Browser's Guide to the Library of Babel.

I. Articles/Essays/Review Essays
II. Brief Excerpts

III. Poetry

IV. Reviews

I. Articles/Essays/Review Essays

• Spectator No. 507.] Saturday, October 11, 1712. On Party-Lying. July 16, 2024. “The truth of it is, half the great talkers in the nation would be struck dumb were this fountain of discourse dried up.”
• James Thomson Danced the Mind Dance of his Day. February 25, 2024. “Now, at long last, I was ready to actually read the poetry of James Thomson.”
• I offer you first fruits from my ancestral fields... August 6, 2023. “It seems that young Albius Tibullus's family had initially sided with the faction around the assassins, and, perhaps as the result, the majority of their estates had been lost during the poet's youth.”

• An open letter on “giving employment in your line of business to ebony workers”. Jan. 13, 1838. “I was startled by the publication of an act passed by the Legislature of Georgia during my visit to that state, December 27th, 1845.”

• Spectator No. 185.] Tuesday, October 2, 1711. On Zealotry. June 16, 2023. “THERE is nothing in which men more deceive themselves than in what the world calls zeal.”

• The Battle Over Who Invented the First Steamboat. May 26, 2023. “His steamboat was unknown except to a small number of people in whom he had confided.”

• South Carolina Debate over the U. S. Constitution (January 16, 1788). May 25, 2023. “But they don’t like our slaves, because they have none themselves, and therefore want to exclude us from this great advantage; why should the southern states allow of this without the consent of nine states?”

• Emma Smith's First Folio. May 19, 2023. “Twenty years after the Shakespeare Jubilee of 1769, perhaps the single most important such meeting-point in history occurred.”

• It's analogous to an LSD trip. May 7, 2023. 'In his own words: "I see like a person who looks through a kaleidoscope; ...”'

• The Mays of Ventadorn. April 23, 2023. "But consciously or not, he was traveling steadily toward Ventadorn."

• The Shattered Mouth. April 14, 2023. "Buschbeck and Ficker found him jobs from which he simply walked away after a few hours, or, at most, a few months,..."

• Jonathan Swift's Review of The Art of Political Lying. March 15, 2023. "The first mention of The Art of Political Lying appeared in Jonathan Swift's Journal to Stella in October of 1712."

• The Virtual Vanaprastha Discovers the Seemingly Endless Joys of Shakespeare. March 15, 2023. "In all of this research, of many hundreds of thousands of words of text, I have found far and away more evidence suggesting that Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, was the author of the works that go under the name of William Shake-speare, than the traditional Stratford man."

• Medieval Mirrors and Practical Jokes. March 6, 2023. "Among any number of medieval and early modern personal inventories we find the items that composed the owners’ daily lives."

• Francois Rabelais was Born About this Date in 1483. March1, 2023. “Rabelais had not earnestness for a martyr, but the contempt and fun that stirred within him demanded utterance,...”

• Spectator No. 125.] Tuesday, July 24, 1711. On Extreme Partisanship. February 28, 2023. “It is the restless ambition of artful men that thus breaks a people into factions, and draws several well-meaning persons to their interest by a specious concern for their country.”

• Spectator. No. 66.] Wednesday, May 16, 1711. A Young Lady, Body and Mind. January 15, 2023. "...the pretty wild thing is taught a fantastical gravity of behaviour, and forced to a particular way of holding her head,..."

• The Spectator, Wednesday, June 27, 1711: The Ladies' Manual of Arms. December 31, 2022. "Women are armed with fans as men with swords, and sometimes do more execution with them."

• The Founding of the Order of Fools: Cleves, 1381. November 16, 2022. “Further, will we Fools yearly meet, and hold a conventicle and Court,...”

• Some Observations on “Shakespeare and the Saints”. November 6, 2022. 'A brief article, by one Joseph Pearce, entitled “Shakespeare and the Saints,” has been circulating claiming that Shakespeare's works were influenced by the Jesuit poet Robert Southwell.'

• Shakespeare's Ladies: Hall's Labeo satire misses the point. November 2, 2022. “Shakespeare was supremely well versed in the Petrarchan style and used it for effect on rare occasion...”

• Staring Intently into Robert Greene: Feminine Endings, etc. July 31, 2022. “Greene (be he man or allonym) did not write nearly as many poems as Vere/Shakespeare.”
• Tending to Mad Richard During the Queen’s Visit. July 31, 2022. “Upon leaving Kenilworth the Queen and her entourage next visited the town of Lichfield.”
• Anne Vavasour’s Echo and Queen Elizabeth I’s visit to Kenilworth Castle,  July 10th of 1575. July 25, 2022. ‘On Sunday the 10^th of July of that year “there met her in the forest, as she came from hunting, one clad like a savage man, all in ivy,”’
• Playing hooky from Shakespeare. Or “I really must get out more!” July 13, 2022. “The reader may know that the Cotswold games are the subject of considerable debate regarding a brief swatch from Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor…”
• Overdue Book Fines in the Middle Ages. July 8, 2022. “…lending books to other institutions became credited as a particularly meritorious form of charity…”
• The Gourmet Pirate, The Accomplisht Cook, and Triumphs and Trophies in Cookery. June 7, 2022. “…have the proportion of a Castle with Battlements, Portcullices, Gates and Draw-Bridges made of Past-board…”
• Sidney Lanier on the Fate of the Seminoles. May 26, 2022. “I met one resident of Florida who knew their old chief Tiger-tail, and had received an invitation to their Green-Corn Dance,…”
• Lanier On The Runaway Slaves at Fort Gadsden. May 26, 2022. “Colonel Nichols, who had gotten away by water, proceeded with some British troops and friendly Indians up the Apalachicola River…”
• An Excerpt from Joseph Addison’s Spectator #94.  May 5, 2022.  “Joseph Addison and Richard Steele’s Tatler and Spectator papers were a  brilliant addition to the daily sheet.  They developed into prototypical society pages.”
• The Gourmet Pirate: his recipes for Syllabub. May 4, 2022. 'Mixing with a "birchen rod" and drinking the beverage from custom porcelain “syllabub cups” were absolutely essential aspects in better circles in which the participants took their syllabub seriously.'
• Shakespeare and the End of Western Civilization. February 21, 2021. “The SLJ article posted at pretty much the same time that a featured interview of Germán was posted in the much more radical White Supremacy in Education issue of the Learning for Justice group’s Teaching Tolerance Magazine. Learning for Justice was founded by the Southern Poverty Law Center.”
• Antebellum Plantation Real Estate Listings. August 15, 2020. “The subscriber designing to remove to the Western Country, gives this public notice, to all persons who have claims against him, or against the estate of Edward Hoge desceased,…”
• Peter Kalm on the Polecat (1748). August 14, 2020. “On our return to Philadelphia, we saw one of these animals not far from town, near a farmer's house, killed by dogs; and afterwards I had, during my stay in these parts, several opportunities of seeing it, and of hearing its qualities.”
• Benjamin Franklin's Royal Commission as Indian Agent. August 7, 2020. “Whereas the Honorable James DeLancey Esq. Our Lieut Governor and Commander in Chief of our Province of New-York has received our Directions to hold an Interview with our loving and good Allies the Six United Nations of Indians at the City of Albany…”
• Mrs. Trollope observes Andrew Jackson. July 26, 2020. “This resolution was hardly acted upon when the news reached us that the General had arrived at Louisville, and was expected at Cincinnati in a few hours.”
• Pierce Butler, Fanny Kemble, et al.  July 22, 2020.  ‘“An attempt of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to make a way around the original Fugitive Slave Law, of 1793, by finding a private agent guilty of kidnapping for having remanded a slave from Pennsylvania to Maryland was forcefully overturned by the U. S. Supreme Court in Prigg v. United States (1842).”’
• While I attempted forging ties between twin realms.  September 3, 2019. “By best evidence, our translator A. M. Juster informs us, Elegy 5 refers to Maximianus leading an embassy to Justinian's capitol, Constantinople, during one or another of the short reigns of Theoderic's successors.” 
• The Best Translation of Dante’s Divina Commedia.  July 14, 2019.  “What a luxury.  I had hours to put toward Dante.  Hours in which to bathe in his times.  Merwin, Singleton, Vernon and I lingered over every interesting passage.” 
• A Memoriam for W. S. Merwin. April 17, 2019.  ‘The worst of the poet's offenses were his quantifiable rhythms and an obviousness of influence. As Richard Howard would later put it, assessing Merwin's early work, in Alone With America (1969), "Echoes of other writers are indulged...".’ 
• The Game We Play with the Game We Play.  January 31, 2019.  “Like all of our games poetry is fun to talk about. From such talk entire industries of commentary have sprung up around other of our favorite games. The teams and/or individual players shop for and hire the better private analysts, as well.”
• The American Garden.  January 16, 2019.  'Among the first of many "featured plant" histories in Mickey's lushly illustrated America's Romance with the English Garden are the American mayapple and black-eyed susan, both wild native plants, he informs the reader, that were domesticated in England before finding their way back to America gardens during the 19th century.'
• Settling the Books.  January 9, 2019.  “They have rigorously avoided learning inaccessible vocabulary words and cast off the study of centuries of manipulative elitist culture such as resides in the library I hope to keep together for some little while longer.”
• True Stone and Epitaph: The Poetry of Pablo Neruda.  October 13, 2005.  “While Pablo Neruda — the name under which Basoalto's poems began to appear as of 1920 — was living from hand to mouth and being published in Chile's finer literary journals, he suddenly found himself a member of the Chilean diplomatic corps.”

II. Brief Excerpts

• Seminole  Boys Riding Sea Turtles. July 7, 2022. ‘The easiest way in which a novice can acquire the art is to jump on a turtle while it is sleeping on the surface and then hold on like the traditional "grim death."’
• A Visit to a Pottawatomie Medicine Dance (1842). July 7, 2022. "To witness this extraordinary ceremony, a party, in times past, set out, and surmounting many difficulties in passing through a dense forest, and finally crossing a stream of water on a fallen tree, arrived after dark at the scene of mystic reveling."
• Dan Roberts Raises Shelley's Boat. May 22, 2022. “We have got fast hold of Shelley's boat, and she is now safe at anchor off Via Reggio.”
• Trelawny Burns Shelley's Body.  August 16, 2020.  “The lonely and grand scenery that surrounded us so exactly harmonized with Shelley's genius, that I could imagine his spirit soaring over us.”
• Trelawny Recovers Shelley's Body.  August 16, 2020.  “I told my fears to Hunt, and then went upstairs to Byron. When I told him, his lip quivered, and his voice faltered as he questioned me.”
• Texian Advocate, June 22, 1848. August 15, 2020. “To EMIGRANTS. Never was there a more favorable time...”
• Crocker's Review of Keats' Endymion (1818).  December 2, 2018.  “Had the review been written ten years later it would have been considered ridiculous, in that respect, rather than the book of poems.”
• Sidney Lanier on the Fate of the Seminoles.  March 18, 2006.  “The trip began in the spring of 1875 and the first edition of the book appeared late in the same year. The guidebook provides a solid description of the state at that time. Here he deals rather perfunctorily with the fate of the Seminole Indians.”
• Lanier On The Runaway Slaves at Fort Gadsden.  March 18, 2006.  “Lanier's descriptions of the state and its history are concise and informative however much they are tainted with the bigotry of the times. Here he describes the history of a fascinating fort commandeered by runaway slaves.”
• Burroughs' Receives Intelligence About the High Hole.  March 14, 2006.  “If he was held near the face he would soon be attracted by the eye and thrust his tongue into it. In this way he gained the respect of a number of half-grown cats that were around the house.”
• Dan Roberts Raises Shelley's Boat.  November 4, 2005.  “I consulted Ld. B. [Lord Byron], on the subject of paying the crews of the felucca employed in getting up the boat.”
• Bartram Seeks News of the Creeks and Seminoles.  September 29, 2005.  “About to ascend the St. John's River, in April of 1774, Wiliam Bartram seeks information about a recent incident between the local settlers and Indians. Should the incident remain unresolved, he could all too easily find himself in hostile territory.”
• Bartram on the Live Oak and Florida Forest.  September 19, 2005.  “William Bartram explores the St. John's River, just south of St. Augustine, Florida, in April of 1774. Here he gives us a description of the trees of the north Florida forest, especially the Live Oak (Quercus virginiana):…”
• Audubon Observes Florida Sea-Turtles.  September 19, 2005.  “The Logger-head and the Trunk Turtles are the least cautious in choosing the places in which to deposit their eggs, whereas the other two species select the wildest and most secluded spots.”
• Bartram Wakes to the Call of the Wild Turkey.  September 18, 2005.  “William Bartram explores the St. John's River, just south of St. Augustine, Florida, in April of 1774. Here he gives us an account of waking one morning to the call of the wild turkey:…”
• Burroughs Observes a Gourmet Robin.  September 17, 2005.  “Now and then she would suddenly bend her head toward the ground and bring eye or ear for a moment to bear intently upon it.”
• Trelawny Burns Shelley's Body.  September 16, 2005.  “The lonely and grand scenery that surrounded us so exactly harmonized with Shelley's genius, that I could imagine his spirit soaring over us.”
• Trelawny Recovers Shelley's Body.  August 28, 2005.  “I told my fears to Hunt, and then went upstairs to Byron. When I told him, his lip quivered, and his voice faltered as he questioned me.”
• Keats Biography in Chamber's Cyclopedia (1863).  August 23, 2005.  “John Keats was born in London, October 29, 1795, in the house of his grandfather, who kept a livery stable at Moorfields.”

III. Poetry

• "How Filled with Joy, Happy and Well-Informed..." by Michelangelo Buonarroti
• "The Infinite" by Giacomo Leopardi
• Poetry Index

IV. Reviews

• Among a Thickness of Flowers.  February 13, 2019.  “Her effects quietly accumulating, until we've delightfully lost our way, the poet must bring us back:

the ideal of a poet

finding her poetics is lost like

a ball in tall weeds”