Morning Read: Mongers
¶ Lord Chesterfield doesn’t think much of naturalists.
It is characteristic of a man of parts and good judgment to know, and to give that degree of attention that each object deserves; whereas little minds mistake little objects for great ones, and lavish away upon the former that time and attention which only the latter deserve. To such mistakes we owe the numerous and frivolous tribe of insect-mongers, shell-mongers, and pursuers and driers of butterflies, etc. … Of this little sort of knowledge, which I have just hinted at, you will find at least as much as you need wish to know, in a splendid but pretty French book entitles Spectacle de la Nature, which will amuse you while you read it, and give you a sufficient notion of the various parts of nature….
Astronomy is different, though:
The vast and immense planetary system, the astonishing order and regularity of those innumerable world, will open a scewne to you, which not only deserves your attention as a matter of curiosity, or rather astonishment; but still more, as it will give you greater, and consequently juster ideas of that eternal and omnipotent Being, who contrived, made, and still preserves that universe, than all the contemplation of this, comparatively, very little orb, which we at present inhabit, could possibly give you.
So far as science goes, the foregoing marks Chesterfield as a man of the Seventeenth Century, not the Eighteenth.
¶ In Moby-Dick, more unintelligible cetacean anatomy. THIS IS NOT A NOVEL! I can feel a wave of Aneiosis coming on. Last season, I galloped through the final book of Virgil’s screed in one go, so mad was I to be done with it. I’m considerably farther from the end of Moby-Dick; in fact, I’m not that much past halfway. I no longer mind the reading so much; what bewilders me every time I pick up the book is its lofty reputation. It’s a piece of outsider art, is what it is.
¶ In Don Quixote, Sancho, “the scoundrel” (socarrón) shows that he’s learned a thing or two about his knight errant when he tries to solve the problem of producing a Dulcinea. He has never met this figment of Quixote’s imagination, but he has lied to the contrary, and now he’s in a pickle. Abracadabra: poor Don Quixote has been enchanted again, so that Dulcinea looks like a peasant girl, riding along on a donkey with two friends. Quixote puts up not the slightest resistance to the trick. Worse, Sancho can hardly “hide his laughter.”
¶ In Squillions, a cascade of fan letters from important people, all saying such wonderful things about In Which We Serve that you can’t believe that you’ve never seen it. I repeat: Barry Day ought to have titled his book, Letters Noël Coward Saved.