If all the good people were clever,
And all clever people were good,
The world would be nicer than ever
We thought that it possibly could.
But somehow ’tis seldom or never
The two hit it off as they should,
The good are so harsh to the clever,
The clever, so rude to the good!
So friends, let it be our endeavour
To make each by each understood;
For few can be good, like the clever,
Or clever, so well as the good.
— Elizabeth Wordsworth
The second stanza of this poem is an anagram of the first:
A girl once kept a tiny sheep,
Widely famed for whiteness:
This pet would dog her every step,
No certain sign of brightness.
‘Twas viewed, the pest, one day in class
By impish children there;
Kids laugh to see pets, goofing off,
Weren’t trying — open, err!
(Colin Rose)Lord David Cecil called Samuel Johnson “an outstanding example of the charm that comes from an unexpected combination of qualities. In general, odd people are not sensible and sensible people are not odd. Johnson was both and often both at the same time.”
Describing this fish (Holocanthus Alternaus), which was caught off Zanzibar, a correspondent of the ‘Times of India’ wrote: ‘… On the one side of the tail are the words, La-ilaha-illa Allah’ — ‘There is no God but God.’ On the other side, ‘Shan Allah’ — ‘God’s Work,’ or ‘An Act of God.’ … Many of our readers who know Arabic will be able to see for themselves from this untouched photograph that the fish is a devout Moslem.’ We have shown the photographs to an expert in this country, who informs us that the letters are certainly intended to represent Arabic characters, but that there is nothing sufficiently distinguishable to enable it to be said that they mean what they are alleged to mean. A further opinion is expressed that the ‘inscriptions’ may not be genuine.
— Illustrated London News, Dec. 28, 1929
In Eric Cross’ 1942 book The Tailor and Ansty, Irish tailor and storyteller Timothy Buckley recounts the wisdom held by the old Irish, before “the people got too bloodyful smart and educated, and let the government or anyone else do their thinking for them.” They had a way of reckoning time that advances from the lifespan of a rail, a type of small bird, to the age of the world:
A hound outlives three rails.
A horse outlives three hounds.
A jock outlives three horses.
A deer outlives three jocks.
An eagle outlives three deer.
A yew-tree outlives three eagles.
An old ridge in the ground outlives three yew-trees.
Three times the time that the sign of a ridge will be seen in the ground will be as long as from the beginning to the end of the world.
“The tailor is wildly off,” notes philosopher Robert P. Crease, “in his estimate of the age of the universe, which is unlikely to be (lifetime of the rail) × 38. Still, his point is well made that the old Irish unit system may possess certain superiorities to ours in that it was ‘reckoned on the things a man could see about him, so that, wherever he was, he had an almanac.'”
01/31/2025 UPDATE: Reader Edward White writes:
There is actually a similar calculation found in the Cosmati Pavement, in Westminster Abbey: The inscription reads
If the reader wisely considers all that is laid down, he will find here the end of the primum mobile; a hedge (lives for) three years, add dogs and horses and men, stags and ravens, eagles, enormous whales, the world: each one following triples the years of the one before.
In other words the calculation is:
A hedge lives 3 years
A dog lives for 3 hedges (i.e. 9 years)
A man lives for 3 dogs (i.e. 27 years)
A stag lives for 3 men (i.e. 81 years)
A raven lives for 3 stags (i.e. 243 years)
An eagle lives 3 ravens (i.e. 729 years)
A whale lives 3 eagles (i.e. 2187 years)
And the world lives 3 whales (6561 years)This is the same as the Irish peasant’s calculation, in that it involves 8 rounds of tripling, but it has different terms. Schott’s Quintessential Miscellany (Bloomsbury, 2011) has a similar list of calculations on page 104. They are quoted below in full:
Flemish folklore gave this estimate of animal life-spans, premised upon the belief that a town (or enclosure) lasted just three years:
A TOWN lives three YEARS,
A DOG lives three TOWNS,
A HORSE lives three DOGS
A MAN lives three HORSES,
An ASS lives three MEN,
A WILD GOOSE lives three ASSES,
A CROW lives three WILD GEESE,
A STAG lives three CROWS
A RAVEN lives three STAGS
& the PHOENIX lives three RAVENSA German equivalent has it:
A FENCE lasts three YEARS;
A DOG lasts three FENCES;
A HORSE lasts three DOGS;
And a MAN three HORSES.Hesiod (fl.c 8th BC) wrote:
The NOISY CROW lives nine generations of MEN who die in the bloom of years; the STAG attains the age of four CROWS; the RAVEN, in its turn, equals three STAGS in length of days; while the PHOENIX lives nine RAVENS. We nymphs, fair-of-tresses, daughters of Jove the aegis-bearer, attain to the age of ten PHOENIXES.
And, Italian folklore maintained:
A DOG lasts 9 years;
A HORSE lasts 3 DOGS: 27 years;
A MAN lasts 3 HORSES: 81 years;
A CROW lasts 3 MEN: 243 years;
A DEER lasts 3 CROWS: 729 years;
An OAK lasts 3 DEER: 2,187 years.The principle was evidently very widespread across Europe.
[Here’s another translation of the Hesiod, this from Plutarch:
A screaming crow lives for nine generations
of men who have reached puberty; a deer is four crows;
the raven grows old at three deer; then the phoenix at nine ravens; and we at ten phoenixes,
we beautiful-haired nymphs, daughters of aegis-holding Zeus.]
(Thanks, Edward.)
In 1999, a letter in New Scientist noted that randomizing letters in the middle of words has little or no effect on readers’ ability to understand text. Noam D. Plum responded with a poem:
The suggetsoin taht chrilden slhuod laern how to sepll
Is a tmie-watse we ohgut to rjeect.
Sicne a jlumbe of leertts raeds pertlecfy wlel
If the frist and the lsat are crrocet.
Wehn an edtoir grembuls, “Yuor seplinlg is ntus!”
Wtih cntoempt he can braley cocneal,
Trehe is no cuase to flcnih; mkae no ifs adns or btus;
Say, “I’ts radnom, sir. Wa’hts the big dael?”
In tihs fsat-minvog wrold, waht we raed dseon’t sictk.
Olny vrey few deliats get strsseed.
If i’ts frsit or it’s lsat we may glncae at it qucik.
Woh’s got tmie to be raenidg the rset?
(Noam D. Plum, “Prepopr Splelnig,” Verbatim 32:1 [Spring 2008], 15. See Half Measures.)
Two perceptive entries from the journals of English naturalist Gilbert White:
“December 4, 1770 – Most owls seem to hoot exactly in B flat according to several pitch-pipes used in tuning of harpsichords, & sold as strictly at concert pitch.”
“February 8, 1782 – Venus shadows very strongly, showing the bars of the windows on the floors & walls.”
Between these he makes what may be the earliest written use of the word golly, in 1775.
It is true we do not often see the stars in broad daylight, but they are there nevertheless. The blaze of sunlight makes them invisible. A good telescope will always show the stars, and even without a telescope they can sometimes be seen in daylight in rather an odd way. If you can obtain a glimpse of the blue sky on a fine day from the bottom of a coal pit, stars are often visible. The top of the shaft is, however, generally obstructed by the machinery for hoisting up the coal, but the stars may be seen occasionally through the tall chimney attached to a chimney manufactory when an opportune disuse of the chimney permits of the observation being made. The fact is that the long tube has the effect of completely screening from the eye the direct light of the sun. The eye thus becomes more sensitive, and the feeble light from the stars can make their impression and produce vision.
— Robert Stawell Ball, Star-Land, 1890
01/17/2025 UPDATE: This is false. Reader Catalin Voinescu writes, “The stars aren’t obscured by the glare of the sun in the vicinity of the observer. That is easy to shield from. Starlight is overwhelmed by sunlight scattered by the bulk of the atmosphere — by the sky, in other words. While shorter wavelengths scatter more (which is why the sky appears blue), filtering out the blue is still not enough to make the stars visible during the day: red still scatters plenty. Only in wavelengths much longer than visible light is the scattering low enough to observe the stars: radio astronomers can make observations during the day, as long as they don’t point their dishes too close to the sun.” (Thanks, Catalin.)
I heard the story — but I cannot verify it — that Marshall Lyautey (1854-1934) owned a parrot which incorporated these words in its vocabulary: What a beautiful evening! What a beautiful evening! and often repeated them in earnest.
Now one day the renowned soldier, on returning home, was greeted by the same interjection which seemed so in keeping with the fine evening. But what was his astonishment when he found himself before the spectacle presented by his bird. The parrot, which had spent the evening alone with a monkey, had been entirely defeathered by his everyday household companion. ‘What a beautiful evening! What a beautiful evening!’, in that context, took on a droll and ironic meaning.
— Elian Finbert, Les Perroquets Vous Parlent, 1975, quoted in George Gardner Herrick, Winter Rules, 1997
Jane Austen is to me the greatest wonder amongst novel writers. I do not mean that she is the greatest novel writer, but she seems to me the greatest wonder. Imagine, if you were to instruct an author or an authoress to write a novel under the limitations within which Jane Austen writes! Supposing you were to say, ‘Now, you must write a novel, but you must have no heroes or heroines in the accepted sense of the word. You may have naval officers, but they must always be on leave or on land, never on active service. You must have no striking villains; you may have a mild rake, but keep him well in the background, and if you are really going to produce something detestable, it must be so because of its small meannesses, as, for instance, the detestable Aunt Norris in ‘Mansfield Park’; you must have no very exciting plot; you must have no thrilling adventures; a sprained ankle on a country walk is allowable, but you must not go much beyond this. You must have no moving descriptions of scenery; you must work without the help of all these; and as to passion, there must be none of it. You may, of course, have love, but it must be so carefully handled that very often it seems to get little above the temperature of liking. With all those limitations you are to write, not only one novel, but several, which, not merely by popular appreciation, but by the common consent of the greatest critics, the greatest literary minds of the generations which succeed you, shall be classed among the first rank of the novels written in your language in your country.’ Of course, it is possible to say that Jane Austen achieves this, though her materials are so slight because her art is so great. Perhaps, however, so long as the materials are those of human nature, they are not slight.
— Viscount Grey of Fallodon, Fallodon Papers, 1926