Engine Trouble

In John Milton’s 1637’s poem “Lycidas,” corrupt clergy are threatened with a obscure punishment:

The hungry Sheep look up, and are not fed,
But swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw,
Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread:
Besides what the grim Woolf with privy paw
Daily devours apace, and nothing sed,
But that two-handed engine at the door,
Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.

What is the “two-handed engine”? That’s been a riddle for nearly 400 years. In 1950, Oberlin College philologist W. Arthur Turner collected 10 possibilities, ranging from the nations England and Scotland to “[t]he sheep-hook, which in Milton’s day apparently had an iron spud on the straight end and could be used as a weapon.” Turner himself thought that “the only engine which does meet all the requirements is the lock on St. Peter’s door (or the power of the lock), to which he carries the key.” But there’s still no strong consensus.

(W. Arthur Turner, “Milton’s Two-Handed Engine,” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 49:4 [October 1950], 562-565.)

| Literature · Poems · Religion

Asked and Answered

In 1865, while conducting the “Answers to Correspondents” column in The Californian, Mark Twain received this inquiry:

If it would take a cannon ball 3 1/3 seconds to travel four miles, and 3 3/8 seconds to travel the next four, and 3 5/8 to travel the next four, and if its rate of progress continued to diminish in the same ratio, how long would it take it to go fifteen hundred millions of miles?

He responded:

I don’t know.

In a 1906 address to the New York Association for Promoting the Interests of the Blind, he said, “I never could do anything with figures, never had any talent for mathematics, never accomplished anything in my efforts at that rugged study, and today the only mathematics I know is multiplication, and the minute I get away up in that, as soon as I reach nine times seven … [Mr. Clemens lapsed into deep thought for a moment.] I’ve got it now. It’s eighty-four.”

| Literature · Science & Math

The Stranger’s Room

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Immediately below the light room of Scotland’s Bell Rock lighthouse was a library. Writer R.M. Ballantyne spent two weeks there in 1865:

[I]t is a most comfortable and elegant apartment. The other rooms of the lighthouse, although thoroughly substantial in their furniture and fittings, are quite plain and devoid of ornament, but the library, or ‘stranger’s room’, as it is sometimes called, being the guest-chamber, is fitted up in a style worthy of a lady’s boudoir, with a Turkey carpet, handsome chairs, and an elaborately carved oak table, supported appropriately by a centre stem of three twining dolphins. The dome of the ceiling is painted to represent stucco panelling, and the partition which cuts off the small segment of this circular room that is devoted to passage and staircase, is of panelled oak. The thickness of this partition is just sufficient to contain the bookcase; also a cleverly contrived bedstead, which can be folded up during the day out of sight. There is also a small cupboard of oak, which serves the double purpose of affording shelf accommodation and concealing the iron smoke-pipe which rises from the kitchen, and, passing through the several storeys, projects a few feet above the lantern. The centre window is ornamented with marble sides and top, and above it stands a marble bust of Robert Stevenson, the engineer of the building, with a marble slab below bearing testimony to the skill and energy with which he had planned and executed the work.

Stevenson, perhaps fittingly, was the grandfather of Robert Louis Stevenson.

(From R.M. Ballantyne, The Lighthouse, 1865.)

| Literature

Life and Art

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An April 1832 letter of Heinrich Heine strangely prefigures “The Masque of the Red Death”:

On March 29th, the night of mi-careme, a masked ball was in progress, the chabut in full swing. Suddenly, the gayest of the harlequins collapsed, cold in the limbs, and, underneath his mask, ‘violet-blue’ in the face. Laughter died out, dancing ceased, and in a short while carriage-loads of people were hurried from the redoute to the Hotel Dieu to die, and to prevent a panic among the patients, were thrust into rude graves in their dominoes. Soon the public halls were filled with dead bodies, sewed in sacks for want of coffins. Long lines of hearses stood en queue outside Pere Lachaise. Everybody wore flannel bandages. The rich gathered up their belongings and fled the town. Over 120,000 passports were issued at the Hotel de Ville.

He was witnessing the advent of cholera in Paris; Poe had seen similar scenes in Baltimore the year before. The story appeared 10 years later.

| History · Literature

Misc

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Image: Wikimedia Commons
  • POSSESSIONLESSNESSES has nine Ss.
  • Trains are older than bicycles.
  • 87 percent of the human population lives in the Northern Hemisphere.
  • This sentence no verb.
  • “God pity a one-dream man.” — Robert H. Goddard

Roald Dahl wrote the film adaptations for two of Ian Fleming’s novels, You Only Live Twice and Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang.

(Thanks, Ben and Fred.)

| Language · Literature · Quotations · Trivia

Spaceship Away

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Image: Wikimedia Commons

The standards for the British science fiction comic Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future were so high that the editors hired a young Arthur C. Clarke to serve as science and plot adviser. Clarke wrote to publisher Marcus Morris in spring 1950:

I think this might amuse you. Yesterday I was lecturing at the Royal Geographical Society on the problem of interplanetary navigation … After a highly technical series of remarks, [one of the other speakers] ended up by asking ‘Will Dan Dare reach Venus?’

He did. Clarke left the job after six months — he was said to have thought that “the standard of work and research was so high that they were wasting their money getting him to check it.”

(From Jason Dittmer, Comic Book Geographies, 2014.)

| Literature · Science & Math

The Short of It

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A boy, who kept watch on a flock of sheep, was heard from time to time to call out, ‘The Wolf! The Wolf!’ in mere sport. Scores of times, in this way, had he drawn the men in the fields from their work. But when they found it was a joke, they made up their minds that, should the boy call ‘Wolf’ once more, they would not stir to help him. The wolf, at last, did come. ‘The Wolf! The Wolf!’ shrieks out the boy, in great fear, but none will now heed his cries, and the wolf kills the boy, that he may feast on the sheep.

One knows not how to trust those who speak lies, though they may tell one the truth.

— From Lucy Aikin, Æsop’s Fables in Words of One Syllable, 1868

| Language · Literature

Locke’s Index

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Like many thinkers of his age, John Locke maintained a commonplace book, an intellectual scrapbook of ideas and quotations he’d found in his readings. In order to be useful, such a book needs an index, and Locke’s method is both concise (occupying only two pages) and flexible (accommodating new topics as they come up, without wasting pages in trying to anticipate them).

The index lists the letters of the alphabet, each accompanied by the five vowels. Then:

When I meet with any thing, that I think fit to put into my common-place-book, I first find a proper head. Suppose for example that the head be EPISTOLA. I look unto the index for the first letter and the following vowel which in this instance are E. i. If in the space marked E. i. there is any number that directs me to the page designed for words that begin with an E and whose first vowel after the initial letter is I, I must then write under the word Epistola in that page what I have to remark.

The result is a useful compromise: Each of the book’s pages is put to productive use without any need for an overarching plan, and the contents are kept accessible through a simple, expanding index that occupies only two pages. The whole project can grow in almost any direction, and when the pages are full then a new volume can be begun.

(Via the Public Domain Review.)

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Unquote

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“A multitude of books confuses the mind. Accordingly, since you cannot read all the books which you may possess, it is enough to possess only as many books as you can read.” — Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius

| Literature · Quotations

“The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations”

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In 1895 French writer Georges Polti drew up a list of every dramatic situation that might arise in a story or performance, based on an earlier list drawn up by Venetian playwright Carlo Gozzi. They number only 36 — Polti listed the elements necessary for each:

  1. Supplication (“a Persecutor, a Suppliant and a Power in authority, whose decision is doubtful”)
  2. Deliverance (“an Unfortunate, a Threatener, a Rescuer”)
  3. Crime Pursued by Vengeance (“an Avenger and a Criminal”)
  4. Vengeance Taken for Kindred Upon Kindred (“Avenging Kinsman, Guilty Kinsman, Remembrance of the Victim, a Relative of Both”)
  5. Pursuit (“Punishment and Fugitive”)
  6. Disaster (“a Vanquished Power, a Victorious Enemy or a Messenger”)
  7. Falling Prey to Cruelty or Misfortune (“an Unfortunate, a Master or a Misfortune”)
  8. Revolt (“Tyrant and Conspirator”)
  9. Daring Enterprise (“A Bold Leader, an Object, an Adversary”)
  10. Abduction (“The Abductor, the Abducted; the Guardian”)
  11. The Enigma (“Interrogator, Seeker and Problem”)
  12. Obtaining (“A Solicitor and an Adversary Who Is Refusing, or an Arbitrator and Opposing Parties”)
  13. Enmity of Kinsmen (“a Malevolent Kinsman; a Hated or Reciprocally Hating Kinsman”)
  14. Rivalry of Kinsmen (“The Preferred Kinsman; the Rejected Kinsman; the Object”)
  15. Murderous Adultery (“Two Adulterers; a Betrayed Husband or Wife”)
  16. Madness (“Madman and Victim”)
  17. Fatal Imprudence (“The Imprudent; the Victim or the Object Lost”)
  18. Involuntary Crimes of Love (“The Lover; the Beloved; the Revealer”)
  19. Slaying of a Kinsman Unrecognized (“The Slayer; the Unrecognized Victim”)
  20. Self-Sacrifice for an Ideal (“The Hero; the Ideal; the ‘Creditor’ or the Person or Thing Sacrificed”)
  21. Self-Sacrifice for Kindred (“The Hero; the Kinsman; the ‘Creditor’ or the Person or Thing Sacrificed”)
  22. All Sacrificed for a Passion (“The Lover; the Object of the Fatal Passion; the Person or Thing Sacrificed”)
  23. Necessity of Sacrificing Loved Ones (“The Hero; the Beloved Victim; the Necessity for the Sacrifice”)
  24. Rivalry of Superior and Inferior (“The Superior Rival; the Inferior Rival; the Object”)
  25. Adultery (“A Deceived Husband or Wife; Two Adulterers”)
  26. Crimes of Love (“The Lover; the Beloved”)
  27. Discovery of the Dishonor of a Loved One (“The Discoverer; the Guilty One”)
  28. Obstacles to Love (“Two Lovers; an Obstacle”)
  29. An Enemy Loved (“The Beloved Enemy; the Lover; the Hater”)
  30. Ambition (“An Ambitious Person; a Thing Coveted; an Adversary”)
  31. Conflict With a God (“A Mortal; an Immortal”)
  32. Mistaken Jealousy (“The Jealous One; The Object of Whose Possession He Is Jealous; the Supposed Accomplice; the Cause or the Author of the Mistake”)
  33. Erroneous Judgment (“The Mistaken One; the Victim of the Mistake; the Cause or Author of the Mistake; the Guilty Person”)
  34. Remorse (“The Culprit; the Victim or the Sin; the Interrogator”)
  35. Recovery of a Lost One (“The Seeker; the One Found”)
  36. Loss of Loved Ones (“A Kinsman Slain; a Kinsman Spectator; an Executioner”)

Each situation has its variations; for example, The Count of Monte Cristo is a Revenge for a False Accusation, a variation on the Crime Pursued by Vengeance; and Great Expectations is a Life Sacrificed for the Happiness of a Relative or Loved One, a variation on Self-Sacrifice for Kindred.

The whole book is here.

| Literature