The Sparkly Sparkling Color of Money.

While recently reading Dickens's Our Mutual Friend for the first time, I came upon the following remarkable passage in Chapter 2.5:

Why money should be so precious to an Ass too dull and mean to exchange it for any other satisfaction, is strange; but there is no animal so sure to get laden with it, as the Ass who sees nothing written on the face of the earth and sky but the three letters L. S. D.—not Luxury, Sensuality, Dissoluteness, which they often stand for, but the three dry letters. Your concentrated Fox is seldom comparable to your concentrated Ass in money-breeding.

Being rather ignorant, and in something of a hurry to finish the chapter, I underlined L. S. D. in the book and scribbled the helpful gloss "Groovy!" in the margin. Then I promptly forgot about the passage.

The next day, an anonymous essay entitled "Stockbroking and the Stock Exchange" (Fraser's, 1876) offered me the following line: "Within little more than a century our national debt grew from 25,000,000l. or 30,000,000l. to nearly 900,000,000l., all told;…" The abbreviation l. puzzled me; I assumed that it must stand in for "pounds sterling," but had no other information. Fortunately, the OED conveniently resides on the Web, and it confirmed my guess about pounds sterling (from L. libra, duh); but it also provided me with a nearby hyperlink to "L.S.D.," which I was surprised to see. The result of following the link was, "abbreviation for 'pounds, shillings, and pence' (see the letters L, S, D); hence often used = 'money'. Hence L. S. Deism (humorous), worship of money." Okay.

On to Wikipedia, where "the letters L, S, D" are resolved into librae, solidi, denarii after the various types of Roman specie—good. But then a further note:

The Bonzo Dog Band did a cover of the 1931 song, "Ali Baba's Camel" [music and lyrics, Noel Gay], on their 1969 LP, Tadpoles. The lyrics begin, "You've heard of Ali Baba, forty thieves had he. Out for what we all want, lots of L.S.D."

Hee. Here's a link to the Bonzo* version. I think when they say "L.S.D." it might mean something different from what Gay had in mind.…

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* I'm a sort of intermittent fan of Neil Innes, and am always delighted when something reminds me of him. My favorite song of his is "When Does a Dream Begin," video here.

Nemesis.

When Men have made themselves akin to gods,
But broken one another on the rack,
Their outward-clawing hubris sets the odds
Against them for the empathy they lack.
And Life has left the spavined, crumbling domes
Alone amid the culling universe:
Now once again primordial chaos roams
The stars, whose forpined light resounds the curse;
And Time has threshed the livid, mournful sky
Of all its lives and worlds, an elegy
Unweaves the cosmic hum into a sigh,
That fading, is the end of what will be.
  Then Love lies lightless, weeping for the past;
  Our only purpose, purposeless at last.

Anthropocentric.

Neither time nor space will deign to hide me,
Shoulders pressed against the withers of the world;
The hellborn reeks blood in haste to take me—
His eyes are black, and his black banner's unfurled.
The stars reflect his fleshless ebon grin,
With eyes or sockets gouged amid the spaces:
The breadth of void denies the hell within
That man alone endures within its traces.
I thought the universe to be inert—
Indifferent to the meager plights of men—
So I blasphemed ascription for some hurt,
And learned the cosmos hates within its ken.
  If in dying death's to me allowed,
  Death shall rack me, for the Universe is proud.

Gradations of Post-Summer Summertime.

Brought to you by the Church of England, and explicated by Webster's New International Dictionary, Second Edition (1939):

Indian summer. a A period of warm or mild weather late in autumn or in early winter, usually characterized by a clear or cloudless sky and by a hazy or smoky appearance of the atmosphere, esp. near the horizon. The name is of American origin, the reason for it being uncertain; it is now also used in England. In England, the period, when occurring in November, is also called St. Martin's summer (St. Martin's Day being Nov. 11), when occurring in October, St. Luke's summer or little summer of St. Luke (St. Luke's Day being Oct. 18), chiefly dialectically; when occurring in September, St. Austin's, or St. Augustine's, summer. Formerly Allhallow summer (All Saints' Day being Nov. 1) was also used in England. b A brief period during which past favorable conditions recur.

We will find ourselves at the start of a brilliant St. Luke's summer here in Maunder tomorrow, which will last at least several more days. I for one am going to be getting myself outside as much as possible!

H. P. Lovecraft Does Carpe Diem.

Flavia, of Ferule & Fescue, recently posted Robert Herrick's "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time" on ye Occasion of Her Third and Thirtieth Yeere. Herrick's poem uses graceful language and broad metaphors to make his multifarious point: Time's a-wastin', so be happy! I couldn't help being reminded by "To the Virgins" of a poem that makes a similar point, "Gaudeamus," by the New England fantasist and epistolarian H. P. Lovecraft. Though the latter brindisi is rather more obvious and raucous than the former lyric, it's worth repeating here.

"Gaudeamus"*

Come hither, my lads, with your tankards of ale,
And drink to the present before it shall fail;
Pile each on your platter a mountain of beef,
For 'tis eating and drinking that bring us relief:
  So fill up your glass,
  For life will soon pass;
When you're dead ye'll ne'er drink to your king or your lass!

Anacreon had a red nose, so they say;
But what's a red nose if ye're happy and gay?
Gad split me! I'd rather be red whilst I'm here,
Than white as a lily and dead half a year!
  So Betty, my miss,
  Come give me a kiss;
In hell there's no innkeeper's daughter like this!

Young Harry, propp'd up just as straight as he's able,
Will soon lose his wig and slip under the table,
But fill up your goblets and pass 'em around
Better under the table than under the ground!
  So revel and chaff
  As ye thirstily quaff:
Under six feet of dirt 'tis less easy to laugh!

The fiend strike me blue! l'm scarce able to walk,
And damn me if I can stand upright or talk!
Here, landlord, bid Betty to summon a chair;
l'll try home for a while, for my wife is not there!
  So lend me a hand;
  I'm not able to stand,
But I'm gay whilst I linger on top of the land!

* Gaudeamus. [L., let us rejoice.]

For those keeping track, this poem was first published as part of Lovecraft's short story "The Tomb" (1917).

"To be honest with you …"

Recently, I've come to hear a lot of people around me prefacing workaday or banal speech with the phrase "to be honest with you.…" The phrase has never caused me to give much notice before, so either it's gained more currency or I'm listening differently. I often stop now for a moment and think, Wait! was everything that you said previously without the phrase attached not given in honesty? How often should I trust anything you say that doesn't carry the disclaimer? Half of the time? And later on in the day, when you say, "To be perfectly honest with you …," should I just dismiss it as meaningless verbiage, or start to wonder about the truth of your less-qualified "honest" statements of the morning?

To be honest with you, I don't know!

Inaugural Post.

I've been using the name "Priscian" online for various purposes for about ten years now. I adopted the name from the now uncommon phrase "breaking Priscian's head"; that is, smashing the bust of the Roman grammarian, a metaphor for violating the rules of grammar. At the time I was teaching grammar for the English department at SUNY Brumal, and since there are no famous grammarians of English (name one!), I took the name of a Latin one (fl. 500 CE). Unfortunately, my intentions of learning Latin better than the hodgepodge of it I do know became forgotten when ideally imagined life was waylaid by reality. But these are different times, and Latin may see a place in them yet.

Upon flipping through Dante's Inferno last year, I was surprised to find Priscian consorting with the sodomites (i.e. those "violent against nature") in the Seventh Circle, and couldn't imagine why. Such questions are why the Internet exists, and I googled my way to a nicely jesuitical answer in a compelling essay by Arnd Bohm: "Since grammarians should be the ones most aware of the grave implications of linguistic deviation, anyone who tolerated deviations, including the innovations that languages ordinarily generate, could be accused of sodomitical sympathies.… Conversely, Richard Kay has argued that for Dante the grammarians like Priscian violated nature because they did not accept that it was natural for language to change and evolve." There you go, and poor Priscian screwed either way!