United States or China ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It is passing strange, on the face of it, that this vivid personality, one of the most arresting figures in the history of the country, should be so briefly dealt with in the pages of Monsignor Perrelli.
One grows quite encyclopaedic! Minerals, medicine, strategy, heraldry, navigation, palaeography, statistics, politics, botany what did I know or care about all these things before I stumbled on old Perrelli? Have you ever tried to annotate a classic, Mr. Heard? I assure you it opens up new vistas, new realms of delight. It gives one a genuine zest in life. Enthralling!"
It was one of those scholarly, ponderous and yet helplessly straightforward jokes of the late Renaissance; a joke to which Monsignor Perrelli does not allude, both for reasons of local patriotism and of general decorum; some vulgar dictum, in short, connected with the name of the patron saint of Nepenthe who, he urged, was simply a local nature-god, christianized.
"What does your Perrelli say on the subject?" Mr. Eames glanced at him distrustfully. "You are trying to chaff me," he said. "Serves me right for talking so much this morning. I am afraid I bored you dreadfully." The bishop wanted to know. "Then I may tell you that Monsignor Perrelli does not so much as mention the South wind.
Certain problems are always cropping up, aren't they?" Mr. Eames suddenly looked quite troubled. "They are," replied the bishop, who was not in a mood to discuss ethics just then. "What are you going to do about it?" he added. "About what?" "This poetic omission on the part of Perrelli to mention the sirocco?" "It has given me a deal of extra work, I can assure you.
Lastly, the Fountain of Saint Elias, sulphurous and saponaceous, was renowned for its calming influence upon all who suffered from abuse of lechery or alcohol, or from ingrowing toe-nails. This concludes the list. "Whence we may safely infer," says Monsignor Perrelli at the termination of this chapter, "that our island is second to no part of the globe in this divine gift of salutary waters.
I want to concern myself with what lies under my hand. I want to be allowed to get on with my work. I want to bring old Perrelli up to date." "My dear fellow! We all love you for that. And I am delighted to think you are not really clean-minded, in spite of all these lofty protestations. Because you aren't, are you?"
I've got a note of it in my pocket. Here you are. PSYCHOLOGY OF MIND, 1876, pages 472-4 ET SEQ.; 372, 384, 386-7 ET PASSIM. What do you say?" "Nothing. I am not interested in psychology. You know it perfectly well. "Why not? Wouldn't you get more fun out of life if you were?" "I have Perrelli." "Always your old Perrelli! That reminds me, Eames.
He could never have written about red mullets as Perrelli writes when he compares their skin to the fiery waves of Phelgethon, to the mantle of rosy-fingered dawn, to the blush of a maiden surprised in her bath, and then goes on to tell you how to cook the b east in thirty different ways and how to spit out the bones in the most noiseless, genteel fashion.
"They give you the truth to the best of their ability. It is rather dry reading sometimes. I would like to borrow your Perrelli for a day or two, if you don't mind." "I'll send it round, together with some old prints of this island and modern photographs. You will then see what I mean. The prints are not exactly true to nature; these people did not want to be true to nature.
Word Of The Day