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The natural conservatism of growing years, it must be frankly admitted, led eventually in Lord John's case, as in that of the majority of mankind, to the slackening of interest in the new problems of a younger generation, but to the extreme verge of life he remained far too great a statesman and much too generous a man ever to lapse into the position of a mere laudator temporis acti.
The same writer lays herself fairly open to the charge of being laudator temporis acti in her description of the present as compared with the past social life of the colonies, though I am quite prepared to agree with her remark, that 'in proportion as the conditions of life become more complex, they should be met by more ingenuity, more culture, and a deeper sense of duty; and that 'the suddenness of our accumulation of wealth has scarcely prepared our little community for some necessary modifications of our social arrangements. Therein lies the whole source of both what is best and what is worst in the present social life of Australia.
"A better life than you, my dear Sir:" I repeated. He replied warmly, "Don't compliment not." Croker's Boswell, p. 844 See ante, p. 293 The French historian, Jacques-Auguste de Thou, 1553-1617, author of Historia sui Temporis in 138 books. See ante, ii. 42, note 2. Mr. Hutton was occasionally admitted to the royal breakfast-table.
Old settlers say that it has not doubled in ability. But old settlers, with all their virtues, are incorrigible laudatores temporis acti. The industry of the members, the difficulties they had to cope with in the last generation, and the number and variety and novelty of the questions they have essayed to solve in this, are undoubted. Their work must, of course, be tested by time.
Quatuor fratres minores vnum potentem conuertebant apud quem hospitabar, et qui duxit me ad Abbatiam istam, ibi vidi scilicet quod hic narratur. Et ex hoc in breui temporis spacio intratur Imperium Tartarorum, sequendo fluuium vsque in terram Pygmeorum, per cuius medium transit. Hij Pygmei sunt homines statura breues ad longitudinem nostri brachij, seu trium manuum expansarum.
These things are utterly different from the fanaticism of a laudator temporis acti." When Talma heard her declaim, at the time of her earliest celebrity in Paris, he said: "Here is a woman of whom I can still learn. One turn of her beautiful head, one glance of her eye, one light motion of her hand, is, with her, sufficient to express a passion.
A certain amount of self-deception is quite possible at threescore years and ten, but at three score years and twenty Nature has shown most of those who live to that age that she is earnest, and means to dismantle and have done with them in a very little while. As for boasting of our past, the laudator temporis acti makes but a poor figure in our time.
Let an old gentleman of conservative tastes, who can remember the century's youth, talk to you at a club temporis acti tell you wherein it is that from his own point of view London, as a residence for a gentleman, has done nothing but fall off for the last forty years.
The verse of Chaucer, I confess, is not harmonious to us, but it is like the eloquence of one whom Tacitus commends, it was auribus istius temporis accommodata: they who lived with him, and some time after him, thought it musical; and it continues so even in our judgment, if compared with the numbers of Lydgate and Gower, his contemporaries; there is the rude sweetness of a Scotch tune in it, which is natural and pleasing, though not perfect.
And this frank admission ought to show that I am not your mere twaddling laudator temporis acti your old fogey who can see no good except in his own time. They say that claret is better nowadays, and cookery much improved since the days of my monarch of George IV. Pastry Cookery is certainly not so good. I passed by the pastrycook's shop lately, having occasion to visit my old school.
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