Category: Books and Literature

Ambrose Reads in Silence

In classical times reading was done aloud, even in private. But St. Augustine remembered that his mentor St. Ambrose had a habit of reading in silence, without even whispering the words. It was so unusual that it called for an explanation.

And when he read, his eyes ran over the pages, and his heart sought under­standing, but his voice and tongue were silent. Often when I have been there (for no one was refused entrance, nor was it the custom to give him notice of any one’s coming) I have seen him reading in this manner in silence, and never other­wise: and I have sat down, and after a long silence (for who could find in his heart to be trouble­some to one so intent?) I have gone away; conjec­turing that for that short time which he had for the repairing of his mind, free from the noise of other men’s business, he was loth to be taken off from what he was about. And per­haps for this reason did not read aloud, lest his auditor being attentive to the reading, might desire his expo­sition where the author seemed obscure, or his entering into a discus­sion of diffi­cult ques­tions; and by this means his time might be abridged, and he hindered from reading so much as he had a mind. Though perhaps his chief cause for reading in silence might be to save his voice, which was easily weakened. But whatever his reason was the inten­tion of that man was cer­tainly good.

——St. Augustine, Confessions, Book VI, Chapter III, translated by Richard Challoner.

The First Printed Female Author?

It seems to have been Proba. The first printed edition of Proba’s Cento Vergilianus de laudibus Christi came out in 1474. That was only five years after the first printed edition of Virgil himself (1469). It’s a good indicator of her reputation in the Renaissance.

Today, Proba benefits from the rush to find female writers to study, and she has been reassessed as a Good Poet again. I have Wikipedia’s word for it (“During the 19th and 20th centuries the poem was criticized as being of poor quality, but recent scholars have held the work in higher regard”). I’m more likely to value a Renaissance critic’s opinion of what’s “clene and chast Latin” (thus Wikipedia tells me John Colet described Proba’s poem) than a twentieth-century critic’s, so the reassessment of Proba is welcome.

Noon Talfourd and Some Other Guy

I just opened an 1842 issue of Graham’s Magazine. On one page are two poems, and the editor cannot restrain his enthusiasm for one of the poets.

It is with high gratification that we present our readers, this month, with this elegant original poem from the pen of Sergeant NOON TALFOURD, of England, the author of “Ion,” and, perhaps, the first living poet of his age. In the letter accompanying the verses he speaks of them as “my last effusion on an occasion very dear to me—composed in view of Eton College after leaving my eldest son there for the first time.”

The other poem is by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

It is possible—now that I think of it, probable—that the editor who wrote this little footnote was Edgar Allan Poe. He was one of the editors at Graham’s at the time, and we know what he thought of Longfellow. I suspect that I may know what he thought of Talfourd, too: namely, that the most insulting thing he could do was praise a trivial little sonnet by Talfourd and not even mention the much more substantial poem by Longfellow that appeared on the same page. It’s the sort of thing that would amuse Poe.

Gulliver and Gilliver

Jonathan Swift’s famous book is known to us as “Gulliver’s Travels” because, apparently at the last minute, he put the name “Lemuel Gulliver” on the title page as the author. Where did that name come from? I am not the first to figure this out, but it seems to be a fact so little known that it almost counts as an original discovery: there was a bookseller named Lawton Gilliver with whom Swift and the Scriblerians were associated. It is typical of Swift to make an insulting pun on the name of someone he knew, and given the name “Gilliver,” what other pun could Swift possibly make in order to put his name on the title page of a book of exceedingly improbable and unbelievable adventures?

I only noticed this because I was looking for a good edition of Pope’s works, and found that a very expensive-looking edition was published by Lawton Gilliver in 1735. The bells immediately rang. Association with Pope is enough to prove association with Swift, but I did find his name mentioned here and there in connection with Swift as well.

Google and DuckDuckGo each return exactly one legitimate result for Gilliver and Gulliver together: an article from the Huntington Library Quarterly in 1949 that appears to have made the same discovery. Google finds this text in it: “…seller Lawton Gilliver, who became Pope’s regular publisher for the next eight years. The similarity between the names Lawton Gilliver and Lemuel Gulliver is…” On every other page that mentions both names, “Gilliver” is a misprint for “Gulliver,” or vice versa, all doubtless due to the position of the U and I keys on a QWERTY keyboard.