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Updated: May 9, 2025
There was a dead silence, the boys large and small glancing at one another in a questioning way as if asking whether this was the beginning of another mild joke or a bit of facetiae that ought to be laughed at as it stood. "Because " said the Doctor again, more loudly than before, and he seemed, as he glanced round, to direct his words at every boy in turn.
Henry James told me long afterwards a comical tale of how, being left to browse in Mimes's library one afternoon, he strayed into an alcove of pretty and inviting volumes, in sweet bindings, mellowed by age, and was presently terrified by the discovery that he was enmeshed in the toils of what bibliophiles term, I think, "Facetiae" of which Milnes had a collection unmatched among private book-owners.
He half remembered some of his sporting stories, and supplemented these by gleanings from his own commonplace book. The result is a curious medley, which testifies clearly to learning and wit, and also to the turning over of musty old books of facetiae written in execrable Latin.
To be convinced, one has only to glance at the collection of anecdotes, styled "Facetiae," at the end of his works, which even a frequenter of the Judge and Jury Society would consider justly liable to objection, howbeit that a pious gentleman in holy orders who wrote a Life of Bracciolini, the Reverend William Shepherd, can find words of palliation for them as sprightly pleasantries.
His mind was packed with the oddest jumble of incongruities; Herbert Spencer jostled with Charles Bradlaugh, Matthew Arnold with Samuel Smiles; in one breath he lauded George Eliot, in the next was enthusiastic over a novel by Mrs. Henry Wood; from puerile facetiae he passed to speculations on the origin of being, and with equally light heart.
In his work on speaking, especially in the third and fourth books, he tries by means of the comparison of numerous jokes or 'facetiae' to arrive at a general principle.
The agents never spoke of it except as a slave- trade; the facetiae touching "achat" and "rachat" were highly suited to African taste, and I have often heard them declare before the people that "captives" are the only articles which can profitably be exported from the coasts in fact, as old Caspar Barle said, "precipuae merces ipsi Ethiopes sunt."
In American country newspapers there is usually one column entirely devoted to facetiae, which appear to have been clipped out of the columns of other country papers. They live on each other, just as the natives of the Scilly Islands are feigned to eke out a precarious livelihood by taking in each other's washing.
In its long complaints, speeches, and descriptions it is at whiles intolerably prolix and dull, but it caught the taste of the age and went through a large number of editions, many with learned annotations, between the appearance of the first authorized edition and the end of the sixteenth century , There were several imitations later, such as the Accademia tusculana of Benedetto Menzini; Firenzuola imitated the third Prosa in his Sacrifizio pastorale; while collections of tales and facetiae such as the Arcadia in Brenta of Giovanni Sagredo equally sought the prestige of the name.
I'd look me down on Dominic's, and think of the days when I was young, Or would I was an infant meek all sucking of my thumb. Again Simon, who had watched with intense interest the reception of his poem, was perplexed to notice the amusement it had caused. Even Pembury Had mistaken its "inmost soul," for he had placed it in the column devoted to "Facetiae."
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