Author: Isaac

Horace’s Otium Divos

Translated by Enola Brandt, 1935

When storm clouds veil the moon’s pale glow, and stars
No longer shine with light serene to guide
The pilot in his course, what sailor bold…
The victim of an open, grasping sea…
Invokes not all his gods for quiet then?
For peace, Grosphus, the Thracian cries, now crazed
By war’s mad strife; ’tis peace the Mede, too, craves,
Adorned with quiver, bow, and deadly dart…
The peace not bought with gems, nor gold, nor dyes.

To quell the tumult of the soul and drive
Away the cares from panelled doors of state
Both wealth and pow’r are far too small and weak.
He lives well in his poverty for whom
His father’s silver gleams with lovely glow
On frugal table; fear and base desire
Can never rouse him from his restful sleep.

Why, then, in life which soon must end, do we
Undaunted, strive for all things known to men…
Or restlessly our fatherland exchange
For lands warmed by another sun? What man,
An exile from his native soil, can flee
Himself, his cares, his fears, his driving woes?
Still morbid Care will mount the ships of bronze,
Will keep her pace with throngs of horsemen fleet,
Outrun the deer, outspeed the Eastern wind.

The mind rejoicing in today’s glad store
Will scorn to fret about tomorrow’s cares,
And temper all its sorrows with a smile;
In all this world no perfect good exists.
Yet Nature’s law of compensation works:
Achilles felt death’s unexpected blow,
Tithonus lived in life a lingering death;
And what Time gives to me, perhaps it will
Deny to you, who proudly may possess
Your herds of lowing cattle, mares, and fields,
Your woolen garments dipped in purple dye.
To me, just Fate has granted one small farm,
The tender spirit of the Grecian muse,
And pow’r to shun the malice of the mob.

Of No Value

“A barrister made a long speech in the course of which a boy fell asleep in the gallery and fell into the well of the court and broke his neck. At common law the instrument with which a murder was committed was forfeited to the Crown. Hence the indictment had to charge and the jury had to find its value. The barrister was indicted in the Circuit Grand Court for murder with a certain dull instrument, to wit, a long speech of no value.” (Roscoe Pound, The Lawyer from Antiquity to Modern Times, 1953)

The Topography of Ignorance

“Science is the topography of ignorance. From a few elevated points we triangulate vast spaces, inclosing infinite unknown details. We cast the lead, and draw up a little sand from abysses we may never reach with our dredges. The best part of our knowledge is that which teaches us where knowledge leaves off and ignorance begins. Nothing more clearly separates a vulgar from a superior mind, than the confusion in the first between the little that it truly knows, on the one hand, and what it half knows and what it thinks it knows on the other.” (Oliver Wendell Holmes, sr., Medical Essays)

A Dative or an Ablative

“In 1741 Sir Robert Walpole, defending himself in Parliament against an impeachment proceeding brought by William Pulteney, concluded with the pious hope, drawn from Horace, that he had been guilty of nothing, and need grow pale at no wrongdoing: ‘Nil conscire sibi nulli pallescere culpae.’ Pulteney leapt at once — but to correct the grammar of the Horatian tag: ‘Your Latin is as bad as your logic: nullA pallescere culpA!’ So delicate a textual point — whether Horace had written a dative or an ablative — could not be left unresolved. A guinea was wagered upon it, and the matter was appealed to the clerk of Parliament, who quickly rejected Walpole’s reading in favor of Pulteney’s. Such widely shared learning is hard to imagine now, but it would be even harder had it been displayed over the body of any poet other than Horace. The friend of Virgil, Maecenas, and the emperor Augustus, he has commended himself with equal address to generations of Europeans, and to the English in particular. One of Thackeray’s characters was quite content with an education that enabled one to ‘quote Horace respectably through life.’ Nor is it Horace’s words alone that we cherish. We peep and botanize upon his grave, investing him with a kind of posthumous personality. ‘Fat, beery, beefy Horace’ was the image purveyed to schoolchildren, who were encouraged to view him as a kind of superior scout-master, or freshman adviser. His followers seem to agree, archly, even upon the glint in his eye and the likelihood that, given the opportunity, he would have smoked a pipe or a good cigar.” (Steele Commager, Honest Eggs?)

All Centipedists

“When I look back on my early way in science, on the problems I studied, on the papers I published — and even more, perhaps, on those things that never got into print — I notice freedom of movement, a lack of guild-imposed narrowness, whose existence in my youth I myself, as I write this, had almost forgotten. The world of science was open before us to a degree that has become inconcievable now, when pages and pages of application papers must justify the plan of investigating, ‘in depth’, the thirty-fifth foot of the centipede; and one is judged by a jury of one’s peers who are all centipedists or molecular podiatrists. I would say that most of the great scientists of the past could not have arisen, that, in fact, most sciences could not have been founded, if the present utility-drunk and goal-directed attitude had prevailed.” (Erwin Chargaff, Heraclitean Fire)

Fortify Your Mind

“You are about to enter on the career which is closing upon me, and I feel much more solicitude for you than for myself. You have so reluctantly consented to engage in public life, that I fear you will feel too much annoyed by its troubles and perplexities. You must make up your account to meet and encounter opposition and defeats and slanders and treacheries, and above all fickleness of popular favor, of which an ever memorable example is passing before our eyes. Let me entreat you, whatever may happen to you of that kind, never to be discouraged nor soured. Your father and grandfather have fought their way through the world against hosts of adversaries, open and close, disguised and masked; with many lukewarm and more than one or two perfidious friends. The world is and will continue to be prolific of such characters. Live in peace with them; never upbraid, never trust them. But — ‘don’t give up the ship!’ Fortify your mind against disappointments — aequam memento rebus in arduis servare mentem, — keep up your courage, and go ahead!” (John Quincy Adams to Charles Francis Adams, 28 Nov. 1840)

Aequam Memento in 1682, 1767, 1891

Francis Atterbury, 1682

Be calm, my Dellius, and serene,
However Fortune change the scene!
In thy most dejected state,
Sink not underneath the weight:
Nor yet, when happy days begin,
And the full tide comes rolling in,
Let a fierce unruly joy
The settled quiet of thy mind destroy:
However Fortune change the scene,
Be calm, my Dellius, and serene!

Be thy lot good, or be it ill,
Life ebbs out at the same rate still:
Whether, with busy cares opprest,
You wear the sullen time away;
Or whether to sweet ease or rest
You sometimes give a day;
Carelessly laid
Underneath a friendly shade,
By pines and poplars mix’d embraces made;
Near a river’s sliding stream,
Fetter’d in sleep, bless’d with a golden dream.

Here, Here, in this much envy’d state,
Let every blessing on thee wait;
Bid the Syrian nard be brought,
Bid the hidden wine be sought,
And let the rose’s short-liv’d flower,
The smiling daughter of an hour,
Flourish on thy brow:
Enjoy the very, very now!
While the good hand of life is in,
While yet the fatal sisters spin.

A little hence, my friend, and thou
Must into other hands resign
Thy gardens and thy parks, and all that now
Bears the pleasing name of thine!
Thy meadows, by whose planted tides
Silver Tyber gently glides!
Thy pleasant houses, all must go;
The gold that’s hoarded in them too:
A jolly heir shall set it free,
And give th’ imprison’d monarchs liberty.

Nor matters it, what figure here
Thou dost among thy fellow-mortals bear;
How thou wert born, or how begot;
Impartial Death matters it not:
With what titles thou dost shine,
Or who was first of all thy line;
Life’s vain amusements! amidst which we dwell;
Nor weigh’d, nor understood, by the grim god of hell!

In the same road, alas! all travel on!
By all alike the same sad journey must be gone!
Our blended lots together lie,
Mingled in one common urn:
Sooner or later out they fly;
The fatal boat then wasts us to the shore,
Whence we never shall return,
Never! — never more!

Andrew Hervey Mills, 1767 (Imitated)

Let Fortune use you as she will,
Appear the man of temper still;
And keep, tho’ in the midst of woe,
Thyself in — Equilibrio —

But yet the harder task we find,
Justly to poize the tow’ring mind,
When that good lady, at a slap,
Lets fall a ticket in our lap.

Well, let her frown, or let her smile,
I’ll be her dupe but for a while;
And soon, upon the grass, forget
The very name of such a cheat —
There, with my lass and bottle, play,
In a perpetual roundelay;
Or where, to heighten our delight,
Those interwoven shades invite;
Which (stranger to a noon-tide ray)
Can make a twilight of the day,
And give young folks an hint to join
Embrace, like them — like them, intwine —
While water, unperceiv’d, distils,
To feed the little subter-rills —
Which, huddling in a thousand streams,
Sweetly excite poetic dreams —

— Come, pr’ythee set thy forehead free
From all those wrinkles which I see:
If talking will not do, I’ll try
The grand specific — Burgundy!
We’ll strew the place with ev’ry flow’r;
And crop those roses (of an hour)
Which else, perhaps, like you or I,
May droop to-morrow, fall, and die.

— Let’s laugh and sing — for, who’s afraid?
Death’s but my shadow ’till I’m dead!
And, then, believe for once the poet,
Happy for us! we never know it —

— That pretty box, and range of trees,
Where, now, you revel at your ease;
And, day by day, with hope beguile,
May fall to John-a-Noke, or Stile —
Some rav’nous, scraping heir or other;
Some bastard, or forgotten brother —
Will make those golden heaps a level,
And with your lordship at the Devil;
Because some little, paltry sum,
Is wanting to compleat the plumb —

— Sooner, or later, we must hence,
And pay th’ old ferryman his pence.
The last poor solitary coin
His worship suffers to be thine —

— The wretch, who breath’d in open air,
A life of misery and care—
Or he who, cloath’d in rich array,
Far’d sumptuously — but ev’ry day!
Kings, poets, and the Lord knows what,
Forgetting, die — and are forgot;
And, then, who has the most to say?
He who, like me, has liv’d to-day —
This, and this only, my good friend!
Will hold a maxim to the end;
And more immortalize your fame,
Than wealth without an honest name;
Which then, as in the moments past,
Will bring you curses to the last!

Eugene Field, 1891

Be tranquil, Dellius, I pray;
For though you pine your life away
With dull complaining breath,
Or speed with song and wine each day,
Still, still your doom is death.

Where the white poplar and the pine
In glorious arching shade combine,
And the brook singing goes,
Bid them bring store of nard and wine
And garlands of the rose.

Let ‘s live while chance and youth obtain;
Soon shall you quit this fair domain
Kissed by the Tiber’s gold,
And all your earthly pride and gain
Some heedless heir shall hold.

One ghostly boat shall some time bear
From scenes of mirthfulness or care
Each fated human soul, —
Shall waft and leave its burden where
The waves of Lethe roll.

So come, I prithee, Dellius mine;
Let ’s sing our songs and drink our wine
In that sequestered nook
Where the white poplar and the pine
Stand listening to the brook.

Error and Blindness

“To believe that the persecution of witches was rife in the early Middle Ages ‘before the rise of scientific ideas’; that France was not prosperous but impoverished in 1789; that ancient Greece was a peace-loving democracy, peopled entirely by artists and patrons of art; that murder has for centuries been punished by death, and property similarly protected because valued as highly as life; that Magna Carta is the original charter of democratic rights, that scientific discovery precedes technological advance; that the first universities were established to teach liberal arts and did teach them; that Roman law is the antithesis of the English Common Law and contributed nothing to it; that Machiavelli was a ruthless, immoral cynic, Macaulay an apologist for the Whig interest, and Plato a liberal rationalist, that until Darwin nobody knew about evolution and that only after him did religious faith begin to totter; that Hegel was the theorist of Prussian state tyranny and Nietzsche an advocate of world conquest by Nordics; that as the year 1000 approached all Europe feared the end of the world — to believe these and a hundred other pieces of ‘common knowledge’ causes error and blindness in current decisions about science, religion, art, education, criminology, revolution, and social action generally.” (Jacques Barzun, Clio and the Doctors)

Take the Superlative

“Take the superlative, which has become the placebo of mass journalism, written and oral. The superlative seems transparent and harmless. How does it corrupt? By the insidious suggestion, which is soon common belief, that among all the things that fill the world the only notable specimens are six: the first, the last, the largest, the smallest, the oldest, and the youngest, Journalistic art consists in making every story a vehicle for one of these mental aphrodisiacs… But surely everybody takes this with a grain of salt? Not at all: there is not enough salt on earth. To the unprotected mind, even though ‘advanced,” only the superlative deserves attention. One observer has with good reason called this ‘The Paragon Complex.'” (Jacques Barzun, The House of Intellect)

The Loving Study of Horace

“Many readers remember what old Rogers, the poet, said: ‘When I hear a new book talked about or have it pressed upon me, I read an old one.’ Happy the man who finds his rest in the pages of some favorite classic! I know no reader more to be envied than that friend of mine who for many years has given his days and nights to the loving study of Horace. After a certain period in life, it is always with an effort that we admit a new author into the inner circle of our intimates. The Parisian omnibuses, as I remember them half a century ago, — they may still keep to the same habit, for aught that I know, — used to put up the sign ‘Complet‘ as soon as they were full. Our public conveyances are never full until the natural atmospheric pressure of sixteen pounds to the square inch is doubled, in the close packing of the human sardines that fill the all-accommodating vehicles. A new-comer, however well mannered and well dressed, is not very welcome under these circumstances. In the same way, our tables are full of books half read and books we feel that we must read. And here come in two thick volumes, with uncut leaves, in small type, with many pages, and many lines to a page, — a book that must be read and ought to be read at once. What a relief to hand it over to the lovely keeper of your literary conscience, who will tell you all that you will most care to know about it, and leave you free to plunge into your beloved volume, in which you are ever finding new beauties, and from which you rise refreshed, as if you had just come from the cool waters of Hippocrene! The stream of modern literature represented by the books and periodicals on the crowded counters is a turbulent and clamorous torrent, dashing along among the rocks of criticism, over the pebbles of the world’s daily events; trying to make itself seen and heard amidst the hoarse cries of the politicians and the rumbling wheels of traffic. The classic is a still lakelet, a mountain tarn, fed by springs that never fail, its surface never ruffled by storms, — always the same, always smiling a welcome to its visitor. Such is Horace to my friend. To his eye ‘Lydia, dic per omnes’ is as familiar as ‘Pater noster qui es in caelis’ to that of a pious Catholic. ‘Integer vitae’, which he has put into manly English, his Horace opens to as Watt’s hymn-book opens to ‘From all that dwell below the skies.’ The more he reads, the more he studies his author, the richer are the treasures he finds. And what Horace is to him, Homer, or Virgil, or Dante is to many a quiet reader, sick to death of the unending train of bookmakers.” (Oliver Wendell Holmes sr., Over the Teacups, 1890)