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Many, many years ago, in those "good old times" so much bepraised by antiquaries and the laudatores temporis acti, the good old times, that is to say, of the holy office, of those magnificent autos when the smell of roasted heretics was as sweet a savor in the nostrils of the faithful, as that of Quakers done remarkably brown was to our godly Puritan ancestors, there dwelt in the royal city of Madrid a wealthy goldsmith by the name of Antonio Perez, whose family having lost his wife consisted of a lovely daughter, named Magdalena, and a less beautiful but still charming niece, Juanita.
The lady in this case was a butcher's widow, and it was too much to expect that she could wait till the next court, wherefore the steward graciously knocked off seventy-five per cent. of his due; and, in lieu of two shillings, charged her only sixpence ratione temporis et in misericordia, as he sententiously observes. Magnanimous steward!
the fond antiquarianism of Varro, "laudator temporis acti," unite, with the newly-kindled hope of future glories to be achieved under Caesar's rule, to make the Georgics the most complete embodiment of Roman industrial views, as the Aeneid is of Roman theology and religion.
"The Greatest Birth of Time," whatever it was, has perished, though the name, altered to "Partus Temporis Masculus" has survived, attached to some fragments of uncertain date and arrangement. But in very truth the child was born, and, as Bacon says, for forty years grew and developed, with many changes yet the same.
"Oh, smooth; they ain't so easy for beginners, but when a fellow gits the knack of 'em they're a great deal better." Very different from the remarks of these laudatores temporis acti, were those of the rising generation. "How beautiful!" exclaimed Anne. "What wonderful skill! Can anything be more graceful?"
Hastings was sent to India, a prevalent evil. But, my Lords, it is necessary that I should show to you something more, because, prima fronte, this is some exculpation of Mr. Hastings: for, if he was only a partaker in a general misconduct, it was rather vitium loci et vitium temporis than vitium hominis. This might be said in his exculpation.
No doubt there is something of idealization in all these reminiscences, and of that exaggeration which belongs to the laudator temporis acti. But Charles Emerson was idolized in his own time by many in college and out of college. George Stillman Hillard was his rival.
The verse of Chaucer, I confess, is not harmonious to us, but 'tis like the eloquence of one whom Tacitus commends it was auribus istius temporis accommodata they who liv'd with him, and some time after him, thought it musical and it continued so even in our judgment, if compar'd 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, tho' not perfect.
Your "old-timer" anywhere is commonly laudator temporis acti, but there is good reason to believe that these early, and certainly most adventurous, gold-miners, some of whom forced a way into the country when there were no routes of travel, and subsisted on its resources while they explored and prospected it, were men of a higher stamp than many who have come in since.
In Rome this particular kind of bore went by the name of laudator temporis acti; and, if we have no such concise Anglo-Saxon phrase for the type, we still have the type no less ubiquitously with us.
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