“It seems also not very easie, for a Man in his Sermon to learn his Parishioners how to dissolve Gold; of what, and how the stuff is made. Now, to ring the Bells, and call the People on purpose together, would be but a blunt business; but to do it neatly, and when no Body look’d for it, that’s the rarity and art of it. Suppose, then, that he takes for his text that of St. Matthew, Repent ye, for the Kingdom of God is at hand. Now tell me, Sir, do you not perceive the Gold to be in a dismal fear, to curl and quiver at the first reading of these words. It must come in thus: The blotts and blurrs of our sins must be taken out by the Aqua-fortis of our Tears; to which Aqua-fortis if you put a fifth part of Sal-Amoniack, and set them in a gentle heat, it makes Aqua-Regia, which dissolves Gold. And now ’tis out. Wonderfull are the things that are to be done by the help of metaphors and similitudes! And I’ll undertake, that with a little more pains and consideration, out of the very same words, he could have taught the People how to make Custards, Marmalade, or to stew Prunes.”

John Eachard, The Grounds And Occasions Of The Contempt Of The Clergy And Religion (1670)

“I would my father had made me a Hangman, when he made me a Stationer; for we are call’d to Accompt for Other Men’s Works, as well as for our Own. And one thing that’s cast in our Dish, is the selling of Translations, so Dog-Cheap, that every Sot knows now as much as would formerly have made a Passable Doctor, and every Nasty Groom, and Roguy Lacquay is grown as familiar with Homer, Virgil, Ovid, as if ’twere Robin the Devil; The Seven Champions; or a piece of George Withers.

“He would have talkt on, if a Devil had not stopt his Mouth with a Whiffe from a rowle of his own Papers, and Choak’t him with the smoak on’t. The Pestilent Fume would have dispatch’t me too, if I had not got presently out of the reach on’t. But I went on my way, saying, this to myself; If the Book-seller be thus Criminal, what will become of the Author!”

Sir Roger L’Estrange, The Visions Of Don Francisco De Quevedo Villegas (1667)

Via Mark Pack, who has some useful information about the contents. Many thanks to Gaw for drawing it to my attention.

“In Queen Eliz: time, Gravitie and state was kept upp. In King James time things were pretty well. But in K. Charles time there has binn nothing but Trenchmore & the Cushion dance, Omnium gatherum, tolly polly, hoyte come toyte.”

The Table-Talk Of John Selden (1689)

Apropos Brit’s history of Britain 1939-2010 in seventy-seven words, clearly things have been going to pot for a long, long time. Tolly polly and hoyte come toyte indeed! What fresh hell will yet assail us?

ADDENDUM : In 1652, John Evelyn complained of “the depraved youth of England, whose prodigious disbaucheries and late unheard of extravagancies far surpasse the madnesse of all other civilized Nations whatsoever”.

It has come to my attention that a bishop, when dying, is compelled by law to bequeath his pack of dogs to the reigning monarch, for the sovereign’s free use and disposal.

Perhaps there is a legal expert among my readers who could confirm whether or no this sensible measure remains on the statute book. And if it does, I would be interested to know if it is possible to pursue, beyond the grave, any bishop who, before his last gasp, broke the law by not so bequeathing his pack of dogs. It seems to me that a prelate who sinned by breaking the law, even in his last extremity, ought to be pitched from his heavenly perch into the maw of hell.

“[Bishop Hall] sobs me out half a dozen phthisical mottoes wherever he had them, hopping short in the measure of convulsion-fits; in which labour the agony of his wit having escaped narrowly, instead of well-sized periods, he greets us with a quantity of thumb-ring posies. ‘He has a fortune therefore good, because he is content with it.’ This is a piece of sapience not worth the brain of a fruit trencher”

John Milton, An Apology For Smectymnuus or An Apology for a Pamphlet (1642)

“We studied the whole theory of flight in very great detail, spending, I remember, more than a month in an examination of the wing of an albatross”

Rex Warner, The Aerodrome (1941)

Another thing I found when fossicking in that cupboard was a scrap of paper on which was scribbled the following:

11 Petiver, Buddle & Doody. 48 Withering. 53 Rousseau’s wife. 56 Huttonian theory. 63/64 Buckland. 76 Robert Dick – biscuit. 77/78 McGillivray’s journey. 80 Philip Gosse diary entry. 82 Buckland concealed hammer on the Sabbath. 129 Discovery of plankton.

Deploying my Holmesian deductive skills, I worked out that these were notes I had made, long ago, when reading The Naturalist In Britain : A Social History by David Elliston Allen (1976). Seeking enlightenment, I located the volume on the teetering bookshelves, and turned to the relevant pages. In some cases, it is no longer clear to me what sparked my interest. Others, however, I was extremely pleased to be reminded of. Here are the relevant quotes:

“Rousseau’s extreme short-sight was such that at the best of times he saw the landscape as a blur, while his wife, in similar fashion, never knew which day of the week it was and never even learned to tell the time.”

“In many ways [Buckland] was undeniably a very curious person: an oddly truncated man… He sported childish jests and puns, devised peculiar contraptions, went in for the weirdest kinds of food… It was typical of him that he drove round in a special kind of carriage, strengthened in an ostentatious manner… he carried around a mysterious blue bag… he led his students on excursions into the field wearing quite incongruously formal clothes.”

“Robert Dick… ‘the Botanist of Thurso’ made it his regular practice to walk all day, for up to forty miles, with one ship’s biscuit as his only sustenance.”

“Philip Henry Gosse became so lost in his work that he registered the birth of his only child with the remarkable entry in his diary: ‘Received green swallow from Jamaica. E delivered of a son.'”

“The blanching or bleaching of the London fogs, by the improved methods of consuming smoke, must be a very fine thing for the dwellers in that overgrown city. We hear, however, of one old lady, a duchess, who thinks the fog now to be very vulgarly pale; and regrets the good old days of what she thought a much more picturesque gloom.”

Henry Hartshorne, 1931 : A Glance At The Twentieth Century (1881)

“In the beginning of the eighteenth century the great-grandfather of the famous Lord Macaulay, the author of the glowing and impassioned History of England, was minister of Tiree and Coll, when his stipend was taken from him at the instance of the Laird of Ardchattan. The slight inconvenience of having nothing to live upon did not seem to incline the old minister in the least degree to resign his charge and to seek a flock who could feed their shepherd. He stayed valiantly on, doing his duty faithfully by his humble people. But after some time had elapsed, ‘his health being much impaired, and there being no church or meeting-house, he was exposed to the violence of the weather at all seasons; and having no manse or glebe, and no fund for communion elements, and having no mortification for schools or other pious purposes in either of the islands, and the air being unwholesome,’—he was finally compelled to leave, much to his own regret and that of his poor little flock.”

Hattie Tyng Griswold, Home Life Of Great Authors (1886)

It is always worth keeping an eye on the Neglected Books Page, and today I am pleased to see attention paid to the potato.

R.I.P. Bruno S. “…a man of phenomenal abilities and phenomenal depth and suffering. It translates on the screen like nothing I have ever done translates on to a screen.” – Werner Herzog

Time now for the ever-popular Hooting Yard Toad Quiz, where you can sharpen your wits by testing your knowledge of toads.

Here is a photograph of a toad. Study it very carefully for five or ten minutes. It is, of course, a Kihansi spray toad, a tiny little dwarf amphibian just three-quarters of an inch long, native to Tanzania. (I am referring to the larger of the two toads in the picture. You can ignore for the time being the even tinier baby Kihansi spray toad clinging to the back of the adult.) When you think you have prolonged your careful study for a sufficient period of time, answer the question below the picture.

Is this Kihansi spray toad (a) cheerful, (b) mordant, (c) choleric, or (d) hysterical?

You will find the correct answer here.

“Muddleheadedness has always been the sovereign force in human affairs – a force far more potent than malevolence or nobility. It lubricates our hurtful impulses and ties our best intentions in knots. It blunts our wisdom, misdirects our compassion, clouds whatever insights into the human condition we manage to acquire. It is the chief artisan of the unintended consequences that constitute human history.”

Paul R Gross & Norman Levitt, Higher Superstition : The Academic Left And Its Quarrels With Science (1994)