PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK
PEOPLE ALMOST MENTIONED IN A WEEK AND WALDEN:
WILLIAM HABINGTON
“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY
People of A Week and Walden: William Habington “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:WILLIAM HABINGTON PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
A WEEK: I remember a few sentences which spring like the sward in PEOPLE OF its native pasture, where its roots were never disturbed, and not A WEEK as if spread over a sandy embankment; answering to the poet’s prayer, “Let us set so just A rate on knowledge, that the world may trust The poet’s sentence, and not still aver Each art is to itself a flatterer.”
WILLIAM HABINGTON HDT WHAT? INDEX
PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:WILLIAM HABINGTON PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK
WALDEN: Yet we should oftener look over the tafferel of our craft, like curious PEOPLE OF passengers, and not make the voyage like stupid sailors picking oakum. The other side of the globe is but the home of our correspondent. Our voyaging is only WALDEN great-circle sailing, and the doctors prescribe for diseases of the skin merely. One hastens to Southern Africa to chase the giraffe; but surely that is not the game he would be after. How long, pray, would a man hunt giraffes if he could? Snipes and woodcocks also may afford rare sort; but I trust it would be nobler game to shoot one’s self.– “Direct your eye sight inward, and you’ll find A thousand regions in your mind Yet undiscovered. Travel them, and be Expert in home-cosmography.” What does Africa, –what does the West stand for? Is not our own interior white on the chart? black though it may prove, like the coast, when discovered. Is it the source of the Nile, or the Niger, or the Mississippi, or a North-West Passage around this continent, that we would find? Are these the problems which most concern mankind? Is Franklin the only man who is lost, that his wife should be so earnest to find him? Does Mr. Grinnell know where he himself is? Be rather the Mungo Park, the Lewis and Clarke and Frobisher, of your own streams and oceans; explore your own higher latitudes, –with shiploads of preserved meats to support you, if they be necessary; and pile the empty cans sky-high for a sign. Were preserved meats invented to preserve meat merely? Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought. Every man is the lord of a realm beside which the earthly empire of the Czar is but a petty state, a hummock left by the ice. Yet some can be patriotic who have no self-respect, and sacrifice the greater to the less. They love the soil which makes their graves, but have no sympathy with the spirit which may still animate their clay. Patriotism is a maggot in their heads. What was the meaning of that South-Sea Exploring Expedition, with all its parade and expense, but an indirect recognition of the fact, that there are continents and seas in the moral world, to which every man is an isthmus or an inlet, yet unexplored by him, but that it is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals, in a government ship, with five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one’s being alone.– “Erret, et extremos alter scrutetur Iberos. Plus habet hic vitæ, plus habet ille viæ.” Let them wander and scrutinize the outlandish Australians. I have more of God, they more of the road. It is not worth the while to go round the world to count the cats in Zanzibar. Yet do this even till you can do better, and you may perhaps find some “Symmes’ Hole” by which to get at the inside at last. England and France, Spain and Portugal, Gold Coast and Slave Coast, all front on this private sea; but no bark from them has ventured out of sight of land, though it is without doubt the direct way to India. If you would learn to speak all tongues and conform to the customs of all nations, if you would travel farther than all travellers, be naturalized in all climes, and cause the Sphinx to dash her head against a stone, even obey the precept of the old philosopher, and Explore thyself. Herein are demanded the eye and the nerve. Only the defeated and deserters go to the wars, cowards that run away and enlist. Start now on that farthest western way, which does not pause at the Mississippi or the Pacific, nor conduct toward a worn-out China or Japan, but leads on direct a tangent to this sphere, summer and winter, day and night, sun down, moon down, and at last earth down too.
LEWIS AND CLARK HENRY GRINNELL SYMMES HOLE HDT WHAT? INDEX
PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:WILLIAM HABINGTON PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1605
November 4, Friday: William Habington was born at Hindlip Hall, Worcestershire, in a well situated English family, publicly Protestant but actually Catholic. Sir Thomas Habington, his father, had been implicated in the plots
on behalf of Mary, Queen of Scots and had in consequence needed to spend six years at the Tower of London; an uncle, Sir Edward Habington, had in 1586 needed to be beheaded on account of a conspiracy against Queen Elizabeth I in connection with Sir Anthony Babington. HEADCHOPPING
Mary Habington, his mother, had it seems been the person who had while heavily pregnant with him just HDT WHAT? INDEX
PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:WILLIAM HABINGTON PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK
dictated an anonymous letter of warning (actually penned, it seems, by Mrs. Ann Vaux, perhaps in order to
disguise the handwriting) to her brother Lord Monteagle, which he had received by messenger on October 26, 1605, a few days before the Gunpowder Plotters were intending to detonate the 36 ninety-pound barrels of black powder they had secreted in the basements of the Parliament, in order to send their monarch King James I toward the heavens on November 5th while he was delivering his address to the Parliament.1
The lad William Habington would be educated at Paris and Saint-Omer. He would become a poet.
1. It seems that she had not intended to deter or expose the plot, but merely to safeguard her brother: Therefore, I would advise you as you value your life, to find some excuse not to attend this Parliament. For though there is no sign of any trouble, yet I say, they shall receive a terrible blow at this Parliament, yet they shall not see who hurts them. (Lord Monteagle however showed the letter to the chief minister to King James I, Robert Cecil, and this would lead to a search of the cellars beneath Westminster and the discovery there of the kegs of gunpowder, and Guy Fawkes.) HDT WHAT? INDEX
PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:WILLIAM HABINGTON PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN HDT WHAT? INDEX
PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:WILLIAM HABINGTON PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK
NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT
People of A Week and Walden: William Habington “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:WILLIAM HABINGTON PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1632
In about this year William Habington got married with Lucy Herbert, 2d daughter of Sir William Herbert, 1st Baron Powis.
LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD.
People of A Week and Walden: William Habington “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:WILLIAM HABINGTON PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK
1634
William Habington’s CASTARA: CARMINA NON PRIUS AUDITA: MUSARUM SACERDOS VIRGINIBUS (Printed by T. Cotes for Will. Cooke), an anonymous volume of lyrical poems addressed to his wife Lucy Herbert Habington.
Seldom has a mere spouse been so celebrated. Henry Thoreau would copy material into his Literary Notebook, and place it in A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS: TO MY [MOſT] HONOURED FRIEND AND KINſMAN, R. ST., EſQUIRE.
IT ſhall not grieve me (friend) though what I write Be held no wit at Court. If I delight So farre my ſullen Genius, as to raiſe It pleaſure; I have money, wine, and bayes Enough to crowne me Poet.... Vaine oſtentation ! Let us ſet ſo juſt A rate on knowledge, that the world may truſt The Poets Sentence, and not ſtill aver Each Art is to it ſelfe a flatterer. I write to you Sir on this theame, becauſe Your ſoule is cleare, and you obſerve the lawes, Of Poeſie ſo juſtly, that I chuſe Yours onely the example to my muſe. And till my browner haire be mixt with gray Without a bluſh, Ile tread the ſportive way, My Muſe direct ; A Poet youth may be, But age doth dote without Phiſoſophie [sic].
A WEEK: I remember a few sentences which spring like the sward in PEOPLE OF its native pasture, where its roots were never disturbed, and not A WEEK as if spread over a sandy embankment; answering to the poet’s prayer, “Let us set so just A rate on knowledge, that the world may trust The poet’s sentence, and not still aver Each art is to itself a flatterer.”
WILLIAM HABINGTON
WM. HABINGTON’S CASTARA
DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.
People of A Week and Walden: William Habington “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:WILLIAM HABINGTON PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1635
An expanded edition of William Habington’s CASTARA: CARMINA NON PRIUS AUDITA: MUSARUM SACERDOS VIRGINIBUS (Printed by T. Cotes for Will. Cooke), an anonymous volume of lyrical poems addressed to his wife Lucy Herbert Habington. WM. HABINGTON’S CASTARA
TO ROſES IN THE BOſOME OF CASTARA.
YE bluſhing Virgins happie are In the chaſte Nunn’ry of her brefts, For hee’d prophane ſo chaſte a faire, Who ere ſhould call them Cupids neſts. Tranſplanted thus how bright yee grow, How rich a perfume doe yee yeeld ? In ſome cloſe garden, Cowſlips ſo Are ſweeter then ith’ open field. In thoſe white Cloyſters live ſecure From the rude blaſts of wanton breath, Each houre more innocent and pure, Till you ſhall wither into death. Then that which living gave you roome, Your glorious ſepulcher ſhall be. There wants no marble for a tombe, Whoſe breſt hath marble beene to me.
THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
People of A Week and Walden: William Habington “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:WILLIAM HABINGTON PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK
1640
A 3d edition of William Habington’s CASTARA: CARMINA NON PRIUS AUDITA: MUSARUM SACERDOS VIRGINIBUS (London. Printed for Will. Cooke & are ſold at his ſhop at Furnivals-Inne Gate, in Holborne), an anonymous volume of lyrical poems addressed to his wife Lucy Herbert Habington, again expanded from what had previously been published.
WM. HABINGTON’S CASTARA
Also in this year, publication without the author’s consent of THE QUEEN OF ARRAGON: A TRAGI-COMEDIE.
Here is this author’s “Nox Nocti Indicat Scientiam. D A V I D,” which Henry Thoreau would copy into his Literary Notebook: HDT WHAT? INDEX
PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:WILLIAM HABINGTON PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
WHen I ſurvay the bright Cœleſtiall ſpheare : So rich with jewels hung, that night Doth like an Ethiop bride appeare. My ſoule her wings doth ſpread And heaven-ward flies, Th’ Almighty’s Myſteries to read In the large volumes of the skies. For the bright firmament Shootes forth no flame So ſilent, but is eloquent In ſpeaking the Creators name. No unregarded ſtar Contracts its light Into ſo ſmall a Charactar, Remov’d far from our humane ſight : But if we ſteadfaſt looke, We shall diſcerne In it as in ſome holy booke, How man may heavenly knowledge learne. It tells the Conqueror, That farre-ſtretcht powre Which his proud dangers traffique for, Is but the triumph of an houre. That from the fartheſt North ; Some Nation may Yet undiſcovered, iſſue forth, And ore his new got conqueſt ſway. Some nation yet ſhut in With hils of ice May be let out to ſcourge his ſinne ’Till they ſhall equall him in vice. And then they likewiſe ſhall Their ruine have, For as your ſelves your Empires fall, And every Kingdome hath a grave. Thuſ thoſe Cœleſtiall fires, Though ſeeming mute The fallacie of our deſires And all the pride of life confute. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:WILLIAM HABINGTON PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK
For they have watcht ſince firſt The World had birth : And found ſinne in it ſelfe accurſt, And nothing permanent on earth.
A WEEK: We are apt enough to be pleased with such books as Evelyn’s PEOPLE OF Sylva, Acetarium, and Kalendarium Hortense, but they imply a A WEEK relaxed nerve in the reader. Gardening is civil and social, but it wants the vigor and freedom of the forest and the outlaw. There may be an excess of cultivation as well as of anything else, until civilization becomes pathetic. A highly cultivated man, — all whose bones can be bent! whose heaven-born virtues are but good manners! The young pines springing up in the cornfields from year to year are to me a refreshing fact. We talk of civilizing the Indian, but that is not the name for his improvement. By the wary independence and aloofness of his dim forest life he preserves his intercourse with his native gods, and is admitted from time to time to a rare and peculiar society with Nature. He has glances of starry recognition to which our saloons are strangers. The steady illumination of his genius, dim only because distant, is like the faint but satisfying light of the stars compared with the dazzling but ineffectual and short-lived blaze of candles. The Society-Islanders had their day-born gods, but they were not supposed to be “of equal antiquity with the akua fauau po, or night-born gods.” It is true, there are the innocent pleasures of country life, and it is sometimes pleasant to make the earth yield her increase, and gather the fruits in their season, but the heroic spirit will not fail to dream of remoter retirements and more rugged paths. It will have its garden-plots and its parterres elsewhere than on the earth, and gather nuts and berries by the way for its subsistence, or orchard fruits with such heedlessness as berries. We would not always be soothing and taming nature, breaking the horse and the ox, but sometimes ride the horse wild and chase the buffalo. The Indian’s intercourse with Nature is at least such as admits of the greatest independence of each. If he is somewhat of a stranger in her midst, the gardener is too much of a familiar. There is something vulgar and foul in the latter’s closeness to his mistress, something noble and cleanly in the former’s distance. In civilization, as in a southern latitude, man degenerates at length, and yields to the incursion of more northern tribes, “Some nation yet shut in With hills of ice.”
REV. WILLIAM ELLIS HDT WHAT? INDEX
PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:WILLIAM HABINGTON PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
Also in this year, in collaboration with his father Sir Thomas Habington, THE HISTORIE OF EDVVARD THE FOVRTH, KING OF ENGLAND. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:WILLIAM HABINGTON PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK
THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
People of A Week and Walden: William Habington “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:WILLIAM HABINGTON PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1641
William Habington’s OBSERVATIONS VPON HISTORIE (Printed by T. Cotes for Will. Cooke, and are to be sold at his shop, neere Furnivalls-Inne gate in Holborne), created in collaboration with his father Sir Thomas Habington.
At a meeting in Maidstone, Kent, Richard Lovelace led a group of men who seized and destroyed a pro- Parliament, anti-Episcopacy petition which had been signed by 15,000 Englishmen, for the abolition of Episcopal rule.
The Long Parliament summoned Sir Kenelm Digby. Are you now or have you ever been a Roman Catholic?
Due to the onset of the English Civil War, in Broadwindsor the Reverend Thomas Fuller, his curate Henry Sanders, the churchwardens, and five others needed to certify that each and every adult male of their parish, 242 in total, had sworn the Protestation oath that had been ordered by the speaker of the Long Parliament. Although he would not be formally dispossessed of his living and prebend on the triumph of the Presbyterian party, at about this period he would relinquish both preferments. For a short time he would preach at the Inns of Court and then, at the invitation of Walter Balcanqual, the master of the Savoy, and the brotherhood of that foundation, he would become lecturer at their chapel of St Mary Savoy. Sometimes his hearers there would overflow the structure and stand in the chapel-yard looking in at the windows and doors. In one of his sermons he would set forth the hindrances to peace, and urge the signing of peace petitions directed both to King Charles I at Oxford, and to the Parliament.
NO-ONE’S LIFE IS EVER NOT DRIVEN PRIMARILY BY HAPPENSTANCE
People of A Week and Walden: William Habington “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:WILLIAM HABINGTON PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK
1654
November 30, Thursday (Old Style): William Habington died. His “To my honored friend Sir Ed. P. Knight,” which would eventually be included in Volume VI of Alexander Chalmers’s THE WORKS OF THE ENGLISH POETS and which, with modernization, Henry Thoreau would include in WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS as an exemplar of his strategy of personal correction: PERUSE VOLUME VI HDT WHAT? INDEX
PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:WILLIAM HABINGTON PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
WALDEN: Yet we should oftener look over the tafferel of our craft, like curious PEOPLE OF passengers, and not make the voyage like stupid sailors picking oakum. The other side of the globe is but the home of our correspondent. Our voyaging is only WALDEN great-circle sailing, and the doctors prescribe for diseases of the skin merely. One hastens to Southern Africa to chase the giraffe; but surely that is not the game he would be after. How long, pray, would a man hunt giraffes if he could? Snipes and woodcocks also may afford rare sort; but I trust it would be nobler game to shoot one’s self.– “Direct your eye sight inward, and you’ll find A thousand regions in your mind Yet undiscovered. Travel them, and be Expert in home-cosmography.” What does Africa, –what does the West stand for? Is not our own interior white on the chart? black though it may prove, like the coast, when discovered. Is it the source of the Nile, or the Niger, or the Mississippi, or a North-West Passage around this continent, that we would find? Are these the problems which most concern mankind? Is Franklin the only man who is lost, that his wife should be so earnest to find him? Does Mr. Grinnell know where he himself is? Be rather the Mungo Park, the Lewis and Clarke and Frobisher, of your own streams and oceans; explore your own higher latitudes, –with shiploads of preserved meats to support you, if they be necessary; and pile the empty cans sky-high for a sign. Were preserved meats invented to preserve meat merely? Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought. Every man is the lord of a realm beside which the earthly empire of the Czar is but a petty state, a hummock left by the ice. Yet some can be patriotic who have no self-respect, and sacrifice the greater to the less. They love the soil which makes their graves, but have no sympathy with the spirit which may still animate their clay. Patriotism is a maggot in their heads. What was the meaning of that South-Sea Exploring Expedition, with all its parade and expense, but an indirect recognition of the fact, that there are continents and seas in the moral world, to which every man is an isthmus or an inlet, yet unexplored by him, but that it is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals, in a government ship, with five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one’s being alone.– “Erret, et extremos alter scrutetur Iberos. Plus habet hic vitæ, plus habet ille viæ.” Let them wander and scrutinize the outlandish Australians. I have more of God, they more of the road. It is not worth the while to go round the world to count the cats in Zanzibar. Yet do this even till you can do better, and you may perhaps find some “Symmes’ Hole” by which to get at the inside at last. England and France, Spain and Portugal, Gold Coast and Slave Coast, all front on this private sea; but no bark from them has ventured out of sight of land, though it is without doubt the direct way to India. If you would learn to speak all tongues and conform to the customs of all nations, if you would travel farther than all travellers, be naturalized in all climes, and cause the Sphinx to dash her head against a stone, even obey the precept of the old philosopher, and Explore thyself. Herein are demanded the eye and the nerve. Only the defeated and deserters go to the wars, cowards that run away and enlist. Start now on that farthest western way, which does not pause at the Mississippi or the Pacific, nor conduct toward a worn-out China or Japan, but leads on direct a tangent to this sphere, summer and winter, day and night, sun down, moon down, and at last earth down too.
LEWIS AND CLARK HENRY GRINNELL SYMMES HOLE HDT WHAT? INDEX
PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:WILLIAM HABINGTON PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK
[next screen] To my honoured friend Sir Ed. P. Knight. You’d leave the silence in which safe we are, To listen to the noyse of warre; And walke those rugged paths, the factious tread, Who by the number of the dead Reckon their glories and thinke greatnesse stood Vnsafe, till it was built on blood. Secure ith’ wall our Seas and ships provide (Abhorring wars so barb’rous pride And honour bought with slaughter) in content Lets breath though humble, innocent. Folly and madnesse! Since ’tis ods we nere See the fresh youth of the next yeare, Perhaps not the chast morne, her selfe disclose Againe, t’out-blush th’ æmulous rose. Why doth ambition so the mind distresse To make us scorne what we possesse? And looke so farre before us? Since all we Can hope, is varied misery? Goe find some whispering shade neare Arne or Poe , And gently ’mong their violets throw Your wearyed limbs, and see if all those faire Enchantments can charme griefe or care? Our sorrowes still pursue us, and when you The ruin’d Capitoll shall view And statues, a disorder’d heape; you can Not cure yet the disease of man, And banish your owne thoughts. Goe travaile where Another Sun and Starres appeare, And land not toucht by any covetous fleet, And yet even there your selfe youle meet. Stay here then, and while curious exiles find New toyes for a fantastique mind; Enjoy at home what’s reall: here the Spring By her aeriall quires doth sing As sweetly to you as if you were laid Vnder the learn’d Thessalian shade, Direct your eye-sight inward, and you’le find A thousand regions in your mind Yet undiscover’d. Travell them, and be Expert in home Cosmographie. This you may doe safe both from rocke and shelfe: Man’s a whole world within himselfe. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:WILLIAM HABINGTON PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1810
Alexander Chalmers’s THE WORKS OF THE ENGLISH POETS, FROM CHAUCER TO COWPER; INCLUDING THE SERIES EDITED WITH PREFACES, BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL, BY DR.SAMUEL JOHNSON: AND THE MOST APPROVED TRANSLATIONS, a revised and expanded version of Dr. Johnson’s 1779-1781 LIVES OF THE POETS, began to come across the London presses of C. Wittingham. It would amount to 21 volumes and the printing would require until 1814 to be complete. According to the Preface, this massive thingie was “a work professing to be a Body of the Standard English Poets”2:
2. When the massive collection would come finally to be reviewed in July 1814, the reviewer would, on the basis of Chalmers’s selection of poems and poets, broadly denounce this editor as incompetent. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:WILLIAM HABINGTON PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK
PERUSE VOLUME I PERUSE VOLUME III PERUSE VOLUME IV PERUSE VOLUME V PERUSE VOLUME VI PERUSE VOLUME VII PERUSE VOLUME VIII PERUSE VOLUME IX PERUSE VOLUME X PERUSE VOLUME XI PERUSE VOLUME XII PERUSE VOLUME XIII PERUSE VOLUME XIV PERUSE VOLUME XV PERUSE VOLUME XVI PERUSE VOLUME XVII PERUSE VOLUME XVIII PERUSE VOLUME XIX PERUSE VOLUME XX PERUSE VOLUME XXI HDT WHAT? INDEX
PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:WILLIAM HABINGTON PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
WALDEN: Breed’s hut was standing only a dozen years ago, though it had long been unoccupied. It was about the size of mine. It was set on fire by mischievous boys, one Election night, if I do not mistake. I lived on the edge of the village then, and had just lost myself over Davenant’s Gondibert, that winter that I labored FIRE with a lethargy, –which, by the way, I never knew whether to regard as a family complaint, having an uncle who goes to sleep shaving himself, and is obliged to sprout potatoes in a cellar Sundays, in order to keep awake and keep the Sabbath, or as the PEOPLE OF consequence of my attempt to read Chalmers’ collection of English WALDEN poetry without skipping. It fairly overcame my Nervii. I had just sunk my head on this when the bells rung fire, and in hot haste the engines rolled that way, led by a straggling troop of men and boys, and I among the foremost, for I had leaped the brook. We thought it was far south over the woods, –we who had run to fires before,– barn, shop, or dwelling-house, or all together. “It’s Baker’s barn,” cried one. “It is the Codman Place,” affirmed another. And then fresh sparks went up above the wood, as if the roof fell in, and we all shouted “Concord to the rescue!” Wagons shot past with furious speed and crushing loads, bearing, perchance, among the rest, the agent of the Insurance Company, who was bound to go however far; and ever and anon the engine bell tinkled behind, more slow and sure, and rearmost of all, as it was afterward whispered, came they who set the fire and gave the alarm. Thus we kept on like true idealists, rejecting the evidence of our senses, until at a turn in the road we heard crackling and actually felt the heat of the fire from over the wall, and realized, alas! that we were there. The very nearness of the fire but cooled our ardor. At first we thought to throw a frog-pond on to it; but concluded to let it burn, it was so far gone and so worthless. So we stood round our engine, jostled one another, expressed our sentiments through speaking trumpets, or in lower tone referred to the great conflagrations which the world has witness, including Bascom’s shop, and, between ourselves we thought that, were we there in season with our “tub”, and a full frog-pond by, we could turn that threatened last and universal one into another flood. We finally retreated without doing any mischief, –returned to sleep and Gondibert. But as for Gondibert, I would except that passage in the preface about wit being the soul’s powder, –“but most of mankind are strangers to wit, as Indians are to powder.”
INSURANCE NARCOLEPSY ALEXANDER CHALMERS BASCOM & COLE HDT WHAT? INDEX
PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:WILLIAM HABINGTON PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK THE ENGLISH POETS: Joseph Addison, Akenside; Armstrong; Beattie; Francis Beaumont; Sir J. Beaumont; Blacklock; Blackmore; Robert Blair; Boyse; Brome; Brooke; Broome; Sir Thomas Browne; Charles Butler; George Gordon, Lord Byron; Cambridge; Thomas Carew; Cartwright; Cawthorne; Chatterton; Geoffrey Chaucer; Churchill; William Collins; William Congreve; Cooper; Corbett; Charles Cotton; Dr. Cotton; Abraham Cowley; William Cowper; Crashaw; Cunningham; Daniel; William Davenant; Davies; Sir John Denham; Dodsley; John Donne; Dorset; Michael Drayton; Sir William Drummond; John Dryden; Duke; Dyer; Falconer; Fawkes; Fenton; Giles Fletcher; John Fletcher; Garth; Gascoigne; Gay; Glover; Goldsmith; Gower; Grainger; Thomas Gray; Green; William Habington; Halifax; William Hall; Hammond; Harte; Hughes; Jago; Jenyns; Dr. Samuel Johnson; Jones; Ben Jonson; King; Langhorne; Lansdowne; Lloyd; Logan; Lovibond; Lyttelton; Mallett; Mason; William Julias Mickle; John Milton; Thomas Moore; Otway; Parnell; A. Phillips; J. Phillips; Pitt; Pomfret; Alexander Pope; Prior; Rochester; Roscommon; Rowe; Savage; Sir Walter Scott; William Shakespeare; Sheffield; Shenstone; Sherburne; Skelton; Smart; Smith; Somerville; Edmund Spenser; Sprat; Stepney; Stirling; Suckling; Surrey; Jonathan Swift; James Thomson; W. Thomson; Tickell; Turberville; Waller; Walsh; Warner; J. Warton; T. Warton; Watts; West; P. Whitehead; W. Whitehead; Wilkie; Wyatt; Yalden; Arthur Young. TRANSLATIONS: Alexander Pope’s Iliad & Odyssey; John Dryden’s Virgil & Juvenal; Pitt’s Aeneid & Vida; Francis’ Horace; Rowe’s Lucan; Grainger’s Albius Tibullus; Fawkes’ Theocritus, Apollonius Rhodius, Coluthus, Anacreon, Sappho, Bion and Moschus, Museus; Garth’s Ovid; Lewis’ Statius; Cooke’s Hesiod; Hoole’s Ariosto & Tasso; William Julias Mickle’s Lusiad. COMMENTARY: William Julias Mickle’s “Inquiry into the Religion Tenets and Philosophy of the Bramins,” which Thoreau encountered in 1841 in Volume 21 (pages 713-33).
CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT
People of A Week and Walden: William Habington “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:WILLIAM HABINGTON PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1844
January 17, Wednesday: Waldo Emerson checked out from Harvard Library, for Henry Thoreau, the 6th volume of 3 Alexander Chalmers’s 1810 anthology, THE WORKS OF THE ENGLISH POETS, FROM CHAUCER TO COWPER, the volume that contains William Browne’s “Britannia’s Pastorals” (1613) and “The Shepherd’s Pipe” (1614), Francis Beaumont’s THE HONEST MAN’S FORTUNE, Richard Crashaw’s “Sospetto d’Herode,” Charles Cotton’s “The World,” “The Morning Quatrains,” “Evening Quatrains,” “The Tempest,” “On the Death of the Most Noble Thomas Earl of Ossory,” and “Contentment,” the poetry of Sir John Beaumont, Sir William Davenant’s preface to “Gondibert,” the poetry of Giles Fletcher and Phineas Fletcher, William Habington’s “To Roses in the Bosome of Castara,” and Sir John Birkenhead’s “On the Happy Collection of Mr. FLETCHER’S Works, never before printed.” PERUSE VOLUME VI JOHN BIRKENHEAD WILLIAM BROWNE CHARLES COTTON RICHARD CRASHAW WILLIAM DAVENANT GILES FLETCHER PHINEAS FLETCHER WILLIAM HABINGTON Thoreau would make notes on this reading in his Literary Notebook and Miscellaneous Extracts.4
3. THE WORKS OF THE ENGLISH POETS, FROM CHAUCER TO COWPER; INCLUDING THE SERIES EDITED WITH PREFACES, BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL, BY DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON: AND THE MOST APPROVED TRANSLATIONS. THE ADDITIONAL LIVES BY ALEXANDER CHALMERS IN TWENTY-ONE VOLUMES. London, 1810.
4. See page 320 of the William Browne text. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:WILLIAM HABINGTON PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK
WALDEN: Breed’s hut was standing only a dozen years ago, though PEOPLE OF it had long been unoccupied. It was about the size of mine. It WALDEN was set on fire by mischievous boys, one Election night, if I do not mistake. I lived on the edge of the village then, and had just lost myself over Davenant’s Gondibert, that winter that I labored with a lethargy, –which, by the way, I never knew whether to regard as a family complaint, having an uncle who goes to sleep shaving himself, and is obliged to sprout potatoes in a cellar Sundays, in order to keep awake and keep the Sabbath, or as the consequence of my attempt to read Chalmers’ collection of English poetry without skipping. It fairly overcame my Nervii. I had just sunk my head on this when the bells rung fire, and in hot haste the engines rolled that way, led by a straggling troop of men and boys, and I among the foremost, for I had leaped the brook. We thought it was far south over the woods, –we who had run to fires before,– barn, shop, or dwelling-house, or all together. “It’s Baker’s barn,” cried one. “It is the Codman Place,” affirmed another. And then fresh sparks went up above the wood, as if the roof fell in, and we all shouted “Concord to the rescue!” Wagons shot past with furious speed and crushing loads, bearing, perchance, among the rest, the agent of the Insurance Company, who was bound to go however far; and ever and anon the engine bell tinkled behind, more slow and sure, and rearmost of all, as it was afterward whispered, came they who set the fire and gave the alarm. Thus we kept on like true idealists, rejecting the evidence of our senses, until at a turn in the road we heard crackling and actually felt the heat of the fire from over the wall, and realized, alas! that we were there. The very nearness of the fire but cooled our ardor. At first we thought to throw a frog-pond on to it; but concluded to let it burn, it was so far gone and so worthless. So we stood round our engine, jostled one another, expressed our sentiments through speaking trumpets, or in lower tone referred to the great conflagrations which the world has witness, including Bascom’s shop, and, between ourselves we thought that, were we there in season with our “tub”, and a full frog-pond by, we could turn that threatened last and universal one into another flood. We finally retreated without doing any mischief, –returned to sleep and Gondibert. But as for Gondibert, I would except that passage in the preface about wit being the soul’s powder, –“but most of mankind are strangers to wit, as Indians are to powder.”
DAVENANT HDT WHAT? INDEX
PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:WILLIAM HABINGTON PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
A WEEK: PEOPLE OF Gazed on the Heavens for what he missed on Earth. A WEEK — Britania’s Pastorals.
WILLIAM BROWNE
A WEEK: PEOPLE OF Man is man’s foe and destiny. A WEEK — COTTON.
CHARLES COTTON The World. ODE. I Fy! What a wretched World is this? Nothing but anguish, griefs, and fears, Where, who does best, must do amiss, Frailty the Ruling Power bears In this our dismal Vale of Tears. II Oh! who would live, that could but dye, Dye honestly, and as he shou’d, Since to contend with misery Will do the wisest Man no good, Misfortune will not be withstood. III The most that helpless man can do Towards the bett’ring his Estate Is but to barter woe for woe, And he ev’n there attempts too late, So absolute a Prince is Fate. IV But why do I of Fate complain; Man might live happy, if not free, And Fortunes shocks with ease sustain, If Man would let him happy be: Man is Man’s Foe, and Destiny. V And that Rib Woman, though she be But such a little little part; Is yet a greater Fate than he, HDT WHAT? INDEX
PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:WILLIAM HABINGTON PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK
And has the Power, or the Art To break his Peace; nay break his Heart. VI Ah, glorious Flower, lovely piece Of superfine refined Clay, Thou poyson’st only with a Kiss, And dartest an auspicious Ray On him thou meanest to betray. VII These are the World, and these are they That Life does so unpleasant make, Whom to avoid there is no way But the wild Desart straight to take, And there to husband the last stake. VIII Fly to the empty Desarts then, For so you leave the World behind, There’s no World where there are no Men, And Brutes more civil are, and kind, Than Man whose Reason Passions blind. IX For should you take an Hermitage, Tho’ you might scape from other wrongs, Yet even there you bear the rage Of venemous, and slanderous tongues, Which to the Innocent belongs. X Grant me then, Heav’n, a wilderness, And there an endless Solitude, Where though Wolves howl, and Serpents hiss, Though dang’rous, ’tis not half so rude As the ungovern’d Multitude. XI And Solitude in a dark Cave, Where all things husht, and silent be, Resembleth so the quiet Grave, That there I would prepare to flee, With Death, that hourly waits for me.
“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING: HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY
People of A Week and Walden: William Habington “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:WILLIAM HABINGTON PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2015. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at
“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST
Prepared: February 1, 2015 HDT WHAT? INDEX
PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:WILLIAM HABINGTON PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT
GENERATION HOTLINE
This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a request for information we merely push a button. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PEOPLE OF A WEEK AND WALDEN:WILLIAM HABINGTON PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.
First come first serve. There is no charge. Place requests with