did. The tree may represent everlasting life. (129)

Martianus Capella… A lawyer with a strong interest in mysticism and little regard for Christianity, Capella lived in Carthage … best known for a single work, broken into several books, that presented in prose and poetry the seven liberal arts. It is difficult to overestimate the influence of his work, The Marriage of Philology and Mercury (A.D. 429), which included his Book of Rhetoric. One scholar has called The Marriage of Philology and Mercury “the most successful textbook ever written,” and it certainly was one of the most widely used books in medieval schools. In his strange, massive, and thoroughly pagan book, Capella imagines a wedding in which the god Mercury gives his bride a gift of the seven liberal arts constituting the core of the medieval curriculum. These seven are grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and harmonics. … Capella represented rhetoric as a heavily armed woman, a tradition that continued throughout the Middle Ages. (130)

Typical of the preaching manuals of the late Middle Ages is Robert of Basevorn’s Forma Praedicandi (The Form of Preaching). … Robert turns to a discussion of the method of preaching by developing themes. Interestingly, themes ought to “contain not more than three statements or convertible to three.” He is insistent on this point, devoting an entire chapter, Chapter XIX, to the discussion of divisibility by three. “No matter how many statements there may be, as long as I can divide them into three, I have a sufficient proposition.” This notion that sermons ought to be divisible into three sections persists in preaching to this day. (133)

According to the treatises on letter writing, a letter should be divided into five parts. George Kennedy explains that the “standard five-part epistolary structure” is reminiscent of typical Roman divisions of a speech: “The salutatio, or greeting; the captatio benevoluntatiae, or exordium, which secured the goodwill of the recipient; the narratio (the body of the letter setting out the details of the problem to be addressed); the petitio, or specific request, demand, or announcement; and a relatively simple conclusio.” Of these parts, the salutio received a disproportionate amount of attention, probably because establishing the correct relationship between yourself and… (135)

Praedicandi (Ars) The art of preaching; one of three medieval rhetorical arts. (143)

Great French scholar Peter Ramus (1515-1572)… Ramus vehemently opposed scholasticism, proposing an alternative approach to learning that did not make reference to authorities such as Aristotle or Cicero at all. As Peter Mack writes, the iconoclastic Ramus “built his academic career on scandalous attacks on the academics gods of his time: Aristotle, Cicero and Quintilian.” He was skeptical about the value of Aristotle’s and Cicero’s treatment of rhetoric, calling the former “the man chiefly responsible for confusing the arts of rhetoric and dialectic,” and the latter “verbose” and “unable to restrain and check himself” when making a speech. /
Though he owed much to Quintilian, the great Roman teacher also became Ramus’ target in an angry attack entitled, Arguments in Rhetoric against Quintiliam (1549). Ramus rejected Quintilian’s famous conception of the perfect orator as a virtuous as well as an eloquent person, summed up in the Latin phrase Vir bonus beni dicendi (“The good man speaking well”). Such a view, which ignored the brute fact that an eloquent speaker could also be an evil person, was for Ramus simply “useless and stupid.” … Ong writes that “in a very real sense Italian humanism stood for a rhetorically centered opposed to the dialectically or logically centered culture of North Europe.” Ramus preferred the latter, less rhetorical, model of liberal education. … Because of Ramus’ enormous intellectual influence, rhetoric suffered considerable loss of prestige as a study… Ramus “separated thought from language” by advancing a model of education in which “reason breaks free of speech.” (167)

Whereas rhetoric was suffering under the criticism of Agricola and Ramus on the European continent in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, England was developing into a particularly fertile filed for the growth of interest in the art of rhetoric between 1500 and 1600. (167)

It has been noted by some scholars that the eighteenth century marks a period in which rhetorical theory turned away from its traditional concern for the invention of arguments, and toward aesthetic matters of style and good delivery. One leading expert on the period, Barbara Warnick, suggests that this shift in emphasis reflects the influence of Ramus in the sixteenth century and Descartes in the seventeenth. Both writers moved argument and proof out of the domain of rhetoric and into the domains of logic, dialectic, and mathematics. … At the same time, we might also note in this period a shift form an earlier concern for rhetoric’s public role as the techne of civil discourse as a window on the human mind or a means of personal refinement. (175)

Vico wrote passionately in response to the great philosopher and mathematician Rene Descartes, who despised rhetoric and wished to relegate it to an obscured place in the academy. (176)

Other changes taking in place in eighteenth-century England assisted rhetoric’s rise to prominence in education. English was displacing Latin as the language of scholarship, … urbanization was bringing people from the English countryside, from Scotland, and form Ireland to urban centers such as London. Many of these new city dwellers recognized that their rustic accents limited the possibility for personal advancement in the bigger cities. The rhetorical education. Thus, education in rhetoric was sought out by an increasingly broad cross-section of the British public during the century. … For a variety of reasons, then, rhetoric occupied a central place in British education in the eighteenth century. Winifred Horner notes that the potential for upward mobility in English society, a mobility dependent on a command of “good English,” meant that there was a strong demand for language instruction, particularly instruction in writing. (180)

Whatley’s Elements of Rhetoric … an ecclesiastical rhetoric… a treatise on the art of rhetoric that would assist both the preacher and the apologist or defender of Christianity. … Whatley’s theory, then, represents a break with one important emphasis of the classical tradition of Aristotle and Cicero: the tendency to see rhetoric as pursuing probable truths on debatable issues. If truth is absolute, rhetoric does not determine truth, though it may help to discover it. (190)

Izaak Walton, The Compleat Angler

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Izaak Walton, The Compleat Angler, The Modern Library, New York, 1939.

Walton was born at Stafford on August 9, 1593. … the son of Jervis Walton, of whom nothing further is known except that he died in February 1596/7. Of Walton’s mother nothing is known, not even her name. (Geoffrey Keynes, The Life of Izaak Walton, 3)

His first marriage took place on December 27, 1626, his wife being Rachel Floud of Canterbury, through whom he became connected with the Cranmer family. … Rachel Walton lived for nearly fourteen years after her marriage and bore six children, but none of them survived infancy. Nothing further is known of Walton’s married life. Rachel Walton died in 1640, and six years later Walton married for the second time, … By her he had three children, a daughter and two sons, one of whom survived. Anne Walton lived for sixteen years after her marriage, dying at Worcester in 1662… (5-6)

Meanwhile, in 1664, Walton had left his house in Chancery Lane, because it was “dangerous for honest men to be there”, dangerous, that is, for a Royalist. There is no reason, however, for supposing that he left London, and it is probable that in 1650 he was living in Clerkenwell. (6)

Walton had published his Compleat Angler in 1653, and it had immediately become popular, so that several editions were sold in a few years. (7)

It does not seem to have occurred to Walton before 1683 that he might die, but at last, on August 9 of that year, his ninetieth birthday, he decided to make his will, (11)

Piscator: … my purpose is to bestow a day or two in helping to destroy some of those villainous vermin, for I hate them perfectly, because they love fish so well, or rather, because they destroy so much; (35)

Auceps: As first the Lark, when she means to rejoice, to chear her self and those that hear her, she then quits the earth, and sings as she ascends higher into the air, and having ended her heavenly imployment, grows then mute and sad to think she must descend to the dull earth, which she would not touch but for necessity. (41)

Auceps: Nay, the smaller birds also do the like in their particular seasons, namely the Leverock, the Tit-lark, and little Linnet, and the honest Robin, that loves mankind both alive and dead. (41)

Auceps: There is also a little contemptible winged Creature [42] (an inhabitant of my Aerial Element) namely the laborious Bee, of whose Prudence, Policy and regular Government of their own Commonwealth I might say much, as also of their several kinds, and how useful their honey and wax is both for meat and Medicines to mankind; but I will leave them to their sweet labour, without the least disturbance, believing them to be all very busie amongst the herbs and flowers that we see nature puts forth this May morning. (42-3)

Venator: How doth the earth bring forth herbs, flowers and fruits, both for physick and the pleasure of mankind? and above all, to me at least, the fruitful Vine, of which when I drink moderately, it clears my brain, chears my heart, and sharpens my wit. (45)

Piscator: And for that I shall tell you, that in ancient times a debate hath risen (and it remains yet unresolved) Whether the happiness of man in this world doth consist more in Contemplation or action [55] … Concerning which two opinions I shall forbear to add a third, by declaring my own, and rest my self contented in telling you (my very worthy friend) that both these meet together, and do most properly belong to the most honest, ingenuous, quiet, and harmlesse art of Angling. (55-6)

Piscator: And this seems also to be intimated by the Children of Israel (Psal. 137) who having in a sad condition banished all mirth and musique from their pensive hearts, and having hung up their then mute Harps upon the Willow-trees growing by the Rivers of Babylon, sate down upon those banks bemoaning the ruines of Sion, and contemplating their own sad condition. (56-7)

Piscator: The Cuttle-fish will cast a long gut out of her throat, which (like as an Angler doth his line) she sendeth forth and pulleth in again at her pleasure, according as she sees some little fish come near to her; and the Cuttle-fish [note: Mount. Essayes: and others affirm this.] (being then hid in the gravel) lets the smaller fish nibble and bite the end of it, at which time she by little and little draws the smaller fish so near to her, that she may leap upon her, and then catches and devours her: and for this reason some have called this fish the Sea-angler. /
And there is a fish called a Hermit, that at a certain age gets into a dead fishes shell, and little a Hermite dwells there alone, studying the wind and weather, and so turns her shell that she makes it defend her from the injuries that they would bring upon her. (60)

Piscator: At first, what Dubartas says of a fish called the Sargus; which (because none can expresse it better than he does) I shall give you in his own words, supposing it shall not have the less credit for being Verse, for he hath gathered this, and other observations out of Authors that have been great and industrious searchers into the secrets of Nature.
The Adult’rous Sargus doth not only change
Wifes every day in the deep streams, but (strange)
As if the honey of Sea-love delight
Could not suffice his raging appetite,
Goes courting she-Goats on the grassie shore,
Horning their husbands that had horns before. (61)

Piscator: On the contrary, what shall I say of the House-Cock, which treads any Hen, and then (contrary to the Swan, and Partridge and Pigeon) takes no care to hatch, to feed or to cherish his own brood, but is senseless though they perish. (63)

Piscator: Concerning which last, namely the Prophet Amos, I shall make but this Observation, That he that shall read the humble, lowly, plain style of that Prophet, and compare it with the high-glorious, eloquent style of the Prophet Isaiah (thought they be both equally true) may easily believe him to be, not only a Shepherd, but a good-natur’d, plain Fisher-man. /
Which I do the rather believe, by comparing the affectionate, loving, lowly, humble Epistles of S. Peter, S. James and S. John, whom we know were all Fishers, with the glorious language and high Metaphors of S. Paul, who we may believe was not. (66)

Piscator: And let me adde this more, he that views the ancient Ecclesiastical Canons, shall find Hunting to be forbidden to Church-men, as being a toilsome, perplexing Recreation; and shall find angling allowed to Clergy-men, as being a harmlesse Recreation, a recreation that invites them to contemplation and quietness. (67)

Piscator: … and his custome was to spend besides his fixt hours of prayer… this good man was observed to spend a tenth part of his time in Angling; and also (for I have conversed with those which have conversed with him) to bestow a tenth part of his Revenue, and usually all his fish, amongst the poor that inhabited near to those Rivers in which it was caught: saying often, That charity gave life to Religion: and at his return to his house would praise God he had spent that day free from worldly trouble; both harmlessly, and in a recreation that became a Church-man. (68)

Piscator: Jo. Davors Esq. /
Let me live harmlessly, and near the brink
Of Trent or Avon have a dwelling place;
Where I may see my quill or cork down sink
With eager bit of Pearch, or Bleak, or Dace;
And on the world and my Creator think,
Whilst some men strive, ill gotten goods t’ imbrace;
And others spend their time in base excesse
Of wine and worse, and war and wantonness. (71)

Venator: Why, Sir, what’s the skin worth?
Hunter: ’Tis work ten shillings to make gloves; the gloves of an Otter are the best fortification for your hands that can be thought on against wet weather.
Piscator: I pray, honest Huntsman, let me ask you a pleasant question, do you hunt a beast or a fish? (75)

Venator: …now all the dogs have her, some above and some under water; but now, now she’s tir’d, and past losing: come bring him to me, Sweet-lips. Look, ’tis a Bitch-Otter, and she has lately whelp’d, (76)

Piscator: And now to your question concerning your House, to speak truly, he is not to me a good companion: for most of his conceits were either Scripture-jests, or lascivious jests; for which I count no man witty; (79)

Piscator: having so done, put some sweet herbs into his belly, and then tye him with two or three splinters to a spit, and rost him, basted often with vinegar, or rather verjuice and butter, with good store of salt mixt with it. (84)

Piscator: Being thus used and drest presently, and not washt after he is gutted, (for note that lying long in water, and washing the blood out of the Fish after they by gutted, abates much of their sweetnesse) … Or you may dress the Chavender or Chub thus: / When you hav scaled him, and cut off his tail and fins, and washed him very clean, then chine or slit him through the middle, as a salt fish is usually cut, then give him three or four cuts or scotches with your knife, and broil him on Char-coal, or Wood-coal that are free from smoke, and all the time he is a-broyling baste him with the best sweet butter, and good store of salt mixt with it; and to this add a little Time cut exceeding small, or bruised into the butter. (85)

Piscator: You shall read in Seneca his natural Questions (Lib. 3, cap. 17) that the Ancients were so curious in the newnesse of their Fish, that that seemed not new enough that was not put alive into the guests hand; (90)

Piscator: … Sir George Hastings (an excellent Angler, and now with God), and he hath told me, he thought that trout but not for hunger but wantonness; (92-3)

Piscator: Now you are to know, that it is observed, that usually the best trouts are either red or yellow, though some (as the Fordidge trout) be white and yet good; (96)

Piscator: But turn out of the way a little, good Scholar, towards yonder high hedge: We’ll sit whilst this shower falls so gently upon the teeming earth, and gives yet a sweeter smell to the lovely flowers that adorn these verdant Meadowes. (98-9)

Piscator: … and sometimes I beguil’d time by viewing harmlesse Lambs, some leaping securely in the cool shade, whilst other sported themselves in the chearful Sun; (99)

Coridon: Oh the sweet contentment
The country-man doth find!
high trolollie lollie loe
high trolollie lee.
That quiet contemplation
possesseth all my mind:
Then care away,
And wend along with me. (108)

Coridon: The ploughman, though he labor hard,
Yet on the Holy-Day,
high trolollie lollie loe
high trolollie lee.
No Emperour so merrily
does pass his time away:
Then care away,
And wend along with me. (109)

Piscator: My hand alone my work can do,
So I can fish and study too. (111)

Piscator: But yet though while I fish, I fast;
I make good fortune my repast: (112)

Piscator: Now for Flies… and indeed too many either for me to name or for you to remember: and their breeding is so various and wonderful, that I might easily amaze my self, and tire you in a relation of them. (119)

Piscator: … those very many flies, worms, and little living creatures with which the Sun and Summer adorn and beautifie the River banks… (119)

Piscator: [regarding insects] Pliny holds an opinion, that many have their birth or being from a dew that in the Spring falls upon the leaves of trees; and that some kinds of them are from a dew left upon herbs or flowers; and others form a dew left upon Colworts or Cabbages: … And some affirm, that every plant has his particular flye or Caterpillar, which it breeds and feeds. [120] … But yet I shall tell you what Aldrovandus, our Topsel, and other say of the Palmerworm, or Caterpillar, That whereas others content themselves to feed on particular herbs or leaves, (for most think those very leaves that gave them life and shape, give them a particular feeding and nourishment, and that upon them they usually abide) yet he observes, that this is called a pilgrim or palmer-worm, for his very wandring life and various food; (120-1)

Piscator: … observation of Du Baratas:
God not contented to each kind to give,
And to infuse the vertue generative,
By his wise power made many creatures breed
Of lifelesse bodies without Venus deed.
/
So the cold humor breeds the Salamander,
…
In th’Icy Islands goslings hatcht of trees,
Whose fruitful leaves falling into the water,
Are turn’d (’tis known) to living fowls soon after. (123)

Piscator: … and before you begin to Angle, cast to have the wind on your back, and the Sun (if it shines) to be before you, and to Fish down the stream; and carry the point or top of your Rod downward, by which means the shadow of your self, and Rod too will be the least offensive to the Fish, for the sight of any shade amazes the Fish, … (128-9)

Piscator: Indeed my good Scholar, we may say of Angling, as Dr. Boteler said of Strawberries; Doubtlesse God could have made a better berry, but doubtlesse God never did; And so (if I might be Judge) God never did make a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than Angling. (137)

Piscator: Or with my Bryan, and a book,
Loyter long dayes near Shawford-brook;
There sit by him, and eat my meat,
There see the Sun both rise and set:
There bid good morning to next day,
There meditate my time away:
And angle on, and beg to have
A quiet passage to a welcome grave. (138-9)

Piscator: … affirmed by Sir Francis Bacon… as it is by that learned man, has made me to believe that Eeles unbed themselves, and stir at the noise of the Thunder, … (147)

Piscator: [Umber fish] Much more might be said both of the smell and taste, but I shall only tell you, that S. Ambrose the glorious Bishop of Milan (who liv’d when the Church kept Fasting days) calls him the flowre fish, or flowre of fishes, and that he was so far in love with him, that he would not let him pass without the honour of a long Discourse; but I must; and pass on to tell you how to take this dainty fish. (151)

Piscator: The mighty Luce or Pike is taken to be the Tyrant (as the Salmon is the King) of the fresh waters. ’Tis not to be doubted, but that they are bred some by generation, and some not: as namely, of a Weed called Pickerel-weed, unless learned Gesner be much mistaken; for he sayes, this weed and other glutinous matter, with the help of the Suns heat in some particular Moneths, some Ponds apted for it by nature, do become Pikes. (161)

Piscator: And it is observed, that the pike will eat venomous things (as some kinds of Frogs are) and yet live without being harmed by them… he never eats the venomous Frog, till he have first killed her, and then (as Ducks are observed to do to Frogs in Spawning time, at which time some Frogs are observed to be venomous) so throughly washt her, by tumbling her up and down in the water, that he may devour her without danger. (163)

Piscator: The pike is also observed to be a solitary, melancholly and a bold Fish: Melancholly, because he alwayes swimmes or rests himself alone, and never swimmes in sholes or with company, as Roach and Dace, and most other Fish do: And bold, because he fears not a shadow, or to see or be seen of any body, as the Trout and Chub, and all other Fish do. (164)

Piscator: Dubravius (a Bishop in Bohemia) : As he and the Bishop Thurzo were walking by a large Pond in Bohemia, they saw a Frog, when the Pike lay very sleepily and quiet by the shore side, leap upon his head, and the frog having exprest malice or anger by his swolne cheeks and staring eyes, did streatch out his legs and imbraced the Pikes head, and presently reached them to his eyes, tearing with them and his teeth those tender parts; the Pike moved with anguish, moves up and down the water, and rubs himself against weeds, and what ever he thought might quit him of his enemy; but all in vain, for the frog did continue to ride triumphantly, and bite and torment the Pike till his strength failed, and then he sunk with the Pike to the bottome of the water; then presently the frog appeared again at the top and croaked, and semed to rejoice like Conqueror, and then presently retired to her secret hole. The Bishop, that had beheld the battel, called his fishermen to fetch his nets, and by all means to get the Pike, that they might declare what had hapned: and the Pike was drawn forth, and both his eyes eaten out, at which when they began to wonder, the Fisherman wished them to forbear, and assured them he was certain that Pikes were often so served. (165-6)

Piscator: The Carp is the Queen of Rivers, a stately, a good, and a very subtil fish, that was not at first bred, nor hath been long in England, but it now naturalized. (175)

Piscator: Janus Dubravius has writ a Book of Fish and Fish-ponds, in which he saies, That … three or four Male-Carps will follow a Female, and that then she putting on a seeming coyness, they force her through weeds and flags, where she lets fall her Eggs or Spawn, which sticks fast to the weeds, an then they let fall their Melt upon it, … when the Spawner has weakened her self by doing that natural office, that two or three Melters have helped her from off the weeds, by bearing her up on both sides, and guarding her into the deep. And you may note, that though this may seem a curiosity not worth observing, yet others have judged it worth their time and costs to make Glasse-hives¬, and order them in such a manner as to see how Bees have bred and made their Honey-combs, and how they have obeyed their King, and governed their Common-wealth. (179-80)

Piscator: The Bream… He is very broad and forked tail, and his scales set in excellent order, (185)

Piscator: But though some do not, yet the French esteem this Fish highly, and to that end have this Proverb, He that hath Breams in his pond is able to bid his friend welcome. (186)

Piscator: But bite the Pearch will, and that very boldly: and as one has wittily observed, if there be twenty or forty in a hole, they may be at one standing all catch’d one after another; they being, as he saies, like the wicked of the world, not afraid though their fellows and companions perish in their sight. (198)

Piscator: And others say, that Eeles growing old, breed other Eeles out of the corruption of their own age, which Sir Francis Bacon sayes, exceeds not ten years. … But that Eeles may be bred as some worms, and some kind of Bees and Wasps are, either of dew, or out of the corruption of the earth, seems to be made probable by the Barnacles and young Goslings bred by the Suns heat, and the rotten planks of an old Ship, and hatched of trees; (202-3)

Piscator: It is said by Randeletius, that those Eeles that are bred in Rivers that relate to, or be nearer to the Sea, never return to the fresh waters (as the Salmon does alwayes desire to do) when they have once tasted the salt water; (204)

Piscator: But Scholar, there is a fish that they in Lancashire boast very much of, called a Char, taken there (and I think there only) in a Mere called, Winander Mere; a Mere, sayes Cambden, that is the largest in this Nation, being ten miles in length, and as smooth in the bottom as if it were paved with pollisht marble: this fish never exceeds fifteen or sixteen inches in length; and ’tis spotted like a Trout, and has scarce a bone but on the back: (209)

Piscator: But the Barbel, though he be of a fine shape, and looks big, yet he is not accounted the best fish to eat, (211)

Piscator: There is also a Bleak, or fresh-water-Sprat, a Fish that is ever in motion, and therefore called by some the River-Swallow; for just as you shall observe the Swallow to be most evenings in Summer ever in motion, making short and quick turnes when he flies to catch Flies in the aire (by which he lives), so does the Bleak at the top of the water. Ausonius would have him called Bleak from his whitish colour: his back is of a pleasant sad or Sea-water-green, his belly white and shining as the Mountain snow; … Or this Fish may be caught with a fine small artificial flie, which is to be of a very sad brown colour, and very small, and the hook answerable. (217-8)

Piscator: we sit still,
and watch our quill;
Fishers must not rangle.
(from Jo. Chalkhill. 222)

Piscator: Or we sometimes pass an hour
Under a green Willow,
That defends us from a showre,
Making earth our pillow,
There we may
think and pray
before death
stops our breath:
(from Jo. Chalkhill. 222)

Venator: … I sate down under a Willow-tree by the water side, and considered what you had told me of the Owner of that pleasant Meadow in which you then left me; that he had a plentiful estate, and not a heart to think so; that he had at this time many Law-suits depending; … pitying this poor rich man, that owned this, and many other pleasant Groves and Meadows about me, I did thankfully remember what my Saviour said, that the meek possess the earth; or rather; they injoy what the other possess and injoy not; for Anglers and meek quiet-spirited-men, are free from those high, those restless thoughts which corrode the sweets of life; (223-4)

Piscator: Phineas Fletcher …
His life is neither tost in boisterous Seas,
Or the vexatious world, or lost in slothful ease;
…
His bed more safe than soft, yields sleeps,
While by his side his faithful Spouse has place,
His little son into his bosom creeps,
The lively picture of his father face. (225)

Piscator: And you may take notice, that as the Carp is accounted the Water-fox, for his cunning, so the Roach is accounted the Water-sheep for his simplicity or foolishness. (229)

Piscator: You are to cleanse your Pond if you intend either profit or pleasure, once every three or four Years (especially some Ponds) and then let them lie drie six or twelve moneths, both to kill the water-weeds, as Water-lillies, Candocks, Reate, and Bull-rushes, that breed there; and also that as these die for want of water, so grasse may grow on the Ponds bottom, which Carps will eat greedily in all the hot moneths. (251-2)

Venator: a bottle of Sack, Milk, Oranges, and Sugar, which all put together, make a drink like Nectar, indeed too good for any body but us Anglers: and so Master, here is a full glass to you of that liquor, (257)

Venator: Go, let the diving Negro seek
For Gems hid in some forlone [sic] creek:
We all pearls scorne,
Save what the dewy morne
Congeals upon each little spire of grasse,
Which carelesse shepherds beat down as they passe: (259)

Piscator: a Farewell to the vanities of the World, and some say written by Sir Harry Wootton …
Beauty [’s] (th’ eyes idol) but a damask’d skin;
State but a golden prison, to live in,
And torture free-born minds; … (260)

I would be wise, but that I often see
The Fox suspected, whilest the Ass goes free:
I would be fair, but see the fair and proud
(Like the bright Sun) oft setting in a cloud.
…
wise suspected… fair tempted… (261)

And hold one minute of this holy leasure
Beyond the riches of this empty pleasure.
/
Welcome pure thoughts, welcome ye silent Groves,
These guests, these courts my soul most dearly loves:
…
Then here I’ll sit and sigh my hot loves folly,
And learn t’affect a holy melancholy,
And if Contentment be a stranger then,
I’ll ne’re look for it, but in heaven agen. (262)

Venator: This is my firm resolution, and as a pious man advised his friend, That to beget Mortification he should frequent Churches, and view Monuments, and Charnel-houses, and then and there consider, how many dead bones time had piled up at the gates of death. So when I would beget content, and increase confidence in the Power, and Wisdom, and Providence of Almighty God, I will walk the Meadows by some gliding stream, and there contemplate the Lillies that take no care, and those very many other various little living creatures that are not only created but fed (man knows not how) by the goodness of the God of Nature. (263)

Christopher Hitchens, Arguably

2011-10-14T20:35:00.001-06:00

Christopher Hitchens, Arguably, Twelve Books, New York, 2011.

In passing the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom—the basis of the later First Amendment—they brilliantly exploited the fear that each Christian sect had of persecution by the others. It was easier to get the squabbling factions to agree on no tithes than it would have been to get them to agree on tithes that might also benefit their doctrinal rivals. In his famous “wall of separation” letter, assuring the Baptists of Danbury, Connecticut, of their freedom from persecution, Jefferson was responding to the expressed fear of this little community that they would be oppressed by—the Congregationalists of Connecticut. (Gods of Our Fathers: The United States of Enlightenment, 5)

It is arguably a good thing—and in no way detracts from Andrew Burstein absorbing book—that Jefferson’s Secrets does not quite live up to its title. Secrecy, death, and desire are the ingredients of the sensational, even of the violent, and they consort ill with the measure and scruple for which Thomas Jefferson is still renowned. It might be better to say that this study is an inquiry into the privacy and reticence of a very self-contained man, along with an educated speculation upon the motives and promptings for his defensive style. (The Private Jefferson, 9)

…this was a man who could oppose the emancipation of slaves because he feared the “ten thousand recollections” they would retain of their hated condition, while almost in the same breath saying dismissively that “their griefs are transient.” (The Private Jefferson, 10)

How many know that perhaps 1.5 million Europeans and Americans were enslaved in Islamic North Africa between 1530 and 1780? We dimly recall that Miguel de Cervantes was briefly in the galleys. But what of the people of the town of Baltimore in Ireland, all carried off by “corsair” raiders in a single night? (Jefferson Versus the Muslim Pirates, 13)

One immediate effect of the American Revolution, however, was to strengthen the hand of those very same North African potentates: roughly speaking, the Maghrebian provinces of the Ottoman Empire that conform to today’s Algeria, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia. Deprived of Royal Navy protection, American shipping became even more subject than before to the depredations of those who controlled the Strait of Gibraltar. (Jefferson Versus the Muslim Pirates, 13)

There were many Americans—John Adams among them—who made the case that it was better policy to pay the tribute. It was cheaper than the loss of trade, for one thing, and a battle against the pirates would be “too rugged for our people to bear.” Putting the matter starkly, Adams said: “We ought not to fight them at all unless we determine to fight them forever.”
The cruelty, exorbitance, and intransigence of the Barbary states, however, would decide things. The level of tribute demanded began to reach 10 percent of the American national budget, with no guarantee that greed would not increase that percentage, while from the dungeons of Algiers and Tripoli came appalling reports of the mistreatment of captured men and women. (Jefferson Versus the Muslim Pirates, 15)

Once again, Barbary obstinacy tipped the scale. Yusuf Karamanli, the pasha of Tripoli, declared war on the United States in May 1801, in pursuit of his demand for more revenue. This earned him a heavy bombardment of Tripoli and the crippling of one of his most important ships. … The Barbary regimes continued to underestimated their new enemy, with Morocco declaring war in its turn and the others increasing their blackmail. (Jefferson Versus the Muslim Pirates, 16)

But even the dullest soul could regard the continued triangular Atlantic slave trade between Africa, England, and the Americas and perceive the double standard at work. Thus, the struggle against Barbary may have helped to force some of the early shoots of abolitionism. (Jefferson Versus the Muslim Pirates, 19)

There are two kinds of people: those who read Franklin’s celebrated Autobiography with a solemn expression, and those who keep laughing out loud as they go along. (Benjamin Franklin: Free and Easy, 22)

A few pages father on we read of the tyranny exerted by his brother, who wanted both to indenture him and to beat him, “Tho’ He was otherwise not an ill-natur’d Man: Perhaps I was too saucy & provoking.” Surely an instance of what I call moral jujitsu (of which more later), in which pretended humility can cut like a lash. (Benjamin Franklin: Free and Easy, 22)

…those who really did take the Autobiography at face value. It is no surprise to find D. H. Lawrence among these, because a more humorless man probably never drew mortal breath. But it is astonishing to find Mark Twain saying in effect that the book had made life harder for his Toms and Hucks, who had to bear this additional burden of schoolmarmery and moral exhortation, imposed by those determined to “improve” them at any price. (Benjamin Franklin: Free and Easy, 23)

The 1747 “Speech of Missy Polly Baker,” in which a common whore made a notably eloquent speech in defense of her right to bear bastard children, fooled almost everyone at the time. We may be right in speaking of an age of innocence, in which Miss Baker’s apologia (she is “hard put to it” for a living, “cannot conceive” the nature of her offense, and half admits “all my Faults and Miscarriages”) was received with furrowed and anxious brows. But the only wonder, once you get the trick of it, is how Franklin was able to use such broad and easy punning to lampoon the Pharisees of the day. He even tells us in the Autobiography how it became a delight to him to pen anonymous screeds, put them under the door of the newspaper office at night, and then watch the local worthies try to puzzle out their authorship. (24)

Franklin’s moral jujitsu, in which he always seemingly deferred to his opponents in debate but left them first punching the air and then adopting his opinions as their own, is frequently and slyly boasted about in the Autobiography, but it cannot have afforded him as much pleasure as the applause and income he received from people who didn’t know he was kidding. The tip-offs are all there once you learn to look for them, as with Franklin’s friend Osborne, who died young. /
‘He and I had made a serious Agreement, that the one who happen’d first to die, should if possible make a friendly Visit to the other, and acquaint him how he found things in that separate State. But he never fulfill’d his Promise.’ (27)

Lincoln… To read of the unrelenting coarseness and brutality of the boy’s father is lowering to the spirit, as is the shame he felt at his mother’s reputation for unchastity. (Abraham Lincoln: Misery’s Child, 35)

Lincoln’s own experience of legal bondage and hard usage is very graphically told: Not only did his father’s improvidence deprive him of many necessities, but it resulted in his being hired out as a menial to be a hewer of wood and drawer of water for his father’s rough and miserly neighbors. … struggled to keep reading, an activity feared and despised by his father, as it was by the owner of Frederick Douglass, … (Abraham Lincoln: Misery’s Child, 36)

Here again, we can see the legalistic and sometimes pedantic mind that exhausted all the possibilities of compromise before coming up with the tortuous form of words that finally became the Emancipation Proclamation. / In rather the same way, Lincoln sought a deft means of negotiating the shoals of the religious question. Burlingame’s highly diverting early pages show Lincoln being actively satirical in matters of faith, lampooning preachers, staging mock services, and praying to God “to put stockings on the chicken’s feet in winter,” in the words of his stepsister Matilda. Reminiscing about frontier Baptists many years, he told an acquaintance: “I don’t like to hear cut and dried sermons. No—when I hear a man preach, I like to see him act as if he were fighting bees!” … Several moments in the narrative—the bee-fighting preacher being one such—put me in mind of Mark Twain. The tall tales, the dry wit, the broad-gauge humor, the imminence of farce even in grave enterprises: (37)

Mark Twain and Frederick Douglass, too, were persons who could only have been original Americans, sprung from American ground. It is engaging and affecting to read of Lincoln’s lifelong troubles with spelling and pronunciation (he addressed himself to “Mr. Cheerman” in his famous Cooper Union Speech of 1860) and of his frequent appearance with as much as six inches of shin or arm protruding from his ill-made clothes: truly a Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance. (37)

“Do not misunderstand me,” said Amis p[e]re when he reviewed the first edition, “if I say that one of the troubles with Lolita is that, so far from being too pornographic, it is not pornographic enough.” … (Vladimir Nabokov: Hurricane Lolita, 72)

…neither can I forget Sally’s older brother [Martin Amis], who wrote, / ‘Parents and guardians of twelve-year-old girls will have notices that their wards have a tendency to be difficult. That may take Humbert’s word for it that things are much more difficult—are in fact entirely impossible—when your twelve-year-old girl is also your twelve-year-old girlfriend. The next time that you go out with your daughter, imagine that you are going out with your daughter.’ (72)

But, just as Humbert’s mind is on a permanent knife-edge of sexual mania, so his creator manages to tread the vertiginous path between incest, by which few are tempted, and engagement with pupating or nymph-like girls, which will not lose its frisson. (You will excuse me if, like Humbert, I dissolve into French when euphemism is required.) (73)

…Humbert himself does not allow us to forget—that immediately following each and every one of the hundreds of subsequent rapes, the little girl weeps for quite a long time… (73)

Who but Gore could begin a discussion by saying that the three most dispiriting words in the English language were “Joyce Carol Oates”? (Vidal Loco, 90)

How very agreeable it must be to sit at a table in a casino where nobody seemed to lose, (America the Banana Republic, 96)

Remember the scene at the end of Peter Pan, where the children are told that, if they don’t shout out aloud that they all believe in fairies, then Tinker Bell’s gonna fucking die? (America the Banana Republic, 97)

Now ask yourself another question. Has anybody resigned, from either the public or the private sectors (overlapping so lavishly as they now do)? (America the Banana Republic, 97)

Three portraits by Hans Holbein… The first shows King Henry VIII in all his swollen arrogance and finery… (The Men Who Made England: Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, 146-7)

Cromwell has sufficient immunity to keep his own edition of William Tyndale’s forbidden English Bible, published overseas and smuggled back home, with a title page that carries the mocking words printed in utopia. Thomas More will one day see to it that Tyndale, too, burns alive for that jibe. (148)

Cromwell is a practical skeptic here too, because he has spent some hard time on the Continent and knows, he says, that “the English will never be forgiven for the talent for destruction they have always displayed when they get off their own island.” (The Men Who Made England: Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, 148)

More discloses himself as a hybrid of Savonarola and Bartleby the Scrivener:
“Let us be clear. You will not take the oath because your conscience advises you against it?”
“Yes.”
“Could you be a little more comprehensive in your answers?”
“No.”
“You object but you won’t say why?”
“Yes.”
“Is it the matter of the stature you object to, or the form of the oath, or the business of oath-taking in itself?”
“I would rather not say.”
By this time, any luckless prisoner of More’s would have been stretched naked on the rack, but his questioners persist courteously enough until he suddenly lashes out as the arrogant theocrat he is:
“You say you have the majority. I say I have it. You say Parliament is behind you, and I say all the angels and saints are behind me, and all the company of the Christian dead, for as many generations as there have been since the church of Christ was founded, … (The Men Who Made England, Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, 150-1)

…generations of sentimental and clerical history will canonize More while making Cromwell’s name a hissing and a byword. (151)

It is a frequent vice of radical polemic to assert, and even to believe, that once you have found the lowest motive for an antagonist, you have identified the correct one. (Edmund Burke: Reactionary Prophet, 153)

In point of fact Edmund Burke was neither an Englishman nor a Tory. He was an Irishman, probably a Catholic Irishman at that (even if perhaps a secret sympathizer), and for the greater part of his life he upheld the more liberal principles of the Whig faction. (153)

Johnson… Oliver Sacks was able some years ago to make a fairly definite retrospective diagnosis of Tourette’s syndrome. (Samuel Johnson: Demons and Dictionaries, 167)

Johnson’s pitiless and violent hatred of the American Revolution, and his contemptuous cruelty towards those who apostatized from the established church (even if it was to join another Christian sect) was strong and consistent. (169)

What is amazing is the industry with which Flaubert assimilated so many books on arcane subjects (some 1,500, according to Polizzotti), all of this knowledge acquired just so that a brace of nobodies could manage to get things not just wrong, but exactly wrong. (Gustave Flaubert: I’m with Stupide, 174)

…the possessor of an anarchic sense of humor: This yields the same result. What did oyster shuckers do, Dickens demanded to know, when the succulent bivalves were out of season? / ‘Do they commit suicide in despair, or wrench open tight drawers and cupboards and hermetically-sealed bottles—for practice? Perhaps they are dentists out of the oyster-season? Who knows?’ / This pearl was contained in a private letter not intended for publication (Dickens was almost always “on”) and is somewhat more searching than the dull question—“Where do the ducks in Central Park go in winter?”—that was asked by the boy who spoke so scornfully of “all that David Copperfield kind of crap.” [Dickens vs. Caufield] (The Dark Side of Dickens, 176)

Dickens …He may not have had Shakespeare’s or Eliot’s near omniscience about human character, … (176)

Genuine radicals and reformers in mid-nineteenth-century England were to be defined above all as sympathizers with the American Revolution and with the cause of the Union in the Civil War. Dickens was scornful of the first and hostile to the second. … he was on balance sympathetic to the Confederate states, which he had never visited, and made remarks about Negroes that might have shocked even the pathologically racist Carlyle. (178)

It’s easy to tell, form the protractedly unfunny sarcasm about Mrs. Jellyby and the mock-African hellhole of Borrioboola-Gha in Bleak House, that the author did not possess the gift of imaginative sympathy when it came to those outside his immediate ken, or should I say kin. (178)

…we also encounter a method of Rebecca West’s that has given rise to much criticism. Her nonfictional characters are conscripted more as dramatis personae—Montefiore likens her to Thucydides—and given long speeches, … Throughout the book both she and her husband make long and quite grammatical addresses that would be unthinkable in real life, if only because they would be interrupted if given in mixed company and walked out upon if they occurred at the domestic hearth. (Rebecca West: Things Worth Fighting For, 198)

Note the slight clumsiness, which seems to have inflected everything Maugham ever wrote. (W. Somerset Maugham, 245)

…the specially planted avacado trees, with a skilled resident cook to transform the luscious green fruit into an ice cream flavored with rum. (This contrasts with the rebarbative lobster ice cream served by Ribbentrop at a dinner recorded in “Chips”: The Diaries of Sir Henry Channon.) (247)

…Maugham kept to a rigorous regime at his desk, and turned out third-rate prose by the yard, … (248)

Permanently injured by the flagrant adultery of his first wife, and almost certainly a badly repressed homosexual, he made a living example of Cyril Connolly’s “Theory of Permanent Adolescence,” whereby Englishmen of a certain caste are doomed to re-enact their school days. The vices of the boy are notably unappealing in the grown man, and Waugh was frequently upbraided for the apparent contrast between his extreme nastiness and his ostentatious religiosity. To this he famously replied (to Nancy Mitford) that nobody could imagine how horrible he would be if he were not a Catholic. A nice piece of casuistry, but not one that bears much scrutiny. In at least two cases—his support for the Croatian Fascist Party during his wartime stint in the Balkans, and his animosity towards Jews—there was a direct connection between his spleen and his faith. And in at least two of the novels, Helena (which is based on the life of the early Christian empress of that name) and Brideshead, the narrative is made ridiculous by a sentimental and credulous approach to miracles or the supernatural. This is what Orwell meant by the incompatibility of faith with maturity. (Evelyn Waugh: The Permanent Adolescent, 251)

He toiled in three demanding vineyards: musical comedy, screenwriting, and fiction. (P.G. Wodehouse: The Honorable Schoolboy, 270)

This passage helps to introduce the oft-attempted comparison between Powell and Proust. There is, first and most obviously, that ability to evoke childhood which is, alas, lost to so many of us but still, somehow, recognizable when well done. … Like Proust, Powell was not exactly pithy (I can’t offhand recall any “quotations” from Powell, as one can from his great contemporaries Wodehouse and Waugh), but I hope I have conveyed something of the worthwhileness of hearing him out. One learns to trust certain raconteurs, even if they appear at first to be long of wind. (Anthony Powell: An Omnivorous Curiosity, 279)

George Orwell, whose flinty socialist principles—and persistence in trying to live up to them—might well have invited Powell’s gentle ridicule but (perhaps because they were not bogus) instead won his respect. The pages recollecting his friend are of interest and some beauty: ‘Goodness knows what Orwell would have been like in the army. I have no doubt whatever that he would have been brace, but bravery in the army is, on the whole, an ultimate rather than immediate requirement, demanded only at the end of a long and tedious apprenticeship.’ Here again, reading that deceptively dense sentence, one is reminded of what it is to be molded by a very highly evolved and somewhat stratified society. In such a system courage is neither a sufficient nor even in the strict sense a necessary condition for the high calling of arms; a force that depended on mere bravery would be merely a militant rabble—subject to mood swings, perhaps, and indubitably depriving its officer corps of opportunities for understatement. Such almost invisible writing about the most palpable of questions is a continual distinction of Powerll’s work and an unending reward for the reading of it. (282)

[after an excerpt: ] As I say, Powell knew when and how to write sparely. (282)

Graham Greene once wrote a celebrated essay about a doppelganger who cared enough to haunt and shadow him, even to masquerade as him. This “other” Greene appeared to have anterior knowledge of the movements of his model, sometimes showing up to grant an interview or fill a seat in a restaurant, so that Greene himself, when he arrive in some old haunt or new locale, would be asked why he had returned so soon. … This mode of imitation or emulation or substitution—at once a form of flattery and a species of threat, or at any rate of challenge— (Graham Greene: I’ll Be Damned, 297)

Greene, after all, was nothing if not radical, even subversive, in his self-presentation. Always at odds with authority, not infrequently sued or censored or even banned, a bohemian and a truant, part exile and part émigré, a dissident Catholic and a sexual opportunist, … (298)

This seems doubly ungenerous when considered in the light of the epigraph from Leon Bloy with which Greene opened The End of the Affair: “Man has places in his heart which do not yet exist, and into them enters suffering in order that they may have existence.” Is this creative agony available only to those who believe in transubstantiation? [301] To be fair to Greene, whose answer to that question was fairly obviously in the affirmative, one must admit that he extended the same indulgence to one other group: the Communists. … The theme of martyrdom is constant, even with these secular materialists. … Greene had briefly been a Party member while at Oxford, and although he was too intelligent and too prudent to remain a true adherent for long, he kept up a residual form… (302)

In the English past it had been considered “treasonous” to be a Roman Catholic. Official persecution was the underside of Elizabethan England. … So strongly did Greene identify with these reactionary subversives that he became a Shakespeare-hater, accusing the national bard of being an accomplice in repression, if only a silent one. … “Two years before, Shakespeare’s fellow poet Southwell had died on the scaffold after three years of torture. If only Shakespeare had shared his disloyalty, we could have loved him better as a man.” (303)

Greene was unwaveringly hostile to the United States. (304)

…fatuous apologetics… (305)

…ever since the 1950s, when he indulged the Stalinist regime in Poland because it maintained a Catholic front organization called Pax Christi. (306)

The term “anti-American” is a loose one, and loosely employed. My own working definition of it, admittedly a slack one also, is that a person is anti-American if he ow she is consistently contemptuous of American culture and furthermore supports any opponent of U.S. policy, whoever this may be. (306)

Perhaps Anglophilia continues to play its part, but if I were one of the few surviving teachers of Anglo-Saxon I would rejoice at the way in which such terms as “muggle” and “Wizengamot,” and such names as Godric, Wulfric, and Dumbledore, had become common currency. At this rate, the teaching of Beowulf could be revived. (Harry Potter: The Boy Who Lived, 382)

The schoolchildren appear to know nothing of Christianity; in this latest novel Harry and even Hermione are ignorant of two well-known biblical verses encountered in a churchyard. (382)

If I am correct about this, which I am, (Why Women Aren’t Funny, 394)

The Swedes are not the pacific herbivores that many people imagine: In the footnotes to his second novel Larsson reminds us that Prime Minister Olof Palme was gunned down in the street in 1986 and that the foreign minister Anna Lindh was stabbed to death (in a Stockholm department store) in 2003. The first crime is still unsolved, and the verdict in the second case has by no means satisfied everybody. (Stieg Larsson: The Author Who Played With Fire, 400)

Ancient Greeks and Romans knew what was going on, all right, but they are reported to have avoided the over-keen fellators for fear of their breath alone. And a man in search of this consolation might be suspected of being… unmanly. (As American as Apple Pie, 405)

…the giving of the divine Law by Moses appears in three or four wildly different scriptural versions. (When you hear people demanding that the Ten Commandments be displayed in courtrooms and schoolrooms, always be sure to ask which set. It works every time.) The first and most famous set comes in Exodus 20 but ends with Moses himself smashing the supposedly most sacred artifacts ever known to man: the original, God-dictated panels of Holy Writ. The second edition occurs in Exodus 34, where new but completely different tablets are presented after some heavenly re-write session and are for the first time called “the ten commandments.” In the fifth chapter of Deuteronomy, Moses once more calls his audience together and recites the original Sinai speech with one highly significant alteration (the Sabbath commandment’s justifications in each differ greatly). But plainly discontented with the effect of this, he musters the flock again twenty-two chapters further on, as the river Jordan is coming into view, and gives an additional set of orders—chiefly terse curses—which are also to be inscribed in stone. (The New Commandments, 415)

(II) Then comes the prohibition of “graven images” or indeed “any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.” This appears to forbid representational art, … It certainly seems to discourage Christian iconography, with its crucifixes, and statues of virgins and saints.) But the ban in obviously intended as a very emphatic one, since it comes with a reminder that I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation. (415)

(IV) Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. … neither one’s children nor one’s servants or animals should be allowed to perform any tasks. (Query: Why is it is specifically addressed to people who are assumed to have staff?) … But in Exodus 20: 8-11, the reason given for the day off is that “in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day.” Yet in Deuteronomy 5:15 a different reason for the Sabbath observance is offered: “Remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the LORD they God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched arm: therefore the LORD thy God commanded thee to keep the Sabbath day.” … why can’t the infallible and omniscient one make up his mind what the real reason is? (416)

Thou shalt not kill. This very celebrated commandment quite obviously cannot mean what it seems to say in English translation. In the original Hebrew it comes across as something more equivalent to “Thou shalt do no murder.” (417)

Thou shalt not commit adultery. For some reason, “the seventh” is the only one of the commandments that is still widely known by its actual number. … Most criminal codes have long given up the attempt to make it a punishable offense in law: Its rewards and punishments are carefully administered by its practitioners and victims. (417-8)

Thou shalt not steal. … prosperity of some families and some states is also founded on original theft, … (418)

Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. This is possibly the most sophisticated ruling of the whole Decalogue. Human society is inconceivable unless words are to some extent bonds, … Nothing focuses the attention more than a reminder that one is speaking on oath. … Note, also, how relatively flexible this commandment is. Its fulcrum is the “against.” If you are quite sure of somebody’s innocence and you shade the truth a little in the witness-box, you are no doubt technically guilty of perjury and may be privately troubled. But if you consciously lie in order to indict someone who is not guilty, you have done something irretrievably foul. (418-9)

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor’s. … Instead, this is the first but not the last introduction in the Bible of the totalitarian concept of “thought crime.” … Jesus of Nazareth in the New Testament takes this a step further, announcing that those with lust in their heart have already committed the sin of adultery. In that case, you might as well be hung… Wise lawmakers know that it is a mistake to promulgate legislation that is impossible to obey. … From the “left” point of view, how is it moral to prohibit… demanding a fairer distribution of wealth? From the “right” point of view, why is it wicked to be ambitious and acquisitive? And is not envy a great spur to emulation and competition? (419)

So then: how to prune…? (420)

For millions of people for thousands of years, the Sabbath was made a dreary burden of obligation and strict observance instead of a day of leisure or recreation. It also led to absurd hypocrisies that seem to treat God as a fool: He won’t notice is we make the elevators stop on every floor so that no pious Jew needs press a button. This is unwholesome and over-strenuous. (420)

As for Number Five, by all means respect for the elders, but why is there nothing to forbid child abuse? (Insolence on the part of children is punishable by death, according to Leviticus 20:9, only a few verses before the stipulation of the death penalty for male homosexuals.) A cruel or rude child is a ghastly thing, but a cruel or brutal parent can do infinitely more harm. Yet even in a long and exhaustive list of prohibitions, parental sadism or neglect is never once condemned. (420)

Number Seven … what about rape? It seems to be very strongly recommended, along with genocide, slavery, and infanticide, in Numbers 31: 1-18, and surely constitutes a rather extreme version or sex outside marriage. (421)

Number Ten … Sinister and despotic in that it cannot be obeyed and thus makes sinners even of quite thoughtful people. (421)

Burka. What about the Ku Klux Klan? … I am not going to have a hooded man or woman teach my children, or push their way into a bank ahead of me, or drive my taxi or bus, and there will never be a law that says I have to. (In Your Face, 424)

…in many Muslim societies, such as Tunisia and Turkey, the shrouded look is illegal in government buildings, schools, and universities. Why should Europeans and Americans, seeking perhaps to accommodate Muslim immigrants, adopt the standard only of the most backward and primitive Muslim states? (424)

Even in Iran there is only a requirement for the covering of hair, and I defy anybody to find any authority in the Koran for the concealment of the face. (425)

Here is a society where rape is not a crime. It is a punishment. Women can be sentenced to be raped, by tribal and religious kangaroo courts, if even a rumor of their immodesty brings shame on their menfolk. (From Abbottabad to Worse, 475)

President Asif Ali Zardari cringes daily in front of the forces who openly murdered his wife, Benazir Bhutto, and who then contemptuously ordered the crime scene cleansed with fire hoses, as if to spit even on the pretense of an investigation. (475)

There’s absolutely no mystery to the “Why do they hate us?” question, at least as it arises in Pakistan. They hate us because they owe us, and are dependent upon us. the two main symbols of Pakistan’s pride—its army and its nuclear program—are wholly parasitic on American indulgence and patronage. (475)

If we ever ceased to swallow our pride, so I am incessantly told in Washington, then the Pakistani oligarchy might behave even more abysmally than it already does, and the situation deteriorate even further. This stale and superficial argument ignores the awful historical fact that, each time the Pakistani leadership did get worse, or behave worse, it was handsomely rewarded by the United States. We have been the enablers of every stage of that wretched state’s counter-evolution, to the point where it is a serious regional menace and an undisguised ally of our worst enemy, as well as the sworn enemy of some of our best allies. How could it be “worse” if we shifted our alliance and instead embraced India, our only rival in scale as a multi-ethnic and multi-religious democracy, and a nation that contains nearly as many Muslims as Pakistan? How could it be “worse” if we listened to the brave Afghams, like their former intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh, who have been telling us for years that we are fighting the war in the wrong country? (479)

[end of an introduction] I have saved the word “British” for as long as I decently can. (The Perils of Partition, 481)

It was arguably fair, when Andre Maurois finished his Historie de la France, to permit him a small allowance of la glorie and to agree with his conclusion that “the history of France, a permanent miracle, has the singular privilege of impassioning the peoples of the earth to the point where they all take part in French quarrels.” (Algeria: A French Quarrel, 492)

Every move to reform Algeria even slightly was vetoed by a pied-noir lobby that was addicted to overplaying his own hand. (494)

Indeed, its chief strength lies precisely in showing the vagary [499] and variety of subject, and thus obliquely convicting any single unified critique of it as essentially reductionist… (The Case of Orientalism, 499-500)

And though it is true that the protracted Greek confrontation with the Persians created the first “East-West” division in the European mind, it is also true that the Greek word barbaros, with all its freight of later associations, was not a pejorative. It simply demarcated Greek-speaking form non-Greek-speaking peoples. So it was simplistic of Said to say that the roots of the problem lay with The Iliad: The Hellenes often looked down on uncouth northerners like the Scythians, while greatly admiring (and borrowing from) the Egyptians. (500)

To return, then, to Said. … Most of all, though, one must be ready to oppose any analysis that even slightly licenses the idea that “outsiders” are not welcome to study other cultures. So far form defending those cultures form depredation, such a stance actually permits them to fall under the dominance of stultified and conservative forces to whom everything depends on an affirmation of blind faith. (502-3)

This passage is rescued from sheer vulgarity only by its incoherence. The sole testable proposition (or nontautology) is the fantastic allegation that American forces powdered the artifacts of the Iraq museum in order to show who was boss. And the essential emptiness of putting the “our” in quotation marks, … (Edward Said: Where the Twain Should Have Met, 511)

In recent arguments in Washington about democracy and self-determination and pluralism, it seemed to me that the visiting Iraqi and Kurdish activists had a lot more to teach than to learn. (511)

…the U.N.’s genocide convention, to which we are signatories. (Worse Than Nineteen Eighty-four, 553)

Everybody in the city has to be at home and in bed by curfew time, when all the lights go off (if they haven’t already failed). A recent nighttime photograph of the Korean peninsula from outer space shows something that no free-world propaganda could invent: a blaze of electric light all over the southern half, stopping exactly at the demilitarized zone and becoming an area of darkness in the north. (554)

Wall posters and banners depicting all Japanese as barbarians are only equaled by the ways in which Americans are caricatured as hook-nosed monsters. (The illustrations in this book are an education in themselves.) The United States and its partners make up in aid for the huge shortfall in North Korea’s food production, but there is not a hint of acknowledgement of this by the authorities, who tell their captive subject that the bags of grain stenciled with the Stars and Stripes are tribute paid by a frightened America to the Dear Leader. (North Korea: A Nation of Racist Dwarves, 557)

The people of that tiny and nightmarish state are not, of course, allowed to make comparisons with their lives of others, and if they complain or offend, they are shunted off to camps that—to judge by the standard care and nutrition in the “wider” society—must be a living hell excusable only by the brevity of its duration. But race arrogance and nationalist hysteria are powerful cements for the most odious systems, as Europeans and Americans have good reason to remember. (558)

…a North Korean is on average six inches shorter than a South Korean. (558)

…the closing third of the nineteenth century, after which it was possible to begin thinking of the United States as a global power. (The Case for Humanitarian Intervention, 574)

Many also forget that the international campaign in solidarity with the Union under the Lincoln presidency rallied at a time when it was entirely possible that the United Kingdom might have thrown its whole weight behind the Confederacy and even moved troops form Canada to hasten the partition of a country half slave and half free. This is often forgotten, I suggest, because the movement of solidarity was partly led by Karl Marx and his European allies (as was gratefully acknowledged by Henry Adams in his Education) and because the boycott of Confederate goods, the blocking of shipbuilding orders for the Confederate fleet, and other such actions were to some degree orchestrated by the founders of the communist movement—not the sort of thing that is taught in school when Abraham Lincoln is the patriotic subject. Marx and Freidrich Engels hugely admired Lincoln and felt that just as Russia was the great arsenal of backwardness, reaction, and superstition, the United States was the land of potential freedom and equality. (574)

…the antique Shia concept of taqqiya, or the religious permission to dissemble in dealings with infidels. (The Persian Version, 621)

In his superb memoir, Experience (2000), Martin Amis almost casually expends a terrific line in a minor footnote. Batting away a critic he describes as “humorless,” he adds, “And by calling him humorless I mean to impugn his seriousness, categorically: such a man must rig up his probity ex nihilo.” (Martin Amis: Lightness at Midnight, 625)

(The frightful mustache was grown partly to distract attention from his rotting fangs and suppurating gums.) In the same way, he abhorred smoking, was a fanatical vegetarian, and would never allow jokes about sex in his presence. (Imagining Hitler, 642)

The maddening thought that, in other circumstances, he could have been such an ordinary bore and nuisance? The man’s opinions are trite and bigoted and deferential, and the prose in Mein Kampf is simply laughable in its pomposity. (642)

You can chuck out your Alan Bullock and Joachim Fest and Hugh Trevor Roper biographies, in my opinion, and read only one relatively short book: The Meaning of Hitler, by the brave, brilliant former German exile Sebastian Haffner. In one dense paragraph, written in 1978, before the Kershaw disclosures, he guessed correctly that Hitler’s maniacal reaction to the Munich revolution in 1918-19 was the key that unlocked everything. Read it carefully, because it leaves noting out:
“There must never again be and there will never again be a November 1918 in Germany,” was his first political resolution after a great many political ponderings and speculations. It was the first specific objective the young private politicians set himself and incidentally the only one he truly accomplished. There was certainly no November 1918 in the Second World War—neither a timely termination of a lost war nor a revolution. Hitler prevented both. /
Let us be clear about what this “never again a November 1918” implied. It implied quite a lot. First of all the determination to make impossible any future revolution in a situation analogous to November 1918. Secondly—since otherwise the first point be left in the air—the determination to bring about once more a similar situation. And this implied, thirdly, the resumption of the war that was lost or believed to be lost. Fourthly, the war had to be resumed on the basis of a domestic constitution in which there were no potentially revolutionary forces. From here it was not far to the fifth point, the abolition of all Left-wing parties, and indeed why not, while one was about it, of all parties. Since, however, one could not abolish the people behind the Left-wing parties, the workers, they would have to be politically won over to nationalism, and this implied, sixth, that one had to offer them socialism, or at least a kind of socialism, in fact National Socialism. Seventh, their former faith, Marxism, had to be uprooted and that meant—eighth—the physical annihilation of the Marxist politicians and intellectuals who, fortunately, included quite a lot of Jews so that—ninth, and Hitler’s oldest wish—one could also, at the same time, exterminate all the Jews. (646)

It’s known that he had a brutal father and a doting mother, but as Kershaw carefully shows, there is no serious foundation to the rumors of hidden Jewish ancestry, … (649)

Yet deep within himself, Haffner argues, Hitler did not trust the German people, or think them worthy of his leadership. With outright military catastrophe threatening in 1944, he ordered the arrest of 5,000 leading German politicians, from minister to mayor (including the highly conservative politician Konrad Adenauer, later to become the first West German chancellor), because he thought they might go soft, and even sue for peace, and perhaps allow another November 1918 defeat. He kept his Final Solution a state secret, to be conducted well away from German soil—a compliment to public opinion in its way—and, at the end, coldly decided that Germany itself should be laid to waste as a punishment for its weakness. (650)

…splendid book called In Our Time: The Chamberlain-Hitler Collusion, by Professor Clement Leibovitz and Alvin Finkel. This volume establishes conclusively that British prime minister Neville Chamberlain was no duped “appeaser,” with a silly mustache of his own. He had made a cold calculation that Hitler should be re-armed, and be allowed—if not, indeed, encouraged—to expand his Reich. This was partly to keep his marauding hands off the British Empire, and partly to encourage his “tough-minded” solution to the Bolshevik problem in the East. Chamberlain and his foreign secretary, Lord Halifax, refused even to meet with senior German officers who belatedly implored their help, at the last available moment, in overthrowing the madman. The German people, said these brave men, said these brave men, had been partly duped by Hitler because he had apparently restored full employment and overturned the unpopular and humiliating Treaty of Versailles, destroy their illusion, and there were several generals ready to move against their former protégé. (651)

Banish your sentimentality (and I have left out the most heart-touching passages) : Is there not something fabulously grotesque about a regime that in the midst of total war will pedantically insist that Jews and their spouses either euthanize their own pets or surrender them to the state for extermination? (Victor Klemperer: Survivor, 655)

It all sounds oddly…Churchillian. The old lion himself never tired of striking notes like these, and was quite unembarrassed by invocations of race and nation and blood. Yet he is the object of Buchanan’s especial dislike and contempt, because he had a fondness for “wars of choice.” (A War Worth Fighting, 662)

If you want to demonstrate that Germany was more the victim than the aggressor in 1914, then you must confine your account (as Buchanan does) to the very minor legal question of Belgian neutrality… (663)

As General Douglas MacArthur once put it, all military defeats can be summarized in two words: “Too late.” (666)

It’s quite another thing to say that the Nazi decision to embark on a Holocaust of European Jewry was “not a cause of the war but an awful consequence of the war.” Not only is Buchanan claiming that Hitler’s fanatical racism did not hugely increase the likelihood of war, but he is also making the insinuation that those who wanted to resist him are the ones who are equally if not indeed mainly responsible for themurder of the Jews! This absolutely will not do. (666)

Some reviewers have expressed shock or even disbelief at evidence that Baker has adduced, … I myself, however, grew increasingly impatient with Baker’s assumption of his own daring transgressiveness. (Just Give Peace a Chance, 670)

Gandhi… an open letter he wrote to the British people on July 3, 1940. “Your soliders are doing the same work of destruction as the Germans,” wrote the Mahatma. “I want you to fight Nazism without arms.” He went on to say: “Let them take possession of your beautiful island, with your many beautiful buildings. You will give all these, but neither your souls, nor your minds. If these gentlemen choose to occupy your homes, you will vacate them. If they do not give you free passage out, you will allow yourself, man, woman, and child, to be slaughtered, but you will refuse to own allegiance to them.” (671)

On two pages to which I call your attention—pages 204 and 233—Nicholson Baker leaves the distinct impression that Hitler would have been content to ship all Europe’s Jews to somewhere like Madagascar and would have done so were it not for Churchill’s awful belligerence. You are perfectly free to believe this yourself, should you choose. (672)

Indeed, the little matter of democracy is entirely ignored by the self-satisfied Baker analysis. Not only are Britain and America discussed as if they were little if any better than the dictatorships of the time, but we are never even faced with the question of how much force would ever be justifiable in a war to the finish between the pluralist and the absolutist principle (in which the absolutist principle was, lest we forget, rather convincingly vanquished). (672)

When the envoys of the anti-Nazi officers corps visited London at the eleventh hour, they came to tell Chamberlain and Halifax that they could overthrow and imprison their demented Fuhrer, as long as Britain could be counted on to say, and to mean, that it could and would fight for Prague. If you want to avoid a very big and very bad war later, be prepared to fight a small and principled war now. (672)

Infuriating More, Tyndale whenever possible was loyal to the Protestant spirit by correctly translating the word ecclesia to mean “the congregation” as an autonomous body, rather than “the church” as a sacrosanct institution above human law. (When the King Saved God, 689)

For example, in Isaiah 7:14 it is stated that “behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” This is the scriptural warrant and prophecy for the impregnation of the Virgin Mary by the Holy Ghost. But the original Hebrew wording refers only to the pregnancy of an almah, or young woman. If the Hebrew language wants to identify virginity, it has other terms in which to do so. (691)

And so bleak and spare and fatalistic—almost non-religious—are the closing verses of Ecclesiastes that they were read at the Church of England funeral service the unbeliever George Orwell had requested in his will: “Also when they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way, and the almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home… Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern. / Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was.” /
At my father’s funeral I chose to read a similarly non-sermonizing part of the New Testament, this time an injunction from Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Philippians: “Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.” (693)

…the King James Bible slowly overhauled and overtook the Geneva version, and, as the Pilgrim-type mini-theocracies of New England withered away, became one of the very few books from which almost any American could quote something. (694)

Those who opposed the translation of the Bible into the vernacular—were afraid that the mystic potency of incantation and ritual would be lost, and that daylight would be let in upon magic. They also feared that if God’s word became too everyday and commonplace it would become less impressive, or less able to inspire awe. But the reverse turns out to have been the case, at least in this instance. (695)

Penelope Eckert and Norma Mendoza-Denton phrase matters this way: “One of the innovative developments in the white English of Californians is the use of the discourse-marker ‘I’m like’ or ‘she’s like’ to introduce quoted speech, as in ‘I’m like, where have you been?’n This quotative is particularly useful because it does not require the quote to be of actual speech (as ‘she said’ would, for instance). (The Other L-Word, 737)

The actual grammatical battle was probably lost as far back as 1954, when Winston announced that its latest smoke “tasted good, like a cigarette should.” Complaints from sticklers that this should have been “as a cigarette should” (or, in my view, “as a cigarette ought to do”) … How could one preserve what’s useful about “like” without allowing it to reduce everyday vocabulary and without having it weaken the two strong senses of the word, which are: to be fond of something or somebody (As You Like, Like It) or to resemble something or somebody (“Like, Like a Virgin”)? (738)

Introduction to Italian Poetry, Ed. Luciano Rebay

2011-10-09T19:43:00.000-06:00

Introduction to Italian Poetry, Ed. Luciano Rebay, Dover Publications, Inc. New York, 1969.

Praise by You, my Lord, for sister water,
Who is most useful and humble and precious and chaste.

(St Francis, Canticle of Living Creatures, 9)

If I were fire, I would set the world aflame;
If I were wind, I would storm it;
If I were water, I would drown it;
If I were God, I would send it to the abyss.
If I were Pope, then I would be happy,
For I would swindle all the Christians;
If I were Emperor, do you know what I would do?
I would chop off heads all around.
/
If I were death, I would go to my father;
If I were life, I would flee from him;
The same I would do with my mother.
If I were Cecco, as I am and I was,
I would take the women who are young and lovely,
And leave the old and ugly for others.

(Cecco Angiolieri, If I were fire, I would set the world aflame, Complete, 23)

So gentle and so virtuous she appears,
My lady, when greeting other people
That every tongue tremblingly grows silent,
And eyes do not dare gaze upon her.

[Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare
La donna mia quand’ella altrui saluta
Ch’ogne lingua deven tremando muta,
E li occhi no l’ardiscon di guardare.]

(Dante, from So gentle and so virtuous she appears, 29)

Let him be happy who wants to be:
There’s no certainty of tomorrow.

[Chi vuol esser lieto, sia:
Di doman non c’[e] certezza.]

(Lorenzo de’ Medici, refrain from Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne/ Trionfo di Bacco e di Arianna, 56-7)

She who is young and beautiful,
Pray that she not be bitter,
For it does not renew itself,
Age—as does the grass:
Let no one remain proud
With her sweetheart in May.

(Angelo Poliziano, from Welcome to May, 63)

Love comes forth laughing
With roses and lilies on his head,
And he comes looking for you.
Greet him with joy, my pretty ones.
Which of you will be the first
To give him the flower for May?

[Amor ne vien ridendo
Con rose e gigli in testa, E vien di voi caendo.
Fategli, o belle, festa.
Qual sar[a] la pi[u] presta
A dargli e’ fior del maggio.]

(Angelo Poliziano, from Welcome to May, 65)

Giambattista Marino. 1569-1625. The seventeenth century is regarded in Italian literature as a period of decadence whose main traits are frequently epitomized in one word: “Marinism.” The term, derived from the name of Giambattista Marino, implies a special attitude toward literature in general and poetry in particular. The poet’s aim is no longer to teach, to enlighten, or simply to please the reader; it is, in Marino’s own formulation, to produce surprise, the marvelous: “[E] del poet ail fin la meraviglia.” And how will a poet create the marvelous? By using all manner of far-fetched images, telescoped metaphors, hyperbolic sentences, synonyms, antonyms, alliterations.
All such devices about in Marino’s poetry. For instance, in his chief work, Adone, a mythological poem over forty thousand lines long about the love of Venus for Adonis, we find dawn described as a “beautiful nurse” rising “from purple feathers to feed with her heavenly humors grass, plants, and flowers.” And in his famous “Canzone dei baci” The Song of Kisses), the words “bacio” (kiss), “baciare” (to kiss), and “bocca” (mouth) are monotonously intermeshed again and again in all possible combinations and patterns.
But not everything that Marino wrote is extravagant conceit, tiresome tirade, empty sound effect. Especially among his numerous love poems (Marino had many love affairs: in one lyric he confessed that all women made him “burn with desire”) there are quite a few compositions that reveal an uncommon gift for creating fresh images and for portraying original situations. [93] Our selection, “Bella schiava,” describing the poet’s passion for a black servant, is a case in point.
Marino was celebrated as the greatest Italian poet of his time. He lived in Naples, his native city, until 1600. In that year, after being imprisoned a second time for disorderly conduct, he escaped and went to Rome. From Rome he moved to Turin, to the court of Carl Emmanuel of Savoy, and from there to Paris in 1615. It was in France that Marino’s fame reached its apogee. He [94] lived at the court of the Queen, Maria de’ Medici, and to her, in 1623, he dedicated his poem Adone, which was acclaimed as an unsurpassable masterpiece. Soon afterward Marino returned to Italy, greeted with triumphant receptions in every city he visited. Covered with glory, he spent the remaining two years of his life in Naples. The impact of his influence can be detected not only in the works of several minor Italian writers, but also in the writings of poets such as Crashaw in Great Britain and Gongora in Spain. (93-5)

Beautiful Slave

Black—yes, but you are beautiful, O Nature’s
Graceful exhibit among Love’s beauties.
Dawn is gloomy alongside you; defeated and darkened
Are ivory and crimson by your ebony.
When or where did the ancient world, or ours,
Ever see such lively, ever feel such pure
Light coming out of dark ink,
Or such ardor issuing from spent coal?
/
Servant of her who is my servant, here I am
Bearing my heart caught in a brown noose
Which can never be untied by a pure-white hand.
There where you burnt the most, O Sun, for your shame alone
A sun has been born; a Sun who in her beautiful face
Bears the night, and in her eyes has day. (95)

Bella schiava

Nera s[i], ma se’ bella, o di Natura
Fra le bella d’Amor leggiadro mostro.
Fosca [e] l’alba appo te; perde e s’oscura
Presso l’ebeno tuo l’avorio e l’ostro.
Or quando, or dove il mondo antico o il nostro
Vide s[i] viva mai, sent[i] s[i] pura
O luce uscir di tenebroso inchiostro,
O di spento carbon nascere arsura?
/
Servo di chi m’[e] serva, ecco ch’avvolto
Porto di bruno laccio il core intorno,
Che per candida man non fia mai sciolto.
L[a] ’ve pi[u] ardi, o Sol, sol per tuo scorno
Un sole [e] nato; un Sol, che nel bel volto
Porta la notte ed ha negli occhi il giorno. (94)

Rain in the Pine Wood

Hush. On the edge
Of the wood I do not hear
Words which you call
Human; but I hear
Words which are newer
Spoken by droplets and leaves
Far away.
Listen. Rain falls
From the scattered clouds.
Rain falls on the tamarisks
Briny and parched,
Rain falls on the pine trees
Scaly and bristling,
Rain falls on the myrtles—
Divine,

On the broom-shrubs gleaming
With clustered flowers,
On the junipers thick
With fragrant berries,
Rain falls on our faces—
Sylvan,
Rain falls on our hands—
Naked,
On our clothes—
Light,
On the fresh thoughts
That our soul discloses—
Renewed,
On the lovely fable
That yesterday
Beguiled you, that beguiles me today,
O Hermione.

Do you here? The rain is falling
On the solitary
Greenness
With a crackling that persists
And varies in the air
According to the foliage
Sparser, less sparse.
Listen. The weeping is answered
By the song
Of the cicadas
Which are not frightened
By the weeping of the south wind
Or the ashen sky.
And the pine tree
Has one sound, and the myrtle
Another sound, and the juniper
Yet another, instruments
Different
Under numberless fingers.
And we are immersed in the spirit
Of the woodland, alive with arboreal life;
And your ecstatic face
Is soft with rain
As a leaf,
And your hair
Is fragrant like
The bright broom-flowers,
O earthly creature
Whose name is
Hermione.

Listen, listen. The harmony
Of the high-borne cicadas
Gradually becomes
Fainter
Beneath the weeping
That grows stronger;
But a song mingles with it—
Hoarser,
Rising form down there,
Form the far damp shade.
Fainter and weaker
It slackens, fades away.
Only one note
Still trembles, fades away,
Rises again, trembles, fades away.
One hears no sea voice.
Now one hears upon all the foliage,
Pelting,
The silvery rain
That cleanses,
The pelting that varies
According to the foliage
Thicker, less thick.
Listen.
The daughter of the air
Is mute; but the daughter
Of the miry swamp, in the distance,
The frog,
Is singing in the deepest shade,
Who knows where, who knows where!
And rain falls on your lashes,
Hermione.
/
Rain falls on your black eyelashes
So that you seem to weep
But from pleasure; not white
But made almost green,
You seem to emerge from bark.
And within us all life is fresh,
Fragrant,
The heart is our breasts is like a peach
Untouched,
The eyes between the eyelids
Are like springs in the grass,
The teeth in their sockets
Are like bitter almonds.
And we go from thicket to thicket,
Now joined, now apart
(And the rough green vigor
Entwined our ankles,
Entangled our knees)
Who knows where, who knows where!
And rain falls on our faces—
Sylvan,
Rain falls on our hands—
Naked,
On our clothes—
Light,
On the fresh thoughts
That our soul discloses—
Renewed,
On the lovely fable
That yesterday
Beguiled me, that beguiles you today,
O Hermione.

(Gabriele D’Annunzio, Rain in the Pine Wood, Complete, 113-119)

Italian Poets of the Renaissance, Transl. Joseph Tusiani

2011-10-09T18:42:00.000-06:00

Italian Poets of the Renaissance, Transl. Joseph Tusiani, Baroque Press, Long Island City, NY, 1971.

Birds, there are birds enamored so of light
that, as they lie, after the day is ended,
deep in their nest, with one another blended,
if the least sound should stir, and a faint light
appear, they rise, and follow soon that bright
glimpse, once more eager to pursue their splendid
delight, full unaware they’re being bended
by their false guide to traps of grief and fright.
/
The same thing happens, O my God, to me:
as soon as those two radiant, ruthless eyes
bid all my longings speed where’er she be,
I run at once, most eager and unwise,
myself in faster fetters then to see,
from which I had been hoping free to rise.

(Boccaccio, Birds, There Are Birds, Complete, 32)

If Baia’s sea and heaven I abhor,
Its lakes and fountains, and its waves and sand,
The known and unknown corners of this land,
No one, indeed, should wonder any more.
With feasts of song and dancing on this shore,
And with a blab of ever-empty sound,
All hearts are taken and all minds are bound
Where only feats of love come to the fore.
/
Venus is seen so freely here to roam
That, often, a Lucretia coming out
Goes with the shame of Cleopatra home.
How well I know! I therefore have no doubt
That this corruption, so far-spread and true,
Has won the spirit of my lady, too.

(Boccaccio, The Curse of Baia, Complete, 33)

Cheaply have I abused the Muses so,
That to a brothel I have brought them all,
Causing their most intimate parts to fall
Beneath the stare of their plebian foe.
But let no longer such offences go
Against me, for Apollo with his gall
Has on my flesh already avenged them all
So that no limb is free from his hard blow.
/
I was a man, and am a wineskin full,
Oh, not of wind, but of most grievous lead,
So grievous I can hardly walk at all.
And will this boredom end? I know not how,
So one with it am I, from toe to head:
Oh, only God, I hope, can help me now.

(Boccaccio, Cheaply Have I Abused, Complete, 35)

No golden tress or loveliness of glance,
No regal bearing or entrancing face,
No youthfulness of age or song of mirth,
And no angelic mien of beauty’s grace
Could ever draw from all his sovereign height
The King of Heaven on this wicked earth,
And make him, Mary dear, in you have birth,
Mother of grace and mirror of delight.
/
’Twas your humility with all its might
Broke the old rancor between us and God,
And bade the heavens open once again.
Lend us this virtue, Holy Mother, then,
So that, preceded by it, climb we may
To your blest kingdom piously one day.

(Boccaccio, To the Blessed Mother, Complete, 36)

The snow, the ice, and every morning gust,
Coldness of hoarfrost, winds from alpine lair,
Away Diana from her woods have thrust.
/
Seeing all grasses and all blossoms dead,
Every leaf flying, every forest bare,
She wrapped a veil around her golden head,
/
and went back quickly to her native place,
leaving us burning for her blissful face.

(Franco Sacchetti, Epigrams, II, 42)

When you were born, O flower of paradise,
They brought you, to baptize you, right to Rome,
And when the pope uncovered your sweet face,
He your godfather wanted to become;
And then your mother, full of grace and fair,
Gave you the name Diana like the star.
/
The Pope gave forty years’ indulgence then
To everyone who simply looks at you;
Hundred and sixty years of pardoned sin
To those who touch your dress; a person who
Can talk to you, and kiss, my dear, your face,
Goes, soul and body, straight to paradise.

(Anonymous [XV Century], Papal Blessing, Complete, 46)

My Beca’s somewhat small, rather than not,
And limps a bit, oh, just a bit, I say.
She has in both her eyes a tiny spot
That, if you notice it, you soon call gay.
Around her little mouth there’s some hair, but
It looks like a fresh trout out of the bay.
She’s white like an old coin but—wait and see—
She only lacks a perfect husband—me.
III
Like wasps that, humming, humming the day long,
Go round the grapes half ripe in the new light;
Like donkeys wooing asses with their song,
All dandies come around you with a fight.
But, one after another, the whole throng
You hang like sausages—it serves them right.
O my dear love, …

(Luigi Pulci, From Beca da Dicomano, 49)

Sing, O you lovely birds in love, with me,
Since it is Love now bids me sing with you;
And you, clear rills that sinuously flow
Through banks in bloom anew,
With this my poem you soft answer blend.
/
So boundless is the beauty that I sing,
My heart does not dare bend
To such a task, alone,
For it is weak and weary for such weight.
/
Wandering little birds, you now take flight
Perhaps because you think
My heart is laden with lamenting fright,
And fail to guess my feeling of distress.
/
Wandering birds, then heed:
However round the sea,
However strong the winds that blow and hiss,
There is on earth no bliss
That can be equal to this joy in me.

(Matteo Maria Boiardo, Madrigals, II, 62)

Sleep, O most balmy sleep, come down at last
Into this anguished heart that longs for you;
Close the unending spring of tears and rue,
O bland oblivion never coming fast.
O come to me, my only peaceful rest,
Which can alone check my desire, and here
Bring as your mate my lady sweet and dear
With those calm limpid eyes where mercy’s best.
/
Show me the happy smile the Graces chose
As their new home, and let one pitying glace,
One wary word, stir my desire no more.
If thus you show her to me, let our sleep
Eternal be, or let these joyful dreams,
Ah, never venture through the ivory door.

(Lorenzo de’ Medici, To Sleep, Complete, 65)

Oh, how lovely youth can be,
That is fleeing fast away:
If you care to be, be gay:
What’s to come we cannot see.
/
Bacchus and Ariadne fair
Deep in love are with each other;
Time deceives and flies like air:
They’re forever gay together.
All these nymphs, all people rather,
Every merry want to stay.
If you care to be, be gay:
What’s to come we cannot see.
/
All these Satyrs, glad and shrewd,
Much in love with these nymphs fair,
In each cave and in each wood
Now had laid their hundredth snare:
Spurred by Bacchus, everywhere
Dancing, leaping—look—are they.
If you care to be, be gay:
What’s to come we cannot see.
/
All these nymphs (I tell the truth)
Love to fall into those traps:
People thankless and uncouth
Against Love can guard perhaps.
Intermingling sounds and steps,
Now they sing and now they play.
If you care to be, be gay:
What’s to come we cannot see.
/
Look, this weight that comes behind
Is Silenus on an ass.
Old and fat and almost blind,
He is drunk and glad: alas,
He can hardly stand and pass,
Yet with fun he laughs allway.
If you care to be, be gay:
What’s to come we cannot see.
/
Midas comes behind these all:
What he touches soon is gold.
What its wealth, and what its goal,
If it leaves you sad and cold?
What contentment can man hold
If his thirst will ever stay?
If you care to be, be gay:
What’s to come we cannot see.
/
Let all people heed me then:
On the morrow no one feed,
But let women and let men,
Young and old, know today’s need:
To be glad and chase, indeed,
Every sadness fast away.
If you care to be, be gay:
What’s to come we cannot see.
/
Loving lads and lasses, come:
Long live Bacchus, long live Love!
Dance and sing and beat your drum!
Let your hearts all sweetness prove!
Never toil and never grieve!
Fate will always have its way.
If you care to be, be gay:
What’s to come we cannot see.

(Lorenzo de’ Medici, Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne, Complete, 70-1)

The Girls
We are women, as you see,
Youthful lasses fair and gay,
And are seeking our delight
For this is Carnival day.
Envious people and Cicadas
Much resent an alien glee;
So they vent their evil rancor,
The Cicadas that you see.
Most unfortunate are we!
The Cicadas’ prey we are:
The whole summer chattering,
They still chatter the whole year:
And from those who do far worse
Comes the worst of gossiping.

The Cicadas
O fair lasses, but we do
What within our nature is;
Often, though, the fault is yours,
For it’s you who tell all this.
One must act, but also know
How to hide one’s happiness.
One who’s quick can run away
From the peril of the word:
Does it pay to make one die
In a long, long agony?
Without chattering too much,
Act at once, while you still may.

The Girls
What’s the purpose of our beauty?
It’s worth nothing if it goes.
Long live love and gentleness!
Death to envy and Cicadas!
Want to gossip? Very well:
We shall act, and you will tell.

(Lorenzo de’ Medici, Song of Girls and of Cicadas, Complete, 72-3)

I thank you, Love,
For all distress and pain,
And now am glad I have in sorrow lain.
/
I now am glad for all I have endured
In your fair realm, O lord,
For not through my desert but through your grace
Have I been granted such a lofty pledge,
And thus made worthy of
A smile of such delight
As to uplift my heart to heaven above.
I thank you, Love.
/
To heaven above my heart has been upraised
By those fair smiling eyes
Wherein, O Love, I saw you full-concealed
In all your glowing flames.
O gleaming gentle eyes
That stole my heart away,
Whence do you such rare faculties receive?
I thank you, Love.
/
I was already on the brink of death;
My lady, clad in white,
Came soon to save me with a loving smile—
Humble and glad and fair,
Roses and violets
A crown around her hair,
Her eyes out-dazzling the bright sun above.
I thank you, Love.

(Angelo Poliziano, I Thank You, Love, Complete, 100)

One saddle or one burden cannot fit
All backs: to one it seems no weight at all,
Another is oppressed and vexed and crushed.
/
A nightingale can hardly bear a cage,
A finch can longer last, and more a linnet,
But in one day a swallow dies of rage.
/
Let those who long for spurs or for a hat
Serve king or duke, or cardinal or pope;
Not I, who little care for this or that.
/
A turnip that I cook in my own home,
And put, when cooked, upon a stick, and peel
And sprinkle then with vinegar and must,
/
To me tastes better than wild boar and thrush
And partridge elsewhere; and beneath a cheap
Blanket I lie as though it were of silk
/
And gold. Here I can rest my weary limbs
Instead of boasting they have been in Scythia,
In India, Ethiopia, and beyond.

(Ariosto, from Satire III, 126)

I feel more precious, I am more than one,
For, since you held my heart, my worth grew more:
A marble block, when carving has been done,
Is not the rough, cheap stone it was before.
As paper painted or just written on
No longer is a rag one can ignore,
So, since you aimed at me, and I was won,
My value’s more, and no regret I bear.
/
Now, with your splendor printed on my face,
I go like one who, dressed with every kind
Of amulet and arm, can dare all wars.
I walk upon the ocean, brave all blaze,
Give in your name the light to all the blind,
And my saliva heals all poisonous sores.

(Michelangelo, I Feel More Precious, I Am More Than One, Complete, 140)

Here, to make swords and helmets, war devours
Our chalices, and here Christ’s blood is sold
By the quart, and cross and thorns are cast into mold
For shields and spears; and yet Christ’s patience showers.
But let Him not return to this land of ours,
For here in Rome where sin is uncontrolled
His blood would spurt to the stars, His skin be sold
For any price in all streets at all hours.
/
The day I wanted to be poor, I came
Right here to work: now one in his mantle does
What once Medusa in Mauritania did.
But if in heaven poverty and strife
Are merits, what will ever mend our state
While other flags blot out the other life?
Finis
Your Michelangelo in Turkey

(Michelangelo, Here, To Make Swords and Helmets, War Devours, Complete, 141)

Simply because the Sun does not embrace
With lucent arms this cold and humid globe,
They thought of calling night his other face,
That second sun they fail to know and probe.
Oh, but so frail is night that the quick blaze
Of a small torch her very life can rend;
And such a fool is she, that the swift trace
Of a gunshot can make her bleed and throb.
/
If something she must be, she doubtless is
The daughter of the sun and of the earth:
One gives her shade, the other holds her here.
But wrong are those who praise her qualities:
She is so dark, lost, lonesome, that the birth
Of one small firefly can make war on her.

(Michelangelo, Simply Because the Sun Does Not Embrace, Complete, 141)

Turning, in restlessness, now right, now left,
I seek salvation’s way.
Bewildered, between vice and virtue lost,
My heart is wearing me. I am like one
Who does not see the sky
But goes from dark to darker path, astray.
I hand my paper, blank,
For all your sacred ink,
So love may undeceive me by the truth
Piety writes upon it; so the soul,
Detached from self, may not to error ben
My brief days left, and I may walk less blind.
Lady divine and high, of you I ask
Whether in heaven a repented sinner
Is less rewarded than a constant winner.

(Michelangelo, To the Marquise of Pescara, Complete, 143)

O night, O time of sweetness, although black,
You give at last to all man’s action peace.
Who sings your praises, well he knows and sees,
And he who greets you feels no inner lack.
You cut and break all weary thoughts, which back
To us are sent by humid shade and breeze,
And form the lowest pit you lift with ease
Of dream my longings to the highest peak,
/
And where I crave to go. O shadow of death,
Halting all aches that rend both soul and heart,
O last and gentle solace of man’s woes,
You heal our ailing flesh, restore our breath,
Dry out our tears, lay all our toils apart,
And from the just you steal despair away.

(Michelangelo, O Night, O Time of Sweetness, Although Black, Complete, 144)

An Angel sculpted in this marble block
The Night you now see sleeping sweet and deep:
She is, therefore, alive, being asleep.
Don’t you believe me? Wake her up: she’ll talk.

(Michelangelo, Lines by Giovanni Strozzi on the “Night” of Buonarroto, Complete, 145)

How good to sleep and—more—be marble block
While all about arm harm and shame and woe!
Neither to see nor hear is my great luck;
So do not rouse me then, but please, speak low.

(Michaelangelo, Answer of Buonarroto, Complete, 145)

From heaven he came and saw with mortal eyes
The hell that stays, and that which shall not last,
Then back he went to God in paradise
To give us glimpses of His splendor vast.
A lucent star, he shone above the vice
Of that lost land which to me, too, was nest;
Man’s evil earth to him can be no prize:
God, You, who made him, can reward him best.
/
Dante I mean, whose works did not elate
That people, thankless and uncivilized,
Who only to the just gives doom the hate.
Yet would that I were he! To be despised,
Outcast, but born as he—for such a fate
I would give up the world and all things prized.

(Michaelangelo, From Heaven He Came and Saw With Mortal Eyes, Complete, 146)

May I, who bore for years, carved in my heart,
The image of your face,
Now that my death is close,
Receive from love the privilege and grace
Of having it engraved within my soul,
So that, serene and free, it soon may leave
The prison of its body. Only thus,
My lady, will my soul feel safe from harm,
Bearing your image like a saving cross
Through winds and storms and demons everywhere.
I shall take it to heaven, …

(Michelangelo, Envoy, 147)

Certain of death, not of its moment, I
Know that a little life is left to me.
Friend to the senses, earth is enemy
To this my soul that urges me to die.
Blind is the world, and evil actions cry
Victory over love and purity.
Dead is all light with its audacity;
Outcast is truth, triumphant every lie.
/
When, Lord, will that thing come which men await
Who still believe in you? Too much delay
Severs our hope and keeps the soul in dread.
Why promise all your splendor on our night
If death comes sooner and makes all its prey,
Catching us fallen, far from you, and dead?

(Michelangelo, Certain of Death, Not of its Moment, I, Complete, 148)

Like to a flower that on the humid earth,
All soaked with rain and bent by its own weight,
Droops, and together with its scent, once great
And pleasant, sheds the color of its birth;
And neither youth nor damsel, held beneath
The yoke of Love in sweetness and delight,
Waters in any more or keeps in sight,
Seeing its primal glory come to death;
/
But if the sun with its new, pitying ray
Comes to revive it in a tender fire,
Quickly restored, it shares its splendor, gay:
So I your beauty, in this world so new,
Have seen little by little disappear,
And then with greater grace return to you.

(Francesco Maria Molza, On the Recovery of His Lady, Complete, 163)

Nature seems to be playing with her thus,
And winds are vying but to hear her word,
And yet she never cared, and never does—
A wolf that even scorns to count a herd,
A stream ignoring banks through which it flows.
Little is she by lesser beauty stirred,
If ever at all: so glad and pure and gay,
She nothing needs but her own way.

(Francesco Maria Molza, La Ninfa Tiberina, Stanza IV, 164)

The stomach is their God, the soup their Law, a keg
Their Testament. …

(Teofilo Folengo, from Baldus Book VIII, 168)

Down from the northern Alps the wicked wind returns,
And with its bellows blows the forest leaves away.
Each river turns to glass, and to white lead each field,
And everywhere the frost scatters its tapers. In
Its shell and snail lies still, its horns completely hid,
And the cicada dies of hunger, the fly of cold.
The little old woman sets a turnip on the table,
But does not eat it, first, her spindle is not done.
The oily lamp makes still the pallid pedants wake;
But, student, you have fun within so sad a night.

(Teofilo Folengo, Epigram, Complete, 171)

No wish have I to crave so great a dream,
For at its root my hope has been cut off,
And every pious star has turned malign.
Let my heart burn but never show a sign;
Let my dismay, the worst of all, be hid:
Soul, be at peace, and praise the holy light.

(Vittoria Colonna, from the Canzoniere, 174)

Monsignor Carnescchi you will tell
I do not envy what he has to write
Nor those who to his ears are bothering bell.
/
But I remember the fried squash I ate
Last year with him; its beauty—tell him this—
My gluttonous glances still can contemplate.

(Francesco Berni, from To Fra Bastiano Del Piombo, 192)

O graceful, limpid pearl,
That with the splendor of your ardent ray
Lend luster to all men,
And take all glory form the sun away,
Oh, listen to the words I have to say.
/
I say that when you came
Into this world, the stars,
Happy and gay and fair
In Love’s most clement heaven were aflame,
And never had Admetus’ tiny shepherd
Shown us a kinder day.
The air, the land and sea,
Were seen to smile, and the lascivious breeze
To play with blossoms and with grasses green
Nor did the birds forget
To mention then your name: in flocks, flocks new,
They with their singing made a joyous Spring.
Oh, why can I not sing
Your praises, just as I would like to do?

(Giovanni Guidiccioni, Madrigals, II, 201)

O solitary tranquil forest, friend
to these my thoughts, much wearied and dismayed,
while Boreas on turbid, shortened days
ruffles both air and earth with horrid frost,
and while your verdant, ancient, shady hair
seems, just like mine, all over to have grayed,
now that, instead of blossoms white and red,
your every open place has snow and ice,
/
on this so brief and nebulous a light
still left to me I muse, and I feel, too,
an icy numbness over flesh and soul.
But, in and out, I freeze much more than you:
a harsher Northwind will my winter bring,
with colder, shorter days, and longer night.

(Giovanni Della Casa, To a Forest, Complete, 203. Robert Frost.)

…O sleep, and over me
fold your black wings, and halt right here your flight.

(Giovanni Della Casa, from To Sleep, 203)

Jealousy…
Go back to Hades, to the tearful, sad,
Infernal fields; there, to yourself be foe,
/
and there, spend all your days with no rest ever,
your nights with no sleep ever, and be there
oppressed by certain and uncertain pain.

(Giovanni Della Casa, from Jealousy, 205. Difference btw Hell & Hades.)

This immortal life which, dark and cold, expires
In one or in two brief nocturnal hours,
Has heretofore involved in its bleak clouds
The nobler part of me. But now I turn
To gaze upon your grace manifold;

(Giovanni Della Casa, from To God, 206)

If this our fate is willed
By the unchanging stars—
That our existence should such laws obey—,
Is there a fairer shield
Against inclement scars
Than deed of beauty or creative play?

(Annibal Caro, 209)

Vales that abhor the sun, proud lofty peaks
That seem to threaten heaven; caverns deep,
Whence night and silence never can depart;
Air vanquishing within dismal mist my eyes;
Steeps and high slopes, and rocks precipitous;
Unburied bones; grass-covered crumbled walls,
Men’s refuge once and now so shelterless
As to be shunned by serpents and by wolves;
/
Unpeopled countryside, abandoned shores
Where never is the air pierced by man’s voice:
I am a spirit doomed to endless tears,
Come to deplore my faith within your midst,
And hoping with my long-despairing cries,
If God bend not, to soften hell at least.

(Luigi Tansillo, Solitude, Complete, 218)

No feather is so light on limpid air,
Nor ship, recently greased, on windless sea,
Nor river flowing down from alpine peak,
Nor swimmer’s feet through open oceans free,
As human thought which, unrestrained, prevails,
Along the verdant bottom of its error,
No every bitter precipice of terror,
And on intruding mounts it never fails.
/
Yet in its quest of the right flash of truth,
A lowly bird unfledged or a slow worm,
A stone, a thorn-bush can quite block its path.
You, then, High Guide, oh, lend me firm and strong
Wings for your Truth, and all my flightless thoughts
Cut short by showing me where I belong.

(Galeazzo Di Tarsia, [no name], Stanza 3, 219)

That lively little bird,
Which is so softly singing,
And so lascivious-swinging
Form fir to beech and back
From beech to myrtle tree,
If given human speech,
Would say: I smart with love, with love I smart!
But fire is in his heart,
And in his way he speaks,
And his sweet mate well understands his cue:
Oh, listen, listen, Silvio—
It is his mate that now
Is answering: With love I’m smarting too!

(Gian Battista Guarini, from Pastor Fido, Act I, Scene I, 233)

That vain and pompous sound,
That futile argument
Of flatteries and titles and deceit,
Which with a word unsound
A maddened throng calls Honor, was not yet
The tyrant of the soul;
…
shepherds and nymphs revealed
within their words their hearts;
Hymen on them bestowed
The sweetest kisses and the deepest bliss;
…
the thievish lover ever found them hid
from his unchaste desire or coveting
whether in forest or in lake or den;
husband and lover were one person the.
/
O wicked age, that veiled
With all your lewd delight
The beauty of the soul, and taught to whet
The thirst of our desire
With modesty of glace,
Unleashing then obscenities concealed!
Thus, like a net laid down
mid leaves and blossoms strewn,
you hide lascivious thoughts
beneath the holy shyness of your deeds;
nor do you care (it seems an honored thing)
if love’s but theft, provided no one knows.

(Gian Battista Guarini, from Pastor Fido, Act IV, Scene 9, Chorus, 234-5)

Let Fortune win, if underneath the weight
Of all these woes in the end must fall.
Let her; and of my rest and of my fate
The evil spoil be in her temple hung.

(Torquato Tasso, from Let Fortune Win, 240)

O wondrous golden age!
Oh, not because with milk
Each river ran, each forest dripped its honey;
Not for the earth that bore,
Untouched by plough, its fruits, or for the snakes
That wandered with no wrath nor poison; not
For lack of horrid cloud
Outstretching its black veil,
Or for the sky that in eternal spring—
…
Only because that vain
And inconsistent name,
That idol of deception and of errors,
That which a senseless throng
In future days called Honor
(and made it of our nature lord and king)
had not yet mixed its anguish and its woe
amid the gayety
of each young flock in love;
…
You first, O Honor, veiled
The fountain of delight,
Denying waves to thirst of love; and you
Taught lovely eyes to stay
Concentered in themselves,
And keep their beauty hidden from men’s view;
You gathered in a net
Tresses to breezes flown;
You made the sweet lascivious deeds of joy
Both fugitive and coy;

(Torquato Tasso, from Aminta, Chorus of Act I, 250-1)

And the new-burgeoned leaves
Wherein the newborn birds
Mingle their music with the breezes’ words;

(Tasso, from Madrigals, II, 252)

Saint Ignatius of Loyola, Personal Writing

2011-10-05T19:31:00.000-06:00

Saint Ignatius of Loyola, Personal Writings, Joseph A. Munitiz and Philip Endean, Penguin Books, London, 1996.

Though the first Jesuits always acknowledged the initial inspiration of Ignatius in bringing them together, their earliest deliberation and decision-processes seem to have been corporate, with Ignatius as a kind of first among equals. It was the second generation of Jesuit leaders, notably Nadal, who stressed the image of Ignatius as solitary founder, not without resistance from some of their predecessors. (Introduction, 4)

Until the age of twenty-six he was a man given up to the vanities of the world, and his chief delight used to be in the exercise of arms, with a great and vain desire to gain honour. And so, being in a stronghold which the French were attacking, … And after the attack had lasted a good time, a shot hit him in one leg, completely shattering it for him; … And he was getting worse, without being able to eat, and had the other symptoms that are normally a signal of death. … But Our Lord was gradually giving him health… he was forced to be in bed. And because he was much given to reading worldly and false books, which they normally call ‘tales of chivalry’, he asked, once he was feeling well, that they give him some of these to pass the time. But in that house none of those books which he normally read could be found, and so they give him a life of Christ and a book of the lives of the saints in Spanish. … And here the desires to imitate the saints were occurring to him, … These desires were confirmed for him by a visitation as follows: being awake one night, he saw clearly a likeness of Our Lady with the Holy Child Jesus, at the sight of which, for an appreciable time, he received a very extraordinary consolation. He was left so sickened at his whole past life, and especially at matters of the flesh, that it seemed to him that there had been removed from his soul all the likenesses that he had previously painted in it. Thus, from that hour until August 1553, when this is being written, he never again had even the slightest complicity… (Reminiscences, 15-16)

So then, as he was going on his way [to Jerusalem] a Moor caught up with him, … as the two of them were going along in conversation, they came to talk about Our Lady. And the Moor was saying that he could well accept that the Virgin had conceived in the absence of a man, but he couldn’t believe in her having given birth while remaining a virgin, offering for this the natural reasons that were occurring to him. Despite the many arguments which the pilgrim gave him, he couldn’t dislodge this opinion. At that the Moor went ahead, with such great speed that he lost sight of him as he remained thinking about what had passed with the Moor. /
And at this there came upon him some impulses creating disturbance in his soul; it seemed to him he had not done his duty. And these caused him anger also against the Moor; it seemed to him he had done wrong in allowing that a Moor should say such things of Our Lady, and he was obliged to stand up for her honour. And thus there were coming upon him desires to go and find the Moor, and stab him for what he he’d said. /
Carrying on a long time with the conflict aroused by these desires, in the end he remained doubtful, not knowing what his duty was. The Moor, who had gone ahead, had told him that he was going to a place which was a little further along his own route, very near the main road, but the main road did not go through the place. So, having tired of analyzing what it would be good to do, and not finding anything definite on which to decide, he decided on this: namely, to let the mule go on a loose rein up to the point where the roads divided. And if the mule went along the town road, he would look for the Moor and stab him; and if it didn’t go towards the town but went along the main road, he’d leave him be. He acted in accord with this thought, and Our Lord willed that, though the town was little more than thirty or forty paces away, and the road leading to it very broad and very good, the mule took the main road, and left the one for the town behind. (Reminiscences 19)

While he was in this almshouse something happened to him, many times: in full daylight he would see clearly something in the air alongside him, which would give him much consolation, because it was very beautiful, enormously so. He couldn’t properly make out what it was an image of, but somehow it seemed to him that it had the shape of a serpent, and it had many things which shone like eyes, though they weren’t eyes. (21)

Once he was going in his devotion to a church, which was a little more than a mile from Manresa (I think it is called St Paul’s), and the way goes along by the river. Going along thus in his devotions, he sat down for a little with his face towards the river, which was running deep below. And as he was seated there, the eyes of his understanding began to be opened: not that he saw some vision, but understanding… One cannot set out the particular things he understood then, though they were many: … sixty-two years he has completed, he does not think, … that he has ever attained so much as on that single occasion. And this left him with the understanding enlightened in so great a way that it seemed to him as if he were a different person, and he had another mind, different from that which he had before. /
After this had lasted a good while, he went off to kneel at a cross which was nearby in order to give thanks to God. And there appeared to him there a vision which had often been appearing and which he had never recognized: i.e. that thing mentioned above which seemed very beautiful to him, with many eyes. But being in front of the cross he could well see that that thing of such beauty didn’t have its normal colour, and he recognized very clearly, with strong backing from his will, that it was the devil. And in this form later the devil had a habit of appearing to him, often and for a long time, and he, by way of contempt, would cast it aside with a staff he used to carry in his hand. (27)

The reluctance shown by Ignatius to any wide dissemination of his text is easily understandable when one accepts that it was always through the spoken word that he introduced people to the Exercises. Somebody is required to ‘give’ the exercises, and only persons who have experienced the process that these exercises set in motion can do this. (Introduction to the Exercises, 281)

The process itself is no great mystery, as the very first Annotation (Exx. I.) makes clear: a person wants to dispose him/herself before God, so that the inner heart can face God with honesty. (281)

Ignatius prepared these notes so that somebody could instruct somebody else in the steps of the process, and would have some warning of the sorts of reaction that may occur—from outright rejection to wild enthusiasm (both equally dangerous). The idea is to bring the retreatant gently into a state where prayer before God can be undertaken while at the same time one looks honestly at the failings or drawbacks which hinder that prayer. … And frequently it is the shock of this self-questioning that arouses great personal emotions, doubts, joy and pain. Usually somebody is then needed to help one cope with the test. (282)

Annotation 4. The exercises that follow are made up of four Weeks, corresponding to the four parts into which these Exercises are divided: namely, the First is the consideration and contemplation of sins; the Second is the life of Christ Our Lord up to, and including, Palm Sunday; the Third, the Passion of Christ Our Lord; the Fourth, the Resurrection and Ascension, with the three ways of praying. However this does not mean that each Week necessarily lasts for six or eight days, for in the First Week some may happen to be slower … some may be more rapid than others, … But the Exercises should be completed in about thirty days. (283-4)

Annotation 7. If the one giving the Exercises sees that the one receiving them is desolate and tempted, it is important not to be hard or curt with that person, but gentle and kind. Let the director give the exercitant courage and strength for the future, and lay open before that person the cunning tricks of the enemy of human nature, … (284)

Annotation 9. … First Week. If it is a person with no previous experience of spiritual things, and who is tempted crudely and obviously, … such as fatigues, shame and fear inspired by worldly honour, etc, the director should not talk to that person about the Second Week rules for various spirits, … as they deal with questions too delicate and too elevated to be understood. (285)

Annotation 10. When the giver of the Exercises sees that the receiver is being assailed and tempted under the appearance of good, that is the time to speak to such a person about the Second Week rules… (285)

Annotation 13. It should also be noted that whereas in time of consolation it is easy and undemanding to remain in contemplation for the full hour, in time of desolation it is very difficult to last out. Consequently, in order to go against desolation and overcome temptations the exercitant must always stay on a little more than the full hour, so that one gets used not only to standing up to the adversary, but even to overthrowing him. (285)

Annotation 15. …Outside the Exercises it can indeed be lawful and meritorious for us to move all who seem suitable to choose continence, virginity, religious life and every form of evangelical perfection, but during these Spiritual Exercises it is more opportune and much better that the Creator and Lord communicate Himself to the faithful soul… Hence the giver of the Exercises should not be swayed or show a preference for one side rather than the other, but remaining in the middle like the pointer of a balance, should leave the Creator to work directly with the creature, and the creature with the Creator and Lord. (286)

Annotation 16. …if a person were bent on seeking to obtain an appointment or benefice, nor for the honour and glory of God Our Lord, nor for the spiritual good of souls, but for one’s own advancement and temporal interests. One must then set one’s heart on what is contrary to this, insisting upon it in prayers and other spiritual exercises, asking God Our Lord for the contrary, namely, not to want that appointment or benefice or anything else, unless the Divine Majesty gives a right direction to one’s desires and changes the first attachment. (286)

Annotation 19. When a person is taken up with public affairs or necessary business, and is someone who is educated or intelligent, such a person can set aside an hour and a half a day for the Exercises. (287)

The human person is created to praise, reverence and serve God Our Lord, and by so doing to save his or her soul. The other things on the face of the earth are created for human being in order to help them pursue the end for which they are created. It follows from this that one must use other created things in so far as they help towards one’s end, and free oneself from them in so far as they are obstacles to one’s end. (First Week, 289)

…in the morning immediately on rising: the exercitant makes a firm resolve to take great care to avoid the particular sin or defect that he or she wants to correct and reform. … after the mid-day meal, when one asks God Our Lord for what one wants, i.e. grace to remember how often one has fallen into the particular sin or defect, and to reform in the future. Then the exercitant makes the FIRST EXAMEN: it consists of demanding of oneself an account of the particular point proposed for correction and reform, running over each hour or each period of time, beginning from the hour of rising, … after supper, when the SECOND EXAMEN will be made the same way, … (290)

Each time one falls into the particular sin or defect, one should put a hand to the breast in sorrow for having fallen. This can be done even in the presence of many people without their noticing. (290)

The second day should be compared with the first, … One week should be compared with another. (290)

I presuppose that there are three sorts of thought processes in me, one sort which are properly mine and arise simply from my free will and choice, and two other sorts which come from outside, one from the good spirit and the other from the bad. (291)

One sins venially when the same thought of committing a mortal sin somes and one gives ear to it, dwelling on it a little or taking some sensual enjoyment form it, or when there is some negligence in rejecting this thought.
There are two ways of sinning mortally. The first is when one consents to a sinful thought in order to put one’s consent into immediate action, or to act on it if one could. The second way of sinning mortally is when that sin is actually committed, and this is more serious for three reasons—(i) because more time is spent, (ii) because there is more intensity, (iii) because greater harm is done both to others and to oneself. (291)

One should not speak ‘idle words’, by which I understand those of no profit to either myself or to others, and those not directed ot that end. Consequently to speak about anything that benefits or seeks to benefit my own soul or my neighbour’s, or that is for the good of the body or for temporal welfare, is never idle. Nor is it idel even to speak of things that do not belong to one’s state of life, e.g. if a religious speaks about wars or trade. Rather in all these cases there is merit in speaking to a well-ordered purpose, and sin in ill-directed or aimless talk. (292)

One should say nothing to defame another or to spread gossip, because if I make known a mortal sin which is not public knowledge, I sin mortally, and if the sin is venial, I sin venially, (293-3)

One should take as subject-matter the Ten Commandments, the precepts of the Church and the recommendations of superiors; any action done against any of these three is a greater or smaller sin depending on the greater or lesser importance of the matter. … there can be no little sin in inciting other to act or acting oneself against the religious exhortations and recommendations of those in authority. (293)

WAY OF MAKING THE GENERAL EXAMEN containing five points.
Point 1: to give thanks to God for the benefits received.
Point 2: to ask for grace to know one’s sins and reject them.
Point 3: to ask an account of one’s soul from the hour of rising to one present examen, hour by hour, or from one period to another, first about thoughts, then about words and finally about deeds, following the order given in the particular examen. [Exx. 25].
Point 4: to ask God Our Lord for pardon for sins.
Point 5: to determine to do better with His grace, ending with an Our Father. (293)

PRAYER. The preparatory prayer is to ask God Our Lord for grace that all my intentions, actions and operations may be directed purely to the service and praise of His Divine Majesty.
PREAMBLE I. This is the composition, seeing the place. It should be noted here that for contemplation or meditation about visible things, e.g. a contemplation about Christ Our Lord who is visible, the ‘composition’ consists in seeing through the gaze of the imagination the material place where the object I want to contemplate is situated. By ‘material place’ I mean e.g. a temple or a mountain where Jesus Christ or Our Lady is to be found, according to what I want to contemplate. Where the object is invisible, as in the case in the present instance dealing with sins, the composition will be to see with the gaze of the imagination and to consider that my soul is imprisoned in this body which will one day disintegrate, and my whole composite self as if exiled in this valley among brute beasts. When I say ‘my whole composite self’, I mean body and soul together. (295)

Preamble 2. This is to ask God for what I want and desire. The request must be adapted to the matter under consideration, so e.g. in contemplating the Resurrection one asks for joy with Christ joyful, but in contemplating the Passion one asks for grief, tears and suffering with the suffering Christ. Here I will ask for personal shame and confusion as I see how many have been damned on account of a single mortal sin, and how many times I deserved to be damned for ever on account of my numerous sins. (295)

Bring the memory to bear on the first sin, which was that of the angels, then apply the intellectual to the same event, in order to reason over it, and then the will, so that by seeking to recall and to comprehend all this, I may feel all the more shame, … (295)

Point 2. In the same way bring the three powers to bear on the case of the sin of Adam and Eve, (295)

Point 3, Do the same for the third sin, the particular one of any individual who has gone to hell for a single mortal sin, … (296)

Colloquy. Imagining Christ Our Lord before me on the cross, make a colloquy asking how it came about that the Creator made Himself man, and from eternal life came to temporal death, and thus to die for my sins. Then, turning to myself I shall ask, what have I done for Christ? What am I doing for Christ? What ought I to do for Christ? Finally, seeing Him in that state hanging on the cross, talk over whatever comes to mind. /
A colloquy, properly so-called, means speaking as one friend speaks with another, or a servant with a master, at times asking for some favour, at other times accusing oneself of something badly done, or telling the other about one’s concerns and asking for advice about them. (296)

The Second Exercise. … Point 1. This is the record of my sins, i.e. I recall to my memory all the sins of my life, looking from year to year or form one period of time to another, and for this three things are helpful: (i) to see the place and house where I lived, (ii) the relations I have had with others, (iii) the occupation in which I have spent my life.
Point 2. I weigh up my sins, …
Point 3. I look at who I am, diminishing myself by means of comparisons: … I look at myself as though I were an ulcer or an abscess, the source of many sins and evils, and of great infection. (297)

The Third Exercise. Repetition of the First and Second Exercises, making three colloquies. (297)

The Fourth Exercise. Recapitulation of the Third Exercise. (298)

The Fifth Exercise. Meditation on Hell. Containing—after the preparatory prayer and the two preambles—five points and a colloquy. … Point 1. This will be to look with the eyes of the imagination at the great fires and at the souls appearing to be in burning bodies. Point 2. To hear with one’s ears and wailings, howls, cries, blasphemies against Christ Our Lord and against all the saints. Point 3. To smell with the sense of smell the smoke, the burning sulphur, the cesspit and the rotting matter. Point 4. To taste with the sense of taste bitter things, such as tears, sadness and the pangs of conscience. Point 5. To feel with the sense of touch, i.e. how those in hell are licked around and burned by the fires. Colloquy. As I make a colloquy with Christ Our Lord, I should recall to my memory the persons who are in hell, … (299)

The first exercise will be made at midnight, the second on rising in the morning, the third before or after mass, as long as it is made before lunch, the fourth at the time of vespers, the fifth an hour before supper. (299)

…arousing myself to confusion for my many sins by using comparisons, such as that of a knight coming before his king and all the court, full of shame and confusion on account of offences committed against he lord from whom in the past he has had many gifts and favours. Similarly for the Second Exercise, I see myself as a great sinner in chains, that is to say, as about to appear, bound, before the supreme and eternal Judge, recalling how chained prisoners appears for the death penalty before a judge here on earth. It is with thoughts like these, or others adapted to the subject matter under consideration, that I should dress myself. (300)

Second Week. The Call of the Earthly King Will Help Us to Contemplate the Life of the Eternal King. … This is the composition, seeing the place, and here it will be to see with the eyes of the imagination synagogues, towns and villages where Christ Our Lord went preaching. (303)

Point 1. I put before me a human king chosen by the hand of God Our Lord, to whom all Christian leaders and their followers give their homage and obedience. Point 2. I watch how this kind speaks to all his own saying: ‘My will is to conquer all the land of the infidels! (303)

Note 2. For the Second Week, as well as for the future, it is very helpful to read from time to time from the Imitation of Christ, or from the Gospels, or lives of saints. (304)

First Day: First Contemplation. On the Incarnation. … recall the narrative of the subject to be contemplated, in this case how the three Divine Persons were looking at all the flatness or roundness of the whole world filled with people, and how the decision was taken in Their eternity, as They saw them all going down into hell, that the second Person would become human to save the human race. (305)

Preamble 2. The composition, seeing the place, which here will be to see the great extent of the round earth with its many different races; then, in the same way, see the particular house of Our Lady and its rooms in the town of Nazareth in the province of Galilee. (305)

Second Contemplation. On the Nativity. Preamble I. The narrative here will be how Our Lady, almost nine months pregnant (as we may devoutly think of her) and seated on a donkey, with Jospeh and a servant girl, taking with them an ox, set out from Nazareth and Bethlehem to pay the tribute which Caesar had imposed on all those lands [Exx.264]. Preamble 2. Composition, seeing the place. Here it will be to see with the eyes of the imagination the road from Nazareth to Bethlehem, considering the length and breadth of it, whether it is a flat road or goes through valleys or over hills; and similarly to look at the place or grotto of the Nativity, to see how big or small it was, how low or high, and what was in it. (306)

Point I. This is to see the people, i.e. Our Lady, and Joseph, and the servant girl, and the child Jesus after his birth. Making myself into a poor and unworthy little servant, I watch them, and contemplate them, and serve them in their needs as if I were present, with all possible submission and reverence; and afterwards I reflects with in myself to derive some profit. Point 2. I watch, and notice and contemplate what they are saying, and then reflect within myself to derive some profit. Point 3. I watch and consider what they are doing, e.g. their travel and efforts, so that Christ comes to be born in extreme poverty and, after so many labours, after hunger, thirst, heat and cold, outrages and affronts, he dies on the cross, and all of this for me; then I reflect within myself to derive some spiritual profit. (307)

Fourth Day. … Point 1. This point is to imagine the leader of all the enemy powers as if he were enthroned in that great plain of Babylon, upon something like a throne of fire and smoke, a horrible and fearsome figure. Point 2. To consider how he calls up innumerable demons, and how he then disperses them, some to one city and others to another, thus covering the entire world, omitting no region, no place, no state of life, nor any individual. Point 3. To consider the address he makes to them, ordering them to lay traps for people and to bind them with chains. They are to tempt them first to crave after riches (the enemy’s usual tactic), so that they might come more readily to the empty honours of the world, and in the end to unbounded pride. Therefore the first step is riches, the second, honour, and the third, pride; form these three steps the enemy leads people on to every other vice. (311)

…looking only at what I have been created for, viz. the praise of God Our Lord and the salvation of my soul, … I must not make the end fit the means, but subordinate the means to the end. But what happens in fact is that many first of all choose marriage, which is a means, and secondly the service of God in married life, although this service of God is the end; … So in the case of priesthood, marriage etc., … one should represent and try to lead a good life within the state one chosen. It does not look as if such an election is a divine vocation, since it is disordered and biased. (317)

Third Week. Rules for the future ordering of one’s life as regards eating. Rule I. There is less to be gained in restraint from eating bread, since bread is not a food about which the appetite is usually as uncontrolled, … (325)

Rule 5. While eating one should imagine that one is seeing Christ Our Lord eating with His apostles, considering the way He drinks, the way He looks, and the way He talks, and then try to imitate Him; thus the higher part of the mind is taken up with considering Our Lord, and the lower with feeding the body, … Rule 6. At other times, when eating, one can think over the lives of the saints, or some religious contemplation, or some spiritual matter that has to be undertaken; … Rule 7. Above all, one should take care not to become wholeheartedly engrossed in what one is eating, and not to be carried away by one’s appetite at meals; instead one should be in control of oneself, both in the manner of eating and in the quantity eaten. (326)

Fourth Week. Re Addition 7. One can take advantage of the light and of the pleasures of the seasons, e.g. refreshing coolness in the summer, in the winter of the sunshine or the warmth of a fire, in so far as one seems likely to be helped by these things to rejoice in the Creator and Redeemer. (328)

Additional Material. … I consider and think over the First Commandment: how have I kept it? How have I failed to keep it? I stay with this as a rule for the time it takes to say three Our Fathers and three Hail Marys. (331)

On the Five Bodily Senses. … Should one wish to imitate Christ Our Lord in the use of the senses, one should commend oneself to His Divine Majesty in the preparatory prayer, then after considering with each sense say a Hail Mary or an Our Father. And if one wishes to imitate Our Lady in the use of the senses, one should commend oneself to her in the preparatory prayer, so that she may obtain that grace from her Son and Lord, then after considering each sense, say a Hail Mary. (332)

Way 2 of Praying. Consists in contemplating the meaning of each word of a prayer. … Keeping one’s eyes closed or fixed on the one spot, without allowing the gaze to wander, one says the word ‘Father’, staying with this word for as long as one finds meanings, comparisons, relish and consolation in considerations related to it. One should do this for each word of the Our Father, or for another prayer that one may wish to take for praying in this way. (332) … One should spend an hour on the whole of the Our Father, … If the person contemplating the Our Father finds in one or two words rich matter for reflection, and much relish and consolation, that person should not be anxious to go further, … (332)

WAY 3 OF PRAYING by rhythm. … The third Way of praying consists in praying mentally with each breath or respiration, by saying one word of the Our Father or of any other prayer being said, so that only a single word is pronounced between one breath and the next. In the interval between each breath, attention is especially paid to the meaning of that word, or to the person to whom one is praying, or to one’s own lowliness, or to the distance between the other’s greatness and one’s own lowliness; … (333)

Rule 1. With people who go from one mortal sin to another it is the usual practice of the enemy to hold out to them apparent pleasures; so he makes them imagine sensual satisfaction and gratifications, in order to retain and reinforce them in their vices and sins. With people of this kind, the good spirit uses the opposite procedure, causing pricks of conscience and feelings of remorse by means of the power of rational moral judgment. (348)

Rule 4. On spiritual desolation. ‘Desolation’ is the name I give to everything contrary to what is in Rule 3, e.g. darkness and disturbance in the soul, attraction towards what is low and of the earth, anxiety arising form various agitations and temptations. All this tends to a lack of confidence in which the soul is without hope and without love; one finds oneself thoroughly lazy, lukewarm, sad, and as though cut off from one’s Creator and Lord. … Rule 5. In time of desolation one should never make any change, but stand firm and constant in the resolutions and decision by which one was guided on the day before the desolation, or in the decision one had reached during the preceding time of consolation. For, just as in consolation it is more the good spirit who guides and counsels us, so in desolation it is the bad spirit, and by following his counsels we can never find the right way. … Rule 7. Anyone in desolation must consider how Our Lord has placed them in a trial period, (349)

Rule 9. There are three principal reasons for our being in desolation: (i) because we are lukewarm, lazy or careless in our commitment to the spiritual life, and so spiritual consolation goes away because of our faults; (ii) to test our quality and to show how far we will go in God’s service and praise, even without generous recompense in the form of consolations and overflowing graces; (iii) to give us true information and understanding, so that we may perceive through experience that we cannot ourselves arouse or sustain overflowing devotion, intense love, tears or any other spiritual consolation, but that everything is a gracious gift form God Our Lord. (350)

Rule 12. The behaviour of the enemy resembles that of a woman in a quarrel with a man, for she is weak before strength, but strong when allowed her will. (350)

Rule 13. The enemy also behaves as a false lover behaves towards a woman. Such a man wants to remain hidden and now be discovered; in using dishonest talk to try to seduce the daughter of a good father, or the wife of a good husband, he wants his words and inducements kept secret; on the other hand he is greatly put out when the daughter reveals his deceitful words and corrupt intentions to her father… (351)

Rule 14. Likewise, he behaves like a military leader setting about the conquest and seizure of the object of his desire. For the commander of an army, after setting up his camp and inspecting the fortifications and defenses of a castle, attacks it at its weakest point; (351)

Rules to be observed in the ministry of alms-giving… Firstly, the love that moves me and makes me give the alms has to descend from above, from the love of God Our Lord; so I must first of all feel within myself that the love, greater or lesser, which I have for these people is for God’s sake, … Rule 5. When one feels a preference and attachment for the people to whom one wants to give alms, one should stop and carefully ponder the four rules just given, using them to examine and test one’s attachment; one should not give the alms until one has god rid of and rejected one’s disordered attachment, in keeping with these rules. (354)

Note 4. The enemy observes closely whether a person is of coarse or sensitive conscience: sensitive conscience he tries to sensitize still further, to the point of excess, in order the more easily to cause trouble and confusion. For instance, he may see that a person consent neither to mortal nor to venial sin, nor anything that looks like deliberate sin at all, and in such a case, unable to make such a person fall into anything that seems to be sin, he endeavours to make that person see sin where there is no sin, as in some word or passing thought. But if the conscience is coarse the enemy tries to make it even more coarse. For example, if up to now a person took no notice of venial sins, he will try to make that person take little notice of mortal sins,… (355)

Note 5. The person who wishes to progress in the spiritual life must always go contrario modo [in the opposite direction] to that of the enemy; i.e. if the enemy is out to make the conscience coarser, one should seek to become more sensitive, and likewise if the enemy tries to refine the conscience to an extreme degree, one should seek to establish a position in the just mean, so as to become completely tranquil. (356)

Rules to follow in view of the true attitude of mind that we ought to maintain [as members] within the Church militant. / Rule 1. Laying aside all our own judgments, we ought to keep our minds open and ready to obey in everything the true bride of Christ Our Lord, our holy mother, the hierarchical Church. (356)

Rule 6. We should praise the cult of the saints, venerating their relics and praying to the saints themselves, praising also the stations, pilgrimages, indulges, jubilees, dispensations and the lighting of candles in churches. … Rule 8. We should praise the decoration and architecture of churches, also statues, which should be venerated according to what they represent. … Rule 10. We should be more inclined to approve and praise the decrees and regulations o those in authority, and their conduct as well; for although some of these things do not or did not in the past deserve approval, more grumbling and scandal than profit would be aroused by speaking against them, either in public sermons or in conversations in front of simple people. In that way people would become hostile towards authority, either temporal or spiritual. But just as harm can be done by speaking ill to simple people about those in authority in their absence, so it can do good to speak of their unworthy behaviour to the actual people who can bring about a remedy. (357)

Rule 13. To maintain a right in al things we must always maintain that the white I see, I shall believe to be black, if the hierarchical Church so stipulates; (358)

Rule 14. Even granting as perfectly true that no one can be saved without being predestined, and without having faith and grace, nevertheless much caution is needed in the way in which we discuss and propagate these matters. (358)

Rule 15. We must not make a habit of talking much about predestination, but if sometimes mention is made of it one way or another, our language should be such that simple people are not led into error, as sometimes happens with them saying, ‘It is already decided whether I am to be saved or damned, so whether I do good or evil can change nothing;’ paralysed by this notion, they neglect the works that lead to the salvation and spiritual progress of their souls. (358)

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria

2011-10-01T12:33:00.001-06:00

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, Ed. George Watson, Everyman’s Library, Dutton, New York, 1967.

[note 3] Cowper’s Task was published some time before the Sonnets of Mr Bowles; but I was not familiar with it till many years afterwards. The vein of satire which runs through that excellent poem, together with the somber hue of its religion opinions, would probably, at that time, have prevented its laying any strong hold on my affections. The love of nature seems to have led Thomas to a cheerful religion; and a gloomy religion to have led Cowper to a love of nature. The one would carry his fellow-men. In chastity of diction however, and the harmony of blank verse, Cowper leaves Thomson unmeasurably below him; yet still I feel the latter to have been the poet. (13)

In Spenser, indeed, we trace a mind constitutionally tender, delicate and, in comparison with his three great compeers, I had almost said effeminate… But nowhere do we find the least trace of irritability, and still less of quarrelsome or affected contempt of his censurers. /
The same calmness and even greater self-possession may be affirmed of Milton, as far as his poems and poetic character are concerned. He reserved his anger for the enemies of religion, freedom and his country. (19)

I know it, alas! By woeful experience! I have laid too many eggs in the hots sands of the wilderness, the world, with ostrich carelessness and ostrich oblivion. (27)

In times of old, books were as religious oracles; as literature advanced, they next became venerable preceptors; they then descended to the rank of instructive friends; and as their numbers increased they sank still lower to that of entertaining companions; and at present they seem degraded into culprits to hold up their hands at the bar of every self-elected yet not the less peremptory judge who chooses to write from humour or interest, from enmity or arrogance, and to abide the decision (in the words of Jeremy Taylor) ‘of him that reads in malice, or him that reads after dinner.’ [note 3:

Probably a vague recollection of a proverb quoted by Taylor in his Rules and Advice to the Clergy of Down and Connor (Dublin, 1661), xlix: ‘After a good dinner let us sit down and backbite our neighbours.’] (33)

What literary man has not regretted the prudery of Spratt in refusing to let his friend Cowley appear in his slippers and dressing-gown? [note 1: Thomas Sprat (1635-1713), in the biography of his friend Abraham Cowley which he wrote after Cowley’s death in 1667 and published in his edition of Cowley’s English Works (1668), declined to include Cowley’s letter as too private for publication. Johnson in his Life of Cowley condemned the biography as ‘confused and enlarged through the mist of panegyrick.’] (37)

…that fancy and imagination were two distinct and widely different faculties, instead of being, according to the general belief, either two names with one meaning, (50)

Yet even in this attempt I am aware that I shall be obliged to draw more largely on the reader’s attention than so immethodical [53] a miscellany can authorize, when in such a work (the Ecclesiastical Polity) of such a mind as Hooker’s the judicious author, though no less admirable for the perspicuity than for the port and dignity of his language and though he wrote for men of learning in a learned age, saw nevertheless occasion to anticipate and guard against ‘complaints of obscurity’ as often as he was to trace his subject ‘to the highest well-spring and fountain.’ Which (continues he), ‘because men are not accustomed to, the pains we take are more needful a great deal than acceptable; and the matters we handle seem by reason of newness (till the mind grow better acquainted with them) dark and intricate.’ I would gladly therefore spare both myself and others this labour, if I know knew how without it to present an intelligible statement of my poetic creed; not as my opinions, which weigh for nothing, but as deductions from established premise conveyed in such a form as is calculated either to effect a fundamental conviction or to receive a fundamental confutation. (53)

[note 1] I here used the word ‘idea’ in Mr Hume’s’s sense of its general currency among the English metaphysicians; though against my own judgment, for I believe that the vague use of this word has been the cause of much error and much confusion. The word, idea [greek text], in its original sense as used by Pindar, Aristophanes and in the Gospel of Matthew, represented the visual abstraction of a distant object when we see the whole without distinguishing its parts. Plato adopted it as a technical term, and as the antithesis to [?], or sensuous images; the transient and perishable emblems, or mental words, of ideas. The ideas themselves he considered as mysterious powers, living, seminal, formative, and exempt from time. In this sense the word became the property of the Platonic school; and it seldom occurs in Aristotle, without some such phrase annexed to it as according to Plato, or as Plato says. Our English writers to the end of Charles 2nd’s reign, or somewhat later, employed it either in the original sense, or platonically, or in a sense nearly correspondent to our present use of the substantive ideal, always however opposing it more or less to image, whether of present or absent objects. The reader will not be displeased with the following interesting exemplification from Bishop Jeremy Taylor; ‘St Lewis the King sent Ivo Bishop of Chartres on an embassy, and he told that he met a grave and stately matron on the way with a censer of fire in one hand, and a vessel of water in the other; and observing her to have a melancholy, religious and phantastic deportment and look, he asked her what those symbols meant, and what she meant to do with her fire and water; she answered, my purpose it with the fire to burn paradise and with my water to quench the flames of hell, that men may serve God purely for the love of God. But we rarely meet with such spirits which love virtue so metaphysically as to abstract her from all sensible compositions, and love the purity of the idea.’ [Jeremy Taylor, Golden Grove (1651), Sermon xxi] (57)

‘As therefore physicians are many times forced to leave such methods of curing as themselves know to be fittest, and being overruled by the sick man’s impatience are fain to try the best they can; in like sort, considering how the case doth stand with this present age full of tongue and weak of brain, behold we would (if our subject permitted it) yield to the stream thereof. That way we are contented to prove our thesis, which being the worse in itself, is notwithstanding now by reason of common imbecility the fitter and likelier to be brooked.’ – Hooker. [Ecclesiastical Polity, I. viii.] (90)

During the first year that Mr Wordsworth and I were neighbours our conversations turned frequently on the two cardinal points of poetry, the power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to the truth of nature, and the power of giving the interest of novelty by the modifying colours of imagination. … The thought suggested itself (to which of us I do not recollect) that a series of poems might be composed of two sorts. In the one, the incidents and agents were to be, in part at least, supernatural; and the excellence aimed at was to consist in the interesting of the affections by the dramatic truth such of emotions as would naturally accompany such situations, supposing them real. … For the second class, subjects were to be chosen from ordinary life; … In this idea originated the plan of the Lyrical Ballads; in which it was agreed that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic; yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a [169] semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith. Mr Wordsworth, on the other hand, was to propose to himself as his object to give the charm of novelty to things of every day, and to excite a feeling analogous to the supernatural, by awakening the mind’s attention form the lethargy of custom and directing it to the loveliness and the wonders of the world before us; (168-9)

But if this should be admitted as a satisfactory character of a poem, we have still to seek for a definition of poetry. The writings of Plato, and Bishop Taylor, and the Theoria Sacra of Burnet, furnish undeniable proofs that poetry of the highest kind may exist without metre, and even without the contradistinguishing objects of a poem. The first chapter of Isaiah (indeed a very large proportion of the whole book) is poetry in the most emphatic sense; yet it would not be less irrational then strange to assert that pleasure, and not truth, was the immediate object of the prophet. (173)

The language of Hooker, Bacon, Bishop, Taylor and Burke differs from the common language of the learned class only by the superior number and novelty of the thoughts and relations which they had to convey. (198)

‘There neither is or can be any essential difference between the language of prose and metrical composition.’ Such is Mr Wordsworth’s assertion. Now prose itself, at least in all argumentative and consecutive works, differs, and ought to differ, from the language of conversation; even as reading [note 1] ought to differ from talking. [note 1: It is no less an error in teachers than a torment to the poor children to enforce the necessity of reading as they would talk. In order to cure them of singing, as it is called, that is, of too great a difference, the child is made to repeat the words with his eyes from off the book; and then, indeed, his tones resemble talking, as far as his fears, tears and trembling will permit. But as soon as the eye is again directed to the printed page the spell begins anew; for an instinctive sense tells the child’s feelings that to utter its own momentary thoughts, and to recite the written thoughts of another, as of another and a far wiser than himself, are two widely different things; and as the two acts are accomplished with widely different feelings, so must they justify different modes of enunciation. (203)

And, first, from the origin of metre. This I would trace to the balance in the mind effected by that spontaneous effort which strives to hold in check the workings of passion. … Assuming these principles as the data of our argument, we deduce form them two legitimate conditions which the critic is entitled to expect in every metrical work. First, that as the elements of metre owe their existence to a state of increased excitement, so the metre itself should be accompanied by the natural language of excitement. Secondly, that as these elements are formed into metre artificially, by a voluntary act, with the design and for the purpose of blending delight with emotion, so the traces of present volition should throughout the metrical language be proportionally discernible. Now these two conditions must be reconciled and co-present. There must be not only a partnership, but a union; an interpenetration of passion and of will, of spontaneous impulse and of voluntary purpose. Again, this union can be manifested only in a frequency of forms and figures of speech (originally the offspring of passion, but now the adopted children of power) greater than would be desired or endured where the emotion is not voluntarily encouraged and kept up for the sake of that pleasure which such emotion so tempered and mastered by the will is found capable of communicating. It not only dictates, but of itself tends to produce, a more frequent employment of picturesque and vivifying language than would be natural in any other case in which there did not exist, as there does in the present, a previous and well understood, though tacit, compact between the poet and his reader, that the latter is entitled to expect and the former bound to supply this species and degree of pleasurable excitement. (206)

Metre in itself is simply a stimulant of the attention, and therefore excites the question: Why is the attention to be thus stimulated? Now the question cannot be answered by the pleasure of the metre itself; for this we have shown to be conditional and dependent on the appropriateness of the thoughts and expressions to which the metrical form is superadded. Neither can I conceive any other answer that can be rationally given, short of this: I write in metre because I am about to use a language different from that of prose. (209)

The ultimate end of criticism is much more to establish the principles of writing than to furnish rules how to pass judgment on that has been written by others; if indeed it were possible that the two could be separated. (217)

When I was at Rome, among many other visits to the tomb of Julius II I went thither once with a Prussian artist, a man of genius and great vivacity of feeling. As we were gazing on Michael Angelo’s Moses, our conversation turned on the horns and beard of that stupendous statue; of the necessity of each to support the other; of the superhuman effect of the former and the necessity of the existence of both to give a harmony and integrity both to the image and the feeling excited by it. Conceive them removed, and the statue would become un-natural, without being super-natural. We called to the mind the horns of [244] the rising sun, and I repeated the noble passage from Taylor’s Holy Dying. [Holy Dying (1651), I. iii. 2. ‘For the life of a man comes upon him slowly and insensibly. But as when the sun approaches towards the gates of the morning he first opens a little eye of Heaven, and sends away the spirits of darkenesse, and gives light to a cock, and calls up the lark to matins, and by and by gilds the fringes of a cloud and peeps over the eastern hills, thrusting out his golden horns like those which decked the browes of Moses when he was forced to wear a vail because himself had seen the face of God…’ (243-4)

William Hazlitt, Lectures on the Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth

2011-09-30T10:14:00.002-06:00

William Hazlitt, Lectures on the Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth, Wiley and Putnam, 161 Broadway, New York, 1845.

…statesmen, warriors, divines, scholars, poets, and philosophers, Ralegh, Drake, Coke, Hooker, and higher and more sounding still, and still more frequent in our mouths, Shakespeare, Spenser, Sidney, Bacon, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, men whom fame has eternized in her long and lasting scroll, and who by their words and acts were benefactors of their country, and ornaments of human nature. (1)

…restraining my own admiration within reasonable bounds. (2)

There is not a lower ambition, a poorer way of thought, than that which would confine all excellence, or arrogate its final accomplishment to the present, or modern times. (2-3)

Form thence we date a new era, the dawn of our own intellect, (3)

Because, in a word, the last generation, when tottering off the stage, were not so active, so sprightly, and so promising as we were, we begin to imagine that people formerly must have crawled about in a feeble, torpid state, like flies in winter, in a sort of dim twilight of the understanding; (4)

[English dramatists before Shakespeare] It is the present fashion to speak with veneration of old English literature; but the homage we pay to it is more akin to the rites of superstition than to the worship of true religion. Our faith is doubtful; our love cold; our knowledge little or none. We now and then repeat the names of some of the old writers by rote, but we are shy of looking into their works. Though we seem disposed to think highly of them, and to given them every credit for a masculine and original vein of thought, as a matter of literary courtesy and enlargement of taste, we are afraid of coming to the proof, as too great a trial of our candour and patience. We regard the enthusiastic admiration of these obsolete authors, or a desire to make proselytes to a belief in their extraordinary merits, as an amiable weakness, a pleasing delusion; and prepare to listen to some favourite passage, that may be referred to in support of this singular taste, with in incredulous smile; and are in no small pain for the result of the hazardous experiment; feeling much the same awkward condescending disposition to patronize these first crude attempts at poetry and lispings of the Muse, as when a fond parent brings forward a bashful child to make a display of its wit of learning. (6)

Shakespeare… He was not something sacred and aloof from the vulgar herd of men, but shook hands with nature and the circumstances of the time, and is distinguished from his immediate contemporaries, not in kind, but in degree and greater variety of excellence. (7)

The sweetness of Decker, the thought of Marston, the gravity of Chapman, the grace of Fletcher and his young-eyed wit, Jonson’s learned sock, the flowing vein of Middleton, Heywood’s ease, the pathos of Webster, and Marlowe’s deep designs, (8)

The first cause I shall mention, as contributing to this general effect, was the Reformation, which had just then taken place. This event gave a mighty impulse, and increased activity to thought and inquiry, and agitated the inert mass of accumulated prejudices through Europe. … Liberty was held out to all to think and speak the truth. men’s brains were busy; their spirits stirring; their hearts full; and their hands not idle. … their ears burned with curiosity and zeal to know the truth, that the truth might make them free. The death-blow which had been struck at scarlet vice and bloated hypocrisy loosened their tongues, … The translation of the Bible was the chief engine in the great work. It threw open, by a secret spring, the rich treasures of religion and morality, which had been there and locked up as in a shrine. It revealed the visions of the prophets, and conveyed the lessons of inspired teachers (such they were thought) to the meanest of the people. (9-10)

What also gave an unusual impetus to the mind of man at this period, was the discovery of the New World, and the reading of voyages and travels. Green islands and golden sands seemed to arise, as by enchantment, out of the bosom of the watery waste, and invite the cupidity, or wing the imagination of the dreaming speculator. Fairy land was realized in the new and unknown worlds. (15)

Man’s life was (as it appears to me) more full of traps and pit-falls; of hair-breadth accidents by flood and field; more way-laid by sudden and startling evils; (17)

The manners and out-of-door amusements were more tinctured with a spirit of adventure and romance. The war with wild beasts, &c., was more strenuously kept up in country sports. I do not think we could get form sedentary poets, who had never mingled in the vicissitudes, the dangers, or excitements of the chase, such descriptions of hunting and other athletic games, as are to be found in Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, or Fletcher’s Noble Kinsmen. (18)

This does not look as if in those days “it snowed of meat and drink,” as a matter of course throughout the year! (19)

We are a nation of islanders, and we cannot help it; nor mend ourselves if we would. We are something in ourselves, nothing when we try to ape others. Music and painting are not our forte: for what we have done in that way has been little, and that borrowed from others with great difficulty. But we may boast of our poets and philosophers. That’s something. (20)

We are not forward to express our feelings, and therefore they do not come from us till they force their way in the most impetuous eloquence. (21)

We may be accused of grossness, but not of flimsiness; of extravagance, but not of affectation; of want of art and refinement, but not of a want of truth and nature. Our literature, in a work, is Gothic and grotesque; unequal and irregular; (21)

The names of Ben Jonson, for instance, Massinger, Beaumont and Fletcher, are almost, though not quite, as familiar to us as that of Shakespeare; and their works still keep regular possession of the stage. Another set of writers included in the same general period (the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century,) who are next, or equal, or sometimes superior to these in power, but whose names are now little known, and their writings nearly obsolete, are Lyly, Marlowe, Marston, Chapman, Middleton, and Rowley, Heywood, Webster, Decker, and Ford. [!!] (23)

Lyly made a more attractive picture of Grecian manners at second-hand, than of English characters from his own observation. (29)

It is singular that the style of this author, which is extremely sweet and flowing, should have been the butt of ridicule to his contemporaries, particularly Drayton, (32)

Marlowe is a name that stands high, and almost the first in this list of dramatic worthies. … There is a lust of power in his writings, a hunger and thirst after unrighteousness, a glow of the imagination, un hallowed by any thing but its own energies. … His “Life and Death of Doctor Faustus,” though an imperfect and unequal performance, is his greatest work. Faustus himself is a rude sketch, but it is a gigantic one. (33)

As the outline of the character is grand and daring, the execution is abrupt and fearful. The thoughts are vast and irregular; and the style halts and staggers under them, “what uneasy steps;”—“ such footing found the sole of unblest feet.” (34)

There is one passage more of this kind, which is so striking and beautiful, so like a rapturous and deeply passionate dream, that I cannot help quoting it here: it is the address to the Apparition of Helen. (36)

Perhaps the finest trait in the whole play, and that which softens and subdues the horror of it, is the interest taken by the two scholars in the fate of their master, and their unavailing attempts to dissuade him from his relentless career. The regard to learning is the ruling passion of this drama, and its indications are as mild and amiable in them as its ungoverned pursuit has been fatal to Faustus. (37)

The immediate comic parts, in which Faustus is not directly concerned, are mean and groveling to the last degree. One of the Clowns says to another, “Snails! What hast got there? A book? Why thouh can’st not tell ne’er a word on’t.” Indeed, the ignorance and barbarism of the time, as here described, might almost justify Faustus’s overstrained admiration of learning, (38)

I cannot find in Marlowe’s play, any proofs of the atheism or impiety attributed to him, (38)

Edward II. is, according to the modern standard of composition, Marlowe’s best play. It is written with few offences against the common rules, and in a succession of smooth and flowing lines. The poet however succeeds less in the voluptuous and effeminate descriptions which he here attempts, than in the more dreadful and violent bursts of passion. Edward II. is drawn with historic truth, but without much dramatic effect. The management of the plot is feeble and desultory; little interest is excited in the various turns of fate; the characters are too worthless, have too little energy, and their punishment is, in general, too well deserved to excite our commiseration; so that this play will bear, on the whole, but a distant comparison with Shakespeare’s Richard II. in conduct, power, or effect. But the death of Edward II., in Marlowe’s tragedy, is certainly superior to that of Shakespeare’s King; and in heart-breaking distress, and the sense of human weakness, claiming pity from utter helplessness and conscious misery, is not surpassed by any writer whatever. (43)

As Marlowe’s imagination glows like a furnace, Heywood’s is a gentle, lambent flame, that purifies without consuming. His manner is simplicity itself. There is nothing supernatural, nothing startling, or terrific. He makes use of the commonest circumstances of every-day life, (44)

The dialogue (bating the verse) is such as might be uttered in ordinary conversation. It is beautiful prose put into heroic measure. (44)

The names of Middleton and Rowley, with which I shall conclude this Lecture, generally appear together as two writers who frequently combined their talents in the production of joining pieces. Middleton (judging from their separate works) was “the more potent spirit” of the two; but they were neither of them equal to some others. Rowley appears to have excelled in describing a certain amiable quietness of disposition and disinterested tone of morality, … with a pleasing simplicity and naivete equal to the novelty of the conception. Middleton’s style was not marked by any peculiar quality of his own, but was made up, in equal proportions, of the faults and excellences common to his contemporaries. (47)

Marston is a writer of great merit, who rose to tragedy from the ground of comedy, and whose forte wsa not sympathy, either with the stronger or softer emotions, but an impatient scorn… He was not a favourite with his contemporaries, nor they with him. (57)

Next to Marston, I must put Chapman, whose name is better known as the translator of Homer than as a dramatic writer. He is, like Marston, a philosophic observer, a didactic reasoner: but he has both more gravity in his tragic style, and more levity in his comic vein. (64)

He is too stately for a wit, in his serious writings—too formal for a poet. … Our author aims at the highest things in poetry, and tries in vain, wanting imagination and passion, to fill up the epic moulds of tragedy with sense and reason alone, so that he often runs into bombast and turgidity—is extravagant and pedantic at one and the same time. (65)

It remains for me to say something of Webster and Decker. For these two writers I do not know how to show my regard and admiration sufficiently. Noble-minded Webster, gentle-hearted Decker, (69)

Webster would, I think, be a greater dramatic genius than Decker, if he had the same originality; and perhaps is so, even without it. His ‘White Devil’ and ‘Duchess of Malfy,’ upon the whole, perhaps, come the nearest to Shakespeare of anything we have upon record; the only drawback to them, the only shade of imputation than can be thrown upon them, “by which they lose some colour,” is, that they are too like Shakespeare, and often direct imitations of his, both in general conception and individual expression. (76)

Decker has, I think, more truth of character, more instinctive depth of sentiment, more of the unconscious simplicity of nature; but he does not, out of his own stores, clothe his subject with the same richness of imagination, or the same glowing colours of language. Decker excels in giving expression to habitual, deeply-rooted feelings, which remain pretty much the same in all circumstances, the simple uncompounded elements of nature and passion:—Webster gives more scope to their various combinations and changeable aspects, (76)

Beaumont and Fletcher, with all their prodigious merits, appear to me the first writers who in some measure departed form the genuine tragic style of the age of Shakespeare. They thought less of their subject, and more of themselves, than some others. They had a great and unquestioned command over the stores both of fancy and passion; but they availed themselves too often of common-place extravagances and theatrical trick. (85)

It cannot be denied that they are lyrical and descriptive poets of the highest order; every page of their writings is a florilegium: they are dramatic poets of the second class, in point of knowledge, variety, vivacity, and effect; … (86)

Their fault is a too ostentatious and indiscriminate display of power. Everything seems in a state of fermentation and effervescence, and not to have settled and found its centre in their minds. The ornaments, through neglect or abundance, do not always appear sufficiently appropriate: there is evidently a rich wardrobe of words and images, to set off any sentiments that occur, but not equal felicity in the choice of the sentiments to be expressed; the characters in general do not take a substantial form, or excite a growing interest, or leave a permanent impression; (86)

Besides these more critical objections, there is a too frequent mixture of voluptuous softness or effeminacy of character with horror in the subjects, a conscious weakness (I can hardly think it wantonness) of moral constitution struggling with willful and violent situation, like the tender wings of the moth, attracted to the flame that dazzles and consumes it. In the hey-day of their youthful ardour, and the intoxication of their animal spirits, they take a perverse delight in tearing up some rooted sentiment, to make a mawkish lamentation over it; and fondly and gratuitously cast the seeds of crimes and forbidden grounds, to see how they will shoot up and vegetate into luxuriance, to catch the eye of fancy. They are not safe teachers of morality: they tamper with it, (87)

The tone of Shakespeare’s writing is manly and bracing; there is at once insipid and meretricious, in the comparison. Shakespeare never disturbs the grounds of moral principle; but leaves his characters (after doing them heaped justice on all sides) to be judged of by our common sense and natural feeling. Beaumont and Fletcher constantly bring in equivocal sentiments and characters, as if to set them up to be debated by sophistical casuistry, or varnished over with the colours of poetical ingenuity. (87)

I do not say that this was the character of the men; but it strikes me as the character of their minds. … some of the most unguarded professors of a general license of behaviour, have been the last persons to take the benefit of their own doctrine, form which they reap nothing, but the obloquy, and the pleasure of startling their “wonder-wounded” hearers. (87)

Beaumont and Fletcher were the first, also, who laid the foundation of the artificial diction and tinseled pomp of the next generation of poets, by aiming at a profusion of ambitious ornaments, and by transplanting the commonest circumstances into the language of metaphor and passion. It is this misplaced and inordinate craving after striking effect and continual excitement that had at one time rendered our poetry the most vapid of all things, (88)

Ben Jonson’s serious productions are, in my opinion, superior to his comic ones. What he does, is the result of strong sense and painful industry; but sense and industry agree better with the grave and sever, than with the light and gay productions of the muse. … His fault is, that he sets himself too much on his subject, and cannot let go his hold of an idea, after the insisting on it becomes tiresome or painful to others. But his tenaciousness of what is grand and lofty, is more praiseworthy than his delight in what is low and disagreeable. (101)

I must hasten to conclude this Lecture with some account of Massinger and Ford, who wrote in the time of Charles I. I am sorry I cannot do it con amore. The writers of whom I have chiefly had to speak were true poets, impassioned, fanciful, “musical as is Apollo’s lute;” but Massinger is harsh and crabbed, Ford finical and fastidious. I find little in the works of these two dramatists, but a display of great strength or subtlety of understanding, inveteracy of purpose, and perversity of will. (105)

Massinger makes an impression by hardness and repulsiveness of manner. … It is in vain to hope to excite much sympathy with convulsive efforts of the will, or intricate contrivances of the understanding, to obtain that which is better left alone, and where the interest arises principally from the conflict between the absurdity of the passion and the obstinacy with which it is persisted in. for the most part, his villains are a sort of lusus naturae; his impassioned characters are like drunkards or madmen. Their conduct is extreme and outrageous, their motives unaccountable and weak; their misfortunes are without necessity, (105)

Ford is not so great a favourite with me as with some others, form whose judgment I dissent with diffidence. It has been lamented that the play of his which has been most admired (‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore’) had not a less exceptionable subject. I do not know, but I suspect that the exceptionableness of the subject is that which constitutes the chief merit of the play. The repulsiveness of the story is what gives its critical interest; for it is a studiously prosaic statement of facts, and naked declaration of passions. …
I do not deny the power of simple painting and polished style in this tragedy in general, and of a great deal more in some few of the scenes, particularly in the quarrel between Annabella and her husband, which is wrought up to a pitch of demoniac scorn and phrensy with consummate art and knowledge; but I do not find much other power in the author (generally speaking) than that of playing with edged tools, and knowing the use of poisoned weapons. And what confirms me in this opinion is the comparative inefficiency of his other plays. (109)

The name of Drummond of Hawthorden is in a manner entwined in cipher with that of Ben Jonson. He had not done himself or Jonson any credit by his account of their conversation; but his sonnets are in the highest degree elegant, harmonious, and striking. It appears to me that they are more in the manner of Petrarch than any others that we have, with a certain intenseness in the sentiment, an occasional glitter of thought, and uniform terseness of expression. (143)

I should, on the whole, prefer Drummond’s sonnets to Spenser’s; and they leave Sydney’s, picking their way through verbal intricacies and “thorny queaches,” at an immeasurable distance behind. (147)

Ben Jonson’s detached poetry I like much, as indeed I do all about him, except when he degraded himself by “the laborious foolery” of some of his farcical characters, which he could not deal with sportively, and only made stupid and pedantic. I have been blamed for what I have said, more than one, in disparagement of Ben Jonson’s comic humour; but I think he was himself aware of his infirmity, (147)

Carew was an elegant court-trifler. Herrick was an amorist, with perhaps more fancy than feeling, though he has been called by some the English Anacreon. Crashaw was a hectic enthusiast in religion and in poetry, and erroneous in both. Marvell deserves to be remembered as a true poet as well as patriot, not in the best of times. (156)

Carew… We may perceive, however, a frequent mixture of superficial and common-place, with far-fetched and improbably conceipts. (157)

Herrick is a writer who does not answer the expectations I had formed of him. He is in a manner a modern discovery, and so far has the freshness of antiquity about him. He is not trite and thread-bare. But neither is he likely to become so. He is a writer of epigrams, not of lyrics. He has point and ingenuity, but I think little of the spirit of love or wine. Form his frequent allusion to pearls and rubies, one might take him for a lapidary instead of a poet. … His poems, from their number and size, are “like the moats that play in the sun’s beams;” that glitter to the eye of fancy, but leave no distinct impression on the memory. (157)

Of Marvell I have spoken with such praise as appears to me his due, on another occasion; but the public are deaf, except to proof or to their own prejudices, and I will therefore given an example of the sweetness and power of his verse. [To His Coy Mistress] (159)

But so it is: if an author is once detected in borrowing, he will be suspected of plagiarism ever after; and every writer than finds an ingenious or partial editor, will be made to set up his claim to originality against him. A more serious charge of this kind has been urged [161] against the principal characters in ‘Paradise Lost’ (that of Satan), which is said to have been taken from Marino, an Italian poet. Of this we may be able to form some judgment by a comparison with Crashaw’s translation of Marino’s ‘Sospetto d’Herode.’ … This portrait of monkish superstition does not equal the grandeur of Milton’s description: [162] … Milton has got rid of the horns and tail, the vulgar and physical insignia of the devil, and clothed him with other greater and intellectual terrors, reconciling beauty and sublimity, and converting the grotesque and deformed into the ideal and classical. Certainty, Milton’s mind rose superior to all others in this respect, on the outstretched wings of philosophic contemplation, in not confounding the depravity of the will with physical distortion, or supposing that the distinctions of good and evil were only to be subjected to the gross ordeal of the senses. In the subsequent stanzas, we however find the traces of some of Milton’s boldest imagery, though its effect be injured by the incongruous mixture above stated. …
The poet adds— “The while his twisted tail he gnaw’d for spite.”
There is no keeping in this. This action of meanness and mere vulgar spite, common to the most contemptible creatures, [163] takes away from the terror and power just ascribed to the prince of Hell, (163)

Crashaw’s translation of Strada’s description of the contention between a nightingale and a musician, is elaborate and spirited, but not equal to Ford’s version of the same story in his ‘Lover’s Melancholy.’ One line may serve as a specimen of delicate quaintness, as of Crashaw’s style in general:
“And with a quavering coyness [tastes?] the strings.” (164)

Sir Philip Sidney is a writer for whom I cannot acquire a taste. As Mr. Burke said, “he could not love the French Republic”—so I may say, that I cannot love ‘The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia,’ with all my good-will to it. (164)

At the time that Sir Philip Sidney’s ‘Arcadia’ was written, those middle-men, the critics, were not known. The author and [166] reader came into immediate contact, and seemed never tired of each other’s company. We are more fastidious and dissipated: the effeminacy of modern taste would, I am afraid, shrink back affrighted at the formidable sight of this once popular work, which is about as long (horresco referens!) as all Walter Scott’s novels put together; but besides its size and appearance, it has, I think, other defects of a more intrinsic and insuperable nature. It is to me one of the greatest monuments of the abuse of intellectual power upon record. It puts one in mind of the court dresses and preposterous fashions of the time, which are grown poetry, but casuistry; … Out of five hundred folio pages, there are hardly, I conceive, half a dozen sentences expressed simply and directly, with the sincere desire to convey the image implied, and without a systematic interpolation of the wit, learning, ingenuity, wisdom, and everlasting impertinence of the writer, so as to disguise the object, instead of displaying in its true colours and real proportions. (166)

His Sonnets, inlaid in the Arcadia, are jejune, far-fetched and frigid. I shall select only one that has been much commended. (172-3)

His ‘Defence of Poesy’ is his most readable performance; there he is quite at home, in a sort of special pleader’s office, where his ingenuity, scholastic subtlety, and tenaciousness in argument stand him in good stead; and he brings off poetry with flying colours; for he was a man of wit, of sense, and learning, though not a poet of true taste or unsophisticated genius. (173)

Sir Thomas Brown [sic] seemed to be of opinion that the only business of life was to think, and that the proper object of speculation was, by darkening knowledge, to breed more speculation, and “find no end in wandering mazes lost.” (181)

His is the sublime of indifference; a passion for the abstruse and imaginary. He turns the world round for his amusement, as if it was a globe of paste-board. He looks down on sublunary affairs as if he had taken his station in one of the planets. (182)

For a thing to have ever had a name is sufficient warrant to entitle it to respectful belief, and to invest it with all the rights of a subject and its predicates. He is superstitious, but not bigoted; to him all religions are much the same, and he says that he should not like to have lived in the time of Christ and the Apostles, as it would have rendered his faith too gross and palpable. His gossiping egotism and personal character have been preferred unjustly to Montaigne’s. He had no personal character at all but the peculiarity of resolving all the other elements of his being into thought, … In describing himself he deals only in negatives. He says he has neither prejudices nor antipathies to manners, habits, climate, food, to persons or things; they were alike acceptable to him as they afforded new topics for reflection; and he even professes that he could never bring himself heartily to hate the devil. (183)

…he had a hand in the execution of some old women for witchcraft, I suppose to keep a decorum in absurdity, and to indulge an agreeable horror at his own fantastical reveries on the occasion. (183)

Jeremy Taylor was a writer as different from Sir Thomas Brown [sic] as it was possible for one writer to be from another. He was a dignitary of the church, and except in matters of casuistry and controverted points, could not be supposed to enter upon speculative doubts, or give a loose to a sort of dogmatical sceptisim. He had less thought, less “stuff of the conscience,” less “to give us pause,” in his impetuous oratory, but he had equal fancy—not the same vastness and profundity, but more richness and beauty, more warmth and tenderness. He is as rapid, as flowing, and endless, as the other is stately, abrupt, and concentrated. (190)

Jeremy Taylor… His characteristic is enthusiastic and delightful amplification. (190)

[note] Sir Thomas Brown has it, “The huntsmen are up in America,” but Mr. Coleridge prefers reading Arabia. I do not thingk his account of the Urn-Buriall very happy. Sir Thomas can be said to be “wholly in his subject,” only because he is wholly out of it. There is not a word in the ‘Hydiotaphia’ about “a thigh-bone, or a skull, or a bit of mouldered coffin, or a tombstone, or a ghost, or a winding-sheet, or an echo,” nor is “a silver nail or a gilt anno domini the gayest thing you shall meet with.” You do not meet with them at all in the text; nor it is possible, either form the nature of the subject, or of Sir T. Brown’s mind, that you should! He chose the subject of Urn-Burial, because it was “one of no mark or likelihood,” totally free form the romantic prettinesses and pleasing poetical common-places with which Mr. Coleridges has adorned it, and because, being “without form and void,” it gave unlimited scope to his high-raised and shadowy imagination. The motto of this author’s compositions might be—“De apparentibus et non existentibus eadem est ralio. He created his own materials: or to speak of him in his own language, “he saw nature in the elements of its chaos, and discerned his favourite notions in the great obscurity of nothing!” (190)

Jeremy Taylor… He puts his heart into his fancy. He does not pretend to annihilate the passions and pursuits of mankind in the pride or philosophic indifference, but treats them as serious and momentous things, warring with conscience and the soul’s health, or furnishing the means of grace and hopes of glory. (191)

His ‘Holy Living and Dying’ is a divine pastoral. He writes to the faithful followers of Christ, as the shepherd pipes to his flock. (191)

His style is prismatic. It unfolds the colours of the rainbow; it floats like the bubble through the air; it is like innumerable dew-drops that glitter on the face of morning, and tremble as they glitter. He does not dig his way underground, but slides upon ice, borne on the winged car of fancy. (191)

His exhortations to piety and virtue are a gay mememto mori. He mixes us death’s-heads and amaranthine flowers; makes life a procession to the grave, but crowns it with gaudy garland, and “rains sacrificial roses” on its path. In a word, his writings are a choral song in praise of virtue, and a hymn to the Spirit of the Universe. (191)

Thomas de Quincey, Essays on Rhetoric, Style, and Language

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Thomas de Quincey, Essays on Style, Rhetoric, and Language, ed. Fred N. Scott, Ph. D., Allyn and Bacon, Boston, 1893.

The De Quincey stock, supposed to be of Norse extraction, had many branches, of which the American family, represented by the elder Josiah Quincy, had alone arrived at any great distinction. (Introduction, ix)

The tasks of the school-room were, as he has recorded in his ‘Confessions of an Opium-Eater,’ far below his capabilities. At thirteen he had mastered Greek, writing it with careless ease. At fifteen, when he entered the Manchester School, his command of the language, he tells us, was so great, that he not only composed Greek verses in lyric metres, but by extemporaneous translation from the newspapers, had acquired the ability to converse in Greek fluently and without embarrassment. “That boy,” said his teacher to a stranger, “could harangue an Athenian mob better than you or I could address an English one.” (x)

From July to November, 1802, De Quincey tramped about the North of Wales. As long as the weather would permit, he lived in the open air, sleeping at night in a small tent which he carried about with him. Of the many incidents of his outing, the most important was his meeting with one De Haren, of whom we know nothing, save that having a trunkful of German books, he introduced De Quincey to the German language and read with him a good deal of German literature. During this time De Quincey was in contrast fear lest his guardians should send him back to the Grammar School The idea was so hateful to him, that he resolved finally to bury himself in the solitude of London, until, having attained his majority, he should be free to pursue his studies where he chose. (xi)

A delicately organized, highly educated young man of seventeen, he attached himself, much as a lost dog would do, to a disreputable lawyer of the name of Brunell. He ate chance fragments form his patron’s table, and by night slept in the lawyer’s great, empty, rat-haunted house. During the day he walked the street, or sat on the benches in the parks. The Bohemian life endured for some months before he was by accident discovered by his friends, and persuaded to return home. (xi)

His guardians now giving their consent to his attending the University, in 1805 he went to Oxford. His life while there, however, was so little less secluded than it had been in London that he afterward declared he owed nothing to the University. If he owed anything it was his acquaintance with a German named Scwartzburg, with whom he studied Hebrew and read German philosophy. When he came up for his examinations his paper aroused great expectations among his examiners; but, with characteristic timidity, for some slight reason he failed to appear at the oral examination, an din consequence did not obtain his degree. (xi-xii)

Although it was many years before De Quincey called public attention to himself, he began even while yet a resident at Oxford, to form the acquaintance of eminent men of letters. With Wordsworth he had opened correspondence as early as 1803. During a visit to London he called upon Charles Lamb. In 1805, conceiving a violent admiration for Coleridge, who was than in Malta, De Quincey was for starting at once for that island merely to get a glimpse of the poet. This impulse was not followed, but two years later he met Coleridge… (xii)

In Wordsworth’s cottage at Grasmere which he had rented upon the poet’s removal to Allen Bank, he spent his time in reading German philosophy, principally the works of Kant, and planning books which never got themselves written. At one time he meditated coming to America to bury himself in the forest solitudes and there digest the Kantian philosophy. Instead, he married, in 1816, Miss Margaret Simpson, daughter of a neighboring landholder, and cultivated the acquaintance of distinguished neighbors… The was during this period that the opium habit came upon him. He had begun to take opium as a medicine as early as 1803, … From 1813, however, he took the drug for its own sake, and took it in large and rapidly increasing quantities, until in 1817-19, to the great distress of his wife and friends, his subjection to its influence was complete. (xii-xiii)

In that periodical, in September, 1821, appeared the ‘Confessions of an English Opium-Eater,’ and immediately upon its appearance De Quincey’s reputation as a new force in English prose literature, was solidly established. (xiii)

In 1826, through Wilson’s influence, he became a regular contributor to Blackwood’s Magazine. This connection, which brought him frequently to Edinburgh, at length led him to move to that city with his family. (xiii)

De Quincey’s wife died in 1840. Three years later, he rented a small cottage at Lasswade, seven miles distant from Edinburgh, and moved into it with his children, though retaining a room in the city in which to do his work and store his innumerable paper. The remainder of his life was almost barren of events. A few visits to Glasgow, a journey to Scotland to see his married daughter and his grandchildren, an occasional struggle with his old enemy opium—these were the sole interruptions in the quiet current of his life. … he died at his lodgings in Edinburgh, December 8, 1859, in his seventy-fifth year. (xiv)

…a very little man (about five feet three or four inches); his countenance the most remarkable for its intellectual attractiveness that I have ever seen. His features, though not regular, were aristocratically fine, and an air of delicate breeding pervaded the face. (xiv)

De Quincey’s personality was a curious and perplexing compound of timidity, unsophistication, humor, gloominess, sociability, temper, gentleness, and prejudice. He was so shy, that, when passing a London cabstand, “he refrained, with nervous solicitude, form any gesture that might warrant any driver in concluding himself summoned.” In money matters his innocence was such, that he once attempted to exchange a fifty-pound note for a handful of shillings. Most of his writings are pervaded by a humorous spirit, but any direct attempt at the humorous generally results in flat failure. It is not too much to say that he had no fund of moral seriousness, nor any views of politics or social matters in which he earnestly believed. (xv)

De Quincey did not have the philosophic cast of intellect; he never succeeded in getting more than a superficial idea of the Kantian philosophy; but in his time it was something that a man of letters should be able to read Kant at all, and, that he should be able to write about him sympathetically in clear English prose, was, for the future of German ideas in England, an advantage hardly to be overrated. (xvi)

The quality which distinguishes De Quincey as a writer of prose, is his ability to conceive, in language, a constructive whole of a musical order. “The more exquisite passages,” says Leslie Stephen, “are intended to be musical compositions, in which words have to play the part of notes.” (xvi-xvii)

He was passionately fond of Beethoven. (xvii)

“Humbler writers,” … They no more think of weaving whole paragraphs or chapters into complex harmonies, than an ordinary pedestrian of ‘going to church in a galliard and coming home in a coranto.’ Even our great writers generally settle down to a stately, but monotonous gait, after the fashion of Johnson or Gibbon, or, are content with adopting a style as transparent and inconspicuous as possible.” (xvii)

Had De Quincey’s scientific faculty equaled his powers of construction, he might have produced a treatise on style as important for the history of criticism as Aristotle’s ‘Rhetoric’ or ‘Poetics.’ But his learning and his methods of investigation were in no sense scientific. (xviii)

The slightest suggestion sufficed to set him off upon a long digression. (xviii)

‘Essay on Style’ … Like the other essays of this volume, it completes but a part of the originally projected plan. As usual, De Quincey, starting in without any well-defined conception of his subject-matter, allows his ideas to shape themselves as he goes alont. (xviii)

It is certain, for instance, that to the deep sincerity of British nature, and to that shyness or principle of reserve which is inseparable form self-respect, must be traced philosophically the churlishness and unsocial bearing for which, at one time, we were so angrily arraigned by the smooth south of Europe. (1)

…we feel ashamed for the obstinate obtuseness of our country in regard to one and the most effective of the Fine Arts. It will be understood that we speak of Music. In Painting and in Sculpture it is now past disputing that, if we are destined to inferiority at all, it is an inferiority only to the Italians of the fifteenth century—an inferiority which, if it were even sure to be permanent, we share with all the other malicious nations around us. on that head we are safe. And in the most majestic of the Fine Arts,--in Poetry,--we have a clear and vast pre-eminence as regards all nations. … therefore… we cannot be allowed to suppose any general defect of sensibility as a cause of obtuseness with regard to music. (3)

A song, an air, a tune,—that is, a short succession of notes revolving rapidly upon itself,—how could that, by possibility, offer a field of compass sufficient for the development of great musical effects? The preparation pregnant with the future; the remote correspondence; the questions, as it were, which to a deep musical sense are asked in one passage and answered in another; the iteration and ingemination of a given effect, moving through subtle variations that sometimes disguise the theme, sometimes fitfully reveal it, sometimes throw it out tumultuously to the blaze of daylight: these and ten thousand forms of self-conflicting musical passion,--what room could they find, what opening, what utterance, in so limited a field as an air or song? … Yet exactly upon this level is the ordinary state of musical feeling throughout Great Britain; and the howling wilderness of the psalmody in most parish churches of the land countersigns the statement. … in the worst case we have the satisfaction of knowing, though Jean Jacques Rousseau, and by later evidences, [5] that, sink as we may below Italy and Germany in the sensibility to this divne art, we cannot go lower than France. (5)

In proportion, therefore, as the English people have been placed for two centuries and a quarter (i.e. since the latter decennium of James the First’s reign) under a constant experience of popular eloquence thrown into all channels of social life, they must have had peculiar occasion to feel the effects of style. But to feel is not to feel consciously. Many a man is charmed by one cause who ascribes the effect to another. Many a man is fascinated by the artifices of composition who fancies that it is the subject which has operated so potently. And even for the subtlest of philosophers who keeps in mind the interpenetration of the style and the matter it would be as difficult to distribute the true proportions (7)

In the senate, and for the same reason in a newspaper, it is a virtue to reiterate your meaning: a tautology becomes a merit: variation of the words, … A man who should content himself with a single condensed enunciation of a perplexed doctrine would be a madman… Like boys who are throwing the sun’s rays into the eyes of mob by means of a mirror, you must shift your lights and vibrate your reflections at every possible angle, if you would agitate [8] the popular mind extensively. (7-8)

But, return being impossible in the case of a spoken harangue, where each sentence perishes as it is born, … It is for the benefit of both that the weightier propositions should be detained before the eye a good deal longer than the chastity of taste or the austerity of logic would tolerate in a book. (8)

Generally and ultimately it is certain that our British disregard or inadequate appreciation of style, though a very lamentable fault, has had its origin in the manliness of the British character; in the sincerity and directness of the British taste; (10)

The next writers of distinction who came forward as rhetoricians were Burton in his Anatomy of Melancholy and Milton in many of his prose works. They labour under opposite defects. Burton is too quaint, fantastic, and disjointed; Milton too slow, solemn, and continuous. In the one we see the flutter of a parachute; in the other the stately and voluminous gyrations of an ascending balloon. Agile movement, and a certain degree of fancifulness, are indispensable to rhetoric. But Burton is not so much fanciful as capricious; his motion is not the motion of freedom, but of lawlessness; he does not dance, but caper. Milton, on the other hand, polonaises with a grand Castilian air, in paces too sequacious and processional; even in his passages of merriment, and when stung into a quicker motion by personal disdain for an unworthy antagonist, his thoughts and his imagery still appear to move to the music of the organ. (159)

Jeremy Taylor and Sir Thomas Browne; who, if not absolutely the foremost in the accomplishments of art, were undoubtedly the richest, the most dazzling, and, with reference to their matter, the most captivating, of all rhetoricians. (161)

Sir Thomas Browne, deep, tranquil, and majestic as Milton, silently premeditating and “disclosing his golden couplets,” as under some genial instinct of incubation; Jeremy Taylor, restless, fervid, aspiring, scattering abroad a prodigality of life, not unfolding but creating, with the energy and the “myriad-mindedness” of Shakespeare. (162)

The only very obvious defects of Taylor were in the mechanical part of his art, in the mere technique. He writes like one who never revises, nor tries the effect upon his ear of his periods as musical wholes, and in the syntax and connexion of the parts seems to have been habitually careless of slight blemishes. (166)

Sister Miriam Joseph, Shakespeare's Use of the Arts of Language

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Sister Miriam Joseph, C.S.C., Ph.D., Shakespeare’s Use of the Arts of Language, Paul Dry Books, Philadelphia, 2005.

Grammar-school… The method prescribed unremitting exercise in grammar, rhetoric, and logic. Grammar dominated the lower forms, logic and rhetoric the upper. In all forms the order was first to learn precepts, then to employ them as a tool of analysis in reading, and finally to sue them as a guide in composition. (8)

A customary exercise was to compose Latin prose and then turn it into one or more prescribed metrical forms. Accordingly Jonson, whos said that he composed in prose and then turned the prose into verse, merely continued to do in English what he had learned to do in Latin grammar school. (10)

The Greek New Testament, Isocrates and Homer were most often required for reading, (11)

Tudor grammar schools prescribed rising at five; glass from six to nine; breakfast; class from nine-fifteen to eleven; dinner; class from one to five; supper. After supper, from six to seven, the pupils recited to their fellows what they had learned during the day. The lessons drilled on in the morning were regularly recited in the afternoon, and all the work of the week was reviewed in recitation on Fridays and Saturdays. A week devoted to repetitions tested the accomplishments of the thirty-six weeks of the school year. (11)

T. W. Baldwin, upon whose recent work the preceding summary is based, has shown that an Elizabethan would understand Ben Jonson’s ascription to Shakespeare of “small Latine and lesse Greeke” as meaning that Shakespeare had the regular grammar school education of the time. (11)

According to Baldwin an Elizabethan audience would easily have recognized the satirical rogue referred to by Hamlet (2.2.198) as Juvenal, and the book Hamlet was reading (in the first version of the play) just before he began to dispute with himself, “To be or not to be—that is the question” (3.1.56), as Cicero’s Quaestiones Tusculanae, “the first and fundamental text for scholar’s consolation in doubts of death.” [Baldwin, T. W. William Shakespeare’s Small Latin and Lesse Greeke. 2 vols. Urbana, 1944. II, 607; 601-8] (11)

These English works had in Tudor times a popularity, a vitality, and an importance astonishing to us today, due in part to the use of illustrations form matter of intense interest to the readers for whom the books were designed. … the English books circulated among adults, especially among those of the court and of the upper and middle classes. From 1551 to 1595 there were at least seven editions of Wilson’s Rule of Reason and eight of his Arte of Rhetorique … Puttenham explicitly stated that he wrote his Arte for courtiers, and particularly for ladies, … Fraunce, too, capitalized on the lively interest in the new literature of the vernaculars… (15)

Angel Day’s work, which went through eight editions before 1626, appealed especially to the middle class by adapting the figures of rhetoric to the practical needs of letter writing. (15)

There are among the English authors of the Renaissance, as among the Latin, obvious differences that dispose them into the three groups which in the present study are called the traditionalists, the Ramists, and the figurists. / Thomas Wilson is eminently the traditionalist. His Arte of Rhetorique presents the whole of the classical tradition of rhetoric with its five parts: invention, disposition, elocution, memory, and delivery. (16)

The Ramists—as Ramus and his collaborator Talaeus and their English adapters, Fenner, Fraunce, Butler, and, to some degree, Hoskyns, may be called—depart from the Aristotelian tradition not so much in content as in pedagogical method… For the Ramists the functions of rhetoric are but two: to beautify composition and make it emotionally effective by means of a comparatively few figures of speech, … (17)

The figurists, as Susenbrotus, Sherry, Peacham, Puttenham, and Day may be named, … their concept of figures is so inclusive as to omit little of what has even been included in a theory of composition, for the approximately two hundred figures of speech [17] … One of the conclusions to which the present study leads is that in the works of all three of these groups of Renaissance writers there is a fundamental likeness despite obvious differences, for in all of them are discernible, to a degree not hitherto adequately recognized, the dominant features of Aristotle’s rhetoric. (18)

Aristotle… figures. He did not name many of those which he described, but he favored metaphor, simile, synecdoche, prosopopoeia, antonomasia, periphrasis, all of which tend to promote vividness; likewise antithesis, isocolon, homoioteleuton, anaphora, epistrophe, polysyndeton, and asyndeton, figures which emphasize balance in periodic structure and affect prose rhythm. He counseled the avoidance of zeugma, parenthesis, and in general whatever tends to ambiguity and obscurity, although he liked antanaclasis and paronomasia, which are figures of deliberate ambiguity. (21)

The difference between the Elizabethan cognizance and ours is aptly described by Gladys Doidge Willcock and Alice Walker in their edition of Puttenham. / ‘A well-educated modern reader may confess without shame to momentary confusion between Hypozeuxis and Hypozeugma, but to his Elizabethan prototype the categories of the figures were, like the multiplication-tables, a part of his foundations. … [Puttenham, George. The Arte of English Poesie [1589]; ed. by Gladys Doidge Willcock and Alice Walker. Cambridge, 1936. pp. lxxv ff.] (48)

The addition of a syllable at the beginning of a word was called prosthesis, as embolden for bolden, berattle for rattle, ymade for made, adown for down. …
I hold you as a thing enskied and sainted (MM, 1.4.34) (51)

The addition of a syllable or letter in the middle of a word was called epenthesis, as meeterly for meetly. …
I have but with a cursorary eye O’erglanc’d the articles (H5, 5.2.77) (51)

The schemes of subtraction include aphaeresis, syncope, synaloepha, and apocope, ‘Twixt for betwixt is an example of aphaeresis, subtracting a syllable from the beginning. Shakespeare uses this scheme very freely. /
Point against point, rebellious arm ‘gainst arm (Mac., 1.2.56) (52)

Syncope is the removal of a letter or syllable from the middle of the word, as prosprous for prosperous. /
Ignomy and shame Pursue thy life (T&C., 5.10.33)
Let’s make us med’cines of our great revenge (Mac, 4.3.214) (52)

When at the juncture of two vowels one is elided, the scheme is called synaloepha, as t’attain for to attain. Perhaps it may have included the elision of the only vowel, as is’t for is it. The latter is very frequent in Shakespeare’s later plays. This scheme gives swiftness to the verse.
Take’t; ‘tis yours. What is’t? (Cor. 1.10.80)
Star…had made his course t’illlume that part (Ham, 1.1.37) (52)

Apocope, the omission of the last syllable of a word, as bet for better, Shakespeare employs with great freedom.
With Clifford and the haughty Northumberland (3H6, 2.1.169)
Season your admiration for awhile With an attent ear (Ham. 1.2.192) (53)

Of the two remaining schemes of words, metathesis, or transposition, was an exchange of letters in a word. Peacham gave as an example brust for burst. (53)

The exchange of one sound for another in a word, as wrang for wrong, usually for the sake of rhyme, was called antisthecon. [rap]
Troilus: But to the sport abroad! Are you bound thither?
Aeneas: In all swift haste.
Troilus: Come, go we then together (T&C, 1.1.118) (53)

In English, where word order exercises an important grammatical function, the various forms of departure from the ordinary order, called in general hyperbaton, frequently confer both emphasis and distinction. The Tudor rhetoricians distinguished various species of hyperbaton: anastrophe, tmesis, hysteron proteron, hypallage. (54)

Shakespeare uses anastrophe, or unusual word order, throughout the plays, but especially in the later ones.
Yet I’ll not shed her blood,
Nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow. (Oth., 5.2.3) (54)

When words were put between the parts of a compound word, such as however, the scheme was called tmesis.
How heinous e’er it be,
To win thy after-love I pardon thee (R2, 5.3.34) (55)

hysteron proteron puts first that which occurs later.
With all their sixty, fly and turn the rudder. (A&C, 3.10.2) (55)

In hypallage, the changeling, as Puttenham named it, the application of words is perverted and sometimes made absurd. Waking from the effects of the magic flower-juice, the bewildered Bottom tries to recall his most rare vision.
The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report what my dream was. (MND, 4.1.215) [Ula: feel/taste] (55)

Day spoke of a milder form of hypallage, rife in poesy, where the exchange of words is less violent, as “the wicked wound thus given,” wherein it is the giver and not the wound that is wicked. This is equivalent to a transferred epithet. A memorable instance in Shakespeare is Antony’s remark as he holds up Caesar’s mantle before the crowd, showing them the rent through which the well-beloved Brutus stabbed.
This was the most unkindest cut of all. (JC, 3.2.188)
Hypallage of this kind confers vitality and compression. (56)

Similar to parenthesis in interposing explanatory matter is epergesis, or apposition. Sometimes appositive phrases are metaphor.
The thunder, That deep and dreadful organ pipe (Tem, 3.3.97) (57)

The grammatical figures of omission include eclipsis, zeugma, syllepsis, and diazeugma. Eclipsis, or ellipsis, the omission of a word easily understood, contributes to the compressed character of Shakespeare’s later style, although it appears throughout his work.
And he to England shall along with you (Ham, 3.3.4)
Haply you shall not see me more; or if,
A mangled shadow. (A&C, 4.2.26) (58)

Zeugma, one verb serving a number of clauses, is a favorite with Shakespeare. He places the one verb sometimes first, sometimes last.
But passion lends them power, time means, to meet. (R&J, 2.Prol.13)

Syllepsis differs from zeugma is that a verb, expressed but once, lacks grammatical congruence with at least one subject with which it is understood.
She has deceiv’d her father, and may thee. (Oth. 1.3.294)

The use of one subject with many verbs, called diazeugma, gives cumulative force to Norfolk’s account of Cardinal Wolsey’s strange conduct.
He bites his lip and starts,
Stops on a sudden, looks upon the ground,
Then lays his finger on his temple; straight
Springs out into fast gait, then stops again,
Strikes his breast hard, and anon he casts
His eye against the moon. (H8, 3.2.113)

Ariel’s spirit-quality and his swift and ready obedience to Prospero are enhanced by his use of asyndeton, omitting conjunctions between clauses.
All hail, great master! Grave sir, hail! I come
To answer thy best pleasure; be’t to fly [or]
To swim, to dive into the fire, to ride
On the curl’d clouds. (Tem, 1.2.189)
In contrast is the measured deliberateness of polysyndeton, the use of a conjunction between each clause.
‘Tis as I should entreat you wear your gloves,
Or feed on nourishing dishes, or keep you warm,
Or sue to you to do a peculiar profit
To your person. (Oth, 3.3.77) (59)

The figure primarily concerned with rhythm is isocolon or parison in which phrases or clauses are of equal length and usually of corresponding structure, as in Nathaniel’s euphuistic comments to Holofernes.
Your reasons at dinner have been sharp and sententious; pleasant without scurrility, witty without affection, audacious without impudency, learned without opinion, and strange without heresy. (LLL, 5.1.2) (59)

Often the equal members are marked off by homoioteleuton, or like ending, as –ly in the following.
How churlishly I chid Lucetta hence
When willingly I would have had her here!
How angerly I taught my brow to frown… (TGV, 1.2.60) (60)

In the periodic sentence, called hirmus, the sense is supended until the end.
Tell my friends,
Tell Athens, in the sequence of degree
Form high to low throughout, that whoso please
To stop affliction, let him take his haste,
Come hither ere my tree hath felt the axe,
And hang himself. (Tim., 5.1.10) (60)

There remain four figures of grammatical exchange: enallage, hendiadys, Graecismus, and anthimeria. Enallage is the deliberate use of one case, person, gender, number, tense, or mood for another. Obviously, if this were done through ignorance, it would be a solecism. …a plural form of the verb may be used with a singular subject.
The posture of your blows are yet unknown (JC, 5.1.33)
more than the scope Of these dialated articles allow (Ham., 1.2.37)

Hendiadys, the use of two nouns for a noun with its modifier, gives increased emphasis.
The heaviness and the guilt within my bosom
Takes off my manhood. (Cym, 5.2.1.)
The singular verb assists in yoking the nouns, and makes it more clear that heavy guilt is meant.

Shakespeare’s nearest approach to Graecismus, the use of a Greek idiom, seems to be by confusion of two constructions, such as:
I do not like the Tower of any place (R3, 3.1.68)
E. A. Abbott, who quotes these examples, remarks with particular reference to the last: “This… is a thoroughly Greek idiom, though independent in English… The line is a confusion of two constructions. … ‘I dislike the tower more than any other place’ and ‘most of all places’ becomes ‘of any place’.” (62)

Of all the schemes of grammar in Elizabethan English, anthimeria, the substitution of one part of speech for another, is perhaps the most exciting. … In the following examples, adjectives are used as adverbs, prepositions as adjectives, adjectives as nouns, nouns as adjectives, nouns as adverbs, verbs as nouns.
Report That I I am sudden sick. Quick and return! (AC 1.3.3)
Shap’d out a man Whom this beneath the world (Tim 1.1.43)
All cruels else subscrib’d (Lear, 3.7.65)
His complexion is perfect gallows (Tem, 1.1.32)
Kingdom’d Achilles in commotion rages (TC 2.3.185)
Betwixt too early and too late (H8. 2.3.84)
Goodness, growing to a pleurisy,
Dies in his own too-much (Ham, 4.7.118) (62-3)
Shakespeare uses pronouns, adjectives, and nouns as verbs.
Julius Caesar, Who at Philippi the good Brutus ghosted (AC, 2.6.12)
The thunder would not peace at my bidding (Lear, 4.6.103)

The Vices of Language… Solecismus, a vice related to the grammatical figure enallage, is the ignorant misuse of cases, genders, tenses. (64)

Soraismus, the mingling of sundry languages ignorantly or affectedly, is a characteristic of the pedant HOlofernes.
Most barbarous intimation! Yet a kind of insinuation, as it were, in via, in way, of explication; facere, as it were, replication, or rather, ostentare, to show, as it were, his inclination. (LLL, 4.2.13) (65)

Amphibology is ambiguity of grammatical structure, often occasioned by mispunctuation. (66)

Tapinosis is the use of a base word to diminish the dignity of a person or thing.
Achilles, A drayman, a porter, a very camel! (TC 1.2.270)
Sir Toby maintains that judgment and reason have been grand-jurymen in disputes “since before Noah was a sailor” (TN, 3.2.18) (67)

Cacemphaton, or aischrologia, is the vice of foul speech. It characterizes a buffoon or railing companion, whom the Latins called scurra. Scurrilous jests are plentifully illustrated in the remarks of Thersites and Lucio. Another form of cacemphaton is an unpleasing combination of sounds such as results form excessive alliteration. It is consciously illustrated in the opening line of the epitaph already quoted, which was composed extemporaneously by Holofernes, who announces that he “will something affect the letter.” (68)

Cacosyntheton is the ill placing of words, as when an adjective improperly follows a nouns or when there is any other unpleasing order of words:
My name is Pistol call’d (H5, 4.1.62) (68)

Tautology, vain repetition of the same idea, is used skillfully by Antony to mock drunken Lepidus.
Lepidus. What manner o’thing is your crocodile?
Antony. It is shap’d, sir, like itself, and it is as broad as it has breadth. It is just so high as it is, and movies with its own organs. It lives by that which nourisheth it, and the elements once out of it, it transmigrates. (A&C, 2.7.46) (68)

Perissologia, or macrologia, is the addition of a superfluous clause which adds nothing to the meaning.
Evans. I do despise a liar as I despise one that is false, or as I despise one that is not true. (MWW, 1.1.68) (69)

Parelcon is the addition of a superfluous word, as of that in the following:
When that I was and a little tiny boy (TN, 5.1.398) (69)

Pleonasmus, the needless telling of what is already understood, …
Juliet’s nurse, reporting Tybalt’s death, insists:
I saw the wound, I saw it with mine eyes. (RJ, 3.2.52) (69)

Homiologia, tedious and inane repetition, is the specific means by which Shakespeare characterizes Justice Shallow.
He hath wrong’d me; indeed he hath; at a word, he hath. Believe me! Robert Shallow, Esquire, saith he is wronged. (MWW, 1.1.107) (69)

Periergia is a vice not so much of superfluity of words as of overlabor to seem fine and eloquent, especially in a slight manner.
Anointed, I implore so much expense of thy royal sweet breath as will utter a brace of words (LLL, 5.2.523)
The princess comments on his pomposity: “’A speaks not like a man God his making” (70)

Bomphiologia or bombastic speech characterizes the braggart. Falstaff, a prolific and incorrigible braggart, … (70)

Affected diction, especially the coining of fine words out of Latin, is a form of the vice cacozelia. Through it Shakespeare satirizes inkhornism.
Armado. There is remuneration; for the best ward of mine honour is rewarding my dependents… [exit.]
Costard. Now will I look to his remuneration. Remuneration—O, that’s the Latin word for three farthings. (LLL, 3.1.132)
Cacozelia is Osric’s characteristic vice. In delivering to Hamlet a message from the king he thus dilates on Laertes. … (5.2.110) Hamlet scornfully travesties Osric’s affectation of “true diction” by answering him in kind. (73)

Another form of the vice cacozelia, which we call malapropism, and which sometimes achieves, as it were unconsciously, a happy hit through the misused word.
Elbow. [to Escalus] My wife, sir, whom I detest before heaven and your honour—(MM, 2.1.69)

The Figures of Repetition. Of all the figures of repetition so highly valued by the Elizabethans alliteration or paroemion, as it was called, is the one which we today think of most readily as an embellishment of style. (79)

Shakespeare’s early schematic use of anaphora, beginning a series of clauses with the same word, and of epistrophe, ending with the same, is illustrated in Margaret’s recital of her woes in Richard III (4.4.92-104; 40-44) … Such a combination of anaphora and epistrophe was called symploce. (79)

Epanalepsis is the repetition at the end of a clause or sentence of the word with which it begins. (80)

Shakespeare shows continuing favor toward three figures of repetition related to logical processes: antimetable, anadiplosis, and climax. Antimetabole is akin to logical conversion in that it turns a sentence around.
Grief joys, joy grieves, on slender accident. (Ham., 3.2.209) (81)

Anadiplosis is the repetition of the last word of one clause or sentence at the beginning of the next. It often expresses the two premises of a syllogism, as where Richard III through its swift, compact logic shows himself a man of action and quick decision.
Come! I have learn’d that fearful commenting
Is leaden servitor to dull delay;
Delay leads impotent and snail-pac’d beggary.
Then fiery expedition be my wing. (R3, 4.3.51) (82)

Climax is a continued anadiplosis, inasmuch as it carries the same kind of repetition through three or more clauses. (83)

Polyptoton is the repetition of words derived from the same root, and as such is related to the logical argument from conjugates, as in the following examples…
Society is no comfort To one not sociable. (Cym. 4.2.12) (83)

Diaphora is the repetition of a common name so as to perform two logical functions: to designate an individual and to signify the qualities connoted by the common name, as when Desdemona remarks to Cassio of Othello’s altered manner.
My advocation is not now in tune.
My lord is not my lord. (Oth. 3.4.123) (84)

The two figures of repetition which Shakespeare uses most persistently throughout his work, diacope and epizeuxis… Diacope, which often expresses deep feeling, is the repetition of a word with one or more between, usually in exclamation, as in these examples from Othello:
Light, I say! Light! (1.1.145)
Even now, now, very now. (1.1.88)
Macbeth, deluded by the witches, disillusioned of his hopes of glory, cynically sees life and times as but a meaningless succession of empty days.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow… (5.5.19)

Epizeuxis, the repetition of words with none between, is a figure which Shakespeare uses throughout his plays and songs and his narrative poems, though seldom in his sonnets.
O horror, horror, horror! Tongue nor heart
Cannot conceive nor name thee! (Mac 2.3.69)
Out, out, brief candle! (Mac, 5.5.23) (87)

When we speak of a topic sentence today and the methods, such as definition, contrast, or comparison, by which it may be developed into a paragraph, we hardly envision so systematic and objective a procedure as that by which Elizabethans as a matter of course amplified a subject by drawing it through the places of invention. (91)

Diatyposis is a figure whereby one commends to another certain profitable rules and precepts. Polonius’ advice to Laertes (Ham. 1.3.58-80) is an outstanding example. (101)

The figure apomnemonysis is a form of inartificial which quotes for authority the testimony of approved authors. (102)

Chria, a very short exposition of a deed or word, with the name of the author recited, furnishes Britain’s queen with a spirited argument against Rome’s renewed claim to British tribute.
A kind of conquest
Caesar made here; but made not here his brag
Of ‘came, and saw, and overcame.’ With shame
(The first that ever touch’d him) he was carried
From off our coast, twice beaten. (Cym. 3.1.22) (103)

Euche is a vow to keep a promise. A dramatically impressive instance of it is the oath which Hamlet, seconded by the ghost speaking from below, exacts from Horatio and Marcellus, when he demands that they solemnly swear on his sword never by word or look to reveal what they have seen and heard that night. (1.5.145-81) (104)

Asphalia, the offer of surety for another, strengthens Miranda’s entreaty that her father be less severe toward Ferdinand.
Sir, have pity.
I’ll be his surety. (Tem, 1.2.474)
A memorable example of asphalia is Antonio’s giving his bond as surety for Bassanio’s loan from Shylock (MV, 3.1) (105)

Euphemismus, the prognostication of good, characterizes the Roman soothsayer’s interpretation of his dream in Cymbeline. (106)

Paraenesis is a warning of impending evil, as when Margaret warns Buckingham against Richard. (106)

Ominatio is a prognostication of evil, as in Priam’s plea to Hector…
Horatio, having seen the ghost, concludes:
…in the gross and scope of my opinion,
This bodes some strange eruption to our state. (1.1.68)

Definition. First in order among artificial arguments, those derived form a subject by the art of topical investigation, is definition, which explains the nature or essence of a subject in terms of its genus and difference. (108)

Systrophe is the heaping together of many definitions of one thing.
Macbeth employs systrophe to heap together the benefits of sleep, appreciated most keenly when he realizes that he himself will no longer enjoy
Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleave of care,
The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,
Chief nourisher in life’s feast. (2.2.37) (108)

Shakespeare makes use of the more profound concepts which enter into logical definition, such as difference, property, essence. (109)

A consideration of essence as opposed to its accidental modifications becomes an important underlying theme in Shakespeare’s historical plays: the distinction between kingship and kings, between the ideal and its embodiment in imperfect men, (111)

Logical division of a genus into its species, known to rhetoricians as at the figure diaeresis, is closely related to definition. The distinction which Jaques makes between his melancholy and other melancholies illustrates this relation, for while dividing he briefly characterizes and so in a measure defines each kind.
‘I have neither the scholar’s melancholy, which is emulation; nor the musician’s, which is fantastical; nor the courtier’s, which is proud; nor the solider’s, which is ambitious; nor the lawyer’s, which is politic; nor the lady’s, which is nice; nor the lover’s, which is all these: but it is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects, and indeed the sundry contemplation of my travels, in which my often rumination wraps me in a most humorous sadness. (AYLI, 4.1.10) (111)

Synecdoche is a trope which heightens meaning by substituting genus for species, species for genus, part for whole, whole for part.
Pour down thy weather. (KJ, 4.2.109) (112)

Differing from diaeresis, which divides a genus into its species, merismus, or partitio, divides a whole into its parts, as when Caliban, discussing Prospero’s coming to the island, reminds him:
Then I lov’d thee
And show’d thee all the qualities o’th’isle,
The fresh springs, brine-pits, barren place and fertile. (Tem, 1.2.336) (112)

Eutrepismus is a figure of division which numbers and orders the parts under consideration.
I am enjoin’d by oath to observe three things:
First, never to unfold to anyone (MV, 2.9.9)

Enumeratio employs the third kind of division, that of a subject into its adjuncts, a cause into its effects, an antecedent into its consequence. Holofernes anatomizes Armado by listing his adjuncts.
‘His humour is lofty, his discourse peremptory, his tongue filed, his eye ambitious, his gait majestical, and his general behaviour vain, ridiculous, and thrasonical. He is too picked, too spruce, too affected, too odd, as it were, too peregrinate. (LLL, 5.1.10)
Hamlet interrupts Osric’s enumeration of the good qualities of Laertes, which threatens to be long drawn out, with
I know, to divide him inventorially would dozy th’arithmetic of memory. (5.2.118)
Speaking to an apparently reluctant Cressida, Pandarus enumerates the merits of Troilus.
Pandarus. Have you any eyes? Do you know what a man is? Is not birth, beauty, good shape, discourse, manhood, learning, gentleness, virtue, youth, liberality, and such-like, the spice and salt that season a man?
Cressida. Ay, a minc’d man! (1.2.274) (115)

The figure propositio is a brief summary of what is to follow (115)

Restrictio is a figure whereby after making a general statement one excepts a part, as the senator does in discussing Timon.
I love and honour him,
But must not break my back to heal his finger. (Tim, 2.1.23) (115)

Prolepsis is a general statement amplified by dividing it into parts, as in Arviragus’ description of life in a cave with his brother and foster-father.
We are beastly: subtle as the fox for prey,
Like warlike as the wolf for what we eat.
Our valour is to chase what flies; our cage
We make a choir, as doth the prison’d bird,
And sing our bondage freely. (Cym, 3.3.40) (116)

Epanodos differs from prolepsis only in repeating the terms of the general proposition in the amplification which particularizes it, as in Sonnet XLVI. (116)

Synathroesmus, on the other hand, first gives details, then gathers them up in recapitulation , as when Scroop informs Richard II of the rebellion led by Bolingbroke.
Synathroesmus in another sense, sometimes called congeries, merely heaps together words of different meaning, without recapitulation, as when Macbeth, having just announced that he was killed Duncan’s grooms, gives this excuse for his impulsiveness:
Who can be wise, amaz’d, temp.rate and furious,
Loyal and neutral, in a moment? No man. (2.3.114)
Internet definition: stringing together adjectives, often in invective. (117)

Epiphonema, an epigrammatic summary, gathers into a pithy, sententious utterance what has preceded, (117)

Of greater dramatic significance than the figures of division is the disjunctive proposition, which expresses alternatives that divide the possibilities contemplated.
Othello, convinced of Desdemona’d infidelity, contemplates the alternatives which in consequence rive his tortured soul.
But there where I have garner’d up my heart,
Where either I must live or bear no life,
The fountain from the which my current runs
Or else dries up—to be discarded thence,
Or keep it as a cistern for foul toads
To knot and gender in—(4.2.57) (118)

Subjects and Adjuncts. [not in literal, grammatical sense]. Shakespeare reveals in his plays penetrating observations regarding the relation of subject and adjuncts. Horatio demands of the ghost, “What of buried Denmark?” (1.1.46). The identity of the subject beneath the perceptible adjuncts becomes the central problem for Hamlet: is the ghost really his father’s spirit, or is it an evil spirit… (119)

A man’s real adjuncts do not depend on the thoughts and words of another person, as Malcolm assures Macduff.
That which you are, my thoughts cannot transpose. (Mac. 4.3.21)
There can, however, be a change in adjuncts so great as to constitute almost a new subject, a transformation that Oliver claims for himself as a result of his conversion.
‘Twas I. but ‘tis not I! I do not shame
To tell you what I was, since my conversion
So sweetly tastes, being the thing I am. (AYLI, 4.3.136)
A delegation of authority may be regarded as a transfer of adjuncts form one subject to another; consequently after the duke commissioned Angelo and Escalus, they can truly say:
The Duke’s in us, and we will hear you speak. (MM, 5.1.297) (120)

Peristasis, a figure of speech which is amplified by detailing the circumstances affecting a person or a thing, …
Time and place, which are circumstances of a thing.
Thomas Wilson’s summary in verse for ready memorizing as an aid to invention.
Who, what, and where, by what helpe, and by whose:
Why, how, and when, doe many things discolose. (AR, 17) (122)

Encomium is high praise and commendation of a person or thing by extolling the inherent qualities or adjuncts,
What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculties! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals! (2.2.315)

Taxis is a figure which distributes to every subject its proper adjunct. Oppressed with Macbeth’s tyranny, a lord speaks to Lennox of a time he hopes for, when
We may again
Give from our tables meat, sleep to our nights,
Free from our feasts and banquets bloody knives,
Do faithful homage and receive free honours—
All which we pine for now. (3.6.33) (123)

Epitheton attributes to a person or thing a quality by way of addition, … Armado explains to his page Moth that he called him
‘tender juvenal as a congruent epitheton appertaining to thy young days, which we may nominate tender. (LLL, 1.2.14)
online definition: figure that uses and adjective or adjectival phrase to characterize a person, thing or attribute or quality; the use of a qualifying word or phrase to further or describe something (e.g. fun ride, bad omen, cheerful giver) (124)

The compound epithet, although not mentioned by the Tudor rhetoricians in their treatment of epitheton, was popular with Elizabethan writers…
Now form head to foot I am marble-constant. (AC, 5.2.239) (124)

Antonomasia is of two forms. The first substitutes a description phrase for a proper name, … The second form on the other hand, substitutes a proper name for a quality associated with it.
Valeria. [to Virgilia] You would be another Penelope. (Cor.1.3.92) (125)

The substitution of subject for adjunct, or adjunct for subject, is a form of metonymy.
[of Duncan] renown and grace is dead (Mac, 2.3.99)
[online definition: a thing is not called by its own name, but by the name of something intimately associated with it, e.g. Hollywood for American Cinema] (126)

Prosopographia is the name given to the lively description of a person, (126)

Prosopopoeia, the attribution of human qualities to dumb or inanimate creatures, (126)

Characterismus is the description of the body or mind. (127)

Ethopoeia is the description of natural propensities, manners and affections, such as seeking to win favor by flattery. In The Tempest Antonio urges Sebastian to kill Gonzalo while he himself dispatches Alonso. This will be safe, for all the others are mere time-servers.
‘They’ll take suggestions as a cat laps milk;
They’ll tell the clock to any business that
We say befits the hour. (2.1.288) (127)
[Internet definition: putting oneself in the place of another so as both to understand and express his feelings more vividly. Denotes a construction or simulation of character in discourse.]

Mimesis is the imitation of gesture, pronunciation, utterance. Ulysses complains that Patroclus entertains Achilles by derisive mimicry of the Greek leader… (127)

Dialogismus, the framing of speech suitable to the person speaking, is essential to good drama, and is, of course, exemplified throughout Shakespeare’s plays. (128)

Pragmatographia is the vivid description of an action or event… Cleopatra so realistically pictures her place in Caesar’s intended triumph that she gains the help of her women in ending her life and thus escapes humiliation. (5.2.208-21) Pragmatographia is of great value in drama to report events which occur off-stage. (128-9)

Chronographia is the description of times, as of dawn by Romeo.
Look, love, what envious streaks
Do lace the severing clouds in yonder East.
Night’s candles are burnt out, and jocund day
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops. (3.5.7) (129)

Topographia is the description of places. (129)

Topothesia is the description of imaginary places, such as the house of envy in Ovid’s Metamorphoses or the bower of bliss in The Faerie Queene. Shakespeare describes no place such as these. His nearest approach is the fairyland where Oberon and Titania rule. (130)

[note14] Alfred Hart, “Shakespeare and the Vocabulary of The Two Noble Kinsmen,” in Shakespeare and the Homilies, p. 253, asserts that words beginning with the prefix un- amount to nearly 4 percent of Shakespeare’s vocabulary; about a fourth of these are “new” to literature, of Shakespeare’s own coinage. They help us to differentiate his plays from those of his predecessors and contemporaries (p. 229). Shakespeare has coined thirty-two words beginning with dis-; such formation were rarely invented by his predecessors (p. 256) (133)

Shakespeare, like his contemporaries, appreciated the force of privative terms, which express the absence or the loss of a characteristic that ought to be present.
To be imprison’d in the viewless winds
And blown with restless violence round about (MM, 3.1.124) (134)

Litotes is a figure whereby, instead of affirming a predicate of a subject, one denies its contrary or its contradictory. It may be used to avoid an appearance of boasting or to veil a threat.
Gloucester. [of Edgar] Let him fly far,
Not in this land shall he remain uncaught. (Lear, 2.1.58) (135)

Synoeciosis, a composition of contraries, stimulates attention by the seeming incompatibility of the terms it unites.
Hamlet: They have a plentiful lack of wit. (2.2.201)
Hamlet: I must be cruel, only to be kind. (3.4.178) (136)

Paradox, a figure which excites wonder, often involves apparent self contradiction. (136)

Antithesis sets contraries in opposition to give greater perspicuity by contrast, as when Lord Rivers tries to comfort the widowed queen.
Drown desperate sorrow in dead Edward’s grave
And plant your joys in living Edward’s throne. (R3, 2.2.99) (137)
[internet definition: juxtaposition of contrasting words or ideas (often, though not always, in parallel structure).

Very similar is syncrisis which compares contrary things in contrasting clauses.
Caesar. Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once. (JC, 2.2.32) (137)

Antanagoge is the balancing of an unfavorable aspect with a favorable one, as in Phebe’s comments on Ganymede.
‘Tis but a peevish boy; yet he talks well. (AYLI, 3.5.110)

The figure of inter se pugnantia points out discrepancy between theory and practice.
Ophelia. [to Laertes] But, good brother,
Do not as some ungracious pastors do,
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven,
Whiles, like a puff’d and reckless libertine,
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads
And recks not his own rede. (Ham, 1.3.46) (138)

Antiphrasis, or the broad flout, is irony of one word, … An outstanding instance of antiphrasis is the repetition of “honorable man,” spoken at first with apparent sincerity in Antony’s speech over Caesar, but growing in biting irony… (JC, 3.2.88-219) (139)

Paralipsis is a figure which, while pretending to pass over a matter, tells it most effectively. Antony uses it with consummate skill to sway the crowd.
Let but the commons hear this testament,
Which (pardon me) I do not mean to read,
And they would go and kiss dead Caesar’s wounds…
Have patience, gentle friends; I must not read it.
It is not meet you know how Caesar lov’d you…
‘Tis good you know not that you are his heirs. (3.2.136-51) (139)

Epitrope is an ironical permission, such as Cleopatra gives Antony when he is summoned to Rome by great affairs of state:
Antony. Most sweet queen—
Cleopatra. Nay, pray you seek no colour for your going,
But bid farewell, and go. When you su’d staying,
Then was the time for words. No going then!
Eternity was in our lips and eyes. (AC, 1.3.31) (140)
[internet definition: a figure in which one turns things over to one’s hearer, either pathetically or ironically, or in such a way as to suggest a proof of something without having to state it. Epitrophe often takes the form of granting permission, submitting for consideration, or simply referring to the abilities of the audience to supply the meaning the speaker passes over. Epitrophe can either be biting in its irony or flattering in its deference. Go ahead, make my day.]

Similarity and Dissimilarity. The Tudor rhetoricians called the general figure of similitude homoeosis and distinguished as its species icon, parabola, paradigma,… Icon is a figure which paints the likeness of a person by imagery. Richard describes himself through icon.
Down, down I come, like glist’ring Phaeton,
Wanting the manage of unruly jades. (R2, 3.3.178) (143)

Parabola is a moral or mystical resemblance, … Timon himself relates the event in a sort of parable.
Alcibiades. How came the noble Timon to this change?
Timon. As the moon does, by wanting light to give.
But then renew I could not, like the moon;
There were no suns to borrow of. (4.3.66) (143)

Paradigma, an argument from example judging the present from the past, (144)

The figure allegory continues a metaphor through an entire speech, as when Iago observes:
Our bodies are our gardens, to the which our wills are gardeners; so that if we will plant nettles or sow lettuce, set hyssop and weed up thyme, supply it with one gender of herbs or distract it with many—either to have it sterile with idleness or manured with industry—why, the power and corrigible authority of this lies in our wills. (Oth., 1.3.322) (145)

Catachresis, a figure which we would call an implied metaphor, is the wrenching of a word, most often a verb or an adjective, form its proper application to another not proper, as when one says that the sword devours. This figure, like the use of nouns as verbs, and the formation of compounds and negatives, is in Shakespeare’s hands a vital creative instrument with which he forges sudden concentrations of meaning, and secures the compression, energy, and intensity which characterize great poetry.
Lent him our terror, dress’d him with our love (MM, 1.1.20)
Your ears… so fortified against our story (Ham. 1.1.31)
I will speak daggers to her, but use none. (Ham. 3.2.414)
A sponge… that soaks up the King’s countenance (Ham, 4.2.16)
Methinks My favour here begins to warp (WT, 1.2.365)
‘Tis deepest winter in Lord Timon’s purse (Tim, 3.4.14)
[misapplication of a word, especially in a mixed metaphor] (146)

Comparison: Greater, Equal, Less. Arguments form the greater, the equal, and the less are employed with force and frequency in Shakespeare’s plays.
Beholding Ophelia bereft of reason, Laertes is pierced with an argument stronger than reason could utter.
Hadst thou thy wits, and didst persuade revenge,
It could not move me thus. (Ham, 4.5.168)
Macbeth… argues from equals.
I am in blood
Stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o’er. (3.4.136) (148)

Auxesis is a figure which advances from less to greater by arranging words or clauses in a sequence of increasing force, …
Polonius enumerates the stages by which, he is confident, Hamlet became mad.
And he, repulsed, a short tale to make,
Fell into a sadness, then into a fast,
Thence to a watch, thence into a weakness,
Thence to a lightness, and, by this declension,
Into the madness wherein now he raves. (2.2.146) (150)

Meiosis belittles, …often achieved through a trope of one word, may range from bitter scorn to light derision.
Hamlet: What should such fellows as I do, crawling between earth and heaven? (3.1.131)
Celia [to Rosalind of Orlando] I found him under a tree, like a dropp’d acorn (AYLI, 3.2.247) (152)

Paradiastole is a figure which extenuates in order to flatter or soothe.
Yes, lion-sick, sick of proud heart. You may call it melancholy, if you will favour the man; but, by my head, ‘tis pride. (T&C, 2.393) [This wine is light vs This wine is bodiless, watery]. (152)

Charientismus is a figure through which one mollifies threatening words by answering them with a smooth and appeasing mock.
Coriolanus. What’s the matter, you dissentious rogues
That, rubbing the poor itch of your opinion,
Make yourself scabs?
2.Citizen. We have ever your good word. (1.1.168)

Catacosmesis is the ordering of words from greatest to least in dignity… (152)

Epanorthosis, or correction, amends a first thought by altering it to make it stronger or more vehement.
Iago. I see, sir, you are eaten up with passion.
I do repent me that I put it to you.
You would be satisfied?
Othello. Would? Nay, I will. (3.3.391) (153)

By the figure dirimens copulation a point is added to balance or outweigh what has already been said… (153)

Emphasis is a figure which gives prominence to a quality or trait by conceiving it as constituting the very substance in which it inheres. Shakespeare apparently liked this figure, for he uses it frequently with swift and supple ease.
Prospero [to Caliban] Shrug’st thou, malice? (Tem., 1.2.367) (153)

Synonymia iterates the same thing in many words of the same meaning, to increase its force, as when Macbeth, informed that Fleance has escaped the murderers sent to kill him, realizes the significance of this news to himself.
But now I am cabin’d, cribb’d, confin’d, bound in
To saucy doubts and fears. (3.4.24) (154)

Exergasia, or exploit, augments by repeating the same thought in many figures.
Florizel. [to Perdita] I take thy hand—this hand,
As soft as dove’s down and as white as it,
Or Ethiopian’s tooth, or the fann’d snow that’s bolted
By th’northern blasts twice o’er. (WT, 4.4.373) (154)

an introductory narrative to open a speech, called paradiegesis,
Hear me, grave fathers—noble Tribunes, stay,
For pity of mine age, whose youth was spent
In dangerous wars whilst you securely slept.
For all my blood in Rome’s great quarrel shed,
For all the frosty nights that I have watch’d,
And for these bitter tears which now you see
Filling the aged wrinkles in my cheeks,
Be pitiful to my condemned sons. (Tit., 3.1.1) (155)

Cause and effect, antecedent and consequent are relations vital to dramatic structure. As a playwright keenly alive to this fact, Shakespeare draws arguments from the four causes—efficient, material, formal, and final—but most often from the last, since motives deeply affect both character and plot. (156)

Metalepsis is a figure which attributes a present effect to a remote cause, as when Isabel exclaims to Claudio:
There spake my brother! There my father’s grave
Did utter forth a voice. (MM, 3.1.86)
This figure serves Hamlet’s cast of though as he watches the grave diggers.
To what base uses we may return, Horatio! Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander till he find it stopping a bunghole?... (5.1.223) (159)

Antisagoge is a figure, based on antecedent and consequent, which joins to a precept a promise of reward and to its violation, punishment.
Do’t, and thou hast the one half of my heart;
Do’t not, thou splitt’st thine own. (WT, 1.2.348) (160)

Polyptoton, namely, the repetition of words differing only in termination. Shakespeare uses this topic and figure with cogency.
Duke. Spirits are not finely touch’d But to fine issues. (MM, 1.1.36)

A third aspect of a word or notation is its ambiguity, its capacity to signify more than one meaning. The distinction between the various meanings of a word is included by Renaissance logicians among the forms of division. Therefore to play upon the various meanings of a word represented an intellectual exercise, a witty analysis commended and relished by Aristotle, practiced by Plato and by the great dramatists of Greece, esteemed and used by Cicero, employed by medieval and Renaissance preachers in their sermons, regarded as a rhetorical ornament by the Elizabethans, but frequently despised as false or degenerate wit from the eighteenth century to the present day. In The Spectator, No. 61, for May 10, 1711, Addison sketches the history of puns. Although he admits the high regard in which they were held by all rhetoricians and by both classical and Renaissance writers, and notes their frequency in the most serious works such as Bishop Andrewes’ sermons and Shakespeare’s tragedies, he concludes that they are blemishes discovered in writers of genius… (164)

Rightly to appreciate Shakespeare’s puns, one should regard them as examples of four highly esteemed figures of Renaissance rhetoric—antanaclasis, syllepsis, paronomasia, and asteismus… (165)

Antanaclasis is a figure which repeating a word shifts from one of its meanings to another.
1.Page. [of singing] We kept time, we lost not our time.
Touchstone. By my troth, yes! I count it but time lost to hear such a foolish song. (AYLI, 5.3.38) (165)

Syllepsis is the use of a word having simultaneously two different meanings, although it is not repeated.
Rosalind. [I dwell] here in the skirts of the forest, like fringe upon a petticoat. (AYLI, 32.354) (166)

Paronomasia differs from antanaclasis in that the words repeated are nearly but not precisely alike in sound.
Touchstone. [to Audrey] I am here with thee and goats, as the most capricious poet, honest Ovid, was among the Goths. (AYLI, 3.3.7) (166)

Asteismus is a figure of reply in which the answerer catches a certain word and throws it back to the first speaker with an unexpected twist, an unlooked for meaning. It usually has a mocking or scoffing character, …
Cloten. Would he had been one of my rank!
Lord. [aside] to have smell’d like a fool. (Cym. 2.1.17) (167)

We need only recall Donne’s punning on his own name at the very climax of his solemnly serious and moving “Hymn to God the Father” to remind ourselves how much a play on words was then esteemed.
Ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man. (RJ, 3.1.101) (168)

Although the ordinary function of words is to mirror thought, there are occasions when words are employed rather to veil meaning than to reveal it openly. Consequently the figures of deliberate obscurity, enigma, noema, and schematismus, depend on notation. … A simpler example of enigma occurs in Coriolanus, where the figure is explicitly named.
1.Citizen. You have deserved nobly of your country, and you have not deserved nobly.
Coriolanus. Your enigma?
1.Citizen. You have been a scourge to her enemies; you have been a rod to her friends. You have not indeed loved the common people. (2.3.94) (171)

Noema is an obscure and subtle speech. Hamlet employs this figure, along with asteismus, in a veiled complaint and subtle threat to the king.
King. How fares our cousin Hamlet?
Hamlet. Excellent, i’faith; of the chameleon’s dish. I eat the air, promise-cramm’d. you cannot feed capon so. (3.2.96) (171)

Alcibiades uses schematismus, or circuitous speech, in addressing the senators of Athens, for he covertly reprehends their tyrrany toward his friend by praising the contrary virtue.
I am an humble suitor to your virtues;
For pity is the virtue of the law,
And none but tyrants use it cruelly.
…O my lords,
as you are great, be pitifully good. (Tim, 3.5.7-52) (172)

Although interest in the clash of ideals is perennial, it was an outstanding characteristic of Elizabethan literature. Whether the contention was that of man against man in debate or of thought against though within a man, Shakespeare and his fellow dramatists made full use of logical argumentation to develop conflict, which lies at the very heart of drama. (174)

The simplest arguable relations of propositions are contradiction, contrariety, and conjunction. Since the first two have been touched on in Chapter III, only the third will be discussed here. A mere conjunction of propositions may occasion doubt or disagreement. …
A conjunction of propositions is the true only if all of its parts are true. It is false if any part is false. (175)

Shakespeare’s characters are easily at home with the syllogism and its parts. …
Although the syllogism underlies all reasoning, it seldom appears in discourses in full, explicit form. Shakespeare has a few fully stated syllogisms, for example, Timon’s answer to his faithful steward Flavius expressing his complete misanthropy.
Flavius. Have you forgot me, sir?
Timon. Why dost ask that? I have forgot all men;
Then, if thou grant’st th’art a man, I have forgot thee. (4.3.479) (177)

Usually only two of the three propositions of a syllogism are expressed, while one is merely implicit. Such an abridged syllogism is called an enthymeme. Malvolio, reading the letter which Maria has written in Olivia’s hand in order to gull him, quotes a proposition, supplies a minor premise, and infers the hoped-for conclusion.
‘I may command where I adore.’ Why, she man command me: I serve her; she is my lady. Why, this is evident to any formal capacity. (TN, 2.5.126) (178)

In that form of enthymeme in which one of the premises is omitted there is a strong tendency to accept the conclusion without scrutinizing the missing premise on which the argument rests. For example, the plebeians, swayed by Antony speaking of Caesar, readily take for granted the conclusion he desires:
4. Plebian. Mark’d ye his words? He would not take the crown.
Therefore ‘tis certain he was not ambitious. (JC, 3.2.118)
They do not question the implicit major premise, A man who refuses the crown is not ambitious. (178)

The most usual form of enthymeme or abridged syllogism is that which states the conclusion first, supported by the major or the minor premise. Rhetoricians called this the figure aetiologia, a reason given for a sentence uttered, as when Hamlet, in directing that the players be well provided for, gives a reason which expresses Shakespeare’s esteem of his own profession.
Let them be well us’d; for they are the abstract and brief chronicle of the time. (2.2.547) (179)

The figure syllogismus, even more abridged in form, presents a single vivid suggestion, from which the mind leaps to the desired inference without adverting to the process of reasoning which underlies it. … For example, when the fool in Lear admonishes Kent,
Sirrah, you were best take my coxcomb,
The full implication is: You are a fool. A fool wears a coxcomb.
Vivid and clear in implication and all the more stimulating for their brevity… (180)

A sorites is a chain of reasoning, a series of abridged syllogisms or enthymemes. A sorites normally involves repetition of the last word of each sentence or clause at the beginning of the next,
[To Orlando] For your brother and my sister no sooner met but they look’d; no sooner look’d but they lov’d; no sooner lov’d but they sigh’d; no sooner sigh’d but they ask’d one another the reason; no sooner knew the reason but they sought the rememdy: and in these degrees have they made a pair of stairs to marriage. (AYLI, 5.2.35) (180)

A disjunctive syllogism has for its major premise a disjunctive proposition expressing alternatives, one of which the minor premise affirms or denies, while the conclusion in consequence affirms or denies the other.
The disjunctive syllogism is important in Hamlet. The prince must know wither the ghost is “a spirit of health or a goblin damn’d” (1.4.40). Hamlet later puts the issue more concretely: either the king will unkennel his guilt, or the ghost is a damned spirit (3.2.85). The king does unkennel his guilt by his agitation at the play, thus supplying the minor premise. Hamlet thereupon concludes that the ghost is not evil (186)

Practically identical with the disjunctive syllogism is the figure which the rhetoricians called apophasis, whereby all alternatives are rejected except one. (187)

In contrast to apophasis, the figure prosapodosis rejects none of the alternatives, but supports each with a reason. (188)

The most complex form of reasoning is the dilemma, a compound syllogism having for its major premise a compound hypothetical proposition and for its minor premise a disjunctive proposition. (188)

Fallacious Reasoning. Fallacies are either formal or material. Formal fallacies are those which violate the rules of the syllogism and therefore yield no valid conclusion, even when the premises are true. The most common formal fallacy is that which ignores the necessity of using the middle term in its full extension in at least one of the premises, as when Portia remarks of one of her suitors, the bibulous German:
I will do anything, Nerissa, ere I will be married to a sponge. (MV, 1.2.107)
The implied syllogism is: A sponge drinks. He drinks. Therefore he is a sponge. Portia’s metaphor is the more piquant because of the fallacy. (191)

Material fallacies are those which have their root in the matter, that is, in the terms of a syllogism which appears to be formally correct. Logicians distinguish thirteen material fallacies, six occasioned by the ambiguity of language and seven by a false assumption hidden in the thought. (191)

Most common of material fallacies is equivocation, the use of the middle term in two different senses. Equivocation therefore involves one of the figures of ambiguity, usually antanaclasis, and provides lively repartee.
Desdemona. Do you know, sirrah, where Lieutenant Cassio lies?
Clown. I dare not say he lies anywhere.
Desdemona. Why, man?
Clown. He’s a soldier; and for one to say a soldier lies is stabbing. (Oth, 3.4.1) (192)

In the fallacy of amphibology the ambiguity lies, not in a word, but in the grammatical construction. An amusing instance occurs in The Winter’s Tale, where the clown tells Autolycus:
But I was a gentleman born before my father; for the King’s son took me by the hand and call’d me brother; and then the two kings call’d my father brother. (5.2.150)
In the passage preceding this, gentleman born has been used repeatedly as a phrase meaning born a gentleman, but here born links itself to before, making the remark ludicrous. The fallacy of amphibology, often present in oracles, permits them to be interpreted in more than one way, so that they may be accounted true, whatever the result. (193)

The four other fallacies rooted in ambiguity occur less frequently. The fallacy of composition assumes that what is applicable to individual members of a group is applicable to the group. This fallacy seems to underlie Malvolio’s attitude in wanting to bind his Puritanical ideas on all. Sir Toby objects:
Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale? (TN, 2.3.123) (194)

The fallacy of division is just the reverse of composition. No instance of Shakespeare’s use of it has been observed by the present writer. (194)

The fallacy of accent appears when the true significance of a word is altered by pronunciation, and a wrong conclusion drawn, (194)

The fallacy of accident results form the false assumption that something which belongs only to a substance may be attributed to an accident or adjunct of that substance, or contrariwise. For example, when two countrymen discover Henry VI, who has been deposed, and arrest him as an enemy of King Edward IV, to whom they have sworn allegience, Henry asks them whether they have not broken their oaths to be true subjects to him. One answers:
Sinklo. No; for we were subjects but while you were king.
Henry. Why, am I dead? Do I not breathe a man? (3H6, 3.1.80)
Here the question is whether the oath of allegiance attaches to the substance, the man who still lives, or to an accident, the quality of kingship. (194)

Most common of the fallacies of false assumption is the confusion of absolution and qualified statement, called secundum quid, which assumes that what is true in some respect is true absolutely, or contrariwise. Thus, when Hamlet asks whose grave the clown is digging, the clown takes Hamlet’s question in the absolute sense. [Hamlet errs b/c corpse is man only in qualified sense, as man must live.]
Hamlet. What man dost thou dig it for?
Clown. For no man, sir.
Hamlet. What woman then?
Clown. For none either.
Hamlet. Who is to be buried in’t?
Clown. One that was a woman, sir; but rest her soul, she’s dead.
Hamlet. How absolute the knave is! We must speak by the card, or equivocation will undo us. (5.1.141)
Hamlet recognizes the knave’s persistence in taking in an absolute sense a word uttered in a qualified sense. (195)

The fallacy of begging the question is present when the conclusion, or question to be proved, stated in the same or in equivalent words, is used in the proof and stands as one of the premises.
Fool. The reason why the seven stars are no more than seven is a pretty reason.
Lear. Because they are not eight?
Fool. Yes indeed. Thou wouldst make a good fool (1.5.38)
Begging the question is said to be an especial failing of women, as Lucetta admits even while she offers it as her reason for thinking Proteus best among Julia’s suitors.
Julia. Your reason?
Lucetta. I have no other but a woman’s reason;
I think him so because I think him so. (TGV, 1.2.22) (199)

The fallacy of many questions consists in demanding a simple answer to a complex question. Thus, Somerset asks questions of Richard Plantagenet so couched as to demand the answer yes. Ot answer either yes or no would involve Richard in difficulties. He answers by making distinctions and thereby avoids the snare.
Somerset. Was not thy father, Richard Earl of Cambridge,
For treason executed in our late king’s days?
And by his treason stand’st not thou attainted,
Corrupted, and exempt from ancient gentry? …
Richard. My father was attached, not attainted;
Condemn’d to die for treason, but no traitor. (1H6, 2.4.90-7) (199)

Cacosistaton is an argument which serves as well for the one side as for the other. The gravediggers discuss the decision granting Christian burial to Ophelia, who has drowned herself. The argument which won leniency is the very one of which they, with a touch of the grotesque, complain.
2.Clown. Will you ha’ the truth an’t? if this had not been a gentlewoman, she should have been buried out o’Christian burial.
1.Clown. Why, there thou say’st! And the more pity that great folk should have count’nance in this world to drown or hang themselves more than their even-Christen. (Ham., 5.1.26) (201)

To put another into such a position that whatever he says must needs be said amiss was called pseudomenos, … Mercutio does this when he seeks to forestall credence in Romeo’s dream before Romeo has had an opportunity to tell it:
Romeo. I dreamt a dream tonight.
Mercutio. And so did I.
Romeo. Well, what was yours?
Mercutio. That dreamers often lie. (R&J, 1.4.50) (201)

Disputation. The figure aporia is a doubting or deliberating with oneself. (214)

Anthypophora is a reasoning with self, asking question and answering them oneself,
Iago uses this figure to inflame Roderigo against Cassio, effectively supplying the answers to his own questions as to whether Desdemona will tire of Othello and turn to another (2.1.223-53) (214)

By the figure anacoenosis the speaker asks counsel of his hearers, (215)

Synchoresis is a figure whereby the speaker, trusting strongly in his own cause, freely gives his questioner leave to judge him,
Brutus is so confident of rectitude in the killing of Caesar that he will let the adversary judge the cause
Our reasons are so full of good regard
That were you Antony, the son of Caesar,
You should be satisfied. (JC, 3.1.224) (215)

By the figure procatalepsis a speaker confutes the objection which his opponent is likely to make, (215)

Paromologia is a figure whereby one admits something unfavorable to his own position and then brings in a point which overthrows what was granted. Thus Menenius admits in part the charge of Sicinius against Coriolanus, but overthrows his conclusion, that Coriolanus ought therefore to be put to death.
Sicinius. He’s a disease that must be cut away.
Meneius. O, he’s a limb that has been a disease:
Mortal, to cut it off; to cure it easy. (3.1.295) (216)

Concessio is a figure whereby the speaker grants a point which hurts the adversary to whom it is granted, …
Falstaff. Boy, tell him I am deaf.
Page. You must speak louder. My master is deaf.
Justice. I am sure he is, to the hearing of anything good. (2H4, 1.2.77) (216)

Similar to concessio is metastasis, the turning back of an objection against him who made it. …
Oliver. Get you with him, you old dog!
Adam. Is ‘old dog’ my reward? Most true, I have lost my teeth in your service. (AYLI, 1.1.85)

Daisyrmus is a figure whereby an opponent’s argument is depraved or made ridiculous through base similitude. (218)

By the figure antirrhesis one rejects an opponent’s argument or opinion because of its error or wickedness. Thus Imogen indignantly rejects Iachimo and his fabricated testimony…
Away! I do condemn mine ears that have
So long attended thee. If thou wert honourable,
Thou wouldst have told this tale for virtue, not
For such an end thou seek’st, as base as strange. (Cym, 1.6) (219)

Commoratio is a figure whereby one seeks to win an argument by continually coming back to one’s strongest point, as Shylock does when he keeps insisting that Antonio pay the penalty and forfeit of the bond (MV, 4.1.36-242). (220)

Similar to commoratio, and often joined to it, is epimone, the repetition of the same point in the same words, somewhat in the manner of a refrain, as when Othello in a jealous frenzy repeatedly demands the handkerchief. (220)

Apoplanesis is a figure of disputaiton whereby one seeks to evade the issue by digressing to another matter. it is a characteristic dodge of Falstaff, who habitually seeks escape in starting holes of evasion…
Justice. Sir John, I sent for you before your expedition to Shrewsbury.
Falstaff. An’t please your lordship, I hear his Majesty is return’d with some discomfort from Wales. (2H4, 1.2.115) (221)

Pathos is that form of persuasion by which one endeavors to put the auditor into whatever frame of mind is favorable to one’s purpose. ... The practical measure of a speech or a play is its effect on the hearer, as Hamlet appreciates.
The play’s the thing
Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King. (2.2.632)
Iago is one who understands the value of pathos in argument, and he knows well that passion colors judgment. Having wrought Othello to a pitch of jealous frenzy, he realizes that a mere show of tangible evidence will serve his turn, for
Trifles light as air
Are to the jealous confirmations strong
As proof of holy writ. (3.3.322) (242-3)

To move to laughter is one way of disposing hearers favorably toward the cause one has in hand. … Pathos in drama is effected less often by humor than by indignation, scorn, hate, sorrow, pity, desire, wonder, joy—powerful in persuasion. (244)

Aposiopesis is the sudden breaking off of speech, as when Lear, beside himself with rage because Goneril and Regan deny his need of even one retainer, exclaims:
I will have revenges on you both
That all the world shall—I will do such things—
What they are yet, I know not; but they shall be
The terrors of the earth! (2.4.282) (245)

Thaumasmus is the particular name given to an exclamation of wonder. Coming upon his former master, Timon, in the woods, the faithful steward Flavius exclaims:
O you gods!
Is yond despis’d and ruinous man my lord? (Tim, 4.2.464)

By erotema, or rhetorical question, … (246)

Apostrophe is literally a turning of speech form the persons previously addressed to another, sometimes to a thing or an abstraction personified.
Mark Antony turns aside from his talk to the assassins and speaks to Caesar’s corpse. (247)

In contrast to apostrophe, which by direct address conveys the immediacy of the present, anamnesis is a recital of matters past, most often of woes or injuries. (248)

Apocarteresis is the casting away of all hope in one direction and turning to another for aid, as when Hermione, seeing that Leontes is preconvinced of her guilt, turns her hope to the gods. (249)

Optatio is an ardent wish or prayer. Perhaps the best-known instance of it in Shakespeare is the cry of Richard III, “A horse, a horse! My kingdom for a horse!” (R3, 5.4.7), uttered on the battlefield when he is eager to find Richmond and slay him.
Lear, in the storm, moved by the primal strength of the elements, which searches hearts, calls on wickedness to disclose itself.
Emilia desires that heaven punish the knave who has abused Othello and wrought him to unfounded jealousy. (249-50)

Closely akin to optatio is vehement supplication, called deesis, or obtestatio.
Probably the most fearful supplication in all of Shakespeare is Lady Macbeth’s invocation of the spirits of evil, which appears to be nothing less than a plea to be possessed by demons. (1.5.41) (251)

Not far removed from supplication is mempsis, a complaint against injuries and a craving for redress. (251)

If wrongs or sorrows cannot be averted, they may be placated or assuaged. Of the three figures concerned with their alleviation, the first is paramythia, which seeks to console or to diminish sorrow. Titus Andronicus assures his son Lucius that he ought to rejoice rather than grieve at his banishment from Rome. (253)

Medela is a figure which seeks to palliate by conciliatory words the offenses of a friend when they can neither be defended nor denied. Thus Alcibiades admits but extenuates his friend’s faults. (253)

Philophronesis seeks to mitigate by gentle speech and humble submission the anger of an adversary whose might is too great to be overcome. Mark Antony resorts to this figure immediately on learning of Caesar’s murder, in order to gain a safe interview with the assassins. He sends his servant with this message to Brutus: (253)

In contrast to figures that seek to placate are those that mock and taunt. Mycterismus is a scornful mock, sometimes accompanied by facial gesture, as drawing the lip awry. The tribute remark how Coriolanus mocked them in precisely this manner.
When it is conveyed by words without facial gesture, mycterismus is a subtle rather than an open mock.
Hamlet comments scornfully on his mother’s hasty marriage.
The funeral bak’d meats
Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables. (1.2.180) (254)

Sarcasmsus is a more bitter taunt than mycterismus, a more open mock. Antony seizes an opportunity to scoff at Brutus.
Brutus. Good words are better than bad strokes, Octavius.
Antony. In your bad strokes, Brutus, you give good words;
Witness the hole you made in Caesar’s heart,
Crying ‘Long live! Hail, Caesar!’ (JC, 5.1.29) (255)

Not far removed from mocks and taunts are accusations and reprehensions. By the figure epiplexis, or percontatio, one asks questions, not in order to know, but to chide or reprehended. Thus with scathing questions Coriolanus denounces the tribunes for having incensed the people against him after he had begged and obtained their voices for the consulship. (256)

Upbraiding another for ingratitude or impiety constitutes onedismus, a figure which Shakespeare uses with intense vehemence. Suffering from Goneril’s ingratitude, Lear wishes her to have no child, or else one that will
Turn all her mother’s pains and benefits
To laughter and contempt, that she may feel
How sharper than a serpant’s tooth it is
To have a thankless child! (1.4.308) (256)

By categoria one lays open the secret wickedness of another before his face, as Hamlet does when he accuses his mother of
Such an act
That blurs the grace and blush of modesty; (257)

Proclees is a figure whereby one provokes an adversary to the conflict by a vehement accusation or by a confident offer of justification. (257)

Bdelygmia is a figure whereby one expresses hate or abhorrence, usually in a few words, as Lear does when he exclaims to Osward, Goneril’s steward,
Out, varlet, from my sight! (2.4.190) (258)

Threats and curses abound in Shakespeare’s works. By the figure cataplexies one threatens plagues or punishments, … Cleopatra’s use of the same figure to threaten the messenger who brings her news of Antony’s marriage to Octavia.
Hence,
Horrible villain! or I’ll spurn thine eyes
Like balls from me. I’ll unhair thy head!
Thou shalt be whipp’d with wire and stew’d in brine,
Smarting in ling’ring pickle. (AC, 2.5.62) (259)

The figure eulogia pronounces a blessing. (261)

Paeanismus expresses exuberance of joy. (261)

Ethos is the persuasion exerted upon the minds and hearts of the audience by the personal character of the speaker, causing them to believe in his sincerity, his truth, his ability, his good will toward them. Both logos and pathos promote ethos, for people more readily believe and trust a speaker who reasons clearly and cogently and who creates in them a friendly and sympathetic attitude toward himself and what he has to say. Spontaneous and genuine feeling in him begets a like feeling in them and convinces them of his sincerity.
There are four figures that promote ethos by revealing the sincerity and good will of the speaker. (272)

By means of the figure comprobatio a man commends the good he sees in the judges whose confidence he wishes to win. (273)

By parrhesia one is humbly respectful of, if necessity demands, courageously outspoken in addressing those whom he ought to reverence or fear on a matter which concerns them or those near of them. Thus Paulina respectfully but fearlessly comes before Leontes to speak of his conduct toward his queen. (273)

By syngnome one expresses forvieness of injuries. (274)

Christopher Marlowe, The Complete Poems and Translations

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Christopher Marlowe, The Complete Poems and Translations, Ed. Stephen Orgel, Penguin Books, New York, 2007.

After his death Thomas Kyd, who had shared lodgings with Marlowe, testified to his “rashness in attempting sudden privy injuries to men”—Marlowe had in fact been charged in connection with a street brawl in 1589 in which a man was killed. Kyd also pursued the theme of atheism, recalling his companion’s “vile heretical conceits denying the divinity of Jesus.” (vii-viii)

…first translation of the Amores not only into English but into any modern language. The Amores was the least well known of Ovid’s works in the Renaissance, untouched by the allegorizing and moralizing commentaries that had safely contextualized Ovid’s other work for Christian readers. (ix)

In a sense, this is Marlow’s sonnet sequence, the psychic drama of a poet-lover whose love is both his creation and his ultimate monomania, frustration, and despair. (ix)

Nevertheless, All Ovid’s Elegies is a strange book. It reads like a promising first draft, occasionally felicitous but often routine, with moments of real brilliance and also moments of striking ineptitude. Time after time, the only way to understand Marlowe’s English is to use the Latin as a crib. (x)

Nevertheless, the translation is an impressive achievement, especially if, as appears to be the case, it is the work of Marlowe’s undergraduate years; (x-xi)

The undercurrent of tragedy is always there, but Marlowe handles the moral issues in a characteristically subversive way. The tragedy we that Hero and Leander ought not to be behaving this way. Quite the contrary: the point is that our world is simply not good enough for its heroes. Marlowe deals with the necessary tragic conclusion by omitting it, not finishing the poem. This is a work designed to be a fragment—another thing about it that is “classical.” (xvii)

Marlowe’s translation of Lucan is the first in English; it was published in only a single edition, in 1600—clearly it represented the bottom of the Marlowe barrel, the last bit of unpublished work of the most successful classicist of the age. The work is undeniably less engaging than All Ovid’s Elegies or Hero and Leander. The project, however, would not have been a mere academic exercise. Ben Jonson said of Lucan’s Pharsalia, or Civil War, that it was “written with an admirable height,” and that he was “never weary to transcribe” its “admirable verses.” Modern opinion had been less enthusiastic. The general critical attitude is expressed by the Oxford Classical Dictionary: “Lucan shows an excessive fondness for the purple patch. There is much exaggeration, often absurd; bizarre effects and far-fetched paradoxes abound.” … Lucan was regarded as a classic model for the treatment of recent events (evident, for example, in Drayton’s Barons’ Wars and Daniel’s Civil Wars), not merely as a literary monument to be domesticated through translation. (xx)

Of Hellespont, guilty of true love’s blood, (1st line, Hero and Leander)

…Hero the fair,
Whom young Apollo courted for her hair, (page 5)

Many would praise the sweet smell as she passed,
When ‘twas the odor which her breath forth cast;
And there for honey bees have sought in vain,
And beat from thence, have lighted there again. (6)

Cupid…
As he imagined Hero was his mother;
And oftentimes into her bosom flew,
About her naked neck his bare arms threw;
And laid his childish head upon her breast,
And with still panting rocked, there took his rest. (6)

…I could tell ye
How smooth his breast was, and how white his belly,
And whose immortal fingers did imprint
That heavenly path with many a curious dint
That runs along his back, … (7)

His presence made the rudest peasant melt,
That in the vast uplandish country dwelt;
The barbarous Thracian solider, moved with nought,
Was moved with him, and for his favor sought.
Some swore he was a maid in a man’s attire,
For in his looks were all that men desire, (7)

So ran the people forth to gaze upon her,
And all that viewed her were enamored on her.
…
Await the sentence of her scornful eyes:
He whom she favors lives, the other dies. (8)

So fair a church as this had Venus none:
…
And in the midst a silver altar stood;
There Hero sacrificing turtles’ blood,
Vailed to the ground, vailing her eyelids close,
And modestly they opened as she rose: (9)

Stone still he stood, and evermore he gazed,
Till with the fire that from his count’nance blazed
Relenting Hero’s gentle heart was strook:
Such force and virtue hath an amorous look. (9)

Who ever loved, that loved not at first sight?
He kneeled, but unto her devoutly prayed;
Chaste Hero to herself thus softly said:
“Were I the saint he worships, I would hear him,” (10)

And I in duty will excel all other,
As thou in beauty dost exceed Love’s mother. (11)

A stately builded ship, well-rigged and tall,
The ocean maketh more majestical:
Why vowest thou then to live in Sestos here,
Who on Love’s seas more glorious wouldst appear? (11)

Like untuned golden strings all women are,
Which long time lie untouched will harshly jar. (11)

Who builds a palace and rams up the gate,
Shall see it ruinous and desolate.
Ah simple Hero, learn thyself to cherish;
Lone women like to empty houses perish. (11)

One is no number; maids are nothing then,
Without the sweet society of men. (12)

This idol which you term virginity
Is neither essence subject to the eye,
…
Or capable of any form at all.
Of that which hath no being, do not boast;
Things that are not at all, are never lost.
Men foolishly do call it virtuous:
What virtue is it that is born with us?
Much less can honor be ascribed thereto,
Honor is purchased by the deeds we do. (12)

Tell me, to whom mad’st thou that heedless oath?”
“To Venus,” answered she, and as she spake,
Forth from those two tralucent cistern brake
A stream of liquid pearl, which down her face
Made milk-white paths, whereon the gods might trace
To Jove’s high court. He thus replied: “The rites
In which love’s beauteous empress most delights,
Are banquets, Doric music, midnight revel,
Plays, masques, and all that stern age counteth evil.
The as a holy idiot doth she scorn, (13)

Abandon fruitless cold virginity,
The gentle queen of love’s sole enemy.
Then shall you most resemble Venus’ nun,
When Venus’ sweet rites are performed and done. (14)

“Who taught thee rhetoric to deceive a maid?
Aye me, such words as these should I abhor,
And yet I like them for the orator.” (14)

Destinies
Laden with languishment and grief he flies,
And to those stern nymphs humbly made request
Both [H&L] might enjoy each other, and be blest.
But with a ghastly dreadful countenance,
Threat’ning a thousand deaths at every glance,
They answered Love, nor would vouchsafe so much
As one poor word, their hate to him was such.
Hearken awhile, and I will tell you why. (15)

And, knowing Hermes courted her, was glad
That she such loveliness and beauty had
As could provoke his liking, yet was mute,
And neither would deny nor grant his suit. (16)

Imposed upon her lover such a task
As he ought not perform, nor yet she ask.
A draught of flowing nectar she requested,
Wherewith the king of gods and men is feasted.
He ready to accomplish what she willed,
Stole some from Hebe (Hebe Jove’s cup filled)
And gave it to his simple rustic love;
Which being known (as what is hid from Jove?) (17)

But long this blessed time continued not:
As soon as he his wished purpose got,
He… (17)

And few great lords in virtuous deeds shall joy,
But be surprised with every garish toy,
And still enrich the lofty servile clown, (18)

Yet as she went, full often looked behind,
And many poor excuses did she find
To linger by the way, …
…
So on she goes, and in her idle flight, (19)

As if her name and honor had been wronged
By being possessed of him for whom she longed; (19)

And, seeming lavish, saved her maidenhead.
Ne’er king more sought to keep his diadem,
Than Hero this inestimable gem.
Above our life we love a steadfast friend,
Yet when a token of great worth we send,
We often kiss it, often look thereon,
And stay the messenger that would be gone:
No marvel, then, though Hero would not yield
So soon to part from that she dearly held.
Jewels being lost are found again, this never;
‘Tis lost but once, and once lost, lost forever. (21)

For as a hot proud horse highly disdains
To have his head controlled, but breaks the reins,
Spits forth the ringled bit, and with his hooves
Checks the submissive ground: (22)

Imagining that Ganymede, displeased,
Had left the heavens; therefore on him he seized.
Leander strived, the waves about him wound,
And pulled him to the bottom, where the ground
Was strewed with pearl, and in low coral groves
Sweet singing mermaids sported with their loves (23)

And swore the sea should never do him harm.
He clapped him plump cheeks, with his tresses played,
And smiling wantonly, his love bewrayed. (23)

…at which celestial noise
The longing heart of Hero much more joys
Than nymphs and shepherds when the timbrel rings, (25)

And drunk with gladness to the door she goes,
Where seeing a naked man, she screeched for fear;
Such sights as this to tender maids are rare;
And ran into the dark herself to hide.
Rich jewels in the dark are soonest spied. (25)

Leander now, like Theban Hercules,
Entered the orchard of th’Hesperides,
Whose fruit none rightly can describe but he
That pulls or shakes it from the golden tree. (26)

Again she knew not how to frame her look,
Or speak to him who in a moment took
That which so long so charily she kept,
…
But as her naked feet were whipping out,
He on the sudden clinged her so about
That mermaid-like unto the floor she slid;
One half appeared, the other half was hid.
Thus near the bed she blushing stood upright,
…
So Hero’s ruddy cheek Hero betrayed,
And her all naked to his sight displayed,
Whence his admiring eyes more pleasure took
Than Dis on heaps of gold fixing his look. (27)

Come live with me, and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, hills and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses,
And a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle,
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle.

A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull,
Fair lined slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold.

A belt of straw and ivy-buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs,
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me, and be my love.

The shepherd swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May morning.
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me, and be my love.

(The Passionate Shepherd to His Love, Complete, 207)

Sir Thomas Wyatt, The Poetical Works of Sir Thomas Wyatt

2011-09-21T18:21:00.001-06:00

Sir Thomas Wyatt, The Poetical Works of Sir Thomas Wyatt, Ed. Rev. George Gilfillan. James Nichol, 104 High Street, Edinburgh, 1858.

Such vain thought as wonted to mislead me
In desert hope, by well assured moan,
Makes me from company to live alone,
In following her whom reason bids me flee.
She fleeth as fast by gentle cruelty;
And after her my heart would fain be gone;
But armed sighs my way do stop anon,
‘Twixt hope and dread locking my liberty;
Yet as I guess, under disdainful brow
One beam of ruth is in her cloudy look:
Which comforteth the mind, that erst for fear shook:
That bolded straight the way then seek I how
To utter forth the smart I bide within;
But such it is, I not how to begin.
(The Wavering Lover Willeth, And Dreadeth to Moveth His Desire, page 3-4)

If waker care; if sudden pale colour;
If many sighs with little speech to plain:
Now joy, now woe, if they my chere distain;
For hope of small, if much to fear therefore;
To haste or slack, my pace to less, or more,
Be sign of love, then do I love again.
[chere: the expression of the countenance.]
(The Lover Confesseth Him in Love with Phyllis, 5)

Each man me tell’th I change of my devise;
And on my faith, methink it good reason
To change purpose, like after the season.
For in each case to keep still one guise,
Is meet for them that would be taken wise;
And I am not of such manner condition;
But treated after a diverse fashion;
And thereupon my diverseness doth rise.
But you, this diverseness that blamen most,
Change you no more, but still after one rate
Treat you me well, and keep you in that state;
And while with me doth dwell this wearied ghost,
My word, nor I, shall not be variable,
But always one; your own both firm and stable.
(Of Change in Mind, 6)

Like unto these unmeasurable mountains
So is my painful life, the burden of ire;
For high be they, and high is my desire;
And I of tears, and they be full of fountains:
Under craggy rocks they have barren plains;
Hard thoughts in me my woful mind doth tire:
Small fruit and many leaves their tops do attire,
With small effect great trust in me remains:
The boisterous winds oft their high boughs do blast;
Hot sighs in me continually be shed:
Wild beasts in them, fierce love in me is fed;
Unmovable am I, and they steadfast.
Of singing birds they have the tune and note;
And I always plaints passing through my throat.
(The Lover’s Life Compared to the Alps, 12)

For, hitherto though I have lost my time,
Me list no longer rotten boughs to clime.
(A Renouncing of Love, 16)

Whoso list to hunt? I know where is an hind!
But as for me, alas! I may no more,
The vain travail hath wearied me so sore;
I am of them that furthest come behind.
Yet may I by no means my wearied mind,
Draw form the deer; but as she fleeth afore
Fainting I follow; I leave off therefore,
Since in a net I seek to hold the wind.
Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt
As well as I, may spend his time in vain!
And graven with diamonds in letters plain,
There is written her fair neck round about;
‘Noli me tangere; for Caesar’s I am,
And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.’
(The Lover Despairing to Attain Unto His Lady’s Grace, Relinquisheth the Pursuit, 16)

Go, burning sighs! unto the frozen heart,
To break the ice, which pity’s painful dart
Might never pierce: and if that mortal prayer
In heaven be heard, at least yet I desire
That death, or mercy, end my woful smart.
Take with thee pain, whereof I have my part,
And eke the flame form which I cannot start,
And leave me then in rest, I you require.
Go, burning sighs! fulfil that I desire,
I must go work, I see, by craft and art,
For truth and faith in her is laid apart:
Alas, I cannot therefore now assail her,
With pitiful complaint and scalding fire,
That form my breast deceivably doth start.
Go, burning sighs!
(The Lover Sendeth Sighs to Move His Suit, 20)

Once, as methought, Fortune me kiss’d,
And bad me ask what I thought best,
And I should have it as me list,
Therewith to set my heart in rest.

I asked but my lady’s heart,
To have for evermore mine own;
Then at an end were all my smart;
Then should I need no more to maon.

Yet for all that a stormy blast
Had overturn’d this goodly day;
And Fortune seemed at the last
That to her promise she said nay.

But like as one out of despair,
To sudden hope revived I,
Now Fortune sheweth herself so fair,
That I content me wondrously.

My most desire my hand may reach,
My will is always at my hand;
Me need not logn for to beseech
Her, that hath power me to command.

What earthly thing more can I crave?
What would I wish more at my will?
Nothing on eath more would I have,
Save that I have, to have it still.

For Fortune now hath kept her promess,
In granting me my most desire:
Of my sovereign I have redress,
And I content me with my hire.
(The Lover Rejoiceth the Enjoying of His Love, Complete, 26)

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey

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Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, The Poems of Henry Howard Earl of Surrey, Ed. James Yeowell, George Bell & Sons, York St., Covent Garden, London, 1894.

“Surrey first rejected the use of those ‘aureate and mellifluate’ terms, which he found disfiguring our language… (lxx)

And lastly, he discountenanced altogether the French mode of laying an unnatural stress upon final syllables; (lxxi)

He first introduced the use of Blank Heroic Verse. (lxxi)

All writers are agreed that Surrey’s translation of the Second and Fourth Book of Virgil’s Aeneid is the first specimen of Heroic Blank Verse in our language. (lxxii)

“The leading features of Surrey’s style were chiefly dignity and compression. Of his compression, contrasted with the diffusive mode of writing used by all the authors who preceded him, (lxxii)

Surrey’s style bears a stronger resemblance to Dryden’s than to that of any other of our poets. The same manliness, and ease, and vigour characterizes both. In neither do we find any affection of prettiness; they seem both to have been more intent on their thoughts than to have been more intent on their thoughts than their words; (lxxii)

For if I found, sometime that I have sought,
Those stars by whom I trusted of the port,
My sails do fall, and I advance right nought;
As anchor’d fast, my spirits do all resort
To stand agazed, and sink in more and more
The deadly harm which she doth take in sport.
(Description of the Restless State of a Lover, With Suit to His Lady, To Rue on His Dying Heart, page 3)

Rue on my life; or else your cruel wrong
Shall well appear, and by my death be seen. (3)

And when mine eyen did still pursue
The Flying chase of their request;
Their greedy looks did oft renew
The hidden wound within my breast.
(Description of the Restless State of a Lover, 5)

He causeth the one to rage with golden burning dart;
And doth allay with leaden cold again the other’s heart.
Hot gleams of burning fire, and easy sparks of flame,
In balance of unequal weight he pondereth by aim.
(Description of the Fickle Affections, Pangs, and Slights of Love, 6)

And how to hide my harms with soft dissembling chere,
When in my face the painted thoughts would outwardly appear. (7)

I know, and can by rote the tale that I would tell;
But oft the words come forth awry of him that loveth well.
I know in heat and cold the lover how he shakes;
In singing how he doth complain; in sleeping how he wakes. (7)

How small a net may take, and meash a heart of gentle kind: (8)

And when I felt the air so pleasant round about,
Lord! to myself how glad I was that I had gotten out.
(Complaint of a Lover That Defied Love, And Was by Love After the More Tormented, 10)

The jolly woes, the hateless, short debate,
The rakehell life, that ‘longs to love’s disport.
([rakehell: dissolute] How Each Thing, Save the Lover in Spring, Reviveth to Pleasure, 16)

I never saw my Lady lay apart
Her cornet black, in cold nor yet in heat,
Sith first she knew my grief was grown so great;
(Complaint That His Lady, After She Knew His Love, Kept Her Face Always Hidden From Him, 17)

The palme-play, where, despoiled for the game,
With dazzled eyes oft we by gleams of love
Have miss’d the ball, and got sight of our dame,
(Prisoned in Windsor, He Recounteth His Pleasure There Passed, 19)

The wild forest, the clothed holts with green;
With reins availed, and swift y-breathed horse,
With cry of hounds, and merry blasts between, (19)

And such as by their lords do set but little price,
Let them sit still, …
(Complaint of the Absence of her Lover, Being Upon the Sea, 28)

Give place, ye lovers, here before
That spent your boasts and brags in vain;
My Lady’s beauty passeth more
The best of yours, I dare well sayen,
(A Praise of His Love, Wherein He Reproveth Them That Compare Their Ladies with His, 31)

To break it forth unto some friend, it easeth well the heart.
(A Warning to the Lover, How He is Abused By His Love, 34)

I see, (what would you more,) stood never man so sure
On woman’s word, but wisdom would mistrust it to endure. (35)

Each beast can choose his fere according to his mind,
And eke can shew a friendly chere, like to their beastly kind.
(A Song Written by the Earl of Surrey, Of A Lady Refused to Dance with Him, 47)

I might perceive a Wolf as white as whalesbone;
A fairer beast of fresher hue, beheld I never none;
Save that her looks were coy, and forward eke her grace:
Unto the which this gentle beast’gan him advance apace. (47)

But now I do perceive that nought it moveth you, (50)

While that I live and breathe, such shall my custom be
In wildness of the woods to seek my prey, where pleaseth me; (51)

And in my thought I roll her beauties to and fro;
Her laughing chere, her lovely look, my heart that pierced so.
Her strangeness when I sued her servant for to be;
And what she said, and how she smiled, when that she pitied me.
(The Faithful Lover Declareth His Pains and His Uncertain Joys, And With Only Hope Recomforteth Somewhat His Woeful Heart, 54)

Martial, the things that do attain
The happy life, be these, I find:
The riches left, not got with pain;
The fruitful ground, the quiet mind:

The equal friend, no grudge, no strife;
No charge of rule, nor governance;
Without disease, the healthful life;
The household of continuance:

The mean diet, no delicate fare;
True wisdom join’d with simpleness;
The night discharged of all care,
Where wine the wit may not oppress:

The faithful wife, without debate;
Such sleeps as may beguile the night:
Contented with thine own estate;
Ne wish for death, ne fear his might.
(The means to Attain Happy Life, Complete, 57)

Laid in my quiet bed, in study as I were,
I saw within my troubled head a heap of thoughts appear.
And every thought did shew so lively in mine eyes,
That now I sigh’d, and then I smiled, as cause of thought did rise.
I saw the little boy in thought how oft that he
Did wish of God, to scape the rod, a tall young man to be.
The young man eke that feels his bones with pains opprest,
How he would be a rich old man, to live and lie at rest.
The rich old man that sees his end draw on so sore,
How he would be a boy again, to live so much the more.
Whereat full oft I smiled, to see how all these three
From boy to man, form man to boy, would chop and change degree.
And musing thus I think, the case is very strange,
That man from wealth, to live in woe, doth ever seek to change.
Thus thoughtful as I lay, I saw my wither’d skin,
How it doth shew my dented chews, the flesh was worn so thin.
And eke my toothless chaps, the gates of my right way,
That opes and shuts as I do speak, do thus unto me say:
‘Thy white and hoarish hairs, the messengers of age,
That shew, like lines of true belief, that this life doth assuage;
Bid thee lay hand, and feel them hanging on thy chin;
The which do write two ages past, the third now coming in.
Hang up therefore the bit of thy young wanton time:
And thou that therein beaten art, the happiest life define.’
Whereat I sigh’d, and said: ‘Fare well! my wonted joy;
Truss up thy pack, and trudge from me to every little boy;
And tell them thus from me; their time most happy is,
If, to their time, they reason had, to know the truth of this.’
(How No Age is Content With His Own Estate, And How the Age of Children is the Happiest if They Had Skill to Understand It, Complete, 64)

Thraldom at large hath made this prison free.
(Bonum Est Mihi Quod Humiliasti Me, 66)

For well I find it easeth me;
(The Lover Describeth His Whole State Unto His Love, And Promising Her His Faithful Good Will, Assureth Himself of Hers Again, 74)

What is that pleasant gain? What is that sweet relief,
That should delay the bitter taste that we feel of our grief?
The gladsome days we pass to search a simple gain;
The quiet nights, with broken sleeps, to feed a restless brain.
(Ecclesiastes, Chapter II, 86)

Wherefore each greedy heart that riches seeks to gain,
Gather may he that savoury fruit that springeth of his pain.
(Chapter III, 90)

Who sleeps alone, at every turn doth feel the winter blast:
(Chapter IV, 92)

In boast of outward works he taketh no delight,
Nor waste of words; such sacrifice unsavoureth in his sight.
(Chapter IV, 94)

In waste of wind, I rede [advise], vow nought unto the Lord,
Whereto thy heart to bind thy will, freely doth not accord;
For humble vows fulfill’d, by grace right sweetly smoke:
But bold behests, broken by lusts, the wrath of God provoke.
(Chapter V, 95)

‘Oh!’ think I, ‘had I wings like to the simple dove,
This peril might I fly; and seek some place of rest
In wilder woods, where I might dwell far from these cares.’
(Exaudi, Deus, orationem meam. Pslam LV, 106)

Samuel Daniel, Poems and A Defence of Ryme

2011-09-21T16:37:00.000-06:00

Samuel Daniel, Poems and A Defence of Ryme, Ed. Arthur Colby Sprague, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1972.

Like to the curious builder who this yeare
Pulse downe, and alters what he did the last
As if the thing in doing were more deere
Then being done, & nothing likes thats past
(To the Reader, 3)

I may pull downe, raise, and reedifie
It is the building of my life the fee
Of nature, all th’inheritance that i
Shal leaue to those which must come after me
And all the care I haue is but to see
These lodgings of m’affections neatly drest (3)

I know no work from man yet euer came
But had his marke, and by some error shewd
That it was his, and yet what in the same
Was rare, an worthy, euermore allowd
Safe couoy for the rest: the good thats sow’d
Thogh rarely paies our cost, & who so looks
T’haue all thinges in perfection, & in frame
In mens inuentions, neuer must read books. (3)

But as the Peacock, seeing himselfe to weake
Confest the Eagle fairer farre to be
And yet not in his feathers but his beake. (4)

But vntouch’d harts, with vnaffected eye,
Approch not to behold so great distresse:
Cleer-sighted you, soone note what is awry,
Whilst blinded ones mine errours neuer gesse.
You blinded soules whom youth and errours lead,
You outcast Eglets, dazzled with your sunne:
Ah you, and none but you my sorrowes read,
You best can iudge the wrongs that she hath dunne.
(To Delia, Sonnet III)

And her disdaines are gall; her fauours hunny. (VI)

And still I toile, to chaunge the marble brest
Of her, whose sweetest grace I doe adore:
Yet cannot finde her breathe vnto my rest,
Hard is her hart and woe is me therefore.
O happie he that ioy’d his stone and arte,
Vnhappy I to loue a stony harte. (XIII)

Those amber locks, are those same nets my deere,
Wherewith my libertie thou didst surprize: (XIIII)

And list not seeke to breake, to quench, to heale,
The bonde, the flame, the wound that festreth so;
By knife, by liquor, or by salue to deale:
So much I please to perish in my wo. (XIIII)

Happie in sleep, waking content to languish,
…
All things I loath saue her and mine own anguish, (XVI)

Restore thy tresses to the golden Ore,
Yeelde Cithereas sonne those Arkes of loue;
Bequeath the heauens the starres that I adore,
And to th’Orient do thy Pearles remoue.
Yeelde thy hands pride vnto th’yuory whight,
T’Arabian odors giue thy breathing sweete:
Restore thy bluch vnto Aurora bright,
To Thetis giue the honour of thy feete.
Let Venus haue thy graces, her resign’d,
And thy sweete voice giue backe vnto the Spheares:
But yet restore thy fearce and cruell minde,
To Hyrcan Tygers, and to ruthles Beares.
Yeelde to the Marble thy hard hart againe;
So shalt thou cease to plague, and I to paine. (XVIII)

These sorrowing sighes, the smoakes of mine annoy;
These teares, which heate of sacred flame distils;
Are these due tributes that my faith dooth pay
Vnto the tyrant; whose vnkindes kils. (XXI)

Raysing my hopes on hills of high desire,
Thinking to skale the heauen of her hart:
My slender meanes presum’d too high a part;
Her thunder of disdaine forst me retire. (XXVIII)

When golden haires shall chaunge to siluer wyre: (XXX)

No Aprill can reuiue thy withred flowers,
Whose blooming grace adornes thy glorie now:
…
O let not then such riches waste in vaine;
But loue whilst that thou maist be lou’d againe. (XXXI)

And whilst thou spread’st vnto the rysing sunne,
The fairest flower that euer sawe the light:
Now ioye thy time before thy sweete be dunne,
And Delia, thinke thy morning must haue night. (XXXII)

And that thy brightnes sets at length to west:
When thou wilt close vp that which now thou showest:
And thinke the same becomes thy fading best,
Which then shall hide it most, and couer lowest. (XXXII)

Thinke now sweete Delia, this shall be thy shame,
My Muse should lieu, the glory of whose name,
Shall rest in yce, when thine is grau’d in Marble. (XXXVI)

Faire and louely maide, looke from the shore,
See thy Leander striuing in these waues:
…
And wafte him to thee with those louely eyes,
A happy conuoy to a holy lande:
…
Stretch out the fairest hand a pledge of peace,
…
Ile not reuenge olde wrongs, my wrath shall cease;
For that which gaue me woundes, Ile giue it kisses. (XXXVIII)

Who whilst I burne, she singes at my soules wrack,
Looking a loft from Turret of her pride:
There my soules tyrant ioyes her, in the sack
Of her owne seate, whereof I made her guide.
There doe these smoakes that from affliction ryse,
Serue as an incense to a cruell Dame: (XXXIX)

When shall her troubled browe charg’d with disdaine,
Reueale the treasure which her smyles impart: (XLI)

When tyme hath made a passport for thy feares,
Dated in age the Kalends of our death. (XLII)

Care-charmer sleepe, sonne of the Sable night,
Brother to death, in silent darknes borne:
Relieue my languish, and restore the light,
With darke forgetting of my cares returne.
And let the day be time enough to morne,
The shipwrack of my ill-aduentred youth:
Let waking eyes suffice to wayle theyr scorne,
Without the torment of the nights vntruth.
Cease dreames, thy’ymagery of our day desires,
To modell foorth the passions of the morrow:
Neuer let rysing Sunne approue you lyers,
To adde more griefe to aggrauat my sorrow.
Still let me sleepe, imbracing clowdes in vaine;
And neuer wake, to feele the dayes disdayne. (XLV)

Like as the Lute that ioyes or els dislikes,
As is his arte that playes vpon the same:
So sounds my Muse according as she strikes,
On my hart strings high turn’d vnto her fame.
Her touch doth cause the warble of the sound,
Which here I yeeld in lamentable wise,
A wailing descant on the sweetest ground,
Whose due reports giue honor to her eyes.
Els harsh my style, vntunable my Muse,
Hoarce sounds the voice that prayseth not her name:
If any pleasing realish here I vse,
Then iudge the world her beautie giues the same.
O happie ground that makes the musique such,
And blessed hand that giues so sweete a tuch. (XLVII)

What though my selfe no honor get thereby,
Each byrd sings t’herselfe, and so will I. (XLIX)

My body found a graue where to containe it,
A sheete could hide my face, but not my sin,
(The Complaint of Rosamond, lines 5-6)

Happie liu’d I whilst Parents eye did guide,
The indiscretion of my feeble wayes:
And Country home kept me from being eyed,
Where best vnknowne I spent my sweetest dayes;
Till that my frindes mine honour sought to rayse,
To higher place, which greater credite yeeldes,
Deeming such beauty was vnfit for feeldes.
From Country then to Court I was preferr’d, (85-92)

Yet well perceiu’d how Fortune made me then,
The enuy of my sexe, and wonder vnto men. (111-12)

Doost thou not see how that thy King thy Iove,
Lightens foorth glory of thy darke estate:
And showres downe golde and treasure from aboue,
Whilst thou doost shutte thy lappe against thy fate: (232-5)

The mightie who can with such sinnes dispence,
In steed of shame doe honors great bestow:
A worthie author doth redeeme th’offence,
And makes the scarelet sinne as white as snow.
The Maiestie that doth descend so low,
Is not defiled, but pure remaines therein:
And being sacred, sanctifies the sin. (288-94)

So well the golden balles cast downe before me,
Could entertaine my course, hinder my way: (358-9)

For that must hap decreed by heauenly powers,
Who worke our fall, yet make the fault still ours. (412-3)

And now I come to tell the worst of ilnes,
Now drawes the date of mine affliction neere:
Now when the darke had wrapt vp all in stilnes,
And dreadfull blacke, had dispossess’d the cleere:
Com’d was the night, mother of sleepe and feare,
Who with her sable mantle friendly couers,
The sweet-stolne sports, of ioyfull meeting Louers. (428-34)

What greater torment euer could haue beene,
Then to inforce the fayre to lieu retired?
For what is Beautie if it be not seene, (505-8)

Nature created Beautie for the view,
Like as the fire for heate, the Sunne for light:
The Faire doe holde this priuiledge as due,
By auncient Charter, to lieu most in sight, (512-15)

Fond man Musophilus, that thus dost spend
In an vngainefull arte thy deerest daies,
(opening, Mvsophilus)

Be it that my vnseasonable song
Come out of time, that fault is in the time,
And I must do vertue so much wrong
As loue her ought the worse for others crime; (21-4)

For these lines are the vaines, the Arteries,
And vndecaying life-strings of those harts
That still shall pant, and still shall exercise
The motion spirits and nature both imparts, (183-6)

And let th’vnnaturall and wayward race
Borne of one wombe with vs, but to our shame,
That neuer read t’obserue but to disgrace,
Raise all the tempest of their power to blame;
That puffe of follie neuer can deface,
The worke a happy Genius tooke to frame. (201-6)

Sacred Religion, mother of forme and feare,
How gorgeously somtimes dost thou sit deckt?
What pompous vestures do we make thee weare? (295-7)

Is this the walke of all your wide renowne,
This little point, this scarce discerned Ile, (426-7)

And for that happier tongues haue woon so much,
Think you to make your barbarous language such? (432-3)

For when to these rare dainties time admits,
All comers, all Complexions, all that will,
Where none should be let in, but choisest wits,
Whose milde discretion could comport with skill,
For when the place their humor neither fits,
Nor they the place: who can expect but ill? (474-79)

And though irresolution and a selfe distrust be the most apparent faults of my nature, and that the least checke of reprehension, if it sauour of reason, will as easily shake my resolution as any mans liuing: yet in this case I know not how I am growne more resolued, and before I sinke, willing to examine what those powers of iudgement are, that must beare me downe, and beat me off from the station of my profession, which by the law of nature I am set to defend. (A Defence of Ryme, page 130)

SO that if his charitie had equally drawne with his learning hee would haue forborne to procure the enuie of so powerfull a number vupon him, from whom he cannot but expect the returne of a like measure of blame, and onely haue made way to his owne grace, by the proofe of his abilitie, without the disparaging of vs, who would haue bin glad to haue stood quietly by him, & perhaps commended his aduenture, … (131)

All verse is but a frame of wordes confide within certaine measure; differing from the ordinarie speech, and introduced, the better to expresse mens conceipts, both for delight and memorie. (131)

For as Greeke and Latine verse consists of the number and quantitie of syllables, so doth the English verse of measure and accent. And though it doth not strictly obserue long and short syllables, yet it most religiously respects the accent: and as the short and the long make number so the Acute and graue accent yeelde harmonie: And harmonie is likewise number, so that the English verse then hath number, measure and harmonie in the best proportion of Musike. (132)

Me thinkes it is a strange imperfection, that men should thus ouer-runne the estimation of good things with so violent a censure, as though it must please none else, because it likes not them. (134)

For be the verse neuer so good, neuer so full, it seemes not to satisfie nor breede that delight as when it is met and combined with a like sounding accent. Which seems as the iointure without which it hangs loose, and cannot susbsist, but runnes wildely on, like a tedious fancie without a close: (135)

Greekes and Latines… We admire them not for their smooth-gliding wordes, nor their measures, but for their inuentions: which treasure, if it were to be found in Welch, and Irish, we should hold those languages in the same estimation, and they may thanke their sword that made their tongues so famous and vniuersall as they are. For to say truth, their Verse is many times but a confused deliuerer of their excellent conceits, whose scattered limbes we are faine to looke out and ioyne together, to discerne the image of what they represent vnto vs. and euen the Latines, who professe not to be so licentious as the Greekes, shew vs many times examples but of strange crueltie, in torturing and dismembering of wordes in the middest, or disioyning such as naturally should be married and march together, by setting them as farre asunder, as they can possibly stand: that sometimes, vnlesse the kind reader, outo f his owne good nature, wil stay them vp by their measure, they will fall downe into flatte prose, and sometimes are no other indeed in their naturall sound: (136-7)

Euery science, euery profession, must be so wrapt vp in vnnecessary intrications, as if it were not to fashion, but to confound the vnderstanding, which makes me much to distrust man, and feare that our presumption goes beyond our abilitie, (137)

We must not looke vpon the immense course of times past, as men ouer-looke spacious and wide countries, from off high Mountaines and are neuer the neere to iudge of the true Nature of the soyle, or the particular syte and face of those territories they see. (143)

I thanke God that I am none of these great Schollers, if thus their hie knowledges doe but giue them more eyes to looke out into vncertaintie and confusion, accounting my selfe, rather beholding to my ignorance, that hath set me in so lowe an vnderroome of conceipt with other men, and hath giuen me as much distrust, as it hath done hope, daring not aduenture to goe alone, and plodding on the plaine tract I finde beaten by Custome and the Time, contenting me with what I see in vse. (147)

But had our Aduersary taught vs by his owne proceedings, this way of perfection, and therein fram’d vs a Poeme of that excellencie as should haue put downe all, and beene the maister-peece of these times, we should all haue admired him. But to depraue the present forme of writing, and to bring vs nothing but a few loose and vncharitable Epigrammes, and yet would make vs belieue those numbers were come to raise the glory of our language, giueth vs cause to suspect the performance, (148)

Why then it was to shew his owne skill, and what himselfe had obserued: so he might well haue done, without doing wrong to the honor of the dead, wrong to the fame of the liuing, and wrong to England, in seeking to lay reproach vppon her natiue ornaments, and to turne the faire streame and full course of her accents, into the shallow current of a loose vncertaintie, cleane out of the way of her knowne delight. (153)

What, doth he think himselfe is now gotten so farre out of the way of contempt, that his numbers are gone beyond the reach of obloquie, and that how friuolous, or idle soeuer they shall runne, they shall be protected from disgrace, as though that light rymes and light numbers did not weigh all alike in the graue opinion of the wise. (153)

And I must confesse my Aduersary hath wrought this much vpon me, that I thinke a Tragedie would indeede best comporte with a blank Verse, and dispence with Ryme, sauing in the Chorus or where a sentence shall require a couplet. (156)

Next to this deformitie stands our affectation, wherein we always berwray our selues to be both vnkinde, and vnnaturall to our owne natiue language, in disguising or forging strange or vnvsuall wordes, as in if it were to make our verse seeme an other kind of speech out of the course of our vsuall practise, displacing our wordes, or inuesting new, onely vpon a singularitie: when our owne accustomed phrase, set in the due place, would expresse vs more familiarly and to better delight, than all this idle affectation of antiquitie, or noueltie can euer doe. And I can not but wonder at the strange presumption of some men that dare so audaciously aduenture to introduce any whatsoeuer forraine wordes, be they neuer so strange; and of themselues as it were, without a Parliament, without any consent, or allowance, establish them as Free-denizens in our language. But this is but a Character of that perpetually reuolution which wee see to be in all things that neuer remaine the same, and we must herein be content to submit our selues to the law of time, which in few yeeres wil make al that, for which we now contend, Nothing. (158)