EP#25: Insomniac City, Bill Hayes

Insomniac City is by Bill Hayes, the partner of Oliver Sacks in his final 2-3 years. This is a book rather than a set of essays, but we are including it just to round out the coverage of OS. And, it should be noted, we have occasionally included other books-rather-than-essays such as OS’s lovely A Leg to Stand On.

That said, I don’t have a lot to say about Insomniac City. It is an account of Hayes’ arrival in and growing appreciation of NYC (as well as Hayes’ photographs), with alternating chapters describing his relationship with OS.

Hayes’ accounts of NYC didn’t engage me. He has what feels to me like an overly romantic/heroic view of NYC which doesn’t ring true to me, perhaps, though, because I’ve never lived there. I was much more positive about his accounts of his daily life with Sacks. It was nice to get a glimpse of Sacks through other eyes, and find that his eccentricities and charm persisted. I found it especially nice to see that Sacks, who had been alone most of his life, experienced a kind and loving relationship in his last few years.

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EP#27: Essays of Samuel Johnson: An Online Sampler from The Rambler

We are back to the traditional essay form, after a detour into Oliver Sacks, and an abortive taste of William James (which we decided was too far afield from the essay form). I asked Claude.ai to provide a short list of Johnson’s most acclaimed essays from The Rambler, with links to online versions, and we read those.

I find Johnson a bit of a chore to read, although I appreciate his writing. To help consolidate it, I’ve adopted the practice of reading paragraph, and the writing a single sentence that summarizes it.

This time, as an experiment, after writing and consolidating my summary sentences into a precis, I gave Claude.ai the text and asked it to produce a precis of the same length. I was impressed by the results – Claude.ai did as well as I did, although I am confident I will remember the essays better, and appreciate them more, because of my efforts. Below, for each essay, I provide both my own precis and those produced by Claude.ai, as well as links to the essays themselves.

No. 2. The necessity and danger of looking into futurity

No. 2 (imagination vs. execution): https://www.johnsonessays.com/the-rambler/no-2-the-necessity-and-danger-of-looking-into-futurity/

Tom’s Precis

We are distracted from the present by dreams of the future. This manner of wasting time has been widely ridiculed. Yet this condemnation is indulged because those who level it can feel superior, imagining that they think more deeply and possess more perspicuity than the general public. Because it is so easy to mock, writers fail to examine the virtues of looking ahead.

Yet the inclination to look ahead seems unavoidable. Human progress is gradual, and it is only as we progress that we are able to see new things. And when we attain an end, a new one will be in sight: the human mind moves from hope to hope. To make progress you must attend to your goal, which despite its uncertainty provides motivation.

Even the most repeated maxim contains some truth, otherwise it would not persist. It is true by fixing too strongly upon the imagined results of success, one may neglect the practicalities of achieving it. But little would be undertaken unless we did not, to some degree, magnify the rewards of success. Still, we can overdo it, just as a plant may suffer as much from too much sun as too little.

Authors may be particularly prone to this sort of error, in thinking of their writings. I am only lightly touched, and will endeavor to fortify myself against this.

Epictetus advises that one should often think of what is most terrible, to diminish one’s hopes. A new writer should imagine that he may lack the ability to achieve success; this view may be buttressed by looking at all those authors who came before and are now forgotten. Even talented authors my go unnoticed. The public may be too lazy to read anything without an established reputation; others may neglect new offerings because they are not open to new thinking, or are tainted by suspcion or envy. The learned may hesitate to recommend because they are careful of their reputations, and the ignorant may wish to portray themselves as wise by being critical. Writers who succeed, in spite of all this, must acknowledge their debts to things beyond their personal learning, talent, and industry.

Claude’s Precis (Opus 4.8)

Johnson examines the human tendency to live in the future rather than the present. The mind, he observes, is never satisfied with what lies immediately before it but is always “breaking away from the present moment,” losing itself in schemes of future happiness—neglecting the time we actually have in order to prepare for enjoyments that may never arrive.

He notes how easily critics mock this habit. Condemning others flatters one’s own sense of superiority, and recycling familiar complaints lets a writer “shine without labour, and conquer without a contest.” Ridiculing the dreamer who refuses present ease for distant pleasures is a smooth, flowery path—which is precisely why Johnson distrusts it and asks whether it actually leads to truth.

The habit, he argues, is in fact unavoidable for a creature whose life is progressive and whose powers are limited. We must use means to reach ends, intending first what we perform last, and at every stage we discover new motives, fears, and desires. Each goal, once gained, turns out to be merely a means to some further goal. The mind moves not “from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.” The farmer turns the soil only because he thinks of a harvest that blight or flood might still destroy.

Yet the warning against fixing our eyes too intently on remote rewards has real merit, even if it’s usually delivered carelessly. We often indulge the thrill of success so early that we neglect the steps needed to secure it, letting the moment slip away. Still, few difficult enterprises would ever be attempted if we couldn’t magnify their imagined rewards. Don Quixote’s grand delusions, Johnson notes, differ from our own private fantasies only in degree—when we laugh at him, our hearts admit he merely says aloud what we have quietly thought.

Authors are especially vulnerable. A writer with a lively imagination races mentally to the press and to posterity, anticipating future honors before doing the work. Johnson, feeling the first symptoms of this “writer’s malady” himself, tries to fortify against it. He counsels aspiring writers to expect neglect—the cruelest fate, worse than hatred or opposition—since even genuine merit is easily lost amid life’s noise, blocked by lazy, envious, and prejudiced readers who resist whatever is new.

No. 5. A meditation on the Spring.

03 Apr 1750

No. 5 (spring): https://www.johnsonessays.com/the-rambler/no-5-a-meditation-on-the-spring/

Tom’s Precis

Discontent with the present leads us to imagine a felicitous future where barriers to our happiness are gone. When this future arrives, it does not live up to our imaginings; but we simply fix our imagination on a new future. If someone is going to do this, it is best if they imagine ends which are wholly outside their power; for then, at least, they don’t try to do anything to achieve the ends.

One such person imagined that things would improve with the spring. When the season passed without the foreseen improvements, they would simply expect improvements in the following spring. This person has infected me with the same enthusiasm.

And indeed, there is something inexpressibly pleasing about the spring in the way the world transforms from its dreary winter state. Spring’s greenness, pleasant smells, beautiful sounds, abounding growth, and lovely weather serve as a powerful simile for hope!

Some people cannot, perhaps, bear self-reflection and instead struggle to escape by immersing themselves in the mundane world. Those who are incapable of comtemplation must turn to other means to avoid depression.

I will address myself to those who lack the knowledge of nature. Everyone ought to reflect on what they see around them; that is the point of taking a walk.Nature provides an inexhaustible store of materials to reflect on; reflection may range from discovering practical qualities of elements of nature to provoking adoration of God. This will not apply to everyone, but it is not improper to offer these suggestions to those who are depressed. And young people, in the spring of their lives, could gain much pleasure from attention to the natural world, while remembering that the flowers of the spring are but preparation for the fruits of autumn

Claude’s Precis (Opus 4.8)

Johnson opens by noting that almost everyone, dissatisfied with something in their present life, lets the imagination chase future happiness, fixing on some moment when a removed inconvenience or a gained advantage will finally improve things. When that moment arrives, it usually comes without the hoped-for blessing—so we simply latch onto a new prospect and press forward again.

He describes a man he once knew who managed this temper harmlessly by always referring the cure of his troubles to “the next spring.” Ill health, high prices—spring would fix them. Spring routinely failed to deliver, but he was always sure the next would be kinder, and he spoke of spring as still coming until it had passed, at which point everyone agreed it was indeed coming.

Such fondness for spring, Johnson notes, is shared by nearly every great poet, and even the golden age was imagined as a perpetual spring.There is something deeply pleasing in the world’s annual renewal: after winter’s cold and bareness, each early flower feels like a messenger of happier days, and nature wears “the smile” of gaiety.

Yet some people take no delight in this and flee to cards, taverns, and idle chatter. Johnson lays down a reliable rule: when a man cannot bear his own company, something is wrong—he is either escaping an empty mind or fleeing painful thoughts. Setting aside those crushed by genuine sorrow, he addresses people merely bored because they never learned to “read the characters” in the open book of nature.

A French writer claimed few men know how to take a walk, and Johnson agrees—changing your position is pointless if your attention stays fixed. Curiosity about nature multiplies the inlets to happiness without tempting envy. He urges his younger readers to use both the spring of the year and the spring of life, since a blighted spring makes a barren year.

No. 14. The difference between an author’s writings and his conversation

No. 14 (writing vs. conversation): https://www.johnsonessays.com/the-rambler/no-14-the-difference-between-an-authors-writings-and-his-conversation/

Tom’s Precis

The writing and conversation of an author may be strongly inconsistent; this is evinced by Milton’s self-congratulation on avoiding this circumstance in an interview with a visitor. Many have had their high opinions of an author dashed upon encountering the writer in person. Just as oriental monarchs hid themselves in palaces to preserve the august reputations, so ought authors.

It is obvious why someone may write better than they live: writing is not subject to the same pressures and constrains as living. The many impediments–passions, disruptions, the press of time—that create challenges in life may be banished when one only propounds a theory. So it is no surprise that one’s lived experience does not match one’s precepts laid down in solitude, safety and tranquility.

Yet it is valuable to have ideals; even the most remiss may atone for their faults by acknowledging their failings. It’s not fair to call someone like this a hypocrite: they may sincerely believe in their precepts, even while failing to practice them. It is better to have high ideals, and fail at achieving them, than to cynically abandon ideas because of the imagined hypocrisy of others. Because of this cynicism, it is incumbent on authors to be, at least, no worse than others. Bacon takes the approach of first setting forth a lofty ideal, but then offering lesser but more practicable virtues. Hale long concealed his religious activities, fearing that his actions should bring piety into disgrace.

Many seek to know authors for other reasons: flights of wit, sallies of pleasantry, elegant diction, and keen analysis.

Authors are particularly liable to this inconsistency because the solitude of their work keeps them from the public interactions which might enable the refinement of manners and public speaking. Thus men of letters “may be without that readiness of conception, and affluence of language, always necessary to colloquial entertainment.” It is like entering a large city, which appears splendid from a distance, but up close is decrepit and diseased.

Claude’s Precis (Opus 4.8)

Johnson notes a common inconsistency: the striking gap between an author’s life and his writings. He praises Milton for being found, in private conversation, equal to his own public reputation—a rare achievement. More often, readers who seek out a writer they admire come away disappointed; the sparkling bubble becomes plain water at the touch, and the imagined perfection vanishes. Worse, seeing virtue’s best advocates “loitering below” may discourage others from climbing toward virtue themselves.

He compares this to oriental monarchs who hide in their palaces, known only by their edicts. A writer, like a ruler, benefits from concealment, since people resist being taught by someone who shares their own faults. An intruder might find an admired author behaving no more nobly than Sardanapalus busy with trivial amusements.

Yet Johnson explains why a man naturally writes better than he lives: it is far easier to design than to perform. The writer plans in calm abstraction, free from hope, fear, appetite, and affection—like someone teaching navigation on dry land, where the sea is always smooth. The man actually living must act amid passions, accidents, and a thousand inconveniences, forced to choose before he can examine. So we shouldn’t be surprised that people fail in practice at precepts they laid down in tranquil solitude.

Still, ideals of perfection must be proposed so we have something to aim at, and a flawed man partly atones for his faults by warning others against them. Johnson rejects the charge of hypocrisy: a man can sincerely recommend virtues he hasn’t yet achieved, just as he might praise a journey he lacks the courage to take. An argument’s force doesn’t depend on whether its proposer lives up to it. Nonetheless, since this prejudice persists, a writer should try to practice what he teaches—and should at least not behave worse than ordinary people simply because he writes well.

Finally, Johnson observes that the gifts of writing and conversation differ. The scholar spends his polishing years in study and often proves awkward or arrogant in company. Meeting an admired author can be like entering a city admired from afar: the distant spires of palaces give way, up close, to narrow passages, mean cottages, and smoke.

No. 29. The folly of anticipating misfortunes

No. 29 (envy/anticipating misfortunes): https://www.johnsonessays.com/the-rambler/no-29-the-folly-of-anticipating-misfortunes/

Tom’s Precis

The poets of antiquity recommend focusing on the pleasures of the here and now. Their teachings should not be ignored, but note that they are focused on pleasure rather than instruction. This is not surprising, since as heathens they had no expectations of heaven or eternity. But among these incitements to pleasure one may find wise reflections on life.

We should not submit passively to what comes our way, but nor should we struggle too much about unknowable and uninfluenceable future events. A wise man is never surprised, but it because he has thought less about the future. “He escapes disappointment because he never forms any expectations.”

Anxiety about things to come is not provoked by the variability of life, but by a fear of misfortune. This temper, like jealousy, poisons his thinking about the future. While moralists suggest mitigating hope by remembering the vagaries of life, one may mitigate fear in the same way. Evil, like good, is uncertain, and for the reasons we ought not hope too securely, so we ought not fear too greatly. Don’t fear misfortunes before they happen; otherwise life will be dismal. If it is improper to fear events, like death, which must happen, it is even more improper to fear those that may never happen. No one has ever found the realization of one’s hopes as delightful as the expectation thereof; the same is true of evil.Fear is painful, and if it does not provide a path to safety it is useless.

Claude’s Precis (Opus 4.8)

Johnson examines the folly of anticipating misfortunes. He begins with the ancient poets, who frequently urged seizing the present hour and dismissing care. He regards them as unreliable moral teachers—more eager to please than instruct—and faults modern imitators especially, since unlike the pagans they have the hopes and fears of eternity to consider and shouldn’t simply echo old maxims of debauchery. Still, even a flawed genius scatters real wisdom worth treasuring.

Their warning against probing the future, he argues, shows sound judgment. While idle passivity in the face of calamity is beneath a reasonable being, it is equally foolish to torment ourselves over events not yet in existence—things we cannot influence or even know will happen. The wise man’s famous freedom from surprise comes not from foreseeing more but from thinking less about futurity: he forms no expectations, so he suffers no disappointment.

Such desponding anticipation resembles jealousy in love or suspicion in dealings—a temper that keeps a man perpetually alarmed, scheming against evils that never threatened him, and sometimes producing the very mischief he dreaded. Crucially, the examples moralists use to curb vain hope work equally well against fear: evil is as uncertain as good. Fortune may topple the persecutors we dread, or our enemies may weaken before we meet them.

Both hope and fear are fallacious, hope enlarging happiness and fear aggravating calamity; in reality no distress proves as formidable as imagination paints it, since every trial brings unforeseen supports. Above all, time spent fearing the future is stolen from the present, the only time truly ours.

Rambler #134 [Procrastination]

No. 134 (procrastination): https://www.samueljohnson.com/ram134.html

Tom’s Precis

I tried to think about what to write this essay about, but had no luck until I had to turn something in. While I can produce something under these circumstances, I reproached myself for idleness; but I felt superior too.Everyone puts off, to a greater or lesser degree, what must be done; it is a persistent challenge. It is easier to believe that a later time will somehow make the task easier. It is easier to act than suffer, yet every day we put things off; it is difficult to be sympathetic with those who do nothing to help themselves.

Fear or frequent irresolution becomes a habit, and can make life miserable. Those who are idle gain nothing; remorse and vexation will eliminate any pleasure. Some procrastinate because they see so many options, and try to purse them all. The perfect is enemy of the good.

Life is short. It is better to try, even if one does not complete the task, than to never try.

Claude’s Precis (Opus 4.8)

Johnson opens with himself: he spent yesterday morning idly deliberating which subject to write on, deciding nothing, until a summons from the press forced him to write under pressure. He reproaches himself for the delay, yet takes some comfort that he, who merely trifled until diligence became necessary, is still better off than those who trifle until diligence is useless and are condemned to barren sorrow.

This folly of postponing the unavoidable, he argues, afflicts every mind—the most pertinacious of passions, often beaten but never destroyed. We persuade ourselves that necessity is far off, and so waste life collecting resolution that each morning dissipates. Every surrender to fear enlarges its dominion; when evils can’t be avoided, wisdom lies in shortening the dread by meeting them.

Acting is easier than suffering, yet many freeze in idleness like a Tantalus who won’t lift his hand. Others are paralyzed by acuteness—weighing too many options, or refusing to act without unreachable perfection. Since life is short and uncertain, every man should pursue his aims now; even one cut off mid-effort dies honorably in his rank.

No. 208. The Rambler’s reception. His design.

(Fini): https://www.johnsonessays.com/the-rambler/no-208-the-ramblers-reception-his-design/

Tom:

This is Johnson’s goodbye, the last of The Rambler essays. I read it, but did not have time to produce a precis. But, as has been the case with the foregoing, Claude.ai’s version is quite good.

Claude’s Precis (Opus 4.8)

Johnson announces the end of the Rambler after two years and more than two hundred essays. He declines to explain his reasons, doubting anyone will inquire, since he was never a public favorite and never courted patrons, praise, or fashionable attention. He never flattered curiosity about the topic of the day or used living people as examples; his readers were only those whom virtue could please “by its naked dignity.”

He thanks his few friends, identifies the handful of papers contributed by correspondents, and accepts full accountability for his faults, refusing to soften criticism through false modesty or dedication to a patron. A writer bound to compose on a fixed day, he notes, often works with a distracted mind and exhausted body.

He claims one solid achievement: refining the English language toward purity and elegance, drawing chiefly on native resources. His aim throughout was wisdom and piety, not novelty or merriment, and his serious essays conform to Christian precepts. He asks only to be counted among writers who gave ardor to virtue and confidence to truth.

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EP#28: The Art of the Personal Essay*

The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present, ed. Phillip Lopate, 1994.

June 2026 — ???

This is the 27th book we’ve tackled for the Essays Project. This is a giant anthology which should keep us going through the summer – and given anticipated travel likely well into next year. While we had considered being more eclectic, and curating batches of essays from various authors, after one trial (Johnson, EP#26) it seemed easier to return to a published anthology which both eases the burden of selection, and guarantees us paper pages upon which to make notes. So here we gol

Introduction

An excellent introduction that takes on the task of trying to distinguish the personal essay from other sorts of essays, and from seemingly similar writing such as memoir and autobiography. Among Lopate’s claims about what distinguishes the personal essay from other forms of essay:

Sets up a dialog with the reader based on identification, understanding, testiness, and companionship
Contains self-revelation, personal experiences and tastes, and can affect a confidential manner
Less formal in that it may have a rambling structure, relaxed diction, freshness of form, and makes no claims to completeness or definitive treatment. Digressions are OK.
Depends more on style and personality than flawless reasoning
May be conversational, with throat clearing, or putting objections in the mouth of the reader
Struggle for honesty; vulnerability; self-revelation; self-doubt and self-questioning; admission of uncertainty, lapses, errors, defects, shortcomings. Interrogation of one’s own ignorance. Amused self-observation.
The narrator must be reliable
Contrariness: Stand a platitude on its head. Implicate first oneself, then the reader.
Unashamed subjectiveness; “skeptical yet gyroscopically poised.”

And this taste for the miniature becomes a strong suit of the form: the ability to turn anything close at hand (Charles Lamb’s ears, Virginia Woolf’s moth, Samuel Johnson’s boarding house) into a grand meditational adventure.

—The Art of the Personal Essay, p xxviii (in Introduction by Phillip Lopate)

Forerunners

Seneca: On Noise; Asthma; Scipio’s Villa; Slaves

As Lopate says in the introduction, one of his goals is to bring in writings that, while not essays by his definition, have some of the central characteristics he sees in the personal essay. Seneca, followed by Plutarch, are the two [western] classical antecedents.

Seneca seems particularly apt in that, unlike most classical authors, his personality comes through: we come to get a sense of the man through his writing about other things. Other essay-like characteristics include a focus on the mundane (how people behave in a bath house), and moving from the particular to the universal (from asthma to death), and a bit of impish humor at the end (where after all this complaining and discussion of the noise, he admits he is about to move elsewhere.

Plutarch: Consolation to His Wife

The Plutarch entry, cast as another predecessor to the essay, seems less apt than Seneca’s work, because it is a letter to his wife rather than writing addressed to a larger audience. As a consequence, the familiarity of his voice, and the emotional quality of his writing (also a consequence of the topic), seem to me to spring from the particular circumstances, rather than the sort of impulses that motivate personal essayists,

… reading break …

These next three pieces are not essays, in my view, but indicate that the impulse that shaped essays arose independently of western thought.

Sei Shonagan: “Hateful Things”

Sei Shonagan is a court lady in 10th Century Japan. She comes across as a snob: opinionated, mannered, petty, spiteful.

This forerunner of the essay is essentially a list of everything she hates, ranging from the minute (a mosquito’s buzz in the bedroom at night) to boorish ill-mannered people. Mildly amusing, and the list tells us a good deal about her and the times and situation in which she lives.

This piece illustrates Lopate’s “unashamed subjectiveness” and “self-revelation,” and the essay’s “taste for the miniature” (e.g. the mosquito’s whine). The list form of this essay also anticipates modern essays that cast themselves as lists (which I don’t care for)

Kenko: Essays in Idleness

Kenko was some kind of court functionary in 13th-14th C Japan, with a reputation as a poet.

The piece is composed of a series of unconnected (as far as I can see) passages about places, scenes, thoughts and so forth. Though as the editor selected the passages to include, perhaps there would be more connection if we could see it all.

It is true it had an informal tone, and treated with every day life. And that it looks closely at small things. And that it, perhaps, in its fragmentary, drifting form illustrates the approach of keeping things open and incomplete.

That said, I did not find this writing very interesting. Lacks the wit, verve, and humor of Shonagan.

Ou-Yang Hsiu: Pleasure Boat Studio

An 11th C Chinese Sung dynasty classical poet ranked as one of the 8 masters of classical Chinese prose. He was a member of the imperial court, and held various offices throughout his life.

He has named his office in the Palace Pleasure Boat Studio, and this piece explains why. He explains that the rooms that make up his office are arranged in a single row, and so the space is long and narrow like a boat. He also notes that after he was exiled he lived on a boat and sailed rivers, and comments that the real purpose of a boat is to deliver people from danger, and not pleasure. But at the same time he notes that some have found pleasure in living on boats, even though he has no time for such diversions. So I suppose his naming his office “Pleasure Boat” is ironic, though perhaps he also likes the connotation of delivering him from danger.

But it doesn’t really make sense to me. Not a vey thrilling piece in my view.

In terms of Lopate’s characteristics of personal essays, this shows contrariness, self-deprecation, and the conversational gesture of speaking to the reader: “Is there anything wrong with that?”

… reading break …

Fountainhead (Montaigne)

Introduction

Lopate suggests M may have been the greatest essayist who ever lived.
His family on both sides was wealthy; they were minor land owning nobility
Notes that he was raised speaking only Latin for the first years of his life, which (not mentioned here) also means he had almost no interaction with his parents or anyone except his tutor.
M studied law and practiced as a magistrate
He cast his essays as self-study, a portrait of himself in words.
His first book, written from 1572-1574, was short and filled with quotations and not especially personal—but it was a success and gave him more confidence.
M felt there was a basic unity to human experience. He regarded humanity as constantly in flux, and vain, ashamed and contradictory. But he embedded these views in a frame of forgiveness.
“His own sentences were sinewy, dry, yet succulent: they explode like pomegranate seeds on the tongue.”
He wrote in the vernacular, not Latin

…the spirit of humanism was in the air, via Erasmus and others, and the classical Greek and Roman authors were being used as a Trojan borse to open the gates to a freer, more speculative and self-analytical mentality (Socrates’ “Know thyself’). Rabelais great, bawdy novel, Gargantua and Pantagruel, likewise gave Montaigne license to write in support of pleasure and an integration of mind and body. Alongside an increase in classical learning and scientific knowledge, new worlds were literally being discovered. Explorers brought back reports of exotic native customs from the Americas and the Pacific, which fueled Montaigne’s relativistic bent.
—ibid., 44

While Montaigne deserves credit for inventing the form, I have to say I don’t care for his writing. He takes paragraphs to say what might be said in a few sentences. And although many seem to think the uncertainty and changeability is a virtue, or at least a characteristic of the new form, I find it a bit irritating. There is something to be said for emphasizing that an important aspect of the personal essay has to do with how the author approaches the topic, but Montaigne not only disclaims expertise, which is fair, but seems to shirk any responsibility for accuracy or accountability.

Having written the above, after reading a few of his essays, I do have to say that I appreciate his tolerant and even compassionate approach.

Of Books, Michel de Montaigne

The first two pages are mostly disclaimer. He portrays himself as unlearned (which does not seem accurate), and uninterested in grappling with difficult books or study—he just wants to enjoy himself.

“Let attention not be paid to the matter, but to the shape I give it.”
“I want them to give Plutarch a fillip on my nose and get burned insulting Seneca in me.”

After this he comments on books he likes (and some he does not), beginning with entertaining books, fables, poetry. He also likes Seneca, Plutarch, and Cicero.

Of a Monstrous Child, Michel de Montaigne

M describes a child who is a partial Siamese twin, with a headless body joined to his abdomen. He comments that this might be seen as an omen, but it is better not to: “there is nothing like divining about things past. ‘So that when things happen, by some interpretation they are found to have been prophesied.‘ [Cicero]”

M is compassionate, and argues against revulsion. “We call contrary to nature what happens contrary to custom; nothing is anything but according to nature, whatever it may be. Let this universal and natural reason drive out of us the error and astonishment that novelty brings us.“

… reading break …

On Some Verses of Virgil

This essay exhibits a candid, cheerful acceptance of the body and its pleasures — especially sexual pleasure — as a defense against the gloom of old age. A minor theme is a defense of writing about oneself without shame or euphemism.

On Aging

Written as M was aging and ailing, he refers to his own bodily decline and refuses a “melancholic and dull tranquillity,” instead cultivating cheerfulness.

Let childhood look ahead, old age backward: was not this the meaning of the double face of Janus? Let the years drag me along if they will, but backward. As long as my eyes can discern that lovely season now expired, I turn them in that direction at intervals. If youth is escaping from my blood and my veins, at least I want not to uproot the picture of it from my memory.

— Michel Montaigne, p 59 [in Lopate]

On Candid Self-disclosure

M defends writing frankly; not surprising since his project is to write about himself, and how he sees things. With regard to sex he notes the hypocrisy that we all have sex yet are ashamed to talk about it because of convention. Complete self-portraiture requires not exempting the body, and indeed he refers to his various ailments and alludes to his own sexual inadequacy.

On Love vs. Marriage

“Love and marriage are two intentions that go by separate and distinct roads. “

Erotic love and marriage run on different principles. Marriage is a rational, social, durable bond; sexual passion is volatile and belongs elsewhere. Passionate love inside marriage is unstable, even dangerous.

Men and Women

“Women are not wrong at all when they reject the rules of life that have been introduced into the world, inasmuch as it is the men who have made these without them. “

M argues that men and women are not fundamentally different vis a vis sexual appetite. The demands of chastity and constancy are imposed by men and culturally arbitrary; women are judged unfairly. (But there is also misogyny common to those times — women are beguiling, inconstant, vicious — the essay is not proto-feminist, though it does repeatedly undercut male self-flattery.)

I say that males and females are cast in the same mold; except for education and custom, the difference is not great. Plato invites both without discrimination to the fellowship of all studies, exercises, functions, warlike and peaceful occupations, in his commonwealth. And the philosopher Antisthenes eliminated any distinction between their virtue and ours.

Other matters

Jealousy: Reflections on how sexual and marital customs vary across cultures — reinforcing that our norms are contingent.
Impotence: his own, and the undesirability of old men in general
On writing: “Any topic is equally fertile to me. A fly will serve my purpose.” “I owe a complete portrait of myself to the public.”
On his conduct of affairs: he presents himself as fair to a fault.

The Rise of the English /essay

Abraham Crowley

Of Greatness

“I confess I love littleness in all things. A little convenient estate, a little cheerful house, a little company, and a very little feast…“

The essay argues that greatness is not desirable. It is better to be comfortable than wealthy, because wealth and fame come with inconveniences (servitude, disquiet, danger, guilt), and they also incline one to always want more than one has.

…this whole globe of earth, which we account so immense a body, is but one point or atom in relation to those numberless worlds that are scattered up and down in the infinite space of the sky which we behold.

Abraham Crowley, Of Greatness [ibid., p 121]

Addison and Steele

Nicolini and the Lions, by Joseph Addison,

Nicolini and the Lions, by Joseph Addison, is not an allegory (as I initially wondered), though neither it is a review of the opera.

The piece is more of a parody of political factionalism and rumor mongering of the time, as the references to “the whole session,” the mention of the refined politicians in the audience, and the mention friendship among ostensibly opposed parties (“this is what is practiced every day in Westminster Hall.”)

It is also self-parody, in that the author’s ‘investigation’ is careless and credulous, though his report is presented as though important and official. Perhaps it is a dif at Italian opera as well: “…our present grievance is not the want of a good taste, but of common sense.”

I did not enjoy this essay. It felt a bit stilted, and, for me, parody does not age well.

An Hour or Two Sacred To Sorrow, Richard Steele

The essay begins by distinguishing two types of people: those who wish everyone to know of doings; and those who wish to be unobserved. A nice distinction, but I cannot relate it to the rest of the essay.

The essay observes that some people like to make a practice of withdrawing temporarily from the world to think about friends who have passed away. And Steele (or at least the narrator) resolves to do this. However, he quickly discovers that though the passings of those he recalls gave him great sorrow when they occurred, with the passage of time his feelings have lessened, and he is able to reflect on his late friends with pleasure.

He begins by remembering the death of his father, when he was five. He did not grasp what happened, really, but experienced it through the grief of his mother. He comments on how impressionable children are, and suggests that this early experience with grief imprinted itself on him and made him unduly prone to commiseration, remorse, and “unmanly gentleness of mind, which has since ensnared me into ten thousand calamities….”

He then speaks more generally, remarking that those who are very old remember the companions of their youth better than recent events, and that untimely tragic deaths are what are most lamented, and most remembered. He speaks of those who died in wars, and how they evoke veneration, but at the same time pity wells up when considering the havoc that war wrecks.

He then mentions a woman he loved — whom he depicts as beautiful, ignorant and careless — who died young. “In the same week, I saw her dressed for a ball, and in a shroud.” More sad events rise up in his mind, but then a servant knocks and delivers a letter and a hamper of wine. He decides to send for his friends, and they stay up til 2 drinking and talking (recollecting?) cheerfully.

Twenty-four Hours in London, Richard Steele

“It is an inexpressible pleasure to know a little of the world, and be of no character or significancy in it.” Thus begins this essay, the narrator taking on the character of a curious flaneur, who decides that he is going to spend a full 24 hours roving around London to see what he may see.

He says: “The hours of the Day and Night are taken up in the Cities of London and Westminster by Peoples as different from each other as those who are Born in different Centuries.” The essay then unfolds as he first takes a boat into the City, starting a 4am, visits the markets, engages in a flirtatious pursuit-by-cab of a coy woman, and has other adventures that include a beggar, traders, and coffee house habituees. I liked the conceit of this essay, although it was difficult to follow the references to 18th C professions, activities, and places.

Claude.ai generated the following outline of his tour, which I have pared down to this:

a dawn boat-journey downriver to market, with a fleet of gardeners’ boats. Ruddy virgins served as supercargoes, and purveyors sold to the merchants in the market
a stroll through the gay Convent Garden fruit/vegetable/flower market, and observing “fruit wenches” and chimney sweeps flirting (contrasted with the more sober Stocks Market)
A mock cab-chase of a coquette; the cabbies exchange hand signals about fares and destinations, and engage in mock jostling in the streets.
Now the people of fashion come out. At the corner of Warwick Street, street performers sing ballads and the narrator is accosted by a sturdy beggar, but is able to escape when the crowd begins making fun of the beggar
He moves into the center of the city and comes to The Royal Exchange with merchants and high class shops and prosperous people.
Then it is on to Robbins (“Robin’s Coffee-house in Exchange Alley, a hub for stock-jobbing and finance), where men “give bills for the value of large estates.”
And then to Will’s (Will’s Coffee-house in Covent Garden, the famous literary/wits’ haunt), where he hears talk of “cards, dice, love, learning, and politics.”
The day ends with the bellman calling the hour, and him finding a link-boy to light his way home.

Love-Letters, Richard Steele

A short piece on love letters, which argues that the best way to write a love letter as though you are speaking to the person. With that said, he claims that it is better for the man to cast himself as a pleasant and entertaining fellow, than a forlorn lover whose happiness is fully dependent on her. To wit: “If possible therefore divert your mistress, rather than sigh to her. The pleasant Man she will desire for her own Sake; but the languishing Lover has nothing to hope from her but her Pity.”

Samuel Johnson

The Boarding House

xxx

The Solitude of the Country

An interesting essay where Johnson invoked paens to the benefits of retiring to the country for solitude, and then critiques and undercuts them.

Johnson sorts the admirer’s of solitude into types: the arrogant man; the easily offended fault-finders; the imitators of great men (who retired to solitude); the scholars.

The arrogant man will quickly discover he has lost all his flatterers.

The fault finders will turn their scrutiny upon themselves.

As for the imitators of great men:

But what can retirement confer upon him, who having done nothing can receive no support from his own importance, who having known nothing can find no entertainment in reviewing the past, and who intending nothing can form no hopes from prospects of the future: he can, surely, take no wiser course, than that of losing himself again in the crowd, and filling the vacuities of his mind with the news of the day.

—Samuel Johnson, On the Solitude of the Country (ibid., p 142)

And scholars, while they may find solitude conducive to learning, will suffer from the want of others to critique and provide other viewpoints regarding the objects of study.

In sum, Johnson argues that to praise solitude is to covertly to “depreciate mankind,” to say the good others offer isn’t worth the risk of their malice — and he is against that.

Maria Edgeworth, The Noble Science of Self-Justification

I didn’t care for this essay. It is satirical, and never steps out of that form. On the surface, it depicts women as hypocritical manipulators. It does this cleverly, but I just don’t care for it.

The following is Claude.ai’s response to my comment that I didn’t care for the essay because it positioned women as hypocritical manipulators. I asked Claude.ai to explain some of the virtues of the essay. Its response is quite interesting:

In Letters for Literary Ladies (1795) this is the third piece, following a genuine debate on female education. In that debate Edgeworth’s pro-education speaker says outright that women’s appetite for command need not be attributed to any innate cause, and may be fairly ascribed to their erroneous education, and names as the thing he most dreads his daughter absorbing the Rousseauvian idea that cunning and address are the natural resources of her sex. The Self-Justification essay is the exhibit for that argument — a portrait of precisely the woman the preceding letter says bad education produces. Read alone, it looks like a slur; read third, it’s a demonstration.

—Claude.ai

This was, of course, not of Claude’s invention. I believe it is drawn from one of the sources it cited, likely this: Susan Egenolf / Women’s Literary Networks and Romanticism, ch. on Letters for Literary Ladies (Liverpool UP), on the essay as ironic commentary on the preceding debate.

There is ambiguity about when this essay was published, and whether it appeared only in the book, or appeared separately earlier. The latter undercuts the argument a bit…

Quotes I Like

Let childhood look ahead, old age backward: was not this the meaning of the double face of Janus? Let the years drag me along if they will, but backward. As long as my eyes can discern that lovely season now expired, I turn them in that direction at intervals. If youth is escaping from my blood and my veins, at least I want not to uproot the picture of it from my memory.

Praise a hunchback for his handsome figure and he is bound to take it as an insult.

“Love and marriage are two intentions that go by separate and distinct roads. “

It is no longer time to kick when we have let ourselves be hobbled.

“Women are not wrong at all when they reject the rules of life that have been introduced into the world, inasmuch as it is the men who have made these without them. “

“Any topic is equally fertile to me. A fly will serve my purpose.”

Everyone shuns to see a man born, everyone runs to see him die.

Things least feared are least guarded against and observed.

Certainly Love’s conduct has much more style when mingled with heedlessness and confusion; mistakes and misadventures give it style and grace. Provided it is sharp and hungry , it matters little whether it is prudent.