Edward Gibbon

SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE

EDWARD GIBBON

DISAMBIGUATION: There was also, in colonial Boston, a Major General Edward Gibbons (with an “s”).

“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY HDT WHAT? INDEX

EDWARD GIBBON SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE

1737

May 8, Sunday (Old Style): Edward Gibbon was born.

NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT

Edward Gibbon “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE EDWARD GIBBON

1776

Edward Gibbon’s THE HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

NATURE: “The winds and waves,” said Gibbon, “are always on the side of the ablest navigators.”

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.

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Edward Gibbon HDT WHAT? INDEX

EDWARD GIBBON SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE

1780

William Hayley’s ESSAY ON HISTORY, in three epistles, addressed to Edward Gibbon.

THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Edward Gibbon HDT WHAT? INDEX

SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE EDWARD GIBBON

1792

May 30, Wednesday: At the meeting of his Association, which was held at Nottingham, the Reverend William Carey preached on ISAIAH 54: 2,3, announcing the two memorable divisions of his disclosure: “Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God.”

Edward Gibbon wrote to Member of Parliament John Baker Holroyd, 1st Earl of Sheffield expressing his opinion about the recent vote against slavery (Sheffield had been in favor of black slavery as necessary for the continuance of Britain’s supply of sugar), expressed a hope that humanity was the only motive — he was fearful of these new wild ideas about the rights and natural equality of man. In the slave question you triumphed last session, in this you have been defeated. What is the cause of this alteration? If it proceeded only from an impulse of humanity, I cannot be displeased, even with an error: since it is very likely that my own vote (had I possessed one) would have been added to the majority. But in this rage against slavery, in the numerous petitions against the slave trade, was there no leaven of new democratical principles? no wild ideas of the rights and natural equality of man? It is these I fear.

WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF

Edward Gibbon “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

EDWARD GIBBON SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE

1794

January 16, Thursday, Edward Gibbon died in London. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE EDWARD GIBBON

1796

Henry Thoreau’s copy of THE LIFE OF DR. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. WRITTEN BY HIMSELF had been printed in this year at Salem for Cushing and Carlton, at the Bible and Heart:

This edition’s preface includes a letter by Richard Price. It also includes, as pages 82-126, a continuation about Franklin’s life composed by Henry Steuber, and as pages 127-132, “Extracts from the last will and testament of Dr. Franklin.” DR. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

It is very significantly different from every “Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin” book you have ever perused! –To grasp what Thoreau knew, and what Thoreau did not know, of the life of Franklin, one must consult this book that he had on his bookshelf in his garret in Concord. HDT WHAT? INDEX

EDWARD GIBBON SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE

Edward Gibbon’s autobiography, MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE:

I see that you are turning a broad furrow among the books, but I trust that some very private journal all the while holds its own through their midst. Books can only reveal us to ourselves, and as often as they do us this service we lay them aside. I should say read Goethe’s Autobiography by all means, also Gibbon’s Haydon the Painter’s– & our Franklin’s of course; perhaps also Alfieris, Benvenuto Cellini’s, & De Quincey’s Confessions of an Opium Eater – since you like Autobiography. I think you must read Coleridge again & further – skipping all his theology – i.e. if you value precise definitions & a discriminating use of language. By the way, read De Quincey’s reminiscences of Coleridge & Wordsworth.

THOMAS DE QUINCEY VITTORIO ALFIERI BENVENUTO CELLINI BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Edward Gibbon HDT WHAT? INDEX

SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE EDWARD GIBBON

1812

Prussia agreed to allow French troops free passage in case of war with Russia. In June, Napoléon Bonaparte invaded Russia with a “Grand Armée of Twenty Nations” of 550,000, then returned in defeat in the winter with no more than 100,000 escaping Russia and only some 20,000 managing eventually to return to their homes in France.1

François Pierre Guillaume Guizot translated Edward Gibbon’s THE HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE, with additional notes. Louis-Marcelin de Fontanes, grand-master of the university of France, selected him to take the chair of modern history at the Sorbonne. He got married with Mme. Pauline de Meulan.

1. Although it has been conventional to ascribe his defeat to an unexpectedly severe Russian winter, actually that winter was unexpectedly mild one. Some of the French fell of heat prostration and sunstroke during a persistent summer heat wave, some drowned during an attempt to ford a thawed river, and then many were carried away by a lice-borne infection. HDT WHAT? INDEX

EDWARD GIBBON SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE

1818

While still an undergraduate at Exeter College of Oxford University, Alexander Dyce edited John William Jarvis’s attempt at a dictionary of the language of William Shakespeare.

(Lieutenant-General Alexander Dyce of the East India Company’s Madras infantry’s plan was for his son likewise to enter the service of the East India Company — but the college student would soon elect instead to take holy orders.)

We would derive our term “bowdlerize” from Thomas Bowdler’s activities in this year, expurgating a ten- volume edition of William Shakespeare’s plays entitled FAMILY SHAKESPEARE, “in which nothing is added to the original text; but those words and expressions are omitted which cannot with propriety be read aloud in a family.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE EDWARD GIBBON

In the next six years this edition would go through four printings and, emboldened with his success, the expurgator would turn to producing a similarly needed six-volume reduction of Edward Gibbon’s 12- volume THE HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT

Edward Gibbon “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

EDWARD GIBBON SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE

1819

Abba Francis reminisced in later life that “I did not love to study, but books were always attractive. In 1819 I went to pass a year with Miss [Abba] Allyn of Duxbury (daughter of Rev. John Allyn, the parish minister), who assisted me in reviewing my studies; and with her I studied French, Latin, botany, read history extensively, and made notes on many books, such as Hume, Gibbon, Hallam’s Middle Ages, Robertson’s Charles V, etc.”

DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.

Edward Gibbon “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE EDWARD GIBBON

1833

August 28, Wednesday: Waldo Emerson had met, while in Rome, the Gustave d’Eichthal who had sent Saint- Simonian materials to Thomas Carlyle, and this scion of a Jewish banking family had given to the American tourist a letter of introduction to the sympathetic Scottish author. On this August day, therefore, Emerson showed up on the doorstep of the farmhouse at Craigenputtock — this is how Emerson would describe, later, how the visit had gone down, in his ENGLISH TRAITS: From Edinburgh I went to the Highlands. On my return, I came from Glasgow to Dumfries, and being intent on delivering a letter which I had brought from Rome, inquired for Craigenputtock. It was a farm in Nithsdale, in the parish of Dunscore, sixteen miles distant. No public coach passed near it, so I took a private carriage from the inn. I found the house amid desolate heathery hills, where the lonely scholar nourished his mighty heart. Carlyle was a man from his youth, an author who did not need to hide from his readers, and as absolute a man of the world, unknown and exiled on that hill-farm, as if holding on his own terms what is best in London. He was tall and gaunt, with a cliff-like brow, self-possessed, and holding his extraordinary powers of conversation in easy command; clinging to his northern accent with evident relish; full of lively anecdote, and with a streaming humor, which floated every thing he looked upon. His talk playfully exalting the familiar objects, put the companion at once into an acquaintance with his Lars and Lemurs, and it was very pleasant to learn what was predestined to be a pretty mythology. Few were the objects and lonely the man, “not a person to speak to within sixteen miles except the minister of Dunscore;” so that books inevitably made his topics. [continued on following screen] HDT WHAT? INDEX

EDWARD GIBBON SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE

He had names of his own for all the matters familiar to his discourse. “Blackwood’s” was the “sand magazine;” “Fraser’s” nearer approach to possibility of life was the “mud magazine;” a piece of road near by that marked some failed enterprise was the “grave of the last sixpence.” When too much praise of any genius annoyed him, he professed hugely to admire the talent shown by his pig. He had spent much time and contrivance in confining the poor beast to one enclosure in his pen, but pig, by great strokes of judgment, had found out how to let a board down, and had foiled him. For all that, he still thought man the most plastic little fellow in the planet, and he liked Nero’s death, “Qualis artifex pereo!” better than most history. He worships a man that will manifest any truth to him. At one time he had inquired and read a good deal about America. Landor’s principle was mere rebellion, and that he feared was the American principle. The best thing he knew of that country was, that in it a man can have meat for his labor. He had read in Stewart’s book, that when he inquired in a New York hotel for the Boots, he had been shown across the street and had found Mungo in his own house dining on roast turkey. We talked of books. Plato he does not read, and he disparaged Socrates; and, when pressed, persisted in making Mirabeau a hero. Gibbon he called the splendid bridge from the old world to the new. His own reading had been multifarious. Tristram Shandy was one of his first books after ROBINSON CRUSOE, and Robertson’s America an early favorite. Rousseau’s CONFESSIONS had discovered to him that he was not a dunce; and it was now ten years since he had learned German, by the advice of a man who told him he would find in that language what he wanted. He took despairing or satirical views of literature at this moment; recounted the incredible sums paid in one year by the great booksellers for puffing. Hence it comes that no newspaper is trusted now, no books are bought, and the booksellers are on the eve of bankruptcy. He still returned to English pauperism, the crowded country, the selfish abdication by public men of all that public persons should perform. “Government should direct poor men what to do. Poor Irish folk come wandering over these moors. My dame makes it a rule to give to every son of Adam bread to eat, and supplies his wants to the next house. But here are thousands of acres which might give them all meat, and nobody to bid these poor Irish go to the moor and till it. They burned the stacks, and so found a way to force the rich people to attend to them.” We went out to walk over long hills, and looked at Criffel, then without his cap, and down into Wordsworth’s country. There we sat down, and talked of the immortality of the soul. It was not Carlyle’s fault that we talked on that topic, for he had the natural disinclination of every nimble spirit to bruise itself against walls, and did not like to place himself where no step can be taken. But he was honest and true, and cognizant of the subtile links that bind ages together, and saw how every event affects all the future. “Christ died on the tree: that built Dunscore kirk yonder: that brought you and me together. Time has only a relative existence.” He was already turning his eyes towards London with a scholar’s appreciation. London is the heart of the world, he said, wonderful only from the mass of human beings. He liked the huge machine. Each keeps its own round. The baker’s boy brings muffins to the window at a fixed hour every day, and that is all the Londoner knows or wishes to know on the subject. But it turned out good men. He named certain individuals, especially one man of letters, his friend, the best mind he knew, whom London had well served. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE EDWARD GIBBON

1821

Since Waldo Emerson began reading Alexander von Humboldt, and referring to him in his JOURNAL, at this point, it seems likely that he had been told of this explorer and author by his professor Edward Everett while at Harvard College.

Emerson would come to own many of Humboldt’s books and it is likely that it was in these volumes that Henry Thoreau first encountered the explorer (he would by 1853 have studied Humboldt’s major works).

Publication, in this year, by the firm of W. Allason etc., in London, of a new edition of the dozen volumes of Edward Gibbon’s THE HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE (this is the edition that HDT WHAT? INDEX

EDWARD GIBBON SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE

would find its way into the personal library of Emerson). GIBBON, DECLINE & FALL I GIBBON, DECLINE & FALL II GIBBON, DECLINE & FALL III GIBBON, DECLINE & FALL IV GIBBON, DECLINE & FALL V GIBBON, DECLINE & FALL VI GIBBON, DECLINE & FALL VII GIBBON, DECLINE & FALL VIII GIBBON, DECLINE & FALL IX GIBBON, DECLINE & FALL X GIBBON, DECLINE & FALL XI GIBBON, DECLINE & FALL XII At the end of the journal entries for 1820 and 1821, Emerson listed his recent readings in Oriental materials: “Cudworth (containing many quotations from the Neo-Platonists); Zendavesta (apud Gibbon).”

http://www.sacred-texts.com/zor/ ZOROASTER HDT WHAT? INDEX

SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE EDWARD GIBBON

As he completed his senior year, Waldo wrote a Bowdoin Prize essay “The Present State of Ethical Philosophy.” From this year into 1825, having acquired the status of college graduate, he would be teaching school. HDT WHAT? INDEX

EDWARD GIBBON SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE

1834

December 10, Wednesday: Joseph Emerson Worcester replied moderately and specifically and factually to the accusations that he had been plagiarizing the work of Noah Webster.

Sir Robert Peel, 2d Baronet, took over as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, who had for three weeks been acting for him (because at the time of the dismissal of Lord Melbourne in November, he had been in Italy).

William Gladstone would be appointed Junior Lord of the Treasury in Peel’s 1st ministry.

Alexander Chalmers died in London after having produced, in addition to the materials already cited, editions of the works of the Scottish poet and philosopher James Beattie, the novels of Henry Fielding, and the historical treatises of Edward Gibbon. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE EDWARD GIBBON

1836

After December 8, Thursday: David Henry Thoreau supplemented his borrowings from the Harvard Library by checking out, at various times before March 13th, from the library of the “Institute of 1770”, both volumes of John Hoole’s translations of Torquato Tasso (1544-1595)’s LA GIERVSALEMME LIBERATA DI TORQVATO TASSO. CON LE FIGURE DI BERNARDO CASTELLO, E LE ANNOTATIONI DI SCIPIO GENTILI, E DI GIULIO GVASTAVINI (Genova: G. Bartoli, 1590) and GOFFREDO, OVERO GIERUSALEMME LIBERATA, POEMA HEROICO DEL S. TORQUATO TASSO, NEL QUALE SONO STATE AGGIUNTE MOLTE STANZE LEUATE, CON LE VARIE LETTIONI; & POSTIUI GLI ARGOMENTI, & ALLEGORIE A CIASCUN CANTO D’INCERTO AUTTORE. CON L’AGGIUNTA DE’ CINQUE CANTI DEL SIG. CAMILLO CAMILLI, & I LORO ARGOMENTI, DEL SIG. FRANCESO MELCHIORI OPITERGINO (Vinegia: heirs of Francesco de’Franceschi, 1600), published as JERUSALEM DELIVERED (London, 1764, 1783, 1797; Exeter, HDT WHAT? INDEX

EDWARD GIBBON SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE

New Hampshire: 1810),

and then the 3d, 4th, and 5th of the five volumes of Professor Adam Ferguson’s THE HISTORY OF THE HDT WHAT? INDEX

SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE EDWARD GIBBON

PROGRESS AND TERMINATION OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC (1773, new edition, Edinburgh, 1813).

THE ROMAN REPUBLIC, III THE ROMAN REPUBLIC, IV THE ROMAN REPUBLIC, V Also, Thoreau would check out, from the library of his club “Institute of 1770”, Volume 35 of the North American Review containing: • Mrs. William Minot’s “Cousin’s Philosophy,” reviewing among other works by Professor Victor Cousin the Henning Gottfried Linberg translation of his INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY (Boston, 1832) • a review of Ebenezer Henderson’s ICELAND (ITS NATURAL PHENOMENA, MANNERS AND CUSTOMS) • William H. Prescott’s article on “English Literature of the Nineteenth Century” • a review of the great Romantic poets • William B.O. Peabody’s article on the “Habits of Insects” • “History of the Italian Language and Dialects” • a review of D.J. Browne’s SYLVA AMERICANA, entitled “American Forest Trees” • a review of Sir James Macintosh’s GENERAL VIEW OF THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY

At some point before March 13th Thoreau checked out Volume 41 of the North American Review containing:

•“THE AMERICAN ALMANAC,” in regard to the philosophy of time, and the recording of time • “Machiavelli” • a review of Mrs. Lydia Maria Child’s APPEAL IN FAVOR OF THAT CLASS OF AMERICANS CALLED AFRICANS, entitled “Slavery” • “Audubon’s Biography of Birds,” about John James Audubon’s ORNITHOLOGICAL BIOGRAPHY, OR AN ACCOUNT OF THE HABITS OF THE BIRDS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, ACCOMPANIED BY DESCRIPTIONS OF THE OBJECTS REPRESENTED IN THE WORK ENTITLED THE BIRDS OF AMERICA, AND INTERSPERSED WITH DELINEATIONS OF AMERICAN SCENERY AND MANNERS (Edinburgh: Adam Black, Vol. I - 1831, Vol. II - 1835, Vol. III - 1835...) • “Webster’s Speeches” • Professor Georg Heinrich Bode’s “Classic Mythology” HDT WHAT? INDEX

EDWARD GIBBON SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE

• a review of William Swainson’s PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE ON THE STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY (London: Longman, 1834), entitled “Study of Natural History” • a review of Thomas Carlyle’s SARTOR RESARTUS: THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF HERR TEUFELSDRÖKH

At some point before March 13th Thoreau checked out Issue 120 of the Edinburgh Review made up of an article on the new book by Professor Victor Cousin in relation to the Sutras, the Vedas, the researches of Colebrooke, mysticism, Socrates, Plato, and Kant, entitled “Cousin on the History of Philosophy” At some point before March 13th Thoreau checked out the first two of the five volumes of Maximilien de Bethune, duc de Sully (1560-1641)’s MEMOIRS (Edinburgh, 1770, 1773), Jeremiah N. Reynolds’s VOYAGE OF THE UNITED STATES FRIGATE POTOMAC ... DURING THE CIRCUMNAVIGATION OF THE GLOBE, IN THE YEARS 1831, 1832, 1833 AND 1834 (New-York, 1834-1835), the 1st volume of Edward Gibbon’s THE HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE (London 1807, 1820, 1821), GIBBON, DECLINE & FALL I

the first two of the volumes of Sully’s MEMOIRS (again), George Combe’s LECTURES ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY (Boston: Marsh, Capen, & Lyon; New-York: D. Appleton & Co., 1836), GEORGE COMBE LECTURES

the 1st of the three volumes of Bishop Thomas Percy (1729-1811)’s RELIQUES OF ANCIENT ENGLISH POETRY (compiled 1765, reprinted Philadelphia, 1823),

http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/percyleg.htm

William Hazlitt’s LECTURES ON ENGLISH POETS (Philadelphia, 1818; London, 1819), and the 1st volume (again) of Edward Gibbon’s THE HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE (London 1807, 1820, 1821).

GIBBON, DECLINE & FALL I HDT WHAT? INDEX

SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE EDWARD GIBBON

1837

MISCELLANEOUS WORKS OF EDWARD GIBBON, ESQ.

WITH MEMOIRS OF HIS LIFE AND WRITINGS, COMPOSED BY HIMSELF: ILLUSTRATED FROM HIS LETTERS, WITH OCCASIONAL NOTES AND NARRATIVE, BY JOHN, LORD SHEFFIELD (London: B. Blake, 1837). This volume would be in the library of Waldo Emerson and Henry Thoreau would peruse it and find himself somewhat distressed by the life that was being revealed, during the winter of 1840. GIBBON’S LIFE AND WORKS

March 13, Monday: Having previously checked out, from Harvard Library, the 3d volume of Alexander 2 Chalmers’s 1810 anthology, THE WORKS OF THE ENGLISH POETS, FROM CHAUCER TO COWPER, David Henry Thoreau on this date checked out the 1st volume. PERUSE VOLUME I

2. 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. HDT WHAT? INDEX

EDWARD GIBBON SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE HDT WHAT? INDEX

SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE EDWARD GIBBON

During this month he would be studied Geoffrey Chaucer.

WALDEN: I do not propose to write an ode to dejection, but to brag PEOPLE OF as lustily as chanticleer in the morning, standing on his roost, WALDEN if only to wake my neighbors up.

GEOFFREY CHAUCER

CHANTICLEER

Thoreau supplemented his borrowings from the college library by checking out, from the library of the “Institute of 1770,” the 1st volume (again) of Edward Gibbon’s THE HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE (London 1807, 1820, 1821), GIBBON, DECLINE & FALL I

Henry Theodore Tuckerman’s ITALIAN SKETCH BOOK (1st edition, Philadelphia, 1835, anonymous; 2d edition, enlarged, Boston, 1837), and Bishop Thomas Percy (1729-1811)’s RELIQUES OF ANCIENT ENGLISH POETRY (compiled 1765, reprinted Philadelphia, 1823; presumably this time it was the 2d of the three volumes that was being checked out).

http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/percyboy.htm HDT WHAT? INDEX

EDWARD GIBBON SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE

April 3, Monday: David Henry Thoreau passed the final exams in German and in Italian at Harvard College (he took the Italian exam along with 13 other students who also had been brought forward by Pietro Bachi).

After this slam-dunk he checked out Waldo Emerson’s NATURE from the library of his debating club, HDT WHAT? INDEX

SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE EDWARD GIBBON

“Institute of 1770” (soon he would purchase a copy for himself).

Thoreau supplemented his borrowings by at the same time checking out from his club’s library the 1st and 2d of the dozen volumes of Edward Gibbon’s THE HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE (London 1807, 1820, 1821),3 GIBBON, DECLINE & FALL I GIBBON, DECLINE & FALL II

and the 1st of the three volumes of Thomas Carlyle’s translation of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s novel WILHELM MEISTER’S APPRENTICESHIP (Edinburgh, 1824) (Thoreau would have in his personal library the edition that had been printed in Boston by Wells and Lilly in 1828). WILHELM MEISTER I WILHELM MEISTER II WILHELM MEISTER III

John Burroughs was born near Roxbury, New York.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 2nd day 3rd of 4 M / This day, I believe this day, I have paid all my debts of a pecuniary nature, which I owe on my own account - it is a comfortable thing to feel clear of the World & I believe I am truly thankful therefor — My God has been very good to me all my life long

3. We have reason to believe that this was as far as Thoreau got into the famous or infamous “Decline & Fall,” before becoming so distressed with Gibbon that he would switch over entirely to other historical sources having to do with the Roman Empire, and this of course brings to mind the Duke of Gloucester’s remark to Edward Gibbon, upon being presented in 1787 with this 2d volume: “Another damned thick square book! Always scribble scribble scribble — eh, Mr. Gibbon?” HDT WHAT? INDEX

EDWARD GIBBON SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE

1838

The Reverend Professor Henry Hart Milman edited Edward Gibbon’s DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. Also in this year, A SELECTION OF PSALMS AND HYMNS, ADAPTED TO THE USE OF THE CHURCH OF ST. MARGARET, WESTMINSTER, BY H.H. MILMAN. By Henry Hart Milman, Westminster St. Margaret (London: J.B. Nichols and Son). HDT WHAT? INDEX

SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE EDWARD GIBBON

While the rather humorlessly self-righteous James Russell Lowell was rusticating in Concord, Massachusetts during this year, having been temporarily expelled from Harvard College for some infraction of college regulations, he was being tutored by the utterly humorlessly self-righteous Reverend Barzillai Frost. They

must have made quite a pair! In this year Lowell would graduate from Harvard as Class Poet despite being quite unable to attend his Class Day and deliver the poem which he had composed for the occasion because he was being ostracized in Concord, so the poem would be published in Cambridge by Metcalf, Torry & HDT WHAT? INDEX

EDWARD GIBBON SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE

Ballou.

One of the poetaster’s biographers would speak of this poem as “immortalizing, to Lowell’s later regret, his reactionary tendencies and sophomoric opposition to the new thoughts and reforms then coming into fashion [such as] Transcendentalism, abolition, woman’s rights, and temperance … Typical of the poem’s style … are these lines directed against Ralph Waldo Emerson, who had just delivered his famous address before the Divinity College students in Cambridge … [lines the level of which] never rises above that of diatribe: they are abusive in their denunciation, unmemorable in phrasing, and humorlessly self-righteous”: They call such doctrines startling, strange, and new, But then they’re his, you know, and must be true; The universal mind requires a change, Its insect wings must have a wider range, It wants no mediator — it can face In its own littleness the Throne of Grace; WALDO EMERSON For miracles and “such things” ’t is too late, To trust in them is now quite out of date, They’re all explainable by nature’s laws— Ay! if you only could find out their CAUSE!… Alas! that Christian ministers should dare To preach the views of Gibbon and Vol tair e ! HDT WHAT? INDEX

SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE EDWARD GIBBON

1839

Publication in 3 volumes of the poetical works of the Reverend Professor Henry Hart Milman. Publication of his LIFE OF GIBBON. He became dean of St Paul’s. HDT WHAT? INDEX

EDWARD GIBBON SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE

1840

October 7, Wednesday: Waldo Emerson wrote Margaret Fuller that he had been consulting Simon Ockley’s HISTORY OF THE SARACENS, “which I read hastily many years ago, the book which Gibbon praises so heartily.”

November 9, Election Day: “The Dutchman,” President Martin Van Buren, received few votes. Richard Gourgas would soon be dismissed from his job as postmaster of Concord, a spoils-system job, and replaced by the Whig who was running the local bookstore, John Stacy.

Monday Nov. 9th 1840. Events have no abstract and absolute importance, but only concern me as they are related to some man. The biography of a man who has spent his days in a library, may be as interesting as the Peninsular campaigns. Gibbon’s memoirs prove this to me. To my mind he travels as far when he takes a book from the shelf, as if he went to the barrows of Asia. If the cripple but tell me how like a man he turned in his seat, how he now looked out at a south window then a north, and finally looked into the fire, it will be as good as a tour on the continent or the prairies. For I measure distance inward and not outward. Within the compass of a man’s ribs there is space and scene enough for any biography. My life passes warmly and cheerily here within while my ears drink in the pattering rain on the sill. It is as adventurous as Crusoe’s — as full of novelty as Marco Polo’s, as dignified as the Sultan’s, as momentous as that of the reigning prince. GIBBON’S LIFE AND WORKS HDT WHAT? INDEX

SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE EDWARD GIBBON

December 18, Friday: Having made his way further along in a volume in Waldo Emerson’s library, the one put out in 1837 by John, Lord Sheffield having to do with the miscellaneous works of Edward Gibbon with memoirs of his life, Henry Thoreau had occasion to repent of the initial enthusiasm that he had expressed a week earlier in his journal. This guy Gibbon had turned out to be not so very much the culture hero, as Henry had been anticipating upon beginning this reading. He decided that, after having processed the earlier volumes of the “Decline & Fall” volumes, GIBBON, DECLINE & FALL I GIBBON, DECLINE & FALL II

he was not going to continue to read along in the remainder of the dozen. Forget that! GIBBON, DECLINE & FALL III GIBBON, DECLINE & FALL IV GIBBON, DECLINE & FALL V GIBBON, DECLINE & FALL VI GIBBON, DECLINE & FALL VII GIBBON, DECLINE & FALL VIII GIBBON, DECLINE & FALL IX GIBBON, DECLINE & FALL X GIBBON, DECLINE & FALL XI GIBBON, DECLINE & FALL XII

Dec. 18th 1840. I find Gibbon to have been less a man and more of a student than I had anticipated– I had supposed him a person of more genius with as much learning, more an enthusiast than a pedant, better fitted to influence an active and practical people like the English, than to lead in a German School. He had very little greatness. His Roman History, by his own confession, was undertaken from no higher motive than the love of fame. In his religious views he did not differ nobly from mankind, but rather apologized and conformed. He was ambitious and vain. It was a quite paltry ambition that inspired his first Essay — his observations on the AEneid, and the Decline an Fall — and vanity inspired his memoirs of his own life. In his letters he was more literary than social, they are moments grudgingly given to his friends, whom he kept in pay to inform him how that world went on from which he had retired. I hear him smack his lips at the prospect of a pipe of wine to be sent from England to Lausanne. There is not record of him, that I know, a single reckless and heroic action, which would have been worth a thousand histories. That would have been to Rise and Stand. He withdrew into retirement in Switzerland, not to perfect his culture, but be more at leisure to build up a reputation undisturbed. He respected and courted the doctors and learned, not the learning. I think of him only as the laborious ambitious student who wrote the Decline & Fall, during those 56 years — which after all does not concern me to read. GIBBON’S LIFE AND WORKS HDT WHAT? INDEX

EDWARD GIBBON SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE

1841

August: Just as Nathaniel Hawthorne was preparing a saving-the-appearances exit strategy from the Brook Farm experiment in communal living in West Roxbury on the Newton line, Henry Thoreau was considering becoming a member. Also, in August, he was studying Hugh Murray’s HISTORY AND DESCRIPTIVE ACCOUNT OF BRITISH INDIA, the 2nd volume of Simon Ockley’s THE CONQUEST OF SYRIA, PERSIA, AND ÆGYPT, BY THE SARACENS CONTAINING THE LIVES OF ABUBEKER, OMAR, AND OTHMAN, THE IMMEDIATE SUCCESSORS OF MAHOMET, GIVING AN ACCOUNT OF THEIR MOST REMARKABLE BATTLES, SIEGES, &C...., entitled THE HISTORY OF THE SARACENS...: COLLECTED FROM THE MOST AUTHENTICK ARABICK AUTHORS, Luís Vaz de Camões’s LUSIADS, the Sir William Jones translation from Sanskrit of INSTITUTES OF HINDU LAW; OR, THE ORDINANCES OF MENU, ACCORDING TO THE GLOSS OF CULUCCA, COMPRISING THE INDIAN SYSTEM OF DUTIES, RELIGIOUS AND CIVIL, Edward Gibbon’s AUTOBIOGRAPHY, and Professor Charles Lyell’s PRINCIPLES OF GEOLOGY. (Lyell was spending this year and part of the next, travelling in the United States, Canada and Nova Scotia. During this visit he sought the assistance and fellowship of Dr. Augustus Addison Gould, conchologist at Boston. During this month he was in the vicinity of Rochester, New York).

That title –The Laws of Menu with the Gloss of Culluca– comes to me with such a volume of sound as if it had swept unobstructedly over the plains of Hindostan, and when my eye rests on yonder birches — or the sun in the water — or the shadows of the trees — it seems to signify the laws of them all. They are the laws of you and me — a fragrance wafted down from those old-times, and no more to be refuted than the wind. {One- fifth page blank} The impression which those sublime sentences made on me last night, has awakened me before any cock-crowing— Their influence lingers around me like a fragrance or as the fog hangs over the earth late into the day. When my imagination travels eastward and backward to those remote years of the gods, I seem to draw near to the habitation of the morning — and the dawn at length has a place. I remember the book as an hour before sunrise. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE EDWARD GIBBON

1847

During this year Waldo Emerson contributed the following deeply profound thought about our human trajectory to his journal:

It is not determined of man whether he came up or down: Cherubim or Chimpanzee.

At the end of the journal entries for this year, Waldo listed his recent readings in Oriental materials: “Plotinus; Synesius; Proclus; Institutes of Menu; Bhagavat Geeta; Vishnu Purana; Confucius; Zoroaster; Saadi; Hafiz; Firdusi; Ferradeddin.”

The culture of the Imagination, how imperiously demanded, how doggedly denied. There are books which move the sea and the land, and which are the realities of which you have heard in the fables of Cornelius Agrippa and Michael Scott. Sweetness of reading: Montaigne, Froissart; Chaucer. Ancient: the three Banquets [Plato, Xenophon, Plutarch]. Oriental reading: [HE FORGOT TO FILL THIS OUT] Grand reading: Plato; Synesius; Dante; Vita Nuova; Timæus (weather, river of sleep); Cudworth; Stanley. All-reading: Account of Madame de Staël’s rule; Rabelais; Diderot, Marguerite Aretin. English reading: Clarendon; Bacon; Milton; Johnson; Northcote. Manuals: Bacon’s Essays; Ben Jonson; Ford; Beaumont and Fletcher. Favorites: Sully; Walpole; Evelyn; Walton; Burton; White’s Selborne; Aubrey; Bartram’s Travels; French Gai Science, Fabliaux. Tonic books: Life of Michael Angelo; Gibbon; Goethe; Coleridge. Novels: Manzoni. Of Translation: Mitchell. Importers: Cousin; De Staël; Southey.

Emerson also incidentally mentioned in his journal for this year someone he had been reading, Charles Kraitsir, mentioning all the languages in his head. A few pages later he included something that Kraitsir had written, that “All the languages should be studied abreast.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

EDWARD GIBBON SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE

1857

April 26, Sunday: Henry Thoreau wrote to Benjamin B. Wiley and attempted to explicate his parable in WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS of the loss of the hound, horse, and turtle-dove.

WALDEN: In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line. You will pardon some obscurities, for there are more secrets in my trade than in most men’s, and yet not voluntarily kept, but inseparable from its very nature. I would gladly tell all that I know about it, and never paint “No Admittance” on my gate. I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse, and a turtle-dove, and am still on their trail. Many are the travellers I have spoken concerning them, describing their tracks and what calls they answered to. I have met one or two who had heard the hound, and the tramp of the horse, and even seen the dove disappear behind a cloud, and they seemed as anxious to recover them as if they had lost them themselves. To anticipate, not the sunrise and the dawn merely, but, if possible, Nature herself! How many mornings, summer and winter, before yet any neighbor was stirring about his business, have I been about mine! No doubt many of my townsmen have met me returning from this enterprise, farmers starting for Boston in the twilight, or woodchoppers going to their work. It is true, I never assisted the sun materially in his rising, but, doubt not, it was of the last importance only to be present at it. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE EDWARD GIBBON

Curiously, he explicated it as if he were explicating his reference to Mencius’s remark about the loss of the “sentiments of the heart” in A WEEK where he had quoted as follows:

A WEEK: Mencius says: “If one loses a fowl or a dog, he knows well PEOPLE OF how to seek them again; if one loses the sentiments of his heart, A WEEK he does not know how to seek them again.... The duties of practical philosophy consist only in seeking after those sentiments of the heart which we have lost; that is all.”

MENCIUS

So what he sent off to Wiley was:

How shall we account for our pursuits if they are original? We get the language with which to describe our various lives out of a common mint. If others have their losses, which they are busy repairing, so have I mine, & their hound & horse may perhaps be the symbols of some of them. But also I have lost, or am in danger of losing, a far finer & more etherial treasure, which commonly no loss of which they are conscious will symbolize — this I answer hastily & with some hesitation, according as I now understand my own words.

I would infer, from this confusion, that in Thoreau’s memory his quotation in THE DIAL and then in A WEEK of a parable from Mencius, a parable which referred to a fowl and a dog, and his invention of his own parable in WALDEN, which referred to a hound, a horse, and a turtle-dove, had, by 1857 at least, become commingled.

THE SCHOLAR. Teen, son of the king of Tse, asked what the business of the scholar consists in? Mencius replied, In elevating his mind and inclination. What do you mean by elevating the mind? It consists merely in being benevolent and just. Where is the scholar’s abode? In benevolence. Where is his road? Justice. To dwell in benevolence, and walk in justice, is the whole business of a great man. Benevolence is man’s heart, and justice is man’s path. If a man lose his fowls or his dogs, he knows how to seek them. There are those who lose their hearts and know not how to seek them. The duty of the student is no other than to seek his lost heart. He who employs his whole mind, will know his nature. He who knows his nature, knows heaven. It were better to be without books than to believe all that they record. HDT WHAT? INDEX

EDWARD GIBBON SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE

MENCIUS

We should, therefore, limit the range of possible interpretations of Thoreau’s parable to those which are not blatantly discordant with the more decipherable intention of the Mencius parable. And immediately we notice that a key to the Mencius parable is that “loss” can mean such different things, that we may know how to recover from one “loss” but may have no clue as to how to recover from another “loss.” THOREAU AND CHINA

There is a marked difference in the meaning of the word “my” when it is applied to my hound, my horse, and my turtledove.

Did we suppose that “my” means the same in the expression “Please get my hat” as in the expression “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” No, we did not suppose that, nor are we to suppose that the possessive pronoun is the same when it is applied to a family pet with whom we share a long-term and deep affectional relationship, to a barn animal we saddle in order to go somewhere, and to a wild bird we glimpse as it disappears behind a cloud. In the sense in which the dog is my dog, the horse is not my horse. In the sense in which the horse is my horse, the turtledove is not my turtledove. And there is not only a difference in the definition of the possessive pronoun “my” when it is applied to my hound, my horse, and my turtledove, there is also a difference in the meaning of the economic term “loss.” For me to lose my hound is for this dog to run off after a scent and return when it chooses. For me to lose my horse is for this horse to be stolen by a horse thief, or for me to gamble it away, or for it to lie down and die. For me to lose a turtledove is — what? Thoreau didn’t need to clutch a turtledove, so how could he lose it? What he said was “In Boston yesterday an ornithologist said significantly, ‘If you held the bird in your hand–’; but I would rather hold it in my affections,” and the bird of which he and the ornithologist spoke might as well have been a turtledove as an eponymous anonymous bird of some other species. When one gets to the turtledove part of the saying, one recognizes that Thoreau’s parable of loss is a secret joke, a joke on the whole idea that in this world there could be such a thing as loss. We may well wonder how the idea of loss could have arisen in a world in which each instant of our lives is a gift to us, and is a gift over which we have no control whatever. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE EDWARD GIBBON

Note that if we interpret the parable of the “loss” of the hound, horse, and turtle-dove as a secret joke on the whole idea that in this world there could be such a thing as loss, then the parable becomes an intrinsic part of the chapter, for the chapter, according to Stanley Cavell’s THE SENSES OF WALDEN, is, in its entirety, a parable about the unreality of loss and an attempt to subvert our customary deployment of economic terms such as loss when we attempt to deal with the affect of our lives:

The writer comes to us from a sense of loss; the myth does not contain more than symbols because it is no set of desired things he has lost, but a connection with things, the track of desire itself.

Note also that if we interpret this parable of the “loss” of the hound, horse, and turtle-dove as a secret joke on the simpleminded presumption that “loss” is one single, unproblematic concept, then we are led directly back, full circle, to this citation of Mencius in A WEEK, the citation in which the “duties of practical philosophy” are specified.

MENCIUS

Barbara Johnson, while agreeing that the parable has to do with losses, evidently disagrees with the idea that the chapter is intended to distance us from the easy application of such economic terms to the affect of our lives. Rather, she suggests, WALDEN wakes us up to our losses, evidently to the reality of our losses:

WALDEN’s great achievement is to wake us up to our own losses, to make us participate in the trans-individual movement of loss in its own infinite particularity, urging us passionately to follow the tracks of we know not quite what, as if we had lost it, or were in danger of losing it, ourselves. In order to communicate the irreducibly particular yet ultimately unreadable nature of loss, Thoreau has chosen to use three symbols [hound, bay horse, and turtledove] that clearly are symbols but that do not really symbolize anything outside themselves.

We may note also, here, that Johnson is attempting a pre-emptive strike at anyone and everyone who would make the three symbolic animals “symbolize anything outside themselves.” My own attitude toward this is that a good reader is an active reader, and seeks to read meaning into what she is reading. We should judge each attempt on its merits, and make no pre-emptive strike against the attempt to actively engage with the presented material. Concord April 26th HDT WHAT? INDEX

EDWARD GIBBON SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE

1857 Dear Sir I have been spending a fortnight in New Bedford, and on my return find your last letter awaiting me. I was sure that you would find Newcomb inexhaustible, if you found your way into him at all. I might say, however, by way of criticism, that he does not take firm enough hold on this world, where surely we are bound to triumph. I am sorry to say that I do not see how I can furnish you with a copy of my essay on the wild. It has not been prepared for publication, only for lectures, and would cover at least a hundred written pages. Even if it were ready to be dis- persed, I could not easily find time to copy it. So I return the order. I see that you are turning a broad furrow among the books, but I trust that some very private journal all the while holds its own through their midst. Books can only reveal us to ourselves, and as often as they do us this service we lay them aside. I should say read Goethe’s Autobiography by all means, also Gibbon’s Haydon the Painter’s– & our Franklin’s of course; perhaps also Alfieris, Ben- venuto Cellini’s, & De Quincey’s Confessions of an Opium Eater – since you like Autobiography. I think you must read Coleridge again & further –skipping all his theology– i.e. if you value precise definitions & a discriminating use of language. By the way, read De Quincey’s reminiscences of Coleridge & Wordsworth. How shall we account for our pursuits if they are original? We get the language with which to describe our various lives out of a common mint. If others have their losses, which they are busy repairing, so have I mine, & their hound & horse may perhaps be the symbols of some of them. But also I have lost, or am in danger of losing, a far finer & more etherial treasure, which commonly no loss of which they are conscious will symbolize— This I answer hastily & with some hesitation, according as I now understand my own words. I take this occasion to acknowledge, & thank you for, your long letter of Dec 21st. So poor a correspondent am I. If I wait for the fit time to reply, it commonly does not come at all, as you see. I require the presence of the other party to suggest what I shall say. Methinks a certain polygamy with its troubles is the fate of almost all men. They are married to two wives – their genius (a celestial muse) and also to some fair daughter of the earth. Unless these two were fast friends before mar- riage, and so are afterward, there will be but little peace in the house. In answer to your questions, I must say that I never made, nor had occasion to use a filter of any kind; but, no doubt, they can be bought in Chicago. You cannot surely identify a plant from a scientific description until after long practice. The “millers” you speak of are the perfect or final state of the insect. The chrysalis is the silken bag they spun when caterpillars, & occupied in the nymph state. Yrs truly HDT WHAT? INDEX

SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE EDWARD GIBBON

Henry D. Thoreau EDWARD GIBBON THOMAS DE QUINCEY VITTORIO ALFIERI BENVENUTO CELLINI BENJAMIN FRANKLIN BENJAMIN ROBERT HAYDON

READ ALFIERI’S TEXT READ FRANKLIN’S TEXT

April 26. Riordan’s cock follows close after me while spading in the garden, and hens commonly follow the gardener and plowman, just as cowbirds the cattle in a pasture. I turn up now in the garden those large leather-colored nymphs.

P. M. — Up Assabet to White Cedar Swamp. See on the water over the meadow, north of the boat’s place, twenty rods from the nearest shore and twice as much from the opposite shore, a very large striped snake swimming. It swims with great ease, and lifts its head a foot above the water, darting its tongue at us. A snake thus met with on the water appears far more monstrous, not to say awful and venomous, than on the land. It is always something startling and memorable to meet with a serpent in the midst of a broad water, careering over it. But why had this one taken to the water? Is it possible that snakes ever hibernate in meadows which are subject to be overflown? This one when we approached swam toward the boat, apparently to rest on it, and when I put out my paddle, at once coiled itself partly around it and allowed itself to be taken on board. It did not hang down from the paddle like a dead snake, but stiffened and curved its body in a loose coil about it. This snake was two feet and eleven inches long; the tail alone, seven and a quarter. There [were] one hundred and forty-five large abdominal plates, besides the three smaller under the head, and sixty-five pairs of caudal scales. The central stripe on the back was not bright-yellow, as Storer describes, but a pale brown or clay-color; only the more indistinct lateral stripes were a greenish yellow, the broad dark-brown stripes being between; beneath greenish. Beneath the tail in centre, a dark, somewhat greenish line. This snake was killed about 2 P.M.; i.e., the head was perfectly killed then; yet the posterior half of the body was apparently quite alive and would curl strongly around the hand at 7 P.M. It had been hanging on a tree in the meanwhile. I have the same objection to killing a snake that I have to the killing of any other animal, yet the most humane man that I know never omits to kill one. I see a great many beetles, etc., floating and struggling on the flood. We sit on the shore at Wheeler’s fence, opposite Merriam’s. At this season still we go seeking the sunniest, most sheltered, and warmest place. C. says this is the warmest place he has been in this year. We are in this like snakes that lie out on banks. In sunny and sheltered nooks we are in our best estate. There our thoughts flow and we flourish most. By and by we shall seek the shadiest and coolest place. How well adapted we are to our climate! In the winter we sit by fires in the house; in spring and fall, in sunny and sheltered nooks; in the summer, in shady and cool groves, or over water where the breeze circulates. Thus the average temperature of the year just suits us. Generally, whether in summer or winter, we are not sensible either of heat or cold. A great part of our troubles are literally domestic or originate in the house and from living indoors. I could write an essay to be entitled “Out of Doors,” — undertake a crusade against houses. What a different thing Christianity preached to the house-bred and to a party who lived out of doors! Also a sermon is needed on economy of fuel. What right has my neighbor to burn ten cords of wood, when I burn only one? Thus robbing our half-naked town of this precious covering. Is he so much colder than I? It is expensive to maintain him in our midst. If some earn the salt of their porridge, are we certain that they earn the fuel of their kitchen and parlor? One man makes a little of the driftwood of the river or of the dead and refuse (unmarketable!) wood of the forest suffice, and nature rejoices in him. Another, Herod-like, requires ten cords of the best of young white oak or HDT WHAT? INDEX

EDWARD GIBBON SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE

hickory, and he is commonly esteemed a virtuous man. He who burns the most wood on his hearth is the least warmed by the sight of it growing. Leave the trim wood-lots to widows and orphan girls. Let men tread gently through nature. Let us religiously burn stumps and worship in groves, while Christian vandals lay waste the forest temples to build miles of meeting-houses and horse-sheds and feed their box stoves. The white cedar is apparently just out. The higher up the tree, the earlier. Towed home an oak log some eighteen feet long and more than a foot through, with a birch with around it and another birch fastened to that. Father says lie saw a boy with a. snapping turtle yesterday. HDT WHAT? INDEX

SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE EDWARD GIBBON

1892

February 16, Tuesday: When Henry Walter Bates died in London, he was rereading the dozen volumes of Edward Gibbon’s DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

Werther, a drame lyrique by Jules Massenet to words of Blau, Milliet and Hartman after Goethe, was performed for the initial time, at the Vienna Court Opera. This was a German translation, by Kalbeck.

“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING: HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Edward Gibbon HDT WHAT? INDEX

SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE EDWARD GIBBON

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 2014. 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: October 31, 2014 HDT WHAT? INDEX

SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE EDWARD GIBBON

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

SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE EDWARD GIBBON

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 . Arrgh.