Essay: "Chaucer." John Dryden

Dryden identifies the essence of Chaucer’s talent as a writer. It has never been said better.

Chaucer is the “…father of English poetry….”

Chaucer lived in the “infancy” of our poetry.”

Of Chaucer’s faults: “We must be children before we grow to men.” In other words, we have to learn before we excel.

“A satirical poet is the check of the layman on bad priests.”

Chaucer “…must have been a man of a most wonderful comprehensive nature, because…he has taken into the compass of his Canterbury Tales the various manners and humours…of the whole English nation in his age. Not a single character has escaped him. All his pilgrims are severally distinguished from each other….”

“The matter and manner of their tales, and of their telling, are so suited to their different educations, humours and callings, that each would be improper in any other mouth.”

“We have our forefathers and great-grand-dames all before us as they were in Chaucer’s days; their general characters are still remaining in mankind…for mankind is ever the same….”

The Oxford Book of Essays. Ed. John Gross. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1991, pp. 29-33.

Essay: "Of Avarice." Abraham Cowley.

I'm back. RayS.

Cowley presents two kinds of avarice:

1) “…rapacious appetite for gain” in order to show off how rich he is. 2) The second kind is to hoard and perpetually increase riches.  Never satisfied.

Some ideas:

“Poverty wants some, luxury many, avarice all things.”

A wise man: in having nothing, he has all.”

“Too much plenty impoverishes me….”  Pp. 27-28.

The Oxford Book of Essays. Ed. John Gross. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1991, pp. 27-28.

Essay: "Of Charity or the Love of God." Jeremy Taylor.

“Love is the greatest thing that God can give us; for himself is love: and it is the greatest thing we can give to God; for it will also give ourselves, and carry with it all that is ours.” “It is a grace that loves God for himself and our neighbors for God.”

God is “an infinite nature, immensity or vastness without extension or limit, immutability, eternity, omnipotence, omniscience, holiness, … providence, bounty, mercy, justice, perfection in himself, and the end to which all things and all actions must be directed, and will at last arrive.”

In contrast to God, there is human nature. Smallness and limited nature, our inconstancy, our weakness and ignorance, our inconsideration, our harsh nature, our universal iniquity, our dependence. We are obnoxious and most contemptible.

“For in the scrutinies for righteousness and judgment, when it is inquired whether such a person be a good man or no, the meaning is not What does he believe? Or What does he hope? But what he loves.” 1610.

The Oxford Book of Essays. Ed. John Gross. Oxford and new York: Oxford University Press. 1991.

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After this sampling of essays through the years, I have decided to end this blog. RayS.

Essay: "A Degenerate Noble...." Samuel Butler.

Essay: “A Degenerate Noble: Or One That Is P:roud of His Birth.” Samuel Butler.

He glories in the antiquity of his family. He believes that the honor that was left him is sufficient to support his quality without troubling himself to add to the family’s honor and prosperity. “The living honor of his ancestors is long ago departed, dead and gone, and his is but the ghost and shadow of it….” He will never rise again to the height of his ancestors by his means. He has no business but to spend. He consumes and wastes. He is like a word that has lost its meaning and assumed the meaning of its opposite. “He values himself only upon his title….” 1668.

The Oxford Book of Essays. Ed. John Gross. Oxford and new York: Oxford University Press. 1991.

Essay: "Of Anger." Thomas Fuller.

. “Be not angry without cause.”

. “Be not mortally angry with any for a venial fault.”

. “Let not the anger be so hot…. Fright not people from thy presence with the terror of thy intolerable impatience.”

. “Take heed of doing irrevocable acts in thy passion…. Do not in an instant what an age cannot recompense.”

. “Anger kept till the next morning…doth putrefy and corrupt…. And as the English, by command from William the Conqueror, always raked up their fire and put out their candles, when the curfew bell was rung, let us then also quench all sparks of anger and heat of passion.”

. “He that keeps anger long in his bosom, giveth place to the devil.”

Fuller concludes with: “Had Narcissus himself seen his own face when he had been angry, he would never have fallen in love with himself.” 1642.

Comment: An early course in anger management. RayS.

The Oxford Book of Essays. Ed. John Gross. Oxford and new York: Oxford University Press. 1991.

Essay: "On Dreams." Sir Thomas Browne.

Dreams are the brothers of death. “The day supplieth us with truths; the night with fictions and falsehoods.” Dreams are the demons in our lives. Dreams are the actions of the day acted over and echoed in the night. Men act in dreams in conformity to their senses when awake. There is an art to make dreams as well as their interpretation. Types of food before retiring can make dreams turbulent or quiet. Dionysius kills a man because Dionysius dreamed the man killed him. Lamia sued a man because she dreamed that he had taken her virtue in her dreams. Never to have dreamed is as improbable as never to have laughed.

Comment: These essays are more like lists.

I never forgot a comment about dreams that Tolstoy once made: Dreams are not real, but the emotions that accompany them are. RayS.

The Oxford Book of Essays. Ed. John Gross. Oxford and new York: Oxford University Press. 1991.