Happy 449 Christening Day, Will!

[Somehow I didn't post this on the 24th.]  Wups, missed Shakespeare's 449th yesterday.  I suppose (but I have not looked) that there is a Facebook page where I could stop by with a quick woo hoo.  In lieu, I offer up a favorite sonnet, #138:

When my love swears that she is made of truth
I do believe her, though I know she lies,
That she might think me some untutor'd youth,
Unlearned in the world's false subtleties.
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
Although she knows my days are past the best,
Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue:
On both sides thus is simple truth suppress'd.
But wherefore says she not she is unjust?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
O, love's best habit is in seeming trust,
And age in love loves not to have years told:

Therefore I lie with her and she with me,
And in our faults by lies we flatter'd be.

 Afterthought:  But maybe I didn't miss it.   The choice of the 23d is, after all, merely conventional--we know he was baptized on the 26th, and we back-engineer from there.  So, maybe happy birthday after all, Will.

Happy 200 Charles (and a Word on Words)

It's Charles Dickens' 200th birthday today.  Apparently they are making almost as big a deal of in England as they are over the Queen. I've never been a huge Dickens fan myself (and in fairness, I've read only about half the Dickens canon so I might have missed something wonderful): too much Victorian sentimentalism, especially about women--that last a topic on which he seems to me just awful. Still, I will have to grant his fecundity and his felicity at generating a certain kind of memorable cartoon.

But Michael Quinion points to something that I'd missed before: Dickens as a wordsmith, a coiner of words.  Not, perhaps, on a plane with Shakespeare.  And not, perhaps on a plane with himself, or at any rate his former self as admiringly characterized as his Victorian admirers.  Still, Michael gives him credit for "butter-fingers, unpromisingly, sawbones, messiness, spiflication, whizz-bang and seediness."  Quite enough for a day's work.  BTW, if you don't read Michael's excellent weekly words newsletter, you're missing a treat.



Update:  Buce's friend Bruce points out that it is also the anniversary of the Beatle's  first American tour.  He asks: "which has had more lasting cultural influence?"  The question is perhaps intended to be rhetorical but I am not sure the answer is obvious.  No  doubt that the Beatles are more vivid in our consciousness but Dickens may just be more closely woven into the woof.  Maybe (as Bruce graciously observes, echoing Chou En-lai about the French Revolution) it is just too soon to tell. 
  

Wisdom of the Aged

A birthday greeting to myself:

Now that I am getting old and begin to approach the patriarchic state, I too feel that it is worse to preach immorality than to practice it. One may be driven to commit murder by love or hatred, but one can only advocate murder out of sheer wickedness.

--Italo Svevo, Confessions of Zeno 30 (Alfred A. Knopf ed., 1930, 1958)

Afterthought: By my count, this is my 27,029th day on the planet, including Leap Days. The Leap Days, and actually 19 Leap Days somehow seems like more than 27,029 days.

Happy Birthday, Charles

My grandsons' other grandfather turns 80 today, or yesterday if you read this tomorrow or--but here's a factoid: Monday the 25th is the birthday of Robert Burns, still a big deal in Scotland.

Anyway, apparently Charles the grandfather was born on the 24th (that would be 1930?) but evidently really, really late on the 25th--so late that his mother fudged a couple of time zones and declared the official birthday to be 25th, the same as you-know-who. So:

Long life, my Lord, an' health be yours,
Unskaithed by hunger'd Highland boors!

Meanwhile, here's another Charles with his own take on Robert Burns.