Speaking to a Table

From Winston Churchill’s My Early Years.

When the last sound of my mother’s departing wheels had died away, the Headmaster invited me to hand over any money I had in my possession. I produced my three half-crowns which were duly entered in a book, and I was told that from time to time there would be a ‘shop’ at the school with all sorts of things which one would like to have, and that I could choose what I liked up to the limit of the seven and sixpence. Then we quitted the Headmaster’s parlour and the comfortable private side of the house, and entered the more bleak apartments reserved for the instruction and accommodation of the pupils. I was taken into a Form Room and told to sit at a desk. All the other boys were out of doors, and I was alone with the Form Master. He produced a thin greeny-brown-covered book filled with words in different types of print.

“You have never done any Latin before, have you?” he said.

“No, sir.”

“This is a Latin grammar.” He opened it at a well-thumbed page. “You must learn this,” he said, pointing to a number of words in a frame of lines. “I will come back in half an hour and see what you know.”

Behold me then on a gloomy evening, with an aching heart, seated in front of the First Declension.

Mensa
Mensa
Mensam
Mensae
Mensae
Mensa

a table
O table
a table
of a table
to or for a table
by, with or from a table

What on earth did it mean? Where was the sense of it? It seemed absolute rigmarole to me. However, there was one thing I could always do: I could learn by heart. And I there upon proceeded, as far as my private sorrows would allow, to memorise the acrostic-looking task which had been set me.

In due course the Master returned.

“Have you learnt it?” he asked.

“I think I can say it, sir,” I replied; and I gabbled it off.

He seemed so satisfied with this that I was emboldened to ask a question.

“What does it mean, sir?”

“It means what it says. Mensa, a table. Mensa is a noun of the First Declension. There are five declensions. You have learnt the singular of the First Declension.”

“But,” I repeated, “what does it mean?”

“Mensa means a table,” he answered.

“Then why does mensa also mean O table,” I enquired, “and what does O table mean?”

“Mensa, O table, is the vocative case,” he replied.

“But why O table?” I persisted in genuine curiosity.

“O table, you would use that in addressing a table, in invoking a table.” And then seeing he was not carrying me with him, “You would use it in speaking to a table.”

“But I never do,” I blurted out in honest amazement.

“If you are impertinent, you will be punished, and punished, let me tell you, very severely,” was his conclusive rejoinder.

Such was my first introduction to the classics from which, I have been told, many of our cleverest men have derived so much solace and profit.

On Change

“Daily imitation is far oftenest a conservative force, for the most frequent models are ancient. Of course, however, something new is necessary for every man and for every nation. We may wish, if we please, that tomorrow shall be like to-day, but it will not be like it. New forces will impinge upon us; new wind, new rain, and the light of another sun; and we must alter to meet them. But the persecuting habit and the imitative combine to ensure that the new thing shall be in the old fashion; it must be an alteration, but it shall contain as little of variety as possible. The imitative impulse tends to this, because men most easily imitate what their minds are best prepared for, — what is like the old, yet with the inevitable minimum of alteration; what throws them least out of the old path, and puzzles least their minds. The doctrine of development means this, — that in unavoidable changes men like the new doctrine which is most of a ‘preservative addition’ to their old doctrines. The imitative and the persecuting tendencies make all change in early nations a kind of selective conservatism, for the most part keeping what is old, but annexing some new but like practice — an additional turret in the old style.” (Walter Bagehot, 1872, Physics and Politics)

Immortality by Association

“I am happy too that the subject of my lecture should be Walter Bagehot, who has been my revered and, indeed, I feel, intimate companion for over a quarter of a century. The gift he has bestowed on me is what he himself called ‘immortality by association.’ Posterity cannot take up many people, so my advice to those who have such ambitions is this: if you cannot be a genius yourself, attach yourself to one who is, and then you will be drawn onwards into the future like a speck in the tail of Halley’s comet.” (Norman St John-Stevas, 1987, The Omnipresence of Walter Bagehot)

Jewels Five-Words-Long

From The Princess by Alfred Lord Tennyson.

And then we strolled
For half the day through stately theatres
Benched crescent-wise. In each we sat, we heard
The grave Professor. On the lecture slate
The circle rounded under female hands
With flawless demonstration: followed then
A classic lecture, rich in sentiment,
With scraps of thunderous Epic lilted out
By violet-hooded Doctors, elegies
And quoted odes, and jewels five-words-long
That on the stretched forefinger of all Time
Sparkle for ever: then we dipt in all
That treats of whatsoever is, the state,
The total chronicles of man, the mind,
The morals, something of the frame, the rock,
The star, the bird, the fish, the shell, the flower,
Electric, chemic laws, and all the rest,
And whatsoever can be taught and known;
Till like three horses that have broken fence,
And glutted all night long breast-deep in corn,
We issued gorged with knowledge…

Two Translations

By Alexander William Mair (1875-1928), Professor of Greek at the University of Edinburgh.

Horace’s Aequam Memento (II.3)

A level head neath Fortune’s slings,
A humble heart when Fortune’s pleasant,
Seek still, for in the end of things
One doom awaits us, peer and peasant,
Alike if you should never smile,
Or if, on holiday unbending,
You picnic on the grass awhile
And take the best of Heaven’s sending.
Wherefore do pine and poplar pale
Unite to frame a shade inviting?
Why hastes the rivulet down the dale
Impatient, eye and ear delighting?
Bring wine and unguent, nor forget
To bring the, ah! too fleeting, roses,
So long as means and youth permit
Nor yet the Book of Fate forecloses.
One day you’ll leave both house and lands,
Your villa by the Tiber yellow,
The wealth you’ve piled with eager hands —
Your heir will be the lucky fellow!
Whether you’re rich, of ancient race,
Or poor, the humblest in the city,
It matters not: we fly apace,
Victims of Death who knows no pity.
One way we all are driven, of all
The lots are shaken for the Ferry,
And soon or late ‘twill be our call
To step aboard old Charon’s wherry.

Horace’s Vides Ut Alta (I.9)

Deep lies the snow on Benachie,
Beneath their load the trees are bent,
The sea-ward streams forget the sea,
In winter’s icy clutches pent.

Heap high the logs to thaw the air:
Let fireside warmth mend outer cold:
Bring ben the bottle — see it bear
No lying legend, “Very Old.”

Lippen the lave to One above
Who lulls the wild winds’ angry clash
To zephyr airs that hardly move
The cypress or the aged ash.

Seek not to probe To-morrow’s fate,
But count To-day for happy chance,
And timely, ere it be too late,
Enjoy the daffing and the dance.

Soon on your brow, that now is brent,
Will prints of crusty age be seen;
Golf, shoot, or fish — then, well content,
Hie to the trysting-tree at e’en.

The tell-tale laugh will guide you where
She hides who, willing, still says “won’t” —
So angry if a kiss you dare,
But aiblins angrier if you don’t.

The Third Dimension

“In times of peace, workers or employers or university professors unite for a while on particular issues, permitting temporary generalizations. But all statements based on national or professional classifications are always misleading. Even in constituted bodies that poll their members — a legislature or a medical association — there are always minorities of whom what is true is the exact opposite of the majority truth. Minorities may be overlooked in practical affairs, but in critical judgments, in histories, in anything resembling a desire to know, the recording of divergence is the third dimension necessary to a lifelike portrayal. The urge is strong to speak of groups as if their actions formed an indivisible whole, and it is hard to be sure which of the infinite number of differences are significant, but usually that discovery is the point of the investigation, as when Napoleon III consulted his prefects to find out whether France was ready for war with Prussia. More than half said no: he disregarded them in favor of the other, more congenial view, and so put himself back into the state of ignorance from which he had tried to lift himself by asking. The same error is committed in any assumption of unanimity.” (Jacques Barzun, Race: A Study in Superstition)

Five Versions of Ode I.23

A Translation and Four Paraphrases by Eugene Field (Echoes from the Sabine Farm, 1891).

To Chloe

Chloe, you shun me like a hind
That, seeking vainly for her mother,
Hears danger in each breath of wind,
And wildly darts this way and t’ other;

Whether the breezes sway the wood
Or lizards scuttle through the brambles,
She starts, and off, as though pursued,
The foolish, frightened creature scrambles.

But, Chloe, you’re no infant thing
That should esteem a man an ogre;
Let go your mother’s apron-string,
And pin your faith upon a toga!

A Paraphrase

How happens it, my cruel miss,
You’re always giving me the mitten?
You seem to have forgotten this:
That you no longer are a kitten!

A woman that has reached the years
Of that which people call discretion
Should put aside all childish fears
And see in courtship no transgression.

A mother’s solace may be sweet,
But Hymen’s tenderness is sweeter;
And though all virile love be meet,
You’ll find the poet’s love is metre.

Another Paraphrase

Since Chloe is so monstrous fair,
With such an eye and such an air,
What wonder that the world complains
When she each am’rous suit disdains?

Close to her mother’s side she clings,
And mocks the death her folly brings
To gentle swains that feel the smarts
Her eyes inflict upon their hearts.

Whilst thus the years of youth go by,
Shall Colin languish, Strephon die?
Nay, cruel nymph! come, choose a mate,
And choose him ere it be too late!

A Third Paraphrase

Why, Mistress Chloe, do you bother
With prattlings and with vain ado
Your worthy and industrious mother,
Eschewing them that come to woo?

Oh, that the awful truth might quicken
This stern conviction to your breast:
You are no longer now a chicken
Too young to quit the parent nest.

So put aside your froward carriage,
And fix your thoughts, whilst yet there’s time,
Upon the righteousness of marriage
With some such godly man as I’m.

A Fourth Paraphrase

Syn that you, Chloe, to your moder sticken,
Maketh all ye yonge bacheloures full sicken ;
Like as a lyttel deere you ben y-hiding
Whenas come lovers with theyre pityse chiding.
Sothly it ben faire to give up your moder
For to beare swete company with some oder;
Your moder ben well enow so farre shee goeth,
But that ben not farre enow, God knoweth;
Wherefore it ben sayed that foolysh ladyes
That marrye not shall leade an aype in Hadys;
But all that do with gode men wed full quicklye
When that they be on dead go to ye seints full sickerly.

Not Publication

“To bring new and valuable knowledge by lecturing before fifty or a hundred students a year is not research, for it is not publication, except in the legal sense. But to print such knowledge in a periodical where only a few will peer at it with skepticism or dismay — that is to enlarge human horizons, to make the university shine in a new glory, and to justify an early promotion.” (Jacques Barzun, The House of Intellect)

Horace’s Diffugere Nives

Tr. by Caro Morgan, 1926. Included in Horace’s Diffugere Nives: A Collection of Translations.

The snows are fled, and over her bare breast Earth draws
A new green veil.
Within their banks, the streams glide past the leaf-tipped shaws,
As the floods fail;
The half-awakened flowers with the Zephyrs dance,
And seem to say,
Mortals, hope not, for you but once the hours do glance
From life’s bright day.
In Spring’s faint footsteps Summer rushes madly on,
And hears behind
Fruit-laden Autumn, scattering gifts from Winter won,
Cold, dark, and blind.
Though the swift moons restore each season in its turn,
Yet we, when gone,
With age, great wealth and courage cast into the urn,
Remain undone.
If added to this day the morrow’s hours will be,
No man can say;
So spend for thine own soul, from him who follows thee,
What thou best may.
When Death’s grim lips have passed on thee their sentence stern,
From that dread day
Not piety, nor birth, nor eloquence, will earn
An hour’s delay.
E’en her loved voice, who best on earth thy pain could calm,
Will plead in vain,
Nor shall the willing strength of Friendship’s ready arm
Break through Death’s chain.