Remove not the ancient landmark…

“Remove not the ancient landmark, which thy fathers have set.” (Proverbs 22:28)

The above biblical verse has always been one of my favourites, and since the King James Version was the translation of my childhood, it is the above rendering that is implanted in my mind. I have always taken it as an affirmation of conservative principles, saying broadly that we ought to be wary of changing settled ways and customs. I suppose I understood it that way on the basis of a certain interpretation of the word “landmark”. There are at least three ways one could understand that term, each yielding a slightly different variation on a moral theme, and it is the first that I usually have in mind when I think of this proverb.

1. Landmark as monument. Think of it as a statue or other public work of art. Removing it, even for seemingly justifiable reasons, erases a piece of public memory and of our understanding of who we are as a people, warts and all. We would be culturally confused or lost if we were to lightly go about tearing our monuments down. It is mainly this interpretation that comes to mind when I think of Proverbs 22:28. I would add that, in my mind, “fathers” always means something like “forefathers”, those who went before us, regardless of whether they were genetic or familial ancestors. Think of the Founding Fathers, or (in Canada) the Fathers of Confederation.
2. Landmark as wayfinding device. Here, the landmark could be thought of as a sort of milestone, marking location. A certain stone, purposely placed, tells us that we are five miles from Bethlehem, or are a certain distance along the Appian Way. If the stone were removed, wayfarers might find themselves lost. But again, this could lead us to a figurative reading akin to the one above: “lost” might mean culturally lost or confused.
3. Landmark as boundary. Here we think of the landmark as a pile of stones marking off one farmer’s field from another’s. On this reading, the proverb supports the institution of private property: when we remove the landmark, we can no longer tell where one field ends and another begins. Again, the result is confusion, but also contention and strife.

So textually speaking, which of the above readings has the most warrant? Well, although the first resonates the most with me, as does a figurative reading of the second, it is the third that has the most textual support.

If we turn to the Vulgate (Latin) translation of the bible, the proverb reads “Ne transgrediaris terminos antiquos, quos posuerunt patres tui.” Here, the word which the King James translators rendered as “landmark” is the Latin word terminus, meaning “boundary, limit, end”. And the word for “fathers” is patres. Now, depending on the context this could have the extended sense of “forefathers”, but if that is what was intended, I think the word maiores would be used instead of patres. In other words, “fathers” means “ancestors” in the more narrow genetic or familial sense. Additionally, the Latin for “remove” is transgredior, “to cross, to go, to move, to travel over, to go across.” So, a literal translation of the Latin might be something like “Do not cross the property line which your [genetic/familial] fathers established.”

So far, it seems that the third – narrow – interpretation of “landmark” is the correct one, and that Proverbs 22:28 is intended as supporting private property. But an even narrower sense is also possible. To see this, we must turn to the Hebrew.

I have no Hebrew, so I will rely on Robert Alter’s translation (with fascinating commentary) of the Hebrew bible. Here is his rendering: “Do not shift the age-old boundary stone that your forefathers set up.” Again, it supports the private property interpretation. But in Alter’s view, it supports a specific version of private property. In his footnote, he says “This injunction, which has a close parallel in the Egyptian source-text, reflects the general view that real property should be inalienable” [my italics].

The concept of inalienable property is somewhat… well, alien to the modern mind. But it was common in ancient legal systems, where land had a sort of corporate character, ownership being more akin to a trusteeship, passed on by one’s ancestors and exercised for the benefit of one’s descendants. For more on this, I would direct the reader to Sir Henry Maine’s classic Ancient Law (1861).

In any case, since the above Biblical verse no longer means quite what I wish it did, I need a new one. So far, the one that best seems to capture the sentiment for me is “meddle not with them that are given to change” (Proverbs 24:21). I welcome other suggestions.

Notes & Queries: A Fragment on Mummies

I was recently reading volume three of Sir Thomas Browne’s Works, edited by Geoffrey Keynes (1964 edition). The volume contains mostly miscellaneous pieces and lesser-known works by Browne. It ended with a little piece that I found absolutely charming, “A Fragment on Mummies”. I had never come across the “Fragment” before, and although I enjoyed it immensely, there was something a little odd about it. After finishing it, I referred back to Keynes’ introduction to the volume to see what he had to say about it. He wrote that the fragment

 “was initially supplied to Wilkin by his friend, James Crossley of Manchester, who pretended to have forgotten where he had seen the original manuscript. Wilkin printed the piece in good faith, but afterwards saw that there was reason to doubt its authenticity, and it was omitted from Bohn’s reprint of his edition in 1852. Crossley never publicly admitted having written it himself, and the reader may be left to judge whether Browne would have owned to its verbal extravagances, or would even have gusted so irreverent a pleasantry.”

 The story is that James Crossley (1800-1883) of Manchester had sent the “Fragment on Mummies” to Simon Wilkin, who was preparing his 1835 edition of Browne’s works. Crossley claimed to have gotten it from a manuscript in the British Library, but no one has managed to find any such manuscript. (The documentary history of this story is laid out in Samuel Swett Green’s 1903 paper.)

Keynes’ account, above, is a bit ambiguous, making it sound as if it were still an open question whether or not the “Fragment on Mummies” was written by Browne, and if it was not, what telltale signs within the piece might give it away as a fake. (I believed I had spotted at least one such sign.) So, of course I needed to learn more.

The consensus of course is that it is not genuine, which leads me to the question of Crossley’s intentions. I have seen the “Fragment” described as a “parody”. In a letter to the Manchester Guardian (17 December 1901), C. W. Hutton referred to it as a “hoax” and a “jeu d’esprit”. Since Crossley fessed up to it only much later and only once he was directly accused, and since his confession was not to poor Wilkin, I would prefer to call this a forgery. But it is a very beautiful one, as this passage, once famously quoted by Emerson, demonstrates:

“Of their living habitations they made little account, conceiving of them but as hospitia, or inns, while they adorned the sepulchres of the dead, and planted them on lasting bases, defying the crumbling touches of time and the misty vaporousness of oblivion. Yet all were but Babel vanities. Time sadly overcometh all things, and is now dominant, and sitteth upon a sphinx, and looketh unto Memphis and Thebes, while his sister Oblivion reclineth semisomnous on a pyramid, gloriously triumphing, making puzzles of Titanian erections, and turning old glories into dreams. History sinketh beneath her cloud. The traveller as he paceth amazedly through those deserts asketh of her, who buildeth them? and she mumbleth something, but what it is he heareth not.”

Three days after Hutton’s letter appeared, the editor of the Guardian thanked him for clearing up the mystery: “We should never have guessed that it was not a genuine piece by the author of the ‘Urn Burial,’ and are inclined to place Mr. James Crossley, who wrote it, among the most skilful imitators of other men’s style of whom literary history tells us.” Note again the indulgence granted here to Crossley. He is not a fraudster, he is an imitator.

Anyway, as I said, I guessed it was not genuine, and here is why. As I was reading the piece, I stumbled at one word in the following sentence:

“Shall we eat of Chamnes and Amosis in electuaries and pills, and be cured by cannibal mixtures? Surely such a diet is dismal vampirism…”

Now, the OED’s earliest citation for “vampire” (or “vampyre”) is from The Travels of Three English Gentlemen, from Venice to Hamburgh (1734). And the earliest citation for “vampirism” is from Erasmus Darwin’s Zoonomia (1794-96). This was the rat I smelled.

Now I wish, dear reader, that I was clever enough to have been the first to note this. But it turns out that I was anticipated by at least one other person, Robert Kane, in a 1933 paper. Two further lexical anachronisms in the “Fragment” identified by Kane are worthy of mention, if for no other reason than to give Crossley his due as an innovator. First, Crossley’s 1835 use of “blinkingly” pre-dates the OED’s earliest citation of 1879. Second, the OED’s earliest citation of “semisomnous” is from Henry Rogers’ The Supernatural Origin of the Bible (1873). But in that work Rogers was himself quoting from the “Fragment on Mummies”!

 

Sources

 BROWNE, Sir Thomas. The Works (4 Vols.). Geoffrey Keynes (ed.). London: Faber & Faber, 1964.

 GREEN, Samuel Swett. “Did Sir Thomas Browne Write ‘Fragment on Mummies’?” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 15 (1903), 442-447.

 KANE, Robert J. “James Crossley, Sir Thomas Browne, and the Fragment on Mummies,” Review of English Studies 9.35 (1933), 266-274.

The Government of the Tongue

As the Preacher saith, “There is no new thing under the sun” (Eccles. 1:9). It seems that one of these things that is not new is episodes of contention and unbrotherly relations between preachers and congregants. In Spectator No. 468 (16 July 1714), Joseph Addison related the following amusing anecdote:

“I remember an empty pragmatical Fellow in the Country, who upon reading over the whole Duty of Man, had written the Names of several Persons in the Village at the Side of every Sin which is mentioned by that excellent Author; so that he had converted one of the best Books in the World into a Libel against the ‘Squire, Church-wardens, Overseers of the Poor, and all other the most considerable Persons in the Parish. This Book with these extraordinary marginal Notes fell accidentally into the Hands of one who had never seen it before; upon which there arose a current Report that Some body had written a book against the ‘Squire and the whole Parish. The Minister of the Place having at that Time a Controversy with some of his Congregation upon the Account of his Tythes, was under the Suspicion of being the Author…”

It is generally accepted that the “excellent Author” of the anonymously published work that Addison refers to, The Whole Duty of Man (1658), was Richard Allestree (1621/22-1681), a 17^th-century Anglican clergyman. Though it may come as a surprise now, The Whole Duty of Man vied with The Pilgrim’s Progress as the most popular English devotional work of the 17^th and 18^th centuries. It went through countless editions. In my opinion, Whole Duty is much more deserving of that popularity than Bunyan’s tedious work. But it now goes largely unread.

I happen to have in my possession a 1675 edition of another work of Allestree’s entitled The Government of the Tongue. Curiously, the inscription of a former owner on the flyleaf reads as follows: 

Presented to the Pastor

of Zion Tabernacle

Hamilton Ontario, with

a request that he will

read, mark, learn, and

inwardly digest the

contents

                  March 1879

 

Ouch. Indeed, there is no new thing under the sun. Parish politics "hath been already of old time."

 

The Spectacled Avenger's Reading List, 2021

Well, it’s that time again, when I post the list of books I’ve read over the previous year and try to find patterns in it all.

First off, I read about 20 more books in 2021 than I had in 2020. I attribute this to a somewhat more normal lifestyle, without strict COVID lockdowns. I personally felt a bit bewildered in 2020 and I had a difficult time concentrating. I read less, and when I did read, it seemed to go more slowly. Plus, under normal circumstances I would get much of my reading done on the subway commute to work; I didn’t have that commute for most of 2020. (The commute returned in late September 2021, which resulted in a late surge on the reading list below. But I am back in lockdown now, so we shall see how it all pans out…)

However, upon reflection, I think I have to admit that my reading was not as enjoyable in 2021 as it has been in previous years. As usual, I bold the books that I particularly enjoyed, and there is not nearly as much bolding on the list below.

As for patterns, let me see…. One that jumps out is the number of books from or about the Scottish Enlightenment (Beattie, Carlyle, Hume, Hutcheson, Kames, Raphael, Smith), to which one might add a sprinkling of French authors (Rousseau, Voltaire). I read three books about Richard III  or his age (Drewett and Redhead, Gross, Mancini). Also, there was the usual legal history theme (Boyer, Coke, Finch, Holdsworth, Horne, Kent, Plucknett).

Otherwise, rather than patterns in terms of subject matter, there is a heavy preponderance of works by certain authors: I read four volumes of Burnet’s History of His Own Time, all three books in Robertson Davies’ “Deptford Trilogy”, and three books by Adam Smith.

There are two additional things not reflected on the list below, but which might show up on next year’s list: I have been reading some literature by the Cambridge Platonists. Two works are on this list (Cudworth, Whichcote), but Cudworth’s True Intellectual System of the Universe – a long work – is in progress. Also in progress, and related to the Scottish Enlightenment theme, I am working my way through some historical literature on Scots law: Sir Thomas Hope’s Major Practicks (in two volumes), Lord Stair’s Institutions of the Law of Scotland, and Lord Bankton’s An Institute of the Laws of Scotland (in three volumes). These are long and dense works and will take considerable time to get through.

*          *          *          * 

AXELROD. Robert. The Evolution of Cooperation (revised edition). Cambridge, MA: Basic Books, 2006.

BEATTIE, James. An Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth; in Opposition to Sophistry and Scepticism. Edinburgh: A. Kincaid and J. Bell, 1770.

BLOOM, Allan. The Closing of the American Mind. New York: Touchstone Books, 1988.

BOLINGBROKE, Henry St. John, Viscount. The Works (Vol. IV). David Mallet (ed.). London, 1754 (facsimile, Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1968).

BOYER, Allen D. (ed.). Law, Liberty, and Parliament: Selected Essays on the Writings of Sir Edward Coke. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2004.

BREADY, J. Wesley. Lord Shaftesbury and Social-Industrial Progress. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1928.

BROWN, John. Essays on the Characteristics of the Earl of Shaftesbury. London: C. Davis, 1751.

BURNET, Gilbert. Bishop Burnet’s History of His Own Time (Vol. II). Martin Joseph Routh (ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1833.

BURNET, Gilbert. Bishop Burnet’s History of His Own Time (Vol. III). Martin Joseph Routh (ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1833.

BURNET, Gilbert. Bishop Burnet’s History of His Own Time (Vol. IV). Martin Joseph Routh (ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1833.

BURNET, Gilbert. Bishop Burnet’s History of His Own Time (Vol. V). Martin Joseph Routh (ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1833.

BYNKERSHOEK, Cornelius van. De Dominio Maris Dissertatio. James Brown Scott (trans.). New York: Oceana Publications, 1964.

CARLYLE, Alexander. Anecdotes and Characters of the Times. James Kinsley (ed.). London: Oxford University Press, 1973.

COKE, Sir Edward. The Reports of Sir Edward Coke, Knt. in Thirteen Parts (Vol. II: Parts III-IV). London: Joseph Butterworth and Son, 1826.

CUDWORTH, Ralph. A Sermon Preached before the Honourable House of Commons at Westminster, March 31, 1647. Cambridge: Roger Daniel, 1647 (facsimile, New York: Facsimile Text Society, 1930).

DAVIES, Robertson. Fifth Business. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 2005.

DAVIES, Robertson. The Manticore. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 2005.

DAVIES, Robertson. World of Wonders. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 2005.

DREWETT, Richard and Mark REDHEAD. The Trial of Richard III. Gloucester, UK: Alan Sutton,1987.

FINCH, Sir Henry. Law, or, a Discourse thereof. Danby Pickering (trans.). London: Henry Lintot, 1759 (facsimile, New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1969).

FITZGERALD, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner Classics, 1992.

GRANT, George. Lament for a Nation: The Defeat of Canadian Nationalism (40^th anniversary edition). Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005.

GROSS, Anthony. The Dissolution of the Lancastrian Kingship: Sir John Fortescue and the Crisis of the Monarchy in Fifteenth-Century England. Stamford, UK: Paul Watkins, 1996.

HAMILTON, Alexander and James MADISON. The Pacificus-Helvidius Debates of 1793-1794. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2007.

HAYEK, Friedrich. Individualism and Economic Order. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948.

HEINECCIUS, Johann Gottlieb. A Methodical System of Universal Law: Or, the Laws of Nature and Nations. George Turnbull (trans.). Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2008.

HOLDSWORTH, William S. Charles Dickens as a Legal Historian. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1929.

HORNE, Andrew. The Mirrour of Justices. Washington, DC: John Byrne and Company, 1903.

HUME, David. An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding. Tom L. Beauchamp (ed.) Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001.

HUTCHESON, Francis. Thoughts on Laughter and Observations on the Fable of the Bees. Glasgow: Robert and Andrew Foulis, 1758 (facsimile, Bristol, UK: Thoemmes, 1989).

HUTCHINSON, Lucy. Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson. James Sutherland (ed.). London: Oxford University Press, 1973.

JAMES, William. Pragmatism. New York: Dover Publications, 1995.

KAMES, Henry Home, Lord. Sketches of the History of Man (Vol. I). James A. Harris (ed.). Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2007.

KENT, James. Commentaries on American Law (Vol. I). New York: O. Halsted, 1826.

KENT, James. Commentaries on American Law (Vol. II). New York: O. Halsted, 1827.

KLEIN, Lawrence E. Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness: Moral Discourse and Cultural Politics in Early Eighteenth-Century England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

KLEMPERER, Victor. The Language of the Third Reich – LTI: Lingua Tertii Imperii. Martin Brady (trans.). London: The Athlone Press, 2000.

KYD, Thomas. The Spanish Tragedy. J. R. Mulryne (ed.). New York: W. W. Norton, 1989.

LUCIAN. Works (Vol. II). A. M. Harmon (trans.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968.

MANCINI, Dominic. The Usurpation of Richard III. C. A. J. Armstrong (trans.). Gloucester, UK: Alan Sutton, 1989.

McINERNY, Ralph. Ethica Thomistica: The Moral Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1982.

McKENZIE, Richard B. and Gordon TULLOCK. The New World of Economics (6^th edition). Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, 2012.

NIETZSCHE, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil / The Genealogy of Morality (Complete Works, Vol. 8). Adrian Del Caro (trans.). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014.

NOZICK. Robert. Anarchy, State, and Utopia. New York: Basic Books, 1974.

PEPYS, Samuel. The Diary of Samuel Pepys (Vol. VII: 1666). Robert Latham and William Matthews (eds.). Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972.

PLATIAS, Athanassios G. and Constantinos KOLIOPOULOS. Thucydides on Strategy: Grand Strategies in the Peloponnesian War and their Relevance Today. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010.

PLUCKNETT, Theodore F. T. A Concise History of the Common Law (5^th edition). Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1956.

PLUTARCH. Lives (Vol. I). John Dryden (trans.). London: Folio Society, 2010.

PULTENEY. William and Henry St. John, Viscount BOLINGBROKE. The Craftsman (Vol. IV). London: R. Francklin.

PULTENEY. William and Henry St. John, Viscount BOLINGBROKE. The Craftsman (Vol. V). London: R. Francklin.

RAPHAEL, D. D. The Impartial Spectator: Adam Smith’s Moral Philosophy. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007.

RICHARDSON, Samuel. Clarissa (Vol. II). London: Dent, 1968.

ROSS, Sir David. Kant’s Ethical Theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954.

ROUSSEAU, Jean-Jacques. Emilius; or, An Essay on Education (Vol. I). Thomas Nugent (trans.). London: J. Nourse and P. Vaillant, 1763 (facsimile, Bristol, UK: Thoemmes Press, 1995).

ROUSSEAU, Jean-Jacques. Emilius; or, An Essay on Education (Vol. II). Thomas Nugent (trans.). London: J. Nourse and P. Vaillant, 1763 (facsimile, Bristol, UK: Thoemmes Press, 1995).

SALISBURY, Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3^rd Marquess of. Lord Salisbury on Politics: A selection from his articles in the Quarterly Review, 1860-1883. Paul Smith (ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972.

SHAKESPEARE, William. Antony and Cleopatra. John Munro (ed.). London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1958.

SHAKESPEARE, William. Coriolanus. John Munro (ed.). London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1958.

SHAW, William and Hester Lynch PIOZZI. Memoirs of the Life and Writings of the Late Dr. Samuel Johnson, and Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. Arthur Sherbo (ed.). London: Oxford University Press, 1974.

SMITH, Adam. The Theory of Moral Sentiments. D. D. Raphael and A. L. Macfie (eds.). Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976.

SMITH, Adam. Lectures on Jurisprudence. R. L. Meek, D. D. Raphael, and P. G. Stein (eds.). Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978.

SMITH, Adam. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Vol. I). R. H. Campbell and A. S. Skinner (eds.). Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976.

SMITH, Patti. Just Kids. New York: Ecco, 2010.

STEPHEN, James Fitzjames. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. R. J. White (ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967.

STORY, Joseph. A Familiar Exposition of the Constitution of the United States. New York: American Book Company, 1840 (facsimile, New York: Legal Classics Library, 1992).

SWIFT, Jonathan. The Correspondence of Jonathan Swift (Vol. I: 1690-1713). Harold Williams (ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963.

TAYLOR, Charles. Radical Tories: The Conservative Tradition in Canada. Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 2006. 

TULLOCK, Gordon. The Rent-Seeking Society (Selected Works of Gordon Tullock, Vol. 5). Charles K. Rowley (ed.). Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2005.

VOLTAIRE. Philosophical Dictionary (Vol. I). Peter Gay (trans.). New York: Basic Books, 1962.

VOLTAIRE. Philosophical Dictionary (Vol. II). Peter Gay (trans.). New York: Basic Books, 1962. 

WHICHCOTE, Benjamin. The Works of the Learned Benjamin Whichcote (Vol. III). Aberdeen: Alexander Thomson, 1751 (facsimile, New York: Garland, 1977).

WITTGENSTEIN, Ludwig. On Certainty. G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright (eds.). Oxford: Blackwell, 2003.

WODEHOUSE, P. G. Right Ho, Jeeves. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1975.