From Ortega y Gasset, Invertebrate Spain:

…the amalgamating process which takes place in the formation of any great nation is a labor of totalization; in that process, social groups which have hitherto led independent lives become integrated as parts of a whole. Disintegration is an inverse process: parts of the whole begin to live as separate groups. I call this phenomenon particularism…. The essence of particularism is that each group ceases to feel itself part of a whole, and therefore ceases to share the feelings of the rest. The hopes and needs of the others mean nothing to it, and it does nothing to help them win their hearts’ desires. Since the current of sympathy is cut, the woes that afflict a neighbor have no effect on the other groups, and he is left abandoned in weakness and misfortune. On the other hand, hyper-sensitiveness to one’s own ailments is a characteristic of this social state. Disagreements or difficulties which are easily borne during periods of cohesion come to be intolerable when the spirit of a national life in common has disintegrated…

Is it, then, so strange that the majority of Spaniards, and even of the best Spaniards, should finally begin to ask themselves, “What are we living together for?” Because living is something done with a forward motion, it is an activity which moves from the present toward the immediate future. For living, an echo of the past is not enough, and much less for living together. That is why Renan said that a nation is, by the very act of existing, a daily plebiscite. Every day, in the secrecy of every heart, there is a fateful balloting which decides whether or not the nation can, in truth, go on being a nation. In what activity is the government going to ask our enthusiastic collaboration tomorrow? For a long, long time, indeed for centuries, the government has been pretending that we Spaniards existed merely that it might give itself the pleasure of existing. As the pretext grew more and more meager, Spain went on wasting away…. Today we are not so much a people as a cloud of dust that was left hovering in the air when a great people went galloping down the high road of history.

Amiel on La Fontaine (Journal Intime, July 17, 1877).

Yesterday I went through my La Fontaine, and noticed the omissions in him. He has neither butterfly nor rose. He utilizes neither the crane, nor the quail, nor the dromedary, nor the lizard. There is not a single echo of chivalry in him. For him, the history of France dates from Louis XIV. His geography only ranges, in reality, over a few square miles, and touches neither the Rhine nor the Loire, neither the mountains nor the sea. He never invents his subjects, but indolently takes them ready-made from elsewhere. But with all this what an adorable writer, what a painter, what an observer, what a humorist, what a story-teller! I am never tired of reading him, though I know half his fables by heart. In the matter of vocabulary, turns, tones, phrases, idioms, his style is perhaps the richest of the great period, for it combines, in the most skillful way, archaism and classic finish, the Gallic and the French elements. Variety, satire, finesse, feeling, movement, terseness, suavity, grace, gayety, at times even nobleness, gravity, grandeur — everything — is to be found in him. And then the happiness of the epithets, the piquancy of the sayings, the felicity of his rapid sketches and unforeseen audacities, and the unforgettable sharpness of phrase! His defects are eclipsed by his immense variety of different aptitudes.

One has only to compare his “Woodcutter and Death” with that of Boileau in order to estimate the enormous difference between the artist and the critic who found fault with his work. La Fontaine gives you a picture of the poor peasant under the monarchy; Boileau shows you nothing but a man perspiring under a heavy load. The first is a historical witness, the second a mere academic rhymer. From La Fontaine it is possible to reconstruct the whole society of his epoch, and the old Champenois with his beasts remains the only Homer France has ever possessed. He has as many portraits of men and women as La Bruyère, and Molière is not more humorous.

His weak side is his epicureanism, with its tinge of grossness. This, no doubt, was what made Lamartine dislike him. The religious note is absent from his lyre; there is nothing in him which shows any contact with Christianity, any knowledge of the sublimer tragedies of the soul. Kind nature is his goddess, Horace his prophet, and Montaigne his gospel. In other words, his horizon is that of the Renaissance. This pagan island in the full Catholic stream is very curious; the paganism of it is so perfectly sincere and naïve. But indeed, Rabelais, Molière, Saint Evremond, are much more pagan than Voltaire. It is as though, for the genuine Frenchman, Christianity was a mere pose or costume — something which has nothing to do with the heart, with the real man, or his deeper nature. This division of things is common in Italy too. It is the natural effect of political religions: the priest becomes separated from the layman, the believer from the man, worship from sincerity.

New at IWP Books: Josephine Tey, 1952, The Singing Sands. From Barzun & Taylor, A Catalog of Crime: “Published posthumously, which may account for certain defects that the author might have altered in proof. The plot seems overwrought and the chief characters occasionally fall out of drawing. But other features come out of Miss Tey’s best vein, and the work belongs in the middle range between bad and superb.”

From The Storyteller Essays by Walter Benjamin, Edited by Samuel Titan, Translated by Tess Lewis (2019).

I recount this old tale for those who would like to try figs or Falernian wine, borscht or a peasant lunch on Capri. There once was a king who had all the power and treasures of the world at his command, but who was nonetheless unhappy and became more melancholy with each passing year. One day he summoned his personal cook and said to him: “You have served me faithfully for many a year and filled my table with the most magnificent dishes. I am well-disposed toward you. Now, however, I would like to put your art to a final test. You must make me a mulberry omelet such as I enjoyed fifty years ago in my earliest childhood. My father, at the time, was waging war against his evil neighbor to the east. He conquered us and we had to escape. And so we fled day and night, my father and I, until we reached a dark wood. We wandered through it and were on the brink of perishing from hunger and exhaustion when we stumbled on a little hut. In it lived an old woman who most warmly bid us rest and set to work at the stove. It wasn’t long before the mulberry omelet appeared before us. The moment I took the first bite, I felt a wonderful sense of consolation and my heart swelled with hope. I was a mere child then and I did not think of the relief this delicious food provided. But when I later had the woman searched for throughout my entire realm, neither she nor anyone able to prepare a mulberry omelet could be found. If you can grant me this last wish, I will make you my son-in-law and heir to my throne. But if you cannot satisfy me, you must die.” The cook replied: “Your majesty, you must then summon the hangman at once. I know well the secret of the mulberry omelet and all its ingredients, from the common cress to the noble thyme. I know well the spell one must say as one stirs and how the boxwood whisk must always be turned towards the right lest our labor be rewarded only with trouble. But nevertheless, oh King, I must die. Nevertheless my omelet will not satisfy you. For how shall I season it with all that you savored at the time: the danger of battle and the alertness of the pursued, the warmth of the hearth, and the sweetness of rest, the foreign present, and the dark future?” Thus spoke the cook. The king remained silent for a time and not long after, he released the cook from his duty richly rewarded. (1930)

From Markings by Dag Hammarskjöld:

Respect for the word is the first commandment in the discipline by which a man can be educated to maturity – intellectual, emotional and moral. Respect for the word-to employ it with scrupulous care and an incorruptible heartfelt love of truth-is essential if there is to be any growth in a society or in the human race. To misuse the word is to show contempt for man. It undermines the bridges and poisons the wells. It causes Man to regress down the long path of his evolution.

New at IWP Books: G. K. Chesterton, Tremendous Trifles, 1909.

Before any modern man talks with authority about loving men, I insist (I insist with violence) that he shall always be very much pleased when his barber tries to talk to him. His barber is humanity: let him love that. If he is not pleased at this, I will not accept any substitute in the way of interest in the Congo or the future of Japan. If a man cannot love his barber whom he has seen, how shall he love the Japanese whom he has not seen?

New at IWP Books: Don Marquis, Chapters for the Orthodox, 1934. Which Albert Jay Nock thought was a “delightful” book. Two quotes:

If there’s anything I can’t stand, it’s theology. Did I ever mention publicly how Hell got started? I don’t think I ever did. It was this way: I thought I’d do something nice for a lot of theologians who had, after all, been doing the best they could, according to their lights; so I gave them an enormous tract of Heaven to do what they pleased with – set it apart for them to inhabit and administer. I didn’t pay any attention to it for a few thousand years, and when I looked at it again, they’d made it into Hell. Yes, that’s how Hell got started.”

The Christian ideas and ideals, if they were really put into practice, instead of being merely talked about, in churches and elsewhere, would burst the world asunder. Cover them up with any sort of talk or clever explication you like, attempt to explain them away if you will, the fact is that if they are really put into effect it means a revolution in every department of human life, an overturning of all our cherished institutions. Do we believe in these ideals enough to follow through with them to the limit, to face all that their sincere practice connotes?

More than 50 books published online, including works by Desmond MacCarthy, Aldous Huxley, E. M. Forster, Bernard Berenson, Leo Stein, Willa Cather, & Logan Pearsall Smith. Moreover: Two collections of Horace translations (of Ad Pyrrham and Exegi Monumentum), and several hard-to-find translations of the odes.

From An Exaltation of Larks, or The Venereal Game (1968) by James Lipton.

“Our language, one of our most precious natural resources in the English-speaking countries, is also a dwindling one that deserves at least as much protection as our woodlands, streams and whooping cranes. We don’t write letters, we make long-distance calls; we don’t read, we are talked to, in the resolutely twelve-year-old vocabulary of radio and television. Under the banner of Timesaving we are offered only the abbreviated, the abridged, the aborted. Our Noble Eightfold Path consists entirely of shortcuts. And what are we urged to do with the time saved by these means? Skim through the Reader’s Digest at eighteen hundred words a minute, eating a pre-cooked dinner of condensed soup and reconstituted meat and vegetables on a jet going six hundred miles an hour. Refreshed by our leisurely holiday we can then plunge back into the caucus-race with renewed vigor, dashing breathless behind the Dodo toward an ever-retreating finish-line. Before it is too late I would like to propose a language sanctuary, a wild-word refuge, removed and safe from the hostile environment of our TV-tabloid world.

“Perhaps it is already too late. Under the influence of film and television especially (both valuable but intensely pictorial arts) the picture is finally replacing those maligned thousand words. Soon, if all goes badly, we may be reduced to a basic vocabulary of a few hundred smooth, homogenized syllables, and carry tiny movie projectors and bandoliers of miniaturized film cartridges to project our more important thoughts (too precious to entrust to mere words) in the proper pictorial form on the shirtfront of our conversational partner. Eventually we may be able to press a button on our belt and produce an instantaneous, abstract, psychedelic, atonal, aleatory light-show that will penetrate straight to the beholder’s chromosomes, influencing not only him or her, but logophobic generations yet unborn. Wordless, we will build the new Jerusalem!”

Worth subscribing to The New Criterion for these, and many others by Joseph Epstein:

• Desmond MacCarthy’s Familiar Criticism (1991)
• Willa Cather: Listing Toward Lesbos (1983)
• Selling Henry James (1990)
• The James Cult (2012)
• Maurice Baring & The Good High-brow (1992)
• George Santayana and the Consolations of Philosophy (1987)
• Max Beerbohm and the Law of Levity (1985)

Another Willa Cather at IWP Books: A Lost Lady, 1922.

The winter before, when the Forresters were away, and one dull day dragged after another, he had come upon a copious diversion, an almost inexhaustible resource. The high, narrow bookcase in the back office, between the double doors and the wall, was filled from top to bottom with rows of solemn looking volumes bound in dark cloth, which were kept apart from the law library; an almost complete set of the Bohn classics, which Judge Pommeroy had bought long ago when he was a student at the University of Virginia. He had brought them West with him, not because he read them a great deal, but because, in his day, a gentleman had such books in his library, just as he had claret in his cellar. Among them was a set of Byron in three volumes, and last winter, apropos of a quotation which Niel didn’t recognize, his uncle advised him to read Byron, — all except “Don Juan.” That, the Judge remarked, with a deep smile, he “could save until later.” Niel, of course, began with “Don Juan.” Then he read “Tom Jones” and “Wilhelm Meister” and raced on until he came to Montaigne and a complete translation of Ovid. He hadn’t finished yet with these last, — always went back to them after other experiments. These authors seemed to him to know their business. Even in “Don Juan” there was a little “fooling,” but with these gentlemen none.

There were philosophical works in the collection, but he did no more than open and glance at them. He had no curiosity about what men had thought; but about what they had felt and lived, he had a great deal. If anyone had told him that these were classics and represented the wisdom of the ages, he would doubtless have let them alone. But ever since he had first found them for himself, he had been living a double life, with all its guilty enjoyments. He read the Heroides over and over, and felt that they were the most glowing love stories ever told. He did not think of these books as something invented to beguile the idle hour, but as living creatures, caught in the very behaviour of living, — surprised behind their misleading severity of form and phrase. He was eavesdropping upon the past, being let into the great world that had plunged and glittered and sumptuously sinned long before little Western towns were dreamed of. Those rapt evenings beside the lamp gave him a long perspective, influenced his conception of the people about him, made him know just what he wished his own relations with these people to be.

New Willa Cather at IWP Books: The Professor’s House, 1925. “…long after they had ceased to be pupil and master, he had been able to experience afresh things that had grown dull with use. The boy’s mind had the superabundance of heat which is always present where there is rich germination. To share his thoughts was to see old perspectives transformed by new effects of light.”

Worldly Philosopher: The Odyssey of Albert O. Hirschman by Jeremy Adelman; The Gift of Doubt by Malcolm Gladwell.

"Previously, men could be divided simply into the learned and the ignorant, those more or less the one, and those more or less the other. But your specialist cannot be brought in under either of these two categories. He is not learned, for he is formally ignorant of all that does not enter into his speciality; but neither is he ignorant, because he is ‘a scientist,’ and ‘knows’ very well his own tiny portion of the universe. We shall have to say that he is a learned ignoramus, which is a very serious matter, as it implies that he is a person who is ignorant, not in the fashion of the ignorant man, but with the petulance of one who is learned in his own special line. And such in fact is the behavior of the specialist. In politics, in art, in social usages, in the other sciences, he will adopt the attitude of primitive, ignorant man; but he will adopt them forcefully and with self-sufficiency, and will not admit of -- this is the paradox -- specialists in those matters. By specializing him, civilization has made him hermetic and self-satisfied within his limitations; but this very inner feeling of dominance and worth will induce him to wish to predominate outside his speciality. The result is that even in this case, representing a maximum of qualification in man -- specialization -- and therefore the thing most opposed to the mass-man, the result is that he will behave in almost all spheres of life as does the unqualified, the mass-man." (Jose Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses)

How Reading Josef Pieper Can Help You Stay Sane

"...we can always do more for mankind by following the good in a straight line than we can by making concessions to evil. The illusion that it is wise or necessary to suppress our instinctive love of truth comes from an imperfect understanding of what that instinctive love of truth represents, and of what damage happens both to ourselves and to others when we suppress it. The more closely we look at the facts, the more serious does this damage appear. And on the other hand, the more closely we look at the facts, the more trifling, inconsequent, and absurd do all those reasons appear which strive to make us accept, and thereby sanctify and preserve, some portion of the conceded evil in the world." (John Jay Chapman, Practical Agitation)

New at IWP Books: Willa Cather, 1927, Death Comes for the Archbishop. Willa Cather was born on Dec. 7, 1873. It is now Friday morning of Dec. 6 in St. Ives, NSW, Australia.

One Cheer for E. M. Forster by Joseph Epstein

More Crabbe at IWP Books: George Crabbe, The Village (1783) and The Newspaper (1785).

Sing, drooping Muse, the cause of thy decline;
Why reign no more the once-triumphant Nine?
Alas! new charms the wavering many gain,
And rival sheets the reader’s eye detain;
A daily swarm, that banish every Muse,
Come flying forth, and mortals call them news:
For these, unread, the noblest volumes lie;
For these, in sheets unsoil’d, the Muses die;
Unbought, unblest, the virgin copies wait
In vain for fame, and sink, unseen, to fate.

New at IWP Books: George Crabbe, 1781, The Library. “To think of Crabbe is to think of England.” (E. M. Forster)

But what strange art, what magic can dispose
The troubled mind to change its native woes?
Or lead us willing from ourselves, to see
Others more wretched, more undone than we?
This Books can do; — nor this alone; they give
New views to life, and teach us how to live;
They soothe the grieved, the stubborn they chastise,
Fools they admonish, and confirm the wise:
Their aid they yield to all: they never shun
The man of sorrow, nor the wretch undone:
Unlike the hard, the selfish, and the proud,
They fly not sullen from the suppliant crowd;
Nor tell to various people various things,
But show to subjects what they show to kings.

“…telling the truth to ourselves and to the world is a condition of survival, the beginning of revival, and the only moral option.” Fania Oz-Salzberger, We Have to Choose

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“How rotten is the translation of Lang, Leaf & Myers. Surely Pope is better.” E. M. Forster (1903)

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Anonymity: An Enquire by E. M. Forster.

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What William Vallicella Likes About Wittgenstein

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“Unlimited gullibility is required to be able to believe that any social condition can be improved in any other way than slowly, gradually, and involuntarily.” Nicolás Gómez Dávila

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“Our progress is slow; the path leads upward at a very small angle. But let us remember that slowness of growth is what America most needs in all directions. In everything we have grown up too quickly. Today all things among us go crashing forward too quickly. We should not desire sudden changes, even for the better. Sudden changes signify short-lived events. Therefore, if we see steady improvement going forward anywhere, let us rejoice that it goes forward slowly, so that its roots may sink deep, and all nature may accommodate herself to the change. Thus will the good things become permanent. Isaiah says in a text that is too seldom quoted: ‘He that believeth shall not make haste.'” John Jay Chapman, 1915, The Negro Question

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“Tão cedo passa tudo quanto passa!
Morre tão jovem ante os deuses quanto
Morre! Tudo é tão pouco!
Nada se sabe, tudo se imagina.
Circunda-te de rosas, ama, bebe e cala.
O mais é nada.”
Ricardo Reis (Fernando Pessoa)

Books on India at IWP Books:

• G. Lowes Dickinson, 1914, Appearances: Being Notes of Travel
• E. M. Forster, 1953, The Hill of Devi
• Aldous Huxley, 1926, Jesting Pilate

“Another neighbour, a patriarchal old Englishman with a white beard, kept a great stand of bees. I remember his incessant drumming on a tin pan to marshal them when they were swarming, and myself as idly wondering who first discovered that this was the thing to do, and why the bees should fall in with it. It struck me that if the bees were as intelligent as bees are cracked up to be, instead of mobilising themselves for old man Reynolds’s benefit, they would sting him soundly and then fly off about their business. I always think of this when I see a file of soldiers, wondering why the sound of a drum does not incite them to shoot their officers, throw away their rifles, go home, and go to work. Why, instead of producing this effect which seems natural and reasonable, does it produce one which seems exactly the opposite? In the course of time I found that Virgil had remarked the fact about bees, and that in his parable called The Drum Count Tolstoy had remarked the fact about the human animal. Neither, however, had accounted for the fact. Virgil had not tried to account for it, and Count Tolstoy’s attempt was scattering and unsatisfactory.” (Albert Jay Nock, 1943, Memoirs of a Superfluous Man)

From Albert Jay Nock, “The Triumph of the Gadget,” The American Mercury, July, 1939

During the last fifty years there has been invented almost every conceivable labor-saving device, with the consequence that the average man is in a state of utter manual incompetence. This is well-known and is often commented upon. But what is not so often observed is that these gadgets are not only labor-saving but brain-saving, thought-saving; and it seems an inescapable conclusion that a correlative mental incompetence is being induced.

A certain amount of resistance seems necessary for the proper functioning of mental and moral attributes, as it is for that of physical attributes. In any of these three departments of life, if you can get results without effort, and habitually do so, the capacity for making the effort dwindles. Whatever takes away the opportunity for effort, whatever obviates or reduces the need for making it, is therefore to some degree deleterious. It needs a bit of brains to manage a furnace-fire successfully; an automatic heater needs none; hence many householders today could not manage a furnace-fire to save their lives. It needs some brainwork to add up a column of figures; running an adding-machine needs nothing but attention; consequently there are many book-keepers and bank-clerks now who not only do not add but cannot. As we all have frequently had occasion to observe, shopkeeping now seldom requires any more strenuous mental exercise than is involved in consulting a price-list. Cooking is a great art, requiring a lot of brain-work; running the modern kitchen requires far less.

(The whole essay is available at IWP Articles. The complete series of Nock’s essays for The American Mercury can be found at JAYS).

Essays by Albert Jay Nock at IWP Articles:

• Artemus Ward (1924)
• The Decline of Conversation (1928)
• A Cultural Forecast (1928)
• Pantagruelism (1932)
• Artemus Ward’s America (1934)
• Isaiah’s Job (1936)
• Free Speech and Plain Language (1936)
• College is No Place to Get an Education (1939)
• The Triumph of the Gadget (1939)

Nock’s complete works are available at JAYS.

Pascal on Eloquence

Jacques Barzun Translation (2003)

16. Eloquence is the art of saying things in such a way (1) that those to whom we speak are able to hear them without pain and with pleasure; (2) that they feel their self-interest involved, so that self-love leads them the more willingly to think over what has been said. It consists, then, in a correspondence which we try to establish, on the one hand, between the head and the heart of those to whom we speak and, on the other, between the thoughts and the expressions that we use. This presupposes that we have studied the heart of man in order to know all its workings and that we find the right arrangement of the remarks that we wish to make suitable. We must put ourselves in the place of those who are to hear us, and try out on our own heart the appeal we make in what we say, so as to see whether the one is rightly made for the other, and whether we can feel confident that the hearer will be, as it were, forced to surrender. We ought to restrict ourselves, so far as possible, to the simple and natural, and not to magnify that which is small or diminish that which is great. It is not enough that a thing be beautiful; it must be suitable to the subject and there must be in it nothing excessive or lacking.

W. F. Trotter Translation (1958)

16. Eloquence is an art of saying things in such a way — (1) that those to whom we speak may listen to them without pain and with pleasure; (2) that they feel themselves interested, so that self-love leads them more willingly to reflection upon it. It consists, then, in a correspondence which we seek to establish between the head and the heart of those to whom we speak on the one hand, and, on the other, between the thoughts and the expressions which we employ. This assumes that we have studied well the heart of man so as to know all its powers, and then to find the just proportions of the discourse which we wish to adapt to them. We must put ourselves in the place of those who are to hear us, and make trial on our own heart of the turn which we give to our discourse in order to see whether one is made for the other, and whether we can assure ourselves that the hearer will be, as it were, forced to surrender. We ought to restrict ourselves, so far as possible, to the simple and natural, and not to magnify that which is little, or belittle that which is great. It is not enough that a thing be beautiful; it must be suitable to the subject, and there must be in it nothing of excess or defect.

From Albert Jay Nock, “Liberals Never Learn,” The American Mercury, August, 1937

What I have seen of the Liberal and Progressive movement gives me no wish for its continuance — far from it — and if it disintegrated tomorrow I should be disposed to congratulate the country on its deliverance from a peculiarly dangerous and noisome nuisance. With regard to “all Liberal and Progressive ideas,” I have never been able to make out that there are any. Pseudo-ideas, yes, in abundance; sentiment, emotion, wishful dreams and visions, grandiose castles in Spain, political panaceas and placebos made up of milk, moonshine, and bilge-water in approximately equal parts — yes, these seem to be almost a peculium of Liberalism. But ideas, no.

(The complete series of Nock’s essays for The American Mercury can be found at JAYS).

From “Some of Mayor Gaynor’s Letters and Speeches”

December 4th, 1911.

Dear Mr. Smith: I thank you exceedingly for the edition of Don Quixote which you sent me. The illustrations by Doré are grand. The translation I notice is by Motteux. Of the English translations I deem that by Jarvis the best. It is so deft and nimble. I imagine that it approaches the spirit of the original more nearly than any of the others. When a younger man I often entertained the intention of trying to learn Spanish in order to read Don Quixote in the original. I envy your being able to do so. In translating a work of imagination it is almost always necessary to depart from literalness in order to give the genius and spirit. This Jarvis does, while Motteux is often painfully literal. And yet his literalness brings out some things that should not be lost. For instance, in the account of Don Quixote’s manner of living, and what dishes he ate each day of the week, Jarvis says, “an omelet on Saturdays,” which is certainly common-place enough. But Motteux gives the original exactly, namely, “griefs and groans on Saturdays,” which was some kind of a mixed dish which evidently caused belly ache, or some sort of distress in the paunch. But cases like that are few, and the nimble and light touches of Jarvis which let you right into the spirit of the narrative are often departures from the literal rendering of the original. At best a translation of a work of imagination bears about the same resemblance to the original as the reverse side of a tapestry to the true side. That is why I am sorry I do not understand Spanish as you do. If I did we could continue that discussion of the writings of Cervantes which we commenced on the train up from Richmond.

Let me cite a passage or two to show how much more attractive the translation of Jarvis is. After Don Quixote is knocked down by the sail of the wind-mill, Sancho Panza comes galloping up on Dapple and says, according to Motteux: “Mercy on me, did not I give your Worship fair warning? Did not I tell you they were wind-mills, and that nobody could think otherwise unless he also had wind-mills in his head?” But Jarvis more nimbly says: “God save us, quoth Sancho Panza, did not I warn you to have a care of what you did, for that they were nothing but wind-mills, and nobody could mistake them but one that had the like in his head.” And again, speaking of the company at Antonio’s house who were entertaining Don Quixote, Motteux says: “Among others were two ladies of an airy and waggish disposition.” Contrast this with the way Jarvis puts it: “Among the ladies there were two of an arch and jocose disposition.” But I must not multiply these instances except to quote the rendering of a proverb. Motteux makes Don Quixote say to Sancho: “I have always heard it said that to do a kindness to clowns is like throwing water into the sea.” Jarvis has it that “to do good to the vulgar is to throw water into the sea.”

Cervantes and Shakespeare died on the same day — or rather one died ten days later than the other according to the modern reckoning of time, but I do not remember which. But I find they made use of the same expression. Sancho Panza is made to say, “There is some difference between a hawk and a handsaw.” Shakespeare says in Hamlet, “I know a hawk from a handsaw.”

Years ago I copied every proverb, or philosophical or wise saying there is in Don Quixote. I think that an equal number of good ones is not found in any other book except the Bible. I am half tempted to quote a few to you and let you compare them with the original. “Who but a madman would mind what a madman says,” is one. “Diligence is the mother of good fortune,” is another. And this: “It is pleasant to govern though it be but a flock of sheep.” And this: “Some people go out for wool and come home shorn.” And this: “Letters without virtue are pearls upon a dunghill.” And this: “Though habit and example do much, good sense is the foundation of good language.” And this: “When they give you a heifer be ready with the rope.” And this of the same meaning: “When good fortune knocks, make haste to let her in.” And some or all of those elected to office might well say with Sancho Panza when his old clothes were being taken off and he was being dressed up in his official garments when he was entering upon the government of his island: “Clothe me as you will, I shall be Sancho Panza still.” And it were well if they could all say, as Sancho did when he gave up his governorship and they had stripped him of his official garments to reclothe him with his old ones: “Naked came I into this government and naked come I out of it.” And let me wind up with this one which the ladies might take offense at: “Between the yea and the nay of a woman I would not undertake to thrust the point of a needle.”

And while I am at it, and since we went into this book talk on the train at all, I will set down for you the books which I think have had the largest effect on my life. I will give them in the order in which I think I was affected by them:

The Bible,

Euclid,

Shakespeare,

Hume’s History of England (especially the notes),

Homer,

Milton,

Cervantes (Don Quixote),

Rabelais,

Gil Blas,

Franklin’s Autobiography and letters,

The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini,

Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,

Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations,

Bacon’s Works.

I have left out of this list those works on what for want of a better name I may call the philosophy of history. I have derived immense satisfaction and, I hope, much profit, from them. And no doubt I have omitted some books I would mention if I took the time.