SETTING THE SCENE FOR THOREAU’S POEM: YET AGAIN WE ATTEMPT TO LIVE AS ADAM 11th Century 1010s 1020s 1030s 1040s 1050s 1060s 1070s 1080s 1090s 12th Century 1110s 1120s 1130s 1140s 1150s 1160s 1170s 1180s 1190s 13th Century 1210s 1220s 1230s 1240s 1250s 1260s 1270s 1280s 1290s 14th Century 1310s 1320s 1330s 1340s 1350s 1360s 1370s 1380s 1390s 15th Century 1410s 1420s 1430s 1440s 1450s 1460s 1470s 1480s 1490s 16th Century 1510s 1520s 1530s 1540s 1550s 1560s 1570s 1580s 1590s 17th Century 1610s 1620s 1630s 1640s 1650s 1660s 1670s 1680s 1690s 18th Century 1710s 1720s 1730s 1740s 1750s 1760s 1770s 1780s 1790s 19th Century 1810s Alas! how little does the memory of these human inhabitants enhance the beauty of the landscape! Again, perhaps, Nature will try, with me for a first settler, and my house raised last spring to be the oldest in the hamlet. To be a Christian is to be Christ- like. VAUDÈS OF LYON 1600 William Gilbert, court physician to Queen Elizabeth, described the earth’s magnetism in DE MAGNETE. Robert Cawdrey’s A TREASURIE OR STORE-HOUSE OF SIMILES. Lord Mountjoy assumed control of Crown forces, garrisoned Ireland, and destroyed food stocks. O’Neill asked for help from Spain. HDT WHAT? INDEX 1600 1600 In about this year Robert Dudley, being interested in stories he had heard about the bottomlessness of Eldon Hole in Derbyshire, thought to test the matter. George Bradley, a serf, was lowered on the end of a lengthy rope. Dudley’s little experiment with another man’s existence did not result in the establishment of the fact that holes in the ground indeed did have bottoms; instead it became itself a source of legend as spinners would elaborate a just-so story according to which serf George was raving mad when hauled back to the surface, with hair turned white, and a few days later would succumb to the shock of it all. CREDULITY WALDEN: As I was desirous to recover the long lost bottom of Walden Pond, I surveyed it carefully, before the ice broke up, early in ’46, with compass and chain and sounding line. There have been many stories told about the bottom, or rather no bottom, of this pond, which certainly had no foundation for themselves. It is remarkable how long men will believe in the bottomlessness of a pond without taking the trouble to sound it. I have visited two such Bottomless Ponds in one walk in this neighborhood. Many have believed that Walden reached quite through to the other side of the globe. Some who have lain flat on the ice for a long time, looking down through the illusive medium, perchance with watery eyes into the bargain, and driven to hasty conclusions by the fear of catching cold in their breasts, have seen vast holes “into which a load of hay might be driven,” if there were any body to drive it, the undoubted source of the Styx and entrance to the Infernal Regions from these parts. Others have gone down from the village with a “fifty-six” and a wagon load of inch rope, but yet have failed to find any bottom; for while the “fifty-six” was resting by the way, they we paying out the rope in the vain attempt to fathom their truly immeasurable capacity for marvellousness. But I can assure my readers that Walden has a reasonably tight bottom at a not unreasonable, though at an unusual, depth. I fathomed it easily with a cod-line and a stone weighing about a pound and a half, and could tell accurately when the stone left the bottom, by having to pull so much harder before the water got underneath to help me. The greatest depth was exactly one hundred and two feet; to which may be added the five feet which it has risen since, making one hundred and seven. This is a remarkable depth for so small an area; yet not an inch of it can be spared by the imagination. What if all ponds were shallow? Would it not react on the minds of men? I am thankful that this pond was made deep and pure for a symbol. While men believe in the infinite some ponds will be thought to be bottomless. Thomas Dekker’s plays The Shoemaker’s Holiday and Old Fortunatus. At about this point Thomas Heywood’s 1st play, THE FOUR PRENTISES OF LONDON, began to be acted (it would not be printed until 1615). He also created a 2-part history play about Edward IV. His THE ROYALL KING AND THE LOYALL SUBJECT (acted circa 1600, printed 1637). HDT WHAT? INDEX 1600 1600 Phineas Fletcher, a scholar from the Westminster School of Eton in Buckinghamshire, matriculated at King’s College of Cambridge University. KING’S COLLEGE ST JOHN’S HDT WHAT? INDEX 1600 1600 Samuel Purchas graduated at St John’s College of Cambridge University (later he would become a B.D.). Charles I was born, the 2d son of King James VI of Scotland (who would become King James I of England) and Anne of Denmark. Ben Jonson’s play CYNTHIA’S REVELS. At about this point the commoner poet Samuel Daniel became tutor to Lady Anne Clifford, daughter of the Countess of Cumberland. On the death of Edmund Spenser he was benefited with the somewhat vague office of Poet Laureate, which it seems however he would relinquish in favor of Jonson. Whether it was on this occasion is not known, but about this time, and at the recommendation of his brother-in-law, Giovanni Florio, he was taken into favor at court and wrote A PANEGYRICKE CONGRATULATORIE in ottava rima, which was offered to King James at Burleigh Harrington in Rutland. The Poets Laureate of England 1591-1599 Edmund Spenser 1599-1619 Samuel Daniel 1619-1637 Ben Jonson 1638-1668 William Davenant 1670-1689 John Dryden 1689-1692 Thomas Shadwell 1692-1715 Nahum Tate 1715-1718 Nicholas Rowe 1718-1730 Laurence Eusden 1730-1757 Colley Cibber 1758-1785 William Whitehead HDT WHAT? INDEX 1600 1600 The Poets Laureate of England 1785-1790 Thomas Warton 1790-1813 Henry James Pye 1813-1843 Robert Southey 1843-1850 William Wordsworth 1850-1892 Alfred Lord Tennyson 1896-1913 Alfred Austin 1913-1930 Robert Bridges 1930-1967 John Masefield 1967-1972 Cecil Day-Lewis 1972-1984 Sir John Betjeman 1984-1998 Ted Hughes 1999- Andrew Motion John Beaumont and Francis Beaumont transited from Broadgates Hall at Oxford University to the Inner Temple in London, for the study of law. Publication of THE RUTTER OF JEAN ALPHONSE. This was the approximate florut of the English poet John Chalkhill, about whose life precious little is known. Izaak Walton (1593-1683) would in 1653 include two songs by him in THE COMPLEAT ANGLER. His volume THEALMA AND CLEARCHUS. A PASTORAL ROMANCE. IN SMOOTH AND EASIE VERSE. WRITTEN LONG SINCE BY JOHN CHALKHILL, ESQ., AN ACQUAINTANT AND FRIEND OF EDMUND SPENSER would appear belatedly in 1683, and would be studied by Henry Thoreau in 1842. THEALMA AND CLEARCHUS At about this point coffee was being introduced into Venice, where it was considered a sort of medication. Throughout the century, however, special shops called caffes would be opening to grant patrons their frequent draught of this distillation of a scorched bean from an Arabian tree. Some smugglers were able to get seven (7) coffee seeds out of the Arabian port of Mocha in an unroasted condition, so they could be planted, and the Arabian monopoly on coffee had been broken. By this point at least, Passaconaway (“Child of the Bear”) had become headman of the Penacook. He lived at the top of the Pawtucket Falls in what would become Lowell in what would become Massachusetts. At this point, upstream at what would become Concord in what would become New Hampshire, there were about 2,000 English settlers. HDT WHAT? INDEX 1600 1600 Samuel Rowland’s THE LETTING OF HUMOURS BLOOD IN THE HEAD-VAINE included a remark “We gaue the Brewers Diet-drinke a wipe.” Many such natural health concoctions, at least in Henry Thoreau’s day, would contain sarsaparilla and thus would be what we would today classify as root beers. Cf. WALDEN’s comment about the ruffed grouse: WALDEN: When the ground was not yet quite covered, and again near the end of winter, when the snow was melted on my south hill-side and about my woodpile, the partridges came out of the woods morning and evening to feed there. Whichever side you walk in the woods the partridge bursts away on whirring wings, jarring the snow from the dry leaves and twigs on high, which comes sifting down in the sunbeams like golden dust; for this brave bird is not to be scared by winter. It is frequently covered up by drifts, and, it is said, “sometimes plunges from on wing into the soft snow, where it remains concealed for a day or two.” I used to start them in the open land also, where they had come out of the woods at sunset to “bud” the wild apple-trees. They will come regularly every evening to particular trees, where the distant orchards next the woods suffer thus not a little. I am glad that the partridge gets fed, at any rate. It is Nature’s own bird which lives on buds and diet-drink. RUFFED GROUSE At about this point the members of a Hindu religious cult known as the thugi (pronounced tug-ee, and meaning “sly deceivers”) were becoming notorious throughout India for strangling unsuspecting merchants, then dancing around their bodies.