The Biggest Curiosities of Literature. Disraeli Isaac
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Название: The Biggest Curiosities of Literature
Автор: Disraeli Isaac
Издательство: Bookwire
Жанр: Изобразительное искусство, фотография
isbn: 4064066379827
isbn:
CICERO'S PUNS.
"I should," says Menage, "have received great pleasure to have conversed with Cicero, had I lived in his time. He must have been a man very agreeable in conversation, since even Cæsar carefully collected his bons mots. Cicero has boasted of the great actions he has done for his country, because there is no vanity in exulting in the performance of our duties; but he has not boasted that he was the most eloquent orator of his age, though he certainly was; because nothing is more disgusting than to exult in our intellectual powers."
Whatever were the bons mots of Cicero, of which few have come down to us, it is certain that Cicero was an inveterate punster; and he seems to have been more ready with them than with repartees. He said to a senator, who was the son of a tailor, "Rem acu tetigisti." You have touched it sharply; acu means sharpness as well as the point of a needle. To the son of a cook, "ego quoque tibi jure favebo." The ancients pronounced coce and quoque like co-ke, which alludes to the Latin cocus, cook, besides the ambiguity of jure, which applies to broth or law—jus. A Sicilian suspected of being a Jew, attempted to get the cause of Verres into his own hands; Cicero, who knew that he was a creature of the great culprit, opposed him, observing "What has a Jew to do with swine's flesh?" The Romans called a boar pig Verres. I regret to afford a respectable authority for forensic puns; however, to have degraded his adversaries by such petty personalities, only proves that Cicero's taste was not exquisite.
There is something very original in Montaigne's censure of Cicero. Cotton's translation is admirable.
"Boldly to confess the truth, his way of writing, and that of all other long-winded authors, appears to me very tedious; for his preface, definitions, divisions, and etymologies, take up the greatest part of his work; whatever there is of life and marrow, is smothered and lost in the preparation. When I have spent an hour in reading him, which is a great deal for me, and recollect what I have thence extracted of juice and substance, for the most part I find nothing but wind: for he is not yet come to the arguments that serve to his purpose, and the reasons that should properly help to loose the knot I would untie. For me, who only desired to become more wise, not more learned or eloquent, these logical or Aristotelian disquisitions of poets are of no use. I look for good and solid reasons at the first dash. I am for discourses that give the first charge into the heart of the doubt; his languish about the subject, and delay our expectation. Those are proper for the schools, for the bar, and for the pulpit, where we have leisure to nod, and may awake a quarter of an hour after, time enough to find again the thread of the discourse. It is necessary to speak after this manner to judges, whom a man has a design, right or wrong, to incline to favour his cause; to children and common people, to whom a man must say all he can. I would not have an author make it his business to render me attentive; or that he should cry out fifty times O yes! as the clerks and heralds do.
"As to Cicero, I am of the common opinion that, learning excepted, he had no great natural parts. He was a good citizen, of an affable nature, as all fat heavy men—(gras et gausseurs are the words in the original, meaning perhaps broad jokers, for Cicero was not fat)—such as he was, usually are; but given to ease, and had a mighty share of vanity and ambition. Neither do I know how to excuse him for thinking his poetry fit to be published. 'Tis no great imperfection to write ill verses; but it is an imperfection not to be able to judge how unworthy bad verses were of the glory of his name. For what concerns his eloquence, that is totally out of comparison, and I believe will never be equalled."
PREFACES.
A preface, being the entrance to a book, should invite by its beauty. An elegant porch announces the splendour of the interior. I have observed that ordinary readers skip over these little elaborate compositions. The ladies consider them as so many pages lost, which might better be employed in the addition of a picturesque scene, or a tender letter to their novels. For my part I always gather amusement from a preface, be it awkwardly or skilfully written; for dulness, or impertinence, may raise a laugh for a page or two. A preface is frequently a superior composition to the work itself: for, long before the days of Johnson, it had been a custom for many authors to solicit for this department of their work the ornamental contribution of a man of genius. Cicero tells his friend Atticus, that he had a volume of prefaces or introductions always ready by him to be used as circumstances required. These must have been like our periodical essays. A good preface is as essential to put the reader into good humour, as a good prologue is to a play, or a fine symphony to an opera, containing something analogous to the work itself; so that we may feel its want as a desire not elsewhere to be gratified. The Italians call the preface La salsa del libra, the sauce of the book, and if well seasoned it creates an appetite in the reader to devour the book itself. A preface badly composed prejudices the reader against the work. Authors are not equally fortunate in these little introductions; some can compose volumes more skilfully than prefaces, and others can finish a preface who could never be capable of finishing a book.
On a very elegant preface prefixed to an ill-written book, it was observed that they ought never to have come together; but a sarcastic wit remarked that he considered such marriages were allowable, for they were not of kin.
In prefaces an affected haughtiness or an affected humility are alike despicable. There is a deficient dignity in Robertson's; but the haughtiness is now to our purpose. This is called by the French, "la morgue littéraire," the surly pomposity of literature. It is sometimes used by writers who have succeeded in their first work, while the failure of their subsequent productions appears to have given them a literary hypochondriasm. Dr. Armstrong, after his classical poem, never shook hands cordially with the public for not relishing his barren labours. In the preface to his lively "Sketches" he tells us, "he could give them much bolder strokes as well as more delicate touches, but that he dreads the danger of writing too well, and feels the value of his own labour too sensibly to bestow it upon the mobility." This is pure milk compared to the gall in the preface to his poems. There he tells us, "that at last he has taken the trouble to collect them! What he has destroyed would, probably enough, have been better received by the great majority of readers. But he has always most heartily despised their opinion." These prefaces remind one of the prologi galeati, prefaces with a helmet! as St. Jerome entitles the one to his Version of the Scriptures. These armed prefaces were formerly very common in the age of literary controversy; for half the business of an author consisted then, either in replying, or anticipating a reply, to the attacks of his opponent.
Prefaces ought to be dated; as these become, after a series of editions, leading and useful circumstances in literary history.
Fuller with quaint humour observes on Indexes—"An Index is a necessary implement, and no impediment of a book, except in the same sense wherein the carriages of an army are termed Impedimenta. Without this, a large author is but a labyrinth without a clue to direct the reader therein. I confess there is a СКАЧАТЬ