HDT WHAT? INDEX 1814 1814 EVENTS OF 1813 General Events of 1814 SPRING JANUARY FEBRUARY MARCH SUMMER APRIL MAY JUNE FALL JULY AUGUST SEPTEMBER WINTER OCTOBER NOVEMBER DECEMBER Following the death of Jesus Christ there was a period of readjustment that lasted for approximately one million years. –Kurt Vonnegut, THE SIRENS OF TITAN THE NEW-ENGLAND ALMANACK FOR 1814. By Isaac Bickerstaff. Providence, Rhode Island: John Carter. THE NEW-ENGLAND ALMANACK FOR 1814. By Isaac Bickerstaff. Providence: John Carter. Sold also by George Wanton, Newport. 21-year-old Edward Hitchcock calculated and published a COUNTRY ALMANAC (recalculated and reissued each year to 1818). John Farmer’s “A Sketch of Amherst, New Hampshire” (2 COLL. MASS. HIST. SOC. II. BOSTON). Noah Webster, Esq. became a member of the Massachusetts General Court (he would serve also in 1815 and 1817). Carl Phillip Gottfried von Clausewitz was reinstated in the Prussian army. EVENTS OF 1815 HDT WHAT? INDEX 1814 1814 The 2d of 3 volumes of a revised critical edition of an old warhorse, ANTHOLOGIA GRAECA AD FIDEM CODICIS OLIM PALATINI NUNC PARISINI EX APOGRAPHO GOTHANO EDITA ..., prepared by Christian Friedrich Wilhelm Jacobs, appeared in Leipzig (the initial volume had appeared in 1813 and the final volume would appear in 1817). ANTHOLOGIA GRAECA (My working assumption, for which I have no evidence, is that this is likely to have been the unknown edition consulted by Henry Thoreau, from which he would obtain Plutarch materials plus quotes from Crates of Thebes and Simonides’s “Epigram on Anacreon” that he would recycle in A WEEK.) A WEEK: Plutarch says that “Plato thinks the gods never gave men PEOPLE OF music, the science of melody and harmony, for mere delectation or A WEEK to tickle the ear; but that the discordant parts of the circulations and beauteous fabric of the soul, and that of it that roves about the body, and many times, for want of tune and air, breaks forth into many extravagances and excesses, might be sweetly recalled and artfully wound up to their former consent and agreement.” PLUTARCH A WEEK: A book should contain pure discoveries, glimpses of terra PEOPLE OF firma, though by shipwrecked mariners, and not the art of A WEEK navigation by those who have never been out of sight of land. They must not yield wheat and potatoes, but must themselves be the unconstrained and natural harvest of their author’s lives. “What I have learned is mine; I’ve had my thought, And me the Muses noble truths have taught.” We do not learn much from learned books, but from true, sincere, human books, from frank and honest biographies. The life of a good man will hardly improve us more than the life of a freebooter, for the inevitable laws appear as plainly in the infringement as in the observance, and our lives are sustained by a nearly equal expense of virtue of some kind. CRATES OF THEBES HDT WHAT? INDEX 1814 1814 A WEEK: Here was that “pleasant harbor” which we had sighed for, PEOPLE OF where the weary voyageur could read the journal of some other A WEEK sailor, whose bark had ploughed, perchance, more famous and classic seas. At the tables of the gods, after feasting follow music and song; we will recline now under these island trees, and for our minstrel call on ANACREON. “Nor has he ceased his charming song, for still that lyre, Though he is dead, sleeps not in Hades.” — Simonides’ Epigram on Anacreon. I lately met with an old volume from a London bookshop, containing the Greek Minor Poets, and it was a pleasure to read once more only the words, Orpheus, Linus, Musaeus, — those faint poetic sounds and echoes of a name, dying away on the ears of us modern men; and those hardly more substantial sounds, Mimnermus, Ibycus, Alcaeus, Stesichorus, Menander. They lived not in vain. We can converse with these bodiless fames without reserve or personality. SIMONIDES OF CEOS ANACREON In Upper Mall, Hammersmith, the Reverend Dr. Theophilus Lane, rector of St. Michael’s, Crooked-lane, Cannon-street died in the 76th year of his age. After his father’s demise Edward William Lane would be sent to grammar school at Bath and then Hereford and would exhibit a talent for mathematics. He would visit Cambridge as more or lest a tourist, and then join his brother Richard in London to study to support himself through engraving. An interest in ancient Egypt would be perhaps aroused by visiting a presentation by Giovanni Battista Belzoni in about 1821 or so and, on his own, he would begin to study Arabic. When he would set sail for Egypt, this would be for the hot climate as a corrective for fragile health, as well as in the hope of a career. In March the American army under Wilkinson again entered Lower Canada, was defeated at Lacolle by Major Handcock, and retired to the States. General Brown crossed in July into Upper Canada, and captured Fort Erie. The Niagara frontier during the months of July and August was the scene of several engagements between the American troops under General Brown and the detachments under Generals Drummond and Riall, and success seemed rather to favour the American arms. Reinforcements were however added to the British army at the close of the latter month. Sir George Prevost in September, with an army of 11,000 men, entered the United States, attacked Plattsburgh, defended by 1500 regulars and some militia, on the 11th, and retreated with considerable loss on the 13th. At the same time the British flotilla on Lake Champlain was defeated by Commodore Macdonough. The conduct of Sir George Prevost was loudly censured and became one of the serious charges with which he stood accused. In November the Americans had evacuated every military post they possessed in Canada and when several of their forts and stations had been captured, the command of the Lakes secured, and large reinforcements added to the strength of the inhabitants, a treaty of peace between the two powers was signed at Ghent on the 24th December, 1814 — a termination inglorious to both nations, and particularly to Great Britain. HDT WHAT? INDEX 1814 1814 The 13th and final volume of Christian Friedrich Wilhelm Jacobs’s GREEK ANTHOLOGY (the initial volume had appeared in 1798; the thirteen volumes contained the text of the epigrams in Brunck’s ANALECTA with a learned commentary). He began to supplement this with a revised text from the CODEX PALATINUS as edited by Spaletti, Secretary of the Vatican Library (this would amount to an additional three volumes that he would complete in 1817).1 Mrs. Jane West’s ALICIA DE LACY: AN HISTORICAL ROMANCE (4 volumes). At Trinity College of Cambridge University, George Waddington was the medallist for epigrams. Fort Astoria having been sold to the North West Company, Gabriel Franchère, Fils had returned to Montréal overland. There he would be for a time employed again by John Jacob Astor. He would then live successively in Sault Ste. Marie, in St. Louis, and in New-York. The brothers Karl Theodor Christian Friedrich Follen and August Ludwig Follen enlisted in a unit of Hessian volunteers, to fight in the Napoleonic Wars. A few weeks later, however, Karl came down with typhoid fever. For a time it would be feared that this infection had destroyed his memory. Recovering, he returned to the University of Gießen, and took up the study of law. As a student, he would join the Gießen Burschenschaft and pledge to support republican ideals. Thomas Harwood was presented, on his own nomination, to the rectory of Stawley, Somerset. He would reside there for a couple of years. The Reverend Timothy Flint, dissatisfied with his income as a reverend, requested that the town and the church augment his negotiated salary (by this point, at least, he knew that his predecessor had been pulling down not $400 but $600) — but this was voted down at the Town Meeting. A student of the natural sciences, he conducted some chemical experiments that induced certain Lunenburg locals to gossip that their preacher must be counterfeiting coins. Unwisely, he took these types to court and obtained a judgment against their fable as a slander. Such unneighborliness, combined with political and religious disagreements with his Lunenburg parishioners (he was tending toward Unitarianism and was politically a Federalist whilst they were Democrats), would produce such ill feeling that he would be obliged to resign from the ministry of his Congregational Church (he would continue to preach, but as a supply minister in other pulpits). D. JUNII JUVENALIS ET A. PERSII FLACCI SATIRÆ. INTERPRETATIONE AC NOTIS ILLUSTRAVIT LUDOVICUS PRATEUS, RHETORICÆ PROFESSOR EMERITUS; JUSSU CHRISTIANISSIMI REGIS, IN USUM. SERENISSIMI DELPHINI. EDITIO PRIMA AMERICANA. (Philadelphiæ: Typis L.R. Bailey. Impensis M. Carey. M.DCCC.XIV.). Henry Thoreau would have a copy of this 1st American edition in his personal library. JUVENALIS ET PERSIUS Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert’s SYMBOLISM OF DREAMS, one of the famous books of its time, that would be perused by E.T.A. Hoffmann, and even by Dr. Sigmund Freud and Dr. Carl Gustav Jung. 1.Christian Friedrich Wilhelm Jacobs also published notes on Stobaeus, Euripides, Athenaeus and the ANTEHOMERICA, HOMERICA, and POSTHOMERICA of John Tzetzes, translations of Claudius Aelianus’s HISTORIA ANIMALUM (HISTORY OF ANIMALS), many of the Greek romances such as those of Philostratus of Lemnos, and poetical versions of much of the GREEK ANTHOLOGY. He undertook a translation of the PHILIPPICS and DE CORONA speeches of Demosthenes in order to rouse his nation in opposition to Napoleon, who in his eyes amounted to a 2d Philip of Macedon.