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Updated: May 23, 2025
Later Italian writers complain, half jestingly, half resentfully, of this inevitable mould, this Procrustean bed, to which they were compelled to make their thoughts and feelings fit. Others were, and still are, quite satisfied with this particular form of verse, which they freely use to express any personal reminiscence or idle sing-song without necessity or serious purpose.
Ruskin asks two questions only 'Are these works accurate renderings of nature, as I by education and study now know nature to be? and next, 'Are these high art in its purest, and most ideal, and most godly form? By such Procrustean measurements he adjusts his decisions, and so misses the swarthy romance, the dramatic coarse fire of Salvator, and fails to appreciate the vigorous, affluent, gorgeous majesty of Rubens, before whose luxurious pageant canvas it always seems that, of right, pompous coronation music should be played, and multitudes huzza and banners wave.
He was in constant conflict with their ancient and dearly- bought political liberties. Like his ancestor Charles the Bold, he was desirous of constructing a kingdom out of the provinces. He was disposed to place all their separate and individual charters on a procrustean bed, and shape them all into uniformity simply by reducing the whole to a nullity.
For all his play of mind and fancy, for all his indulgence and, as time went on, he grew indulgent Fleeming had views of duty that were even stern. He was too shrewd a student of his fellow-men to remain long content with rigid formulæ of conduct. Iron-bound, impersonal ethics, the procrustean bed of rules, he soon saw at their true value as the deification of averages.
A worse trouble yet is the attempt to make a short poem fit a long composition. The Procrustean operation strains even Longfellow sadly. This blemish is lacking in "The Farewell of Hiawatha," which is written for men's voices. Though it, too, is of a sad tone, its sombre hues are rich and varied as a tapestry. Its effects, though potent, seem more sincere and less labored. It is altogether noble.
The course of study is a means and not an end, and should be, at all points and times, elastic and adaptable. To make pupils fit the course of study instead of making the course of study fit the pupils is the old method of the Procrustean bed if the person is not long enough for it he is stretched; if too long, a piece is cut off.
A drawing- book, at its very best, is only a partial and lame substitute for a teacher, giving instruction empirically; so that, be it ever so correct in principle, it must lack adaptation to the momentary and most pressing wants of the pupil and to his particular frame of mind; it is too Procrustean to be of any ultimate use to anybody, except in comparatively unimportant matters.
I felt a melancholy conviction that I never should measure five feet ten inches again, unless I could lie on some Procrustean bed and have my back stretched out to its original longitude. Repeated perpendicular concussions had, I confidently believed, telescoped my spinal vertebrae into each other, so that nothing short of a surgical operation would ever restore them to their original positions.
We will begin our exhibition of the qualities of the Procrustean mistranslator with an instance of his almost incredible carelessness, which is, however, excusable in comparison with his more wilful faults. Opening the first volume at page 397, we find the following sentence, which we put side by side with the original as given by Muratori.
He was in constant conflict with their ancient and dearly-bought political liberties. Like his ancestor Charles the Bold, he was desirous of constructing a kingdom out of the provinces. He was disposed to place all their separate and individual charters on a procrustean bed, and shape them all into uniformity simply by reducing the whole to a nullity.
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