They are examples of C. S. Lewis' remark, "There was nothing which medieval people liked better, or did better, than sorting out and tidying up. Of all our modern inventions I suspect that they would most have admired the card index." (That's from Lewis' last and best book, The Discarded Image [1964]; he had not of course seen a computer.) --CGE
Michael Smith wrote:
> I've been reading up on John Milton lately, in
> aid of a literary project that may or may not
> bear any fruit. The guy has always been a hero
> of mine and with every passing year I love him
> more. He too lived from dark days into hopeful
> days and back into dark ones, like my generation,
> but he never lost the faith.
>
> I took my old tired tattered copy of The Student's
> Milton off the self tonight to look something up.
> It's a book I bought forty years ago, and it's still
> in great shape. Appleton-Century put out a sturdy
> product in those days. The paper isn't brilliant
> white any more, but it's not all yellow and brittle,
> either, and the binding is still keeping the pages
> together. You open it up and it lies flat and
> nothing cracks.
>
> I opened it up about halfway through -- then the phone
> rang. I put the book down on the kitchen table.
> Went and answered the phone, and when I came back
> the book was lying open to the last chapter of
> Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, not my favorite
> of Milton's prose works. But this was the first sentence
> my eyes lit upon. He's talking about Gratian, the canonist,
> "the Tubalcain of scholastic sophistry", and his
> brother-canonist Lombard,
>
> "... whose overspreading barbarism hath not only
> infused their own bastardy upon the fruitfullest part
> of human learning, not only dissipated and dejected
> the clear light of nature in us, and of nations, but
> hath tainted the fountains of divine doctrine, and
> rendered the pure and solid law of God unbeneficial
> to us by their calamnious dunceries."
>
> I was having a good time until I got to "calamnious
> dunceries". At that point I started laughing so hard
> I was writhing in my chair and tears of mirth blurred
> what little vision I have left.
>
> Calamnious dunceries! Doesn't that describe nine-tenths
> -- or more -- of what we read and hear?
>
> Great man, that Johnnie Milton.
>