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Allowance must of course be made for the writer's position as a partisan, and some of his later notions are those of the "laudator temporis acti," speaking without responsibility; but it is sufficiently interesting to raise a desire for the whole, published as a diary, and not mixed up with other matters to which it has small relation.
The epitaph in the Lateran is as follows: Isabellas Sfortiæ Joannis Pisaurensium P. Feminæ Sui Temporis Prudentia Ac Pietate Insigni Exec. Test. P. Vix. Ann LVII. M. VII. D. III Obiit Ann. MDLXI. XI Kal. Febr. Consensu Nobilium De Mutis De Papazurris. Above is a profile in marble.
But, in the midst of this, I remember we all grew silent on hearing the old cynical amateur, L. S , that laudator temporis acti, stumping along with his wooden leg; he entered the room with his usual scowl, and, as he advanced, he continued to growl and stutter the whole way "Not an original idea in the whole piece mere plagiarism, base plagiarism from hints that I threw out!
He had, indeed, at the age of twenty-five, written a "youthful" philosophical essay, to which he gave the pompous title "Temporis Partus Maximus," "the Greatest Birth of Time." But he was thirty-one when we first find an indication of the great idea and the great projects which were to make his name famous.
I don't think anybody who does me the honour to cognise my humble individuality at all will ever be likely to mistake me for a laudator temporis acti. On the contrary, so far as I can see, the past seems generally to have been such a distinct failure all along the line that the one lesson we have to learn from it is, to go and do otherwise. I am one on that point with Shelley and Rousseau.
One then supposes that what is so agreeable will soon be renewed; but stay away from him for half a year, and he will neither call on you, nor send to inquire about you. JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, I cannot ascertain his character exactly, as I do not know him; but I should not like to have such a man for my friend. He may love study, and wish not to be interrupted by his friends; Amici fures temporis.
McTaggart, whom I will once more take as an example, is sure that 'reality is rational and righteous' and 'destined sub specie temporis to become perfectly good'; and his calling this belief a result of necessary logic has surely never deceived any reader as to its real genesis in the gifted author's mind.
"Prudens futuri temporis exitum Caliginosa nocte premit Deus, Ridetque, si mortalis ultra Fas trepidat." "Ille potens sui Laetusque deget, cui licet in diem Dixisse vixi! cras vel atra Nube polum pater occupato, Vel sole puro." "Laetus in praesens animus; quod ultra est, Oderit curare."
There one must be a laudator temporis acti, for the present is wholly wretched and bad. The fact is, Arles had a glorious past, from which it has been falling throughout the Middle Ages till it reached a point approaching extinction, and it has not as yet realised that better days are shining before it, and that there is a future to which it may look up.
Here again we have one of those qualities to be found among mankind everywhere and always: the instinct opposed to change, even to those changes for the good we call progress, the disposition that made Horace deride the laudator temporis acti se puero of his day, the feeling of the man who laments the passing of the "good old times" and the military veteran who assures us that "the country, sir, is going to the dogs."
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