Academia

Caprices of Oxford dons, recounted in Maurice Bowra’s Memories: 1898-1939:

“In his quiet way [Wadham College Warden Joseph Wells] had an impressive authority, and it was told that once, when he heard a fearful row in the back quad, he walked up in the dark and said, ‘If you don’t stop at once, I shall light a match.’ They stopped.”

“[Oxford administrator Benjamin Parsons] Symons never admitted that he was wrong. An undergraduate was found drunk, and Symons abused another, quite innocent man for it, who said that his name was not that by which Symons had called him, but Symons would not admit it. ‘You’re drunk still. You don’t even know your own name. Go to your room at once.'”

“[Philosophy tutor Frank] Brabant kept a car and drove it badly, even by academic standards, which, from myopia, or self-righteousness, or loquacity, or absorption in other matters, are notoriously low. Once when I was with him, he drove straight into a cow and knocked it down, fortunately without damage. When the man in charge of it said quite mildly, ‘Look out where you are going,’ Brabant said fiercely, ‘Mind your own business,’ and drove on.”

See Metathesis.

| Literature · Oddities

Misc

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Samuel_Johnson_EMWEA.jpg

  • Dante’s 1305 essay “De vulgari eloquentia” contains a 27-letter word, sovramagnificentissimamente, “supermagnificently.”
  • Life Savers candies were invented by Hart Crane’s father.
  • 2746 = 2 + \sqrt{7\sqrt{4}}^{6} (Colin Rose)
  • RETROSUSCEPTION is an anagram of COUNTERRIPOSTES.
  • “Of all the reciprocals of integers, the one that I best like is 1/0 for it is a titan amongst midgets.” — Sam Linial

Lord David Cecil called Samuel Johnson “an outstanding example of the charm that comes from an unexpected combination of qualities. In general, odd people are not sensible and sensible people are not odd. Johnson was both and often both at the same time.”

| Language · Literature · Quotations · Science & Math · Trivia

Addendum

Visiting Orchomenus, Greece, in 1810, Lord Byron discovered this entry in the travelers’ book:

Fair Albion, smiling, sees her son depart
To trace the birth and nursery of art:
Noble his object, glorious is his aim;
He comes to Athens, and he — writes his name.

Beneath this Byron wrote:

The modest bard, like many a bard unknown,
Rhymes on our names, but wisely hides his own;
But yet, whoe’er he be, to say no worse,
His name would bring more credit than his verse.

| Poems

Reunion

In the church of St. Mary Magdalen in Mulbarton, Norfolk, is mounted a copper diptych, a memorial to resident Sarah Scargill, who died in 1680. The left panel remembers Scargill as “a Person of unimitable Devotion, of a most nice and tender Conscience, of sweet Behaviour, and in all Things so faithfull a Servant of God, that I dare contest the Divine Goodness to have rewarded her.” The right panel reads:

Dear Love! one feather’d Minute, and I come,
To lye down in thy dark retiring Room,
And mingle Dust with thine, that we may have,
As when alive, one Bed, so dead, one Grave,
And may my Soule teare through the vaulted Sky,
To be with Thine, to all Eternity.
Oh! how our Bloodless Forms will that Day greet,
With Love Divine, when we again shall meet,
Devest of all contagion of the Flesh,
Full fill’d with ever lasting Joys, and fresh,
In Heaven above, (and’t may be) cast an Eye,
How far Elyzium doth beneath us lye.

Dear! I dis-body and away,
More swift than Wind,
Or flying Hind,
I come, I come, away.
Daniel Scargill.

| Death · Poems

Perspective

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Il_concerto_popolare_alla_Scala.jpg

Two evenings spent at La Scala, Milan, one of them standing up, the other sitting down. On the first evening, I was continuously conscious of the existence of the spectators who were seated. On the second evening, I was completely unconscious of the existence of the spectators who were standing up (and of those who were seated also).

— Simone Weil, quoted in W.H. Auden, A Certain World, 1970

| Society

“A ‘Religious’ Fish”

https://books.google.com/books?id=P_6Z7ooR98IC&pg=PA1124

Describing this fish (Holocanthus Alternaus), which was caught off Zanzibar, a correspondent of the ‘Times of India’ wrote: ‘… On the one side of the tail are the words, La-ilaha-illa Allah’ — ‘There is no God but God.’ On the other side, ‘Shan Allah’ — ‘God’s Work,’ or ‘An Act of God.’ … Many of our readers who know Arabic will be able to see for themselves from this untouched photograph that the fish is a devout Moslem.’ We have shown the photographs to an expert in this country, who informs us that the letters are certainly intended to represent Arabic characters, but that there is nothing sufficiently distinguishable to enable it to be said that they mean what they are alleged to mean. A further opinion is expressed that the ‘inscriptions’ may not be genuine.

— Illustrated London News, Dec. 28, 1929

| Oddities

Turnabout

Palindromes submitted by correspondent Henry Campkin to Notes and Queries in 1873:

A milksop jilted by his lass, or wandering in his wits,
Might murmer STIFF, O DAIRYMAN, IN A MYRIAD OF FITS!

A limner, by Photography dead beat in competition,
Thus grumbled: NO IT IS OPPOSED, ART SEES TRADE’S OPPOSITION!

A nonsense-loving nephew might his soldier-uncle dun,
With NOW STOP, MAJOR GENERAL, ARE NEGRO JAM POTS WON?

A supercilious grocer, if inclined that way, might snub
A child with, BUT RAGUSA STORE, BABE, ROTS A SUGAR TUB!

Thy sceptre, Alexander, is a fortress, cried Hephaestion:
Great A. said, NO, IT’S A BAR OF GOLD, A BAD LOG FOR A BASTION!

A timid creature fearing rodents — mice and such small fry —
STOP, SYRIAN, I START AT RATS IN AIRY SPOTS, might cry.

A simple soul, whose wants are few, might say, with hearty zest,
DESSERTS I DESIRE NOT, SO LONG NO LOST ONE RISE DISTRESSED.

A stern Canadian parent might — in earnest, not in fun —
Exclaim, NO SOT NOR OTTAWA LAW AT TORONTO, SON!

A crazy dentist might declare, as something strange or new,
That PAGET SAW AN IRISH TOOTH, SIR, IN A WASTE GAP! True!

A surly student, hating sweets, might answer with élan;
NAME TARTS, NO, MEDIEVAL SLAVE, I DEMONSTRATE MAN!

He who in Nature’s bitters, findeth sweet food every day,
EUREKA! TILL I PULL UP ILL I TAKE RUE, well might say.

“Dr. Johnson has somewhere said that there are many things difficult to accomplish, and which, when accomplished, are not worth the labour expended upon them. Sage correspondents of ‘N. & Q.,’ after scanning the above, will doubtless concur in opinion with the sententious old Moralizer.”

| Language