How beatific dost Thou seem,
When I behold Thine unmarked grace,
The gentle curves that frame Thy face,
Thine eyes that with bright waters gleam.

How sweet and innocent Thy pose,
Thy womb borne up by sacred hands,
Thy son held fast, within Thee stands,
Whilst from Thee joy and gladness flows.

I share with Thee a stainless bond,
That will our hearts unending braid,
Into a single strand unswayed,
From fleeting fears fight to abscond.

With Thee I’ll seek to entertain,
A love that everflowing grows,
That my devotion to Thee shews,
That seeks to ease Thine every pain.

How beatific dost Thou seem,
How fast Thou hold’st me in Thy gaze,
And every bashful blush betrays,
Thou know’st my love, Thou art my dream.

This is the first of what promises to be a series of carefully reflective commentaries on the works of Dr Samuel Johnson, LL. D., in–one hopes–a form that is accessible to modern audiences, who–for all their virtues–are not inclined to read at length something written in the style of Eighteenth Century English Language and Letters. While I admit that the common opinion regarding Johnson is that he wrote a sort of Johnsonese–defined as a literary style that is variously characterized by pedantic erudition, Latinisms, heaviness, pomposity, and obscufation– Johnson himself never wrote Johnsonese. The piling up of reasons, the cumulation of argument–setting off epigram against epigram–that mark Johnson’s literary style are its distinguishing features. He is profound, but always lucid. The word–Johnsonese–was coined by a man who had neither the patience to read Johnson nor the ability to comprehend him. Nevertheless, most readers of Johnson today will meet with a similar impatience and will deny him a fair reading, a reading that offers one keen insights on any number of subjects. I have therefore decided that if Johnson is not to be taken up by the masses and read that at least I might–with varying proficiency–distill his ideas that those who would by nature avoid him taste the ambrosial virtue of his thought.

There is no observation more frequently made by such as employ themselves in surveying the conduct of mankind, than that marriage, though the dictate of nature, and the institution of Providence, is yet very often the cause of misery, and that those who enter into that state can seldom forbear to express their repentance, and their envy of those whom either chance or caution had withheld from it.

Johnson here admits something that while hard is nevertheless true, that marriage “is very often the cause of misery,” and that those who are married frequently regret having entered into that state and envy those that are not so bound. While this is–especially for those who hope to enter into matrimony with good will and open hearts–a painful admission, it cannot be pretended that it is not a truth worthy of consideration. It is interesting that in the above paragraph Johnson describes marriage as “the dictate of nature” and “the institution of providence,” though elsewhere he is recorded as having said that nothing is more unnatural than the vows of marriage and that they persist only insofar as the grace of God supports them.

This general unhappiness has given occasion to many sage maxims among the serious, and smart remarks among the gay; the moralist and the writer of epigrams have equally shewn their abilities upon it; some have lamented, and some have ridiculed it; but as the faculty of writing has been chiefly a masculine endowment, the reproach of making the world miserable has been always thrown upon the women, and the grave and the merry have equally thought themselves at liberty to conclude either with declamatory complaints, or satirical censures, of female folly or fickleness, ambition or cruelty, extravagance or lust.

Johnson is here defending women against the prejudice latent in literature–which until the mid-Nineteenth century was chiefly the domain of men and thus subject to their whims, as he describes in the following paragraph.

Led by such a number of examples, and incited by my share in the common interest, I sometimes venture to consider this universal grievance, having endeavoured to divest my heart of all partiality, and place myself as a kind of neutral being between the sexes, whose clamours being equally vented on both sides with all the vehemence of distress, all the apparent confidence of justice, and all the indignation of injured virtue, seem entitled to equal regard. The men have, indeed, by their superiority of writing, been able to collect the evidence of many ages, and raise prejudices in their favour by the venerable testimonies of philosophers, historians, and poets; but the pleas of the ladies appeal to passions of more forcible operation than the reverence of antiquity. If they have not so great names on their side, they have stronger arguments: it is to little purpose that Socrates, or Euripides, are produced against the sighs of softness, and the tears of beauty. The most frigid and inexorable judge would at least stand suspended between equal powers, as Lucan was perplexed in the determination of the cause, where the deities were on one side, and Cato on the other.

Johnson has nobly asserted his neutrality–that he intends to give objective, impartial judgements concerning the causes of marital disharmony–though admittedly he does not in this first of four articles concerning marriage offer such judgements. He admits that because of “their superiority of writing,” and by this he means their dominance in the field of writing, men have the “venerable testimony of philosophers, historians, and poets,” whereas women appeal to “passions of more forcible operation”. He admits that their arguments are stronger, though less attested to. This last sentence refers to the epic poem Pharsalia — De Bello Civili, in which the Roman poet Lucan contrasts Cato–the father of Stoicism who, in the tenth book, takes up governance of the Senate’s cause and whose principles forbid him from consulting the oracle of the gods; and Caesar–who maintains devotion to the ancient rites and deities.

But I, who have long studied the severest and most abstracted philosophy, have now, in the cool maturity of life, arrived at such command over my passions, that I can hear the vociferations¹ of either sex without catching any of the fire from those that utter them. For I have found, by long experience, that a man will sometimes rage at his wife, when in reality his mistress has offended him; and a lady complain of the cruelty of her husband, when she has no other enemy than bad cards. I do not suffer myself to be any longer imposed upon by oaths on one side, or fits on the other; nor when the husband hastens to the tavern, and the lady retires to her closet, am I always confident that they are driven by their miseries; since I have sometimes reason to believe, that they purpose not so much to soothe their sorrows, as to animate their fury. But how little credit soever may be given to particular accusations, the general accumulation of the charge shews, with too much evidence, that married persons are not very often advanced in felicity²; and, therefore, it may be proper to examine at what avenues so many evils have made their way into the world. With this purpose, I have reviewed the lives of my friends, who have been least successful in connubial contracts, and attentively considered by what motives they were incited to marry, and by what principles they regulated their choice.

Johnson first shews the calmness with which he is to approach the subject, telling of the command which he has over his passions and how little he is moved by the protestations of either men or women regarding connubial bliss or the lack thereof. He explains that his experience has shewn him that often the causes of discord are not one’s spouse, but rather wholly separate issues and the surcease that is sought at “tavern” or “closet,” respectively, is often merely a means to animate one’s fury rather than soothe one’s sorrows. His premise is that whatever the particular circumstances, the general rule is that most married couples are not “advanced in felicity,” that is, they are not often inclined to mutual happiness. He sets out–by an anecdotal review of a sampling of married couples–to determine if it is not the motives that “incited [one] to marry” or the “principles that regulated [one’s] choice” that has led to unhappiness, rather than something inherent in the institution.

One of the first of my acquaintances that resolved to quit the unsettled thoughtless condition of a bachelor, was Prudentius, a man of slow parts, but not without knowledge or judgment in things which he had leisure to consider gradually before he determined them. Whenever we met at a tavern, it was his province to settle the scheme of our entertainment, contract with the cook, and inform us when we had called for wine to the sum originally proposed. This grave considerer found, by deep meditation, that a man was no loser by marrying early, even though he contented himself with a less fortune; for estimating the exact worth of annuities, he found that considering the constant diminution of the value of life, with the probable fall of the interest of money, it was not worse to have ten thousand pounds at the age of two and twenty years, than a much larger fortune at thirty; for many opportunities, says he, occur of improving money, which if a man misses, he may not afterwards recover.

Johnson’s views of bachelordom as “unsettled” and “thoughtless” are indicative that he does not believe marriage to be an institution without virtue, though he might admit that it is often perverted. It is worth remarking that Johnson often uses Latin names as a literary device to describe the character or inclinations of an individual. Prudentius, for example, is a masculine name derived from the Latin root meaning foresight, knowledge, sagacity , and discretion. He is, in the literal sense, a prudent, farseeing person, practical and discreet. He is described as “a man of slow parts,” meaning that his talents require gradual refinement, spontaneity would likely unravel him in anxiety. He is described in very fiscal terms, likely because a person of his character would be concerned with his finances, as his finances assured his continued security. His reasons for marrying are shewn to be dependent upon the monetary benefit derived from the marriage. His reasoning is presented as the reasoning of the Counting House, balancing the estimation of annuities with the fall of interest and the diminution of the value of life. Prudentius might–by secular standards–be prudent and farseeing, but his foresight does not allow for any variables outside of the bank. He does not consider what the “person” whom he is marrying will contribute to the value of life or whether he will derive happiness from her, assuming that he will be happy as a result of the number of pounds he receives from her estate each month.

Full of these reflections, he threw his eyes about him, not in search of beauty or elegance, dignity or understanding, but of a woman with ten thousand pounds. Such a woman, in a wealthy part of the kingdom, it was not very difficult to find; and by artful management with her father, whose ambition was to make his daughter a gentlewoman, my friend got her, as he boasted to us in confidence two days after his marriage, for a settlement of seventy-three pounds a year less than her fortune might have claimed, and less than he would himself have given, if the fools had been but wise enough to delay the bargain.

This seems to be a reference to the burgeoning of the nouveaux rich, likely a merchant who wished to marry his daughter into a noble family–impoverished though that nobleman might be. Prudentius is searching for a secure fortune rather than any feminine virtues that might attract other more righteous men. He even boasts not of his betrothed, but rather that he succeeded in gaining more than he might have had her father been less zealous in marrying his daughter off.

Thus, at once delighted with the superiority of his parts and the augmentation of his fortune, he carried Furia to his own house, in which he never afterwards enjoyed one hour of happiness. For Furia was a wretch of mean intellects, violent passions, a strong voice, and low education, without any sense of happiness but that which consisted in eating and counting money. Furia was a scold. They agreed in the desire of wealth, but with this difference, that Prudentius was for growing rich by gain, Furia by parsimony³. Prudentius would venture his money with chances very much in his favour; but Furia very wisely observing, that what they had was, while they had it, their own, thought all traffick too great a hazard, and was for putting it out at low interest, upon good security. Prudentius ventured, however, to insure a ship at a very unreasonable price, but happening to lose his money, was so tormented with the clamours of his wife, that he never durst try a second experiment. He has now grovelled seven and forty years under Furia the insurer.

Prudentius’ vanity is established in that he is “delighted” in the advantage he has gained by his “parts,” i.e. talents, and the consequent “augmentation of his fortune”. He is married to Furia–from the Latin of the same form, meaning rage, frenzy, madness, and passion. She is described as “a wretch of mean intellects,” which would imply a person whose ideas are lowly and uncouth; “violent passions,” bitter, intemperate anger; “a strong voice,” probably what we would describe as Wagnerian, a very emasculate voice for a woman; “a low education,” which suggests that she is not accustomed to “thinking,” but rather acts according to her appetites with little attention to civility. She too shares Prudentius’ “desire for wealth,” but unlike Prudentius–who is interested in continued investment and growth, Furia is contented with static wealth, frugally doled out and horded parsimoniously. She is the epitome of a miser. Though he had gained considerable wealth, his investments were carefully eyed by Furia and when he loses his money in a poor speculation, he is “tormented with the clamours” of Furia who scolds him into inaction. He is described as “grovelling… under her direction,” a condition much removed from that which he had envisaged, wasting away until his last breath with vulgar expletives eternally slipping from the vituperative harpy’s shriveled lips.

The next that married from our society was Florentius. He happened to see Zephyretta in a chariot at a horserace, danced with her at night, was confirmed in his first ardour, waited on her next morning, and declared himself her lover. Florentius had not knowledge enough of the world, to distinguish between the flutter of coquetry⁴, and the sprightliness of wit, or between the smile of allurement, and that of cheerfulness. He was soon awaked from his rapture, by conviction that his pleasure was but the pleasure of a day. Zephyretta had in four and twenty hours spent her stock of repartee⁵, gone round the circle of her airs⁶, and had nothing remaining for him but childish insipidity⁷, or for herself, but the practice of the same artifices upon new men.

I believe that Dr Johnson was intending to suggest that Florentius, from the Latin floreo, is “blooming,” “flourishing,” and “in his prime”. He is a young man, unripened, green, not having lived long enough to produce the fruits of summer’s life. He is described as having too little knowledge of the world to distinguish between seduction and friendliness. Zephyretta, from the Latin zephyrus, is a warm, but passing breeze. She carries with her a tropical energy, that is quickly — “in four and twenty hours” — spent. She is described as having a “stock” of wit which is quickly diminished and a “circle of airs” that swiftly abate, and all that remains after her artifice is used up is an immature, vapid character that has no redeeming qualities. She must recycle this small “stock” on other men. Her charms are too limited, they last but a day and tire. It does not take our young man long to realize that his rush to declare her his “lover” was soon quelled in the realisation that the rapture would not last, that he would awaken from it to see the colorless, innocuous girl empty of all virtue.

Melissus was a man of parts, capable of enjoying and of improving life. He had passed through the various scenes of gaiety with that indifference and possession of himself, natural to men who have something higher and nobler in their prospect. Retiring to spend the summer in a village little frequented, he happened to lodge in the same house with Ianthe, and was unavoidably drawn to some acquaintance, which her wit and politeness soon invited him to improve. Having no opportunity of any other company, they were always together; and as they owed their pleasures to each other, they began to forget that any pleasure was enjoyed before their meeting. Melissus, from being delighted with her company, quickly began to be uneasy in her absence, and being sufficiently convinced of the force of her understanding, and finding, as he imagined, such a conformity of temper as declared them formed for each other, addressed her as a lover, after no very long courtship obtained her for his wife, and brought her next winter to town in triumph.

Melissus, from the Latin mel meaning honey, sweetness, or pleasantness, may have been an emasculation of Melissa, meaning honey bee. If so then he may be trying to suggest that Melissus is a man whose industry, diligence, and command of self rejects the frivolous “gaieties” that might distract him from his lofty idealism. The honey bee has long been associated with these virtues. The bee sacrifices self — in the ancient mind — for a much nobler calling, to build, to produce, to propagate. Johnson would have been familiar with this ancient analogy and used it for his purposes. Ianthe, from the Latin for violet-colored, shares a “conformity of temper” with this “man of parts”. She seems just as much a pensive philosopher as he, so he takes her as a lover, and soon after weds her, taking her with him to the town.

Now began their infelicity. Melissus had only seen her in one scene, where there was no variety of objects, to produce the proper excitements to contrary desires. They had both loved solitude and reflection, where there was nothing but solitude and reflection to be loved; but when they came into publick life, Ianthe discovered those passions which accident rather than hypocrisy had hitherto concealed. She was, indeed, not without the power of thinking, but was wholly without the exertion of that power when either gaiety or splendour played on her imagination. She was expensive in her diversions, vehement in her passions, insatiate of pleasure, however dangerous to her reputation, and eager of applause, by whomsoever it might be given. This was the wife which Melissus the philosopher found in his retirement, and from whom he expected an associate in his studies, and an assistant to his virtues.

Johnson seems to suggest that “no very long courtship” might have been unwise. Melissus has never known Ianthe outside of that secluded, idyllic country retreat. He does not know that the violet color of her passions are excited by the “variety of objects,” by the very busyness of city life. She is not hypocrite, but neither has she ever been exposed to such a chaos of stimuli. There is no quiet within which to think and while she shares a “conformity of temper” with Melissus’ contemplative pursuits, she does not share his self-control, something which he could not have known from their time together. She is gaudy, expensive, ostentatious, and can not seem to sate her desires. She cares not for her good repute, but rather serves her wants and appetites with an eye to exhibitionism. Melissus would have been wise to know her better, in a variety of contexts, before he chose her for his helpmate.

Prosapius, upon the death of his younger brother, that the family might not be extinct, married his housekeeper, and has ever since been complaining to his friends that mean notions are instilled into his children, that he is ashamed to sit at his own table, and that his house is uneasy to him for want of suitable companions.

Prosapius, from the Latin prosapia meaning family or race, cares only that his family might be perpetuated and so takes a wife. His cares should have been much broader though, for he neglected to consider the character of the woman, and rather looked at her as a means to an end. He complains of her “mean notions,” her influence of his children, her indecency at board, and the uneasiness of his domestic life. Had he perhaps sought a wife of similar disposition, with like manners, he might have sired children without the dreaded weight of a vulgar wretch.

Avaro, master of a very large estate, took a woman of bad reputation, recommended to him by a rich uncle, who made that marriage the condition on which he should be his heir. Avaro now wonders to perceive his own fortune, his wife’s and his uncle’s, insufficient to give him that happiness which is to be found only with a woman of virtue.

Avaro, from the Latin for greedy and covetous, is already very rich, but he takes a women of “bad reputation” as his wife, that he might be made even wealthier by an inheritance from his uncle. This marriage is the condition on which that inheritance rests. It is only following the accumulation of wealth that he realises he has overestimated the its value, that a loose wife leaves him unhappy in spite of his bursting coffers.

I intend to treat in more papers on this important article of life, and shall, therefore, make no reflection upon these histories, except that all whom I have mentioned failed to obtain happiness, for want of considering that marriage is the strictest tie of perpetual friendship; that there can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity; and that he must expect to be wretched, who pays to beauty, riches, or politeness, that regard which only virtue and piety can claim.

Jennifer and I were given the exciting opportunity to see our little fellow at the twenty week ultrasound, which because of scheduling conflicts was held at twenty-one weeks. He was squirming and moving around in there, periodically shaking his tiny balled-up fists and kicking his feet. After an exceptionally detailed set of images were taken — from bone measurements to counting the lobes of the brain and the chambers of the heart — we learnt that Charlie was exactly where he needed to be developmentally. He was 13 ounces and about 10 inches long. He had all of his fingers and toes and his nose suggested that he might take after his father — much to his mother’s chagrin. Altogether the event was reassuring and assuaged any concerns that we had been harboring. Coinciding with the sonogram, I was able for the first time to feel him moving inside the womb. Most recently, I placed my cheek against Jennifer’s belly and was smartly kicked in the jaw… three times. As we draw ever closer to end of the year — when Charlie will make his grand entrance — I find myself filled simultaneously with joy and excitement, fear and trepidation, and a general hazy state of confusion. …yet, for all the emotional ambivalence, I simply cannot wait.

Witnesses in the Courts of Law are asked to swear, affirm, and promise to give testimony to the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. With Pontius Pilate, I reasonably beg the question, “What is truth?” Is there an objective truth that exists outside of our perceptions of the same? How can we identify it if we are shackled by the limitations of that perception? Is truth therefore subjective, since its object must necessarily be perceived and interpreted by the individual? And if truth is relative to him who perceives it, what value does it possess? Can it be called Truth? Furthermore, if we agree that all truth is relative, then do we not by this admission insist upon an objective rule by which to measure the same? A law of relativity? A universal rule that insists that there are no universal rules? But again, we cannot simply assert that therefore objective truth must exist — for even in dismissing it we must appeal to something exterior to ourselves — for in that appeal we are likewise appealing to our interior perception of the same? Is it really an endless, vicious epistemological circle?

I — note well the first-person, singular pronoun in the nominative case — am convinced that when Samuel Johnson stamped his boot upon the pavement in opposition to Bishop Berkeley’s immaterialism, he was in the right? The pavement is hard, grey, poorly laid, roughly hewn and obviously so… or is it? By what standard is it hard? There must be a standard to gauge its resistance to plastic deformation, must there not? And whose eye was consulted when it was determined grey? Upon what criterion is it poorly laid and roughly hewn, and in comparison to what? What is it to be hard, grey, poor, and rough? There must be an origin of such descriptive terms? For by themselves they seem to be reliant on the perception of the senses, which are — demonstrably — easily distorted. Alas, I was almost discovered inconsistent, for can it be objectively demonstrated that they are easily distorted, or does the subject perceive such distortions over and against their “reality”?

For my part, “I” am convinced that while truth is often situational — not relative, but certainly not (at least, as we are able to appreciate it) absolute — it is also objective. When trying to identify such truths, it is useful to check my experience against the experience of mankind in part or as a integrated whole. Assuming that I am even a remotely rational creature, such experience must necessarily be interpreted subjectively. It is my duty to attempt to identify those tendencies within mine own mind that might compromise the truth that I am seeking and to subvert them. I would like — and here we are speaking of something flimsier than reason — to believe that I am not the final arbiter, the beginning and the end of “my” creation, the perceiver that holds all things in existence. Since I cannot empirically test whether or not my senses are faithful communicants of objective reality, I can never be absolutely certain that there is an objective reality, but I’m a gambling man and I am comfortable in assuming that it does exist and that I see it as it is, though through a glass and darkly.

At some juncture in the course of my life, I began to suspect that the torpid atheism of my youth was somewhere at fault. Though an exact history of my religious opinions, their development and their maturation, would be tedious and rather dull, let it suffice that after a thorough and comprehensive scrutiny of modern catholic Christianity and its antecedents, I was compelled to make an Act of Faith in the Sacrament of Baptism, establishing what I believe to be a covenant with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob — lately revealed in the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost of orthodox confession. I recite the creed each Sunday in good conscience as a voluntary submission to that God. Do I entertain doubt? Who does not? But I act in good conscience when I speak those words. I do not utter them vainly. I believe.

Our conscience is in a way autonomously supreme, for every moral obligation must finally be weighed and measured according to its judgement. Our conscience — irrespective of its natural or supernatural , social or religious, subjective or objective origins — approves and reproves our actions, relieving or burdening our minds with shame and guilt. Aware as I am of my own failings I often follow an authority contrary to my own private judgment on the equally private conviction that the former has the better claim. I find this authority in the historic episcopate, in the priesthood, in the Councils of the Church, in the Tradition that we have inherited through them from the Apostles, in the canon of Sacred Scripture wherein much of that Tradition is recorded. I do not feel managed, but rather guided. Gently formed by a historical consensus that transcends my own limited and miserable experience. In these customs of prayer and thanksgiving, praise and adoration, penance and mortification, I find myself moved by the entire gamut of emotion and intellectually stimulated.

Having been enlightened by this “truth,” which I firmly believe is the Truth, I can again do nothing less than swear by it, affirm it, and bind myself to it. This will — as is the case with all ideology: social, political, or religious — strongly influence my goals, my expectations, and my actions. It cannot otherwise be and if it can we have never hitherto accomplished the feat of detachment and dispassion. Because I believe that Jesus Christ is God and affirm the teaching of the historic Christian Church, I naturally disbelieve in Mohammedanism, post-Christian Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc. I do not say they are objectively false, but rather that I am unable to subjectively affirm them as objectively true. Situationally and circumstantially,  I can sympathise with those that practice them in good faith and understand their intentions. I do not believe in their God, gods, goddesses, deities, spirits, forces, etc., just as they do not believe in mine.

I try always to demonstrate that which I believe in my speech and in my deeds. In so doing, I seek to offer this “truth” to them, for I believe it an essential and integral part of my life. For insofar as I am a member of this race I believe that my brethren will be served by it — albeit, should they accept it. I will not coerce them into believing what they are unable to believe, but I will by diligence seek to deliver that message which gave to me fulfillment and purpose and understanding. I will endeavor to exercise that charity without which truth is vain and avoid the bitter curses of damnation and condemnation. Am I the Judge of the quick and of the dead?

I will not tell you that you are wrong, though I believe you to be, but will nevertheless speak that which I believe to be right. I have cast my lot with my ancestors, with their ancient Faith, with their queer customs, with their wonder and their awe, and though I cannot in good conscience say you are right, nor in love condemn you, can you begrudge me for believing? Just as you believe…? For we are ultimately just men, wielding our little golden scepters, perceiving that which may or may not be concrete.

You look at trees and label them just so,
(for trees are ‘trees’, and growing is ‘to grow’);
you walk the earth and tread with solemn pace
one of the many minor globes of Space:
a star’s a star, some matter in a ball
compelled to courses mathematical
amid the regimented, cold, Inane,
where destined atoms are each moment slain.

At bidding of a Will, to which we bend
(and must), but only dimly apprehend,
great processes march on, as Time unrolls
from dark beginnings to uncertain goals;
and as on page o’erwitten without clue,
with script and limning packed of various hue,
and endless multitude of forms appear,
some grim, some frail, some beautiful, some queer,
each alien, except as kin from one
remote Origo, gnat, man, stone, and sun.
God made the petreous rocks, the arboreal trees,
tellurian earth, and stellar stars, and these
homuncular men, who walk upon the ground
with nerves that tingle touched by light and sound.
The movements of the sea, the wind in boughs,
green grass, the large slow oddity of cows,
thunder and lightning, birds that wheel and cry,
slime crawling up from mud to live and die,
these each are duly registered and print
the brain’s contortions with a separate dint.

Yet trees are not ‘trees’, until so named and seen -
and never were so named, till those had been
who speech’s involuted breath unfurled,
faint echo and dim picture of the world,
but neither record nor a photograph,
being divination, judgement, and a laugh,
response of those that felt astir within
by deep monition movements that were kin
to life and death of trees, of beasts, of stars:
free captives undermining shadowy bars,
digging the foreknown from experience
and panning the vein of spirit out of sense.
Great powers they slowly brought out of themselves,
and looking backward they beheld the Elves
that wrought on cunning forges in the mind,
and light and dark on secret looms entwined.
He sees no stars who does not see them first
of living silver made that sudden burst
to flame like flowers beneath the ancient song,
whose very echo after-music long
has since pursued. There is no firmament,
only a void, unless a jewelled tent
myth-woven and elf-patterned; and no earth,
unless the mother’s womb whence all have birth.

The heart of man is not compound of lies,
but draws some wisdom from the only Wise,
and still recalls him. Though now long estranged,
man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
Disgraced he may be, yet is not dethroned,
and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned,
his world-dominion by creative act:
not his to worship the great Artefact,
man, sub-creator, the refracted light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with elves and goblins, though we dared to build
gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sow the seed of dragons, ’twas our right
(used or misused). The right has not decayed.

We make still by the law in which we’re made.
Yes! ‘wish-fulfilment dreams’ we spin to cheat
our timid hearts and ugly Fact defeat!
Whence came the wish, and whence the power to dream,
or some things fair and others ugly deem ?
All wishes are not idle, not in vain
fulfillment we devise — for pain is pain,
not for itself to be desired, but ill;
or else to strive or to subdue the will
alike were graceless; and of Evil this
alone is dreadly certain: Evil is.

Blessed are the timid hearts that evil hate,
that quail in its shadow, and yet shut the gate;
that seek no parley, and in guarded room,
through small and bare, upon a clumsy loom
weave rissues gilded by the far-off day
hoped and believed in under Shadow’s sway.

Blessed are the men of Noah’s race that build
their little arks, though frail and poorly filled,
and steer through winds contrary towards a wraith,
a rumour of a harbour guessed by faith.

Blessed are the legend-makers with their rhyme
of things nor found within record time.
It is not they that have forgot the Night,
or bid us flee to organised delight,
in lotus-isles of economic bliss
forswearing souls to gain a Circe-kiss
(and counterfeit at that, machine-produced,
bogus seduction of the twice-seduced).

Such isles they saw afar, and ones more fair,
and those that hear them yet may yet beware.
They have seen Death and ultimate defeat,
and yet they would not in despair retreat,
but oft to victory have turned the lyre
and kindled hearts with legendary fire,
illuminating Now and dark Hath-been
with light of suns as yet by no man seen.

I would that I might with the minstrels sing
and stir the unseen with a throbbing string.
I would be with the mariners of the deep
that cut their slender planks on mountains steep
and voyage upon a vague and wandering quest,
for some have passed beyond the fabled West.
I would with the beleaguered fools be told,
that keep an inner fastness where their gold,
impure and scanty, yet they loyally bring
to mint in image blurred of distant king,
or in fantastic banners weave the sheen
heraldic emblems of a lord unseen.

I will not walk with your progressive apes,
erect and sapient. Before them gapes
the dark abyss to which their progress tends -
if by God’s mercy progress ever ends,
and does not ceaselessly revolve the same
unfruitful course with changing of a name.
I will not treat your dusty path and flat,
denoting this and that by this and that,
your world immutable wherein no part
the little maker has with maker’s art.
I bow not yet before the Iron Crown,
nor cast my own small golden sceptre down.

In Paradise perchance the eye may stray
from gazing upon everlasting Day
to see the day illumined, and renew
from mirrored truth the likeness of the True.
Then looking on the Blessed Land ‘twill see
that all is as it is, and yet made free:
Salvation changes not, nor yet destroys,
garden nor gardener, children nor their toys.
Evil it will not see, for evil lies
not in God’s picture but in crooked eyes,
not in the source but in malicious choice,
and not in sound but in the tuneless voice.
In Paradise they look no more awry;
and though they make anew, they make no lie.
Be sure they still will make, not being dead,
and poets shall have flames upon their head,
and harps whereon their faultless fingers fall:
there each shall choose for ever from the All.

J. R. R. Tolkien, Philomythus to Misomythus

The damning ev’dence did conspire,
To rout me from preferment, earned,
That I might nailed upon a pyre,
In merc’less flames be swiftly burned.
For I profess convictions which,
Should they be happ’ly thus detailed,
Would scandalise that whoring bitch,
Who drove the staves, my soul assailed,
I’m not the man they heaped with praise,
I’m not the mask which hides my face,
My heart is naught as my sly face portrays,
I’m not a saint, but wicked, sick and base.
There’s much that I believe but will not speak,
But never will I witness to a lie, the falsest creed,
My will is plagued by doubt and flounders, weak,
And in the nave upon the floor I bleed.

]]> http://www.daily-peep.com/?feed=rss2&p=3298 0 http://www.daily-peep.com/?p=5661 http://www.daily-peep.com/?p=5661#comments Sat, 07 Aug 2010 19:32:30 +0000 Adam Mitchell Bernard Bond http://www.daily-peep.com/?p=5661

In a quiet unkempt meadow in the Cotswold Hills there rested a house. Whomever was responsible for its construction — and that figure is lost beneath the swell of history — had fashioned it of that rather ubiquitous yellow limestone that is everywhere seen in that part of Gloucestershire. It was only a league and a half northwest of Bishop’s Cleeve — an afternoon’s journey if the horse was very slow, the waggon very heavy, and waggoner drunk with lethargy.

On a dew-drenched morning when all the world is silent — save the unprincipled gossip of songbirds — one might detect the Mattins tolling of the nine bells of the village church, where — should one able to hear it over the damned chittering thrushes, warblers, swallows, terns, skylarks, and plovers with their endless scuttlebutt and prattle about His Lordship’s mother-in-law and the unseemly drunkenness of Vicar Hollingberry as parodied by a rather cheeky Wagtail of the “clerically-arrayed” variety, not to mention various lewd conspiracies to pilfer the granges — Ahem, but where was I?

Oh, yes, one might just hear the divers pedantries of the esoteric art of Camponology, with its Steadman Doubles, Triple Bob Majors, and Cambridge Surprises. (I’ll tell you what’s surprising about Cambridge, it’s not Oxford… much to its disadvantage.) But I digress. The bell-ringing is of the utmost importance, for the very cadence of the bells is said to vibrate through the firmament and enliven that which is inert and grant speech to even the lowliest of creatures. I know it sounds like twaddle, just bear with me, I’ve been commanded to write a fable by someone whose law is more immutable than God’s own: the old woman in my bed, as it were.

Ahem, some of the older folk whisper of withcraft and sorcery, and they might be right, but still others (who incomprehensibly distinguish betwixt and between such things) talk of an old race of “Britons” that dyed their pagan flesh like Oriental silks and who could speak to the stones, the trees, and all manner of creature. What connexion have the bells to these long-dead, painted men? I haven’t the faintest notion, but no one ever said that folk legends were naturally coherent.

What? Pbbfflliitt! I don’t know!? Maybe the bells were cast from articles of sacrifice and idolatry with the residue of some pagan magic still in them, — or perhaps they effect an indiscernible vibration that excites natural processes as yet understood by men, — or it may be that its all horsefeathers and poppycock!?

I’m a spinner of tales (with an hen-pecked agenda) not a tiresome drudge who labours over encyclopædias — so hold thy tongue, quit chattering, and let me press on!

As I was saying, in a quite unkempt meadow in the Cotswold Hills there rested a house. The meadow was enclosed by a low hedge; a hedge that grew wildly, without form or function, in the absence of husbandry. Only the ramshackle manor house with its sunken roof, pane-less windows, and general slumpiness testified to the erstwhile habitation of men. However, it was a parcel of land long bereft of tenants — excepting beasties, of course.

Ah, but it is the beasts with which we are principally concerned, for this is a story of two of their kind. A ladybird, by the name of Miss Evelyn Pemberton; and a bumbling bee, styled Doctor Ambrose Spebbington, Oxon. The year was 1774 — though that’s not really relevant to the story — and Miss Pemberton lived atop the ivy strewn lintel of a westward facing window on that derelict stone structure. She was well-to-do, albeit not very well-to-do, but nevertheless was considered a real prize for him whom could woo her. She was a slim, handsome women who wore always the glossy red silk gown patterned with ebony polka-dots, that distinguished her kin. Stark white petticoats shewn from beneath the hemline and a simple linen bonnet adorned her head.

Her face was remarkably like that of a porcelain doll, her lips rouged to a radiant sheen and only the slightest colour shewing on the surface of her cheeks. Her eyes where like chasms and many men would claim that they had fallen into them and truly worried that they might not cease to fall into those endless pools. That was the startling thing, men “fell” for her, but she seemed so uninterested in the devotion of Bishop’s Cleeves’ “prospects” that she nearly drove half the yeomanry to the madhouse and might have bankrupt the merchants and condemned them to debtor’s prison had she been able to collect a sovereign for every jowl that came loose and mind that was aroused to mischief. But in the face of their attentions, she had proven immovable, which — according to many of the avian scandalmongers — had much to do with her “romanticism,” a very un-English disposition and quite against that steadfast practicality for which the race was renowned.

“She’d just as soon go to the continent, where many are those who would bill and coo her with sweet kisses and false promises and garlands of pearls.”

“And he that won her would leave her for a harlot and stumble home drunk with liquor, begging her to spread her thighs a little wider to accommodate his besotted.…”

A decidedly prudish old bird, molted and grey, stiffened at this indecency (whether it was true of the Europeans or not) interrupting stolidly,

“No Englishman would dare suffer such debauchery. The men of this country have duty and honour in their very blood. What she wants is a man with a mind for industry, a diligent fellow who will supply her with the necessities and do his part to perpetuate the race.” Her crazed beak snapped shut with a determination that would have had every turtledove rolling in its grave. An eruption of agreement followed and various ploys were suggested to convince her of her dire wrongness in seeking love rather than security.

Nevertheless, even the persistence of guttersnipes was to no avail and it appeared that Miss Pemberton would make a premature spinster. This, of course, led to many seditious rumours about her “inclinations,” since every sensible Englishman knows that a woman who will not wed, is no better than a trollop. And so life proceeded in the manor house with no infrequent mention made of the unfettered lady who lived atop the lintel.

Meanwhile, in the City of Oxford a rather energetic bumbling bee, Ambrose Spebbington, was preparing to be elected as a fellow of Pembroke College, wherefrom he had graduated with honours in Letters. He was a thin excuse for a bombus, and wore his stripped great coat too small, thus accentuating this thinness. He corrected his unfortunate myopia with a pair of lead spectacles fitted with rude lenses, of which we might scoff at in this more technologically enlightened era. He had an air of dust about him, which might have been caused by an almost fanatical attendance to the book stacks above Broadgates Hall. Because his mind exercised its gifts at daunting speeds, it was ever the challenge of his fellows to endure the raw energy the buzzed forth from him. He was generally respected, in some sectors awed, but was generally give considerable allowance and liberty as few felt it worth enkindling his zeal.

Not all were of a positive of opinion concerning the Doctor, Don Spindelwebb — a distinctly bald and corpulent arachnid with pudgy fingers and an oozing stink about him — opposed Spebbington’s fellowship tooth and nail. He had tried to subvert his commencent, his continuance, and his completion of studies in the past, but always the other fellow’s had overruled him, but Don Spindelwebb meant to expunge this pretentious and impertinent young man from the college, from the university, from the very city. Had he been a minister in His Majesty’s government (though preferably he would have seen the king hanged, for the the whisper of treason was already on the winds that blew in from the colonies, why not make their job easier and depose the damn despot from within), he might even have had him foisted from the kingdom.

One must understand, Don Spindelwebb belonged to a school of thought quite at variance with Doctor Spebbington, espousing the tenets of Bishop Berkeley, mr Hume, and mr Locke. Spebbington rejected both the methodology of these upstarts and consequently their conclusions, he was satisfied with nothing less than an organic, ever-deepening understanding of a truth that transcends time and space —  through a careful analysis of and due reverence to the whole tradition of Western Thought. There was nothing of the revolutionary in him, and there was no ambition that would serve him but the ambition to stand in the shadow of admittedly greater minds than his own. That and Spindelwebb was an “Extraordinary Mind of the Age” in his own right, and by no means was he going to allow the usurpation of that title by one who was all the more his superior for having the muster of Antiquity in arms with him and in battel with him against the host of Empiricism.

Don Spindelwebb spit excrement and venom from his sagging mouth, when he approached the President of the College,

“He’s a damned scavenger, a filthy plagiarist, whose never had an original idea in his life! He blubbers in his servitude to marble busts of bearded cads, who’ve said nothing relevant for centuries  upon centuries! Aristotle could hardly understand the anatomy of a fly, how could he be an authority on the material world?”

The president might have ignored these intolerant pleas, but he was distracted… distracted by an inflammatory tract that had been published in London condemning him as an academic charlatan, — a wizened oak that need be felled, lest the poision in the root spread to the young saplings about him, — as an age-weary dotard that had lost all honours on which he had once lain claim to office. Were you to know the exact circumstances you would cringe at the barbarity of it, but let is suffice to say that his mind was anywhere but in that room. Far away from the grossly rotund spider making his case by force of rhetoric, or lack thereof as the case may be.

Limply waving his hand, while shaking his head in disbelief at his own ill luck, the President acquiesced,

“Y-yes, yes, you’ve made yourself q-quite clear, strike him from the record and h-have him out.”

He continued to shake his head slowly, staring into the shelf of books before him. His wig loosened its grip upon his cranium and shifted askance, leaving him looking befuddled and obscuring one eye. He hardly seemed to notice,

“Q-quite right, you can go n-now.”

He tapped his nose without purpose and lapsed into a languorous melancholy. Don Spindelwebb grinned wickedly and bowing his head, exited.

That was it. Neither appeal nor apology, just a swift kick delivered by an eight-booted parasite. And so Doctor Spebbington, his life in shambles and no clear path before him, made his way to the Church of Saint Michael and All Angels in Bishop’s Cleeve, wherein he knew he would find respite in the rectory of the Reverend Gregory Panshawe — a bucolic country church mouse of little account in matters of ecclesiastical politics, but ever a true servant of the Most High.

Thick beads of rain pelted the earth as Doctor Spebbington sailed through the air toward the village, his cloke lashing violently against him and disturbing his flight. The Norman facade of Saint Michaels and All Angels materialised before him, but he sped by it with barely a nod to the holy precincts. As he made the final turn onto Cheltenham Road towards the Old Rectory a bolt of lighting streaked across the inky canvas above him, a mighty elm — not a fathom before him — split asunder in a cascade of fire, ash, and splintering wood. He tried to dodge the debris, but too late, a fragment of charred wood with the force of a fly whisk dragged him to the muddy street, pinning him to the cobbled stone.

He awoke with a dizzying nausea stealing over his body, his limbs twitched and his abdomen threatened to burst open in a shower of gore. The blurry vision of the room about him slowly cleared revealing a rough unfinished floor, whitewashed plaster walls, and an enormous three inch stub of tallow with deep grooves — as if a ladder — carved into its side. The bright flame illuminated the room, which was large and spacious, though drab and unadorned. A large tome dominated one corner of the room, its leather binding reduced to a thick red dust and its pages torn and spoilt. The only other furnishings were a badly damaged snuff box, made of bone perhaps, and an empty thread spool.

Atop this spool sat a grave, sober looking mouse… lines of care etched deeply into his face, his body thin and emaciated. He wore a black, threadbare cassock with a falling band that was tattered and yellow with age. His scalp was bald, but he had a fringe of neatly cut whiskers beneath is nose. For all his poverty, he was remarkably clean and even the corrupt leather was swept into a neat pile along the perimetre of the book.

“You are stubborn and asinine,” he said with a firmness and certainty that only the truly holy can affect without hostility.

“You were not to have come hither for another two weeks, and then by coach.”

Spebbington’s head throbbed painfully as he formed the words slowly,

“It was not… not possible, I’ve been t-thrown out of Oxford.”

The Reverend Panshawe’s eyebrows raised ever so slightly, though his expression was otherwise unchanged.

“Who?” he said calmly. And then answered himself,

“Spindelwebb?”

Spebbington nodded.

“And how did he manage that?”

Spebbington paused and collected himself. He weighed the narrative in his mind and then parting his lips a strength gripped him and as if the very spirit flowed through him he recounted his tale,

“Somehow he was able to get the approbation of the President and then just I was walking into the hall, he upbraided me as a recreant and then proceeded to convince the gathered fellows that I was a danger to the College’s integrity. He accused me of sophistries and said that I was contented to submerge the College in the superstition of mediæval dogmatism and bring about a new “Dark Age”. There was muttering amongst the assembled fellows and then he hit a nerve and they all turned upon me like some brood of serpents. He said that I was a double-tongued liar, full of slyness and cunning.

“He exhibited a manual of Moral Theology by a doctor of the Roman Church that I had in my dormitory, and claimed that I was studying Jesuit casuistry, that I might very well be a Jesuit, that my High Churchmanship only strengthened his cause and that I was not only a sympathiser, but full of popery and that I meant to ruin the college by plunging it into the darkness of Rome, against all that is English and against all that our present century has done to rend the veil of ignorance that has ever blinded us to the truth.

“He then began to bellow with the volume held up for all the fellows to see, screaming, ‘This University attests… DOMINUS ILLUMINATIO MEA! God is our enlightenment, not some Italian potentate wrapped in silk and fur, with gems and gold dripping from his fingers! Our beacon cannot be found in the blackness of superstition, and our light comes naught from the whited old sepulchre in the Seven Hilled City. The apostate! The lecherer! The simonist! Our light is eternal, and it is God!’

“It was all that I could do to fly out of the building without incident, though I was soon pursued - the sherriffs accompanying them — to the very boundaries of the city. I flew here directly, for where else might I go?”

Spebbington made a move to lift himself from the bed, the Reverend Panshawe soberly stood and pointed to Spebbington’s right wing which was shredded from top to bottom and swathed in bandages and permeated with odor of herbal oinments.

“Where indeed?”

TO BE CONTINUED

]]> http://www.daily-peep.com/?feed=rss2&p=5661 0 http://www.daily-peep.com/?p=3433 http://www.daily-peep.com/?p=3433#comments Sat, 07 Aug 2010 17:59:54 +0000 Adam Mitchell Bernard Bond http://www.daily-peep.com/?p=3433

Like incense flung from censer swung
Before some sculptured shrine,
To float along with prayer and song
To realms of bliss divine, –
Ascend thy fragrant wreaths of smoke
And with my thoughts entwine.

Why did we shed the coherent dogmas bequeathed to use by our fathers? We have merely created different dogmas, with less pedigree, to replace them, against evils exacerbated by the abandonment of the former? These ‘new’ infallible doctrines have not endured the scrutiny of the ages & they falter through re-definition after re-definition, struggling to redeem themselves in the face of timeless insights offered and refined for two thousand-five hundred years.

For instance, fasting was once a legitimate method employed for curtailing man’s passions. If a man could master licit desire–such as food & drink, then he could proceed to master illicit desire–like fornication and adultery. Athletes, revered for their self-discipline, similarly mortify their flesh in the attempt to master and control their bodies. The cloistered monk may devote himself to a life of prayer, fasting, and mortification to improve his virtue and give himself entirely to his God, nevertheless, we do not believe the monk a very sensible person, for if such discipline serves a purpose other than self-aggrandisement it is considered abhorrent.

We no longer are taught to moderate our behaviour and thus abuse must naturally be prohibited. American culture, ‘in the decay of Puritanism,’ does exactly that, it blames the innocent little tube of Sumsun & Izmir Turkish for the overindulgence of certain members of our society. Certainly smoking three packs a day is unhealthy, just as drinking an entire bottle of scotch in one sitting is unhealthy, and eating far too many roly-poly puddings is unhealthy, and copulating with every woman that crosses one’s path is unhealthy. One may abuse a substance and suffer from lung cancer, cirrhosis, obesity, venereal diseases, or any number of ill effects, but the point is that one is expected to temper ones passions against such abuse. The dose is the poison.

In his collection of essays–Generally Speaking–G.K. Chesterton directly repudiates this kind of identification. Americans notoriously blame the object of sin, rather than the subject. The bottle is blamed for emptying itself into the man. Dr Smith & Dr Wesson are attacked because someone else triggered their fury. The match is accused of arson. Now, this may sound ridiculous, but it is exactly the sort of underlying philosophy the constitutes the American ethic.

If we disarm ourselves, then we won’t be able to commit atrocities in war. Well, yes, but when we legitimately need raise arms against a foe, no munitions are to be had. We might do well to prohibit firearms and prevent needless death, but then again we might do well to keep the forty-five under our pillow when the burglar tries to make off with our silverware. He may very well be armed and as he is committing a crime to begin with, it is unlikely that he’ll heed any regulations or government mandates on firearms.

Prohibition was a horribly failed experiment in this regard. In placing C₂H₅OH in the dock and finding it guilty, the jury completely ignored the real culprit: the gentleman who paid for and emptied twelve vodka martinis into his gullet. To think that prohibiting alcohol’s production and sale would result in reduced consumption and less crime was one of the most foolish assumptions ever entertained by our governing body. For men, unlike the demon drink, have free will and they will satisfy their desires, government be damned.

It is much the same with tobacco. There are those who smoke no more than two or three cigarettes a day and have done so for forty years, and those who smoke two or three packs a day over the same period. The latter-day Puritans clump them both–moderate and immoderate–into a single offending majority and then point to the dæmoniacal seduction of the succubine leaf as clear testament to their slavery. The difference, though, is proportion. Does any one really believe that the former offender is likely to suffer as severely as the latter?

This is the morality of the American masses. If one drinks an evil drink, smokes an evil leaf, or employs an evil device then one is–as a result–evil. But there are no inherently evil things in Creation, Christ has redeemed the world. Matter is not depraved, only man is depraved and being thus perverted may pervert matter and spoil its goodness. Even a secular materialist must admit that matter is neutral, there can be no moral associations attached to atoms & molecules. An atom in a plutonium bomb is morally neutral, it is the man that is required to split it and turn it into a lethal monster with the power to level cities.

The standard of right and wrong that we possess is flawed, the object does not make the subject sinful, the subject uses the object sinfully. Chesterton writes,

That is the “standard of abstract right and wrong” that is apparently taught in the American home [that certain things are to blame for our sinfulness]. And it is perfectly obvious, on the face of it, that it is not a standard of abstract right or wrong at all. That is exactly what it is not. That is the very last thing any clear-headed person would call it. It is not a standard; it is not abstract; it has not the vaguest notion of what is meant by right and wrong. It is a chaos of social and sentimental accidents and associations, some of them snobbish, all of them provincial, but, above all, nearly all of them concrete and connected with a materialistic prejudice against particular materials. To have a horror of tobacco is not to have an abstract standard of right; but exactly the opposite. It is to have no standard of right whatever; and to make certain local likes and dislikes as a substitute.¹

The subject acts, the object is acted upon, and yet countless people mistake the two. There is no object which compels action, even the addict simply lacks will. There is no mystical gravity that draws one to a fine powder and forces one to line in it up and insufflate. The problem rests securely in the subject. Granted, it might be argued that cocaine builds a chemical dependence, therefore reducing inhibition and will; but it does not actually build, it does not actually act, it does not actually do anything… it simply rests in its paper sleeve and awaits the fool willing to dabble it its mysteries. When such anthropomorphic idiocies are insisted and malice attributed to the substance I feel as if my brain were a pat of hard, crumbling butter being scraped over burnt toast with a bent knife.

Incidentally, I must say I can bear witness to this queer taboo about tobacco. Of course numberless Americans smoke numberless cigars; a great many others eat cigars, which seems to me a more occult pleasure. But there does exist an extraordinary idea that ethics are involved in some way; and many who smoke really disapprove of smoking. I remember once receiving two American interviewers on the same afternoon; there was a box of cigars in front of me and I offered one to each in turn. Their reaction (as they would probably call it) was very curious to watch. The first journalist stiffened suddenly and silently and declined in a very cold voice. He could not have conveyed more plainly that I had attempted to corrupt an honorable man with a foul and infamous indulgence; as if I were the Old Man of the Mountain offering him hashish that would turn him into an assassin. The second reaction was even more remarkable. The second journalist first looked doubtful; then looked sly; then seemed to glance about him nervously, as if wondering whether we were alone, and then said with a sort of crestfallen and covert smile: “Well, Mr. Chesterton, I’m afraid I have the habit.“²

This gentleman has no “abstract standard of right and wrong,” he does however have a very concrete set of prejudices, social customs, and received opinions that color his ability to distinguish between the the “naughty foreign weed” and the workman with his cheap, paper pack and his reeking fags. He is pragmatic, he knows that tobacco is a luxury — a luxury that does not furnish the table with bread and meat, a luxury that does not fix the leaking gaskets in the bathroom plumbing, neither does it teach the great American values of “industry” and “hard work” to our children, that it is a frivolous, egocentric pursuit that does naught but blur the boundaries of the mind. But little does he understand that it is a luxury that once inspired thoughts such as these,

Old pipe, old friend, o’er thee doth bend
The rainbow hues of life,
While sorrows roll across my soul,
And peace is turned to strife,
And Faith drifts o’er a sea of doubt
With desolation rife.

Sometimes a cigar is just cigar… and sometimes, we need to apply the burning match, draw in slowly, and simply forget.

On that fateful midsummer day in St. Exupéry, Vermont, when the Reverend Miles Parker visited Mr Michael Hall — a retired book publisher whose rôle was that of an eccentric collector of antique church furnishings, press equipment, and other miscellaneous baubles — and sat down in his cluttered parlour over tea, little did he know that somewhere his autobiographical musings would inspire someone as deranged as our Editor and his dear friend, Mr P. J. Etherington, to take action. When Mr Hall interjected,

I say we write a liturgy for ritual dusting of old things … [a]nd then we invent a way to eat corn that reduces consumption time by half!

and the Reverend Parker reminded himself  “that they are all God’s children,” they had no idea that more of God’s children would take Mr Hall’s suggestion and realise it. One afternoon of drink and smoke was enough for Mr Etherington to hash out a rough draft and one week later our Editor immortalised it in print. Thus we remain vapid and frivilous wastrels who apparently have excess time to expend on unnecessary whimsy. Mr Bertram Wooster — the Bertram Wooster — would be proud of this especial example of effrontery perpetrated against the industrious masses who never neglecting their duty and remaining ever diligent must necessarily look upon this publication as naught but a featherbrained extravagance. I doubt however that Mr Wooster would be feeling the old merry self when trying to wrap the old egg ’round what exactly it is that we have spent so much energy frittering away at. He does — it must be remembered — have half the amount of brain that a bloke ought to have. To make a long story shorter than it could be, I present a liturgy for The Ritual Dusting of Old Things. A copy has been posted to both Michael Hall, his intemperate clergyman, the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, and the Episcopal Church’s Office for Liturgy and Music. Right ho! Carry on.

For more about Rev. Parker and Mr. Hall read Mr P. J. Etherington’s work, When Heather came to St. Exupéry. To secure a portable document format (PDF) please click the following link, The Ritual Dusting of Old Things, should the native viewing window not display. To read in the native viewing window, please

Photographs taken by Adam Bond on 25 July 2010.

Following a sleepless night finishing Jennifer’s Residential Design Project I accompanied her into Philadelphia with a tenner in my pocket and a cup of hot coffee. I wandered through Rittenhouse Square for an hour or so before heading to Miel Patisserie for another dose of one of my favourite poisons. Two double shot Americanos later I decided that if the occasion arose that I died from caffeine toxicity or  cardiac arrest it would be well to have an epitaph in my pocket as a sort of explanation.

Insomnolent he drank caffiene,
The blackest stuff that e’er was seen,

His heart gave out with but a flutter,
He fell headfirst into the gutter,

He dashed his brains out in the street,
And blood spilt from his skull’s grey meat,

They found him lying drowned in mud,
Pale-faced and covered o’er in crud,

And so beneath this bed of soil,
His youthful flesh doth harshly spoil,

And in a woeful, sad refrain,
We stand on that which doth remain.

How far the seizing on countries already peopled, and driving out or massacring the innocent and defenceless natives, merely because they differed from their invaders in language, in religion, in customs, in government or in colour; how far such a conduct was consonant to nature, to reason or to Christianity, deserved well to be considered by those who have rendered their names immortal by thus civilizing mankind.

–Blackstone, Com. ii. 7.

Doctor Johnson’s work is full of surprises. He is caricatured as a pedantic, close-minded conservative, whereas he is in reality considerably more objective than any writer that I have thus read. He is foreign to all partisanship and I find it noteworthy that he denounced slavery long before Britain or America outlawed it and criticized colonialism, not as modern liberals who make inane blanket-objections of wrong and dearth, but by an astute assessment of its “actual” flaws.

Idler No. 81. — Saturday, November 3, 1759.

Dr Samuel Johnson, LL.D., M.A.

As the English army was passing towards Quebec along a soft savanna between a mountain and a lake, one of the petty chiefs of the inland regions stood upon a rock surrounded by his clan, and from behind the shelter of the bushes contemplated the art and regularity of European war. It was evening, the tents were pitched: he observed the security with which the troops rested in the night, and the order with which the march was renewed in the morning. He continued to pursue them with his eye till they could be seen no longer, and then stood for some time silent and pensive.

Then turning to his followers, “My children,” said he, “I have often heard from men hoary with long life, that there was a time when our ancestors were absolute lords of the woods, the meadows and the lakes, wherever the eye can reach or the foot can pass. They fished and hunted, feasted and danced, and when they were weary lay down under the first thicket, without danger and without fear. They changed their habitations, as the seasons required, convenience prompted, or curiosity allured them; and sometimes gathered the fruits of the mountain, and sometimes sported in canoes along the coast.

“Many years and ages are supposed to have been thus passed in plenty and security; when, at last, a new race of men entered our country from the great ocean. They inclosed themselves in habitations of stone, which our ancestors could neither enter by violence, nor destroy by fire. They issued from those fastnesses, sometimes covered, like the armadillo, with shells, from which the lance rebounded on the striker, and sometimes carried by mighty beasts which had never been seen in our vales or forests, of such strength and swiftness, that flight and opposition were vain alike. Those invaders ranged over the continent slaughtering, in their rage, those that resisted, and those that submitted, in their mirth. Of those that remained, some were buried in caverns, and condemned to dig metals¹ for their masters; some were employed in tilling the ground, of which foreign tyrants devour the produce; and, when the sword and the mines have destroyed the natives, they supply their place by human beings of another colour², brought from some distant country to perish here under toil and torture.

“Some there are who boast their humanity, and content themselves to seize our chases and fisheries, who drive us from every tract of ground where fertility and pleasantness invite them to settle, and make no war upon us except when we intrude upon our own lands.

“Others pretend to have purchased a right of residence and tyranny; but surely the insolence of such bargains is more offensive than the avowed and open dominion of force. What reward can induce the possessour of a country to admit a stranger more powerful than himself? Fraud or terrour must operate in such contracts; either they promised protection which they never have afforded, or instruction which they never imparted. We hoped to be secured by their favour from some other evil, or to learn the arts of Europe, by which we might be able to secure ourselves. Their power they never have exerted in our defence, and their arts they have studiously concealed from us. Their treaties are only to deceive, and their traffick only to defraud us. They have a written law ³ among them, of which they boast, as derived from Him who made the earth and sea, and by which they profess to believe that man will be made happy when life shall forsake him. Why is not this law communicated to us? It is concealed because it is violated. For how can they preach it to an Indian nation, when I am told that one of its first precepts forbids them to do to others what they would not that others should do to them?

“But the time, perhaps, is now approaching, when the pride of usurpation shall be crushed, and the cruelties of invasion shall be revenged⁴. The sons of rapacity have now drawn their swords upon each other, and referred their claims to the decision of war; let us look unconcerned upon the slaughter, and remember that the death of every European delivers the country from a tyrant and a robber; for what is the claim of either nation, but the claim of the vulture to the leveret, of the tiger to the fawn? Let them then continue to dispute their title to regions which they cannot people, to purchase by danger and blood the empty dignity of dominion over mountains which they will never climb, and rivers which they will never pass. Let us endeavour, in the mean time, to learn their discipline, and to forge their weapons; and, when they shall be weakened with mutual slaughter, let us rush down upon them, force their remains to take shelter in their ships, and reign once more in our native country.”