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De - Pt| Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) | by Linux fortune |
| The Poet Whose Badness Saved His Life The most important poet in the seventeenth century was George Wither. Alexander Pope called him "wretched Wither" and Dryden said of his verse that "if they rhymed and rattled all was well". In our own time, "The Dictionary of National Biography" notes that his work "is mainly remarkable for its mass, fluidity and flatness. It usually lacks any genuine literary quality and often sinks into imbecile doggerel". High praise, indeed, and it may tempt you to savour a typically rewarding stanza: It is taken from "I loved a lass" and is concerned with the higher emotions. She would me "Honey" call, She'd -- O she'd kiss me too. But now alas! She's left me Falero, lero, loo. Among other details of his mistress which he chose to immortalize was her prudent choice of footwear. The fives did fit her shoe. In 1639 the great poet's life was endangered after his capture by the Royalists during the English Civil War. When Sir John Denham, the Royalist poet, heard of Wither's imminent execution, he went to the King and begged that his life be spared. When asked his reason, Sir John replied, "Because that so long as Wither lived, Denham would not be accounted the worst poet in England." -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures" | |
| Although written many years ago, Lady Chatterley's Lover has just been reissued by the Grove Press, and this pictorial account of the day-to-day life of an English gamekeeper is full of considerable interest to outdoor minded readers, as it contains many passages on pheasant-raising, the apprehending of poachers, ways to control vermin, and other chores and duties of the professional gamekeeper. Unfortunately, one is obliged to wade through many pages of extraneous material in order to discover and savour those sidelights on the management of a midland shooting estate, and in this reviewer's opinion the book cannot take the place of J. R. Miller's "Practical Gamekeeping." -- Ed Zern, "Field and Stream" (Nov. 1959) | |
