Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces Part 39

[Footnote 80: The white-flowering sort would weep--the red-flowering sort would storm, as the pale moon indicates rainy weather, and the red moon high wind. (_Pallida luna pluit, rubicunda fiat_.)]

[Footnote 81: In the neighbourhood of Comorn (Windisch's 'Geography of Hungary'). Buchan mentions a similar twin-birth in Scotland.]

[Footnote 82: There was a superst.i.tion that the Headsman's sword moved, of itself, before cutting off somebody's head.]

[Footnote 83: Who distinguished himself by _painting_ thistles as much as Swift by _writing_ them.]

[Footnote 84: There is nothing more unreasonable, uncontrollable, and inexplicable, than this feeling of repugnance to the unclean--this inconsistent alliance between the will and the coats of the stomach.

Cicero says, "the modest do not willingly use the word 'modesty'" (a transcendental form of disgust with the impure)--and those who feel the repugnance in question deal with it in a similar manner, particularly as bodily and moral purity are neighbours (which the chaste and cleanly Swift exemplified in his own person). Even physical loathing (of which the subject-matter is mental, more than physical), affects the moral sense more than is supposed. Cross the street with undigested food, or antimonial wine, in your stomach, and you will feel a stronger distaste to a score of faces (and for more books when you come home) than at ordinary times.]

[Footnote 85: A beggar in England who keeps a shop full of crutches, eye-plaster, false legs, &c., which every one who wants to be lame, blind, &c., must be supplied with. 'Britt. Annal.']

[Footnote 86: The Rabbis maintain that Cain killed his brother because the latter disagreed with him when he (Cain) denied the immortality of the soul. So that the first murder was an _auto-da-fe_, and the first war a religious one.]

[Footnote 87: According to de Luc, in the third volume of his 'Little Journeys for Amateur Travellers.']

[Footnote 88: That is, to himself. He wishes his inheritance to be paid to himself, and not to his wife, because she might have married a rich husband in the interval; besides, he would have less trouble in knowing whether or not the Heimlicher did what he told him, and could, if necessary, carry out the threat which he is about to make.]

[Footnote 89: Here follow, in the original, puns on the (German) medical names of the four stomachs of the _Ruminantia_, for which I am unequal to finding equivalents.--Trans.]

[Footnote 90: Leibgeber means, at once, the second life (in which he does not believe), and Firmian's continuation of his _present_ life in Vaduz.]

[Footnote 91: Plin. H. N., viii 30.]

[Footnote 92: Which, like a greater Psyche, makes its nest in skulls.]

[Footnote 93: King's hearts are enshrined in golden cases.]

[Footnote 94: The actor (among the Romans) who mimicked the deceased in all his gestures and movements at his funeral.]

[Footnote 95: People who had been taken to be dead, and honoured with a funeral, had to go through these ceremonies.--Potter.]

[Footnote 96: Augustin, Commentar. ad Johann. xxi. 23.]

[Footnote 97: This name, or that of _Tumulus Honorarius_, was given to the _empty_ monument which friends erected to a dead person whose body was not to be found.]

[Footnote 98: Alexand. ab Alex. iii. 7.]

[Footnote 99: There is a pun here in the original, where this expression means also "to hiss off" (_e.g_. an actor from the stage).--Trans.]

[Footnote 100: I speak of 1796.]

[Footnote 101: Whatever Pythagoras wrote with bean-juice on a certain mirror could be read on the moon.--'Call. Rhodogin,' ix. 13. When Charles V. and Francis I. were fighting near Milan, everything that happened by day at Milan could be read at night on the moon in Paris by means of a mirror of this sort.--'Agrippa de Occ. Philos.' ii. 6.]

[Footnote 102: A long cloud, with branch-like streaks, which bodes a storm.]

[Footnote 103: There is a superst.i.tion that when two children kiss without being able to speak, one of them must die.]

[Footnote 104: "Therefore I foresee that Leibgeber's Pastoral Letters in these 'Flower Pieces' will, for most of my readers, be insufferable letters of denunciation or defiance. Most Germans do understand a joke--it cannot be denied of them--but they do not all understand _badinage_--and few understand humour--least of all the Leibgeber sort.

Therefore, at first--because it is easier to alter a book than a public--I thought of falsifying all his letters, and subst.i.tuting pleasanter-flavoured ones. However it can always be arranged that, in the second edition, the falsified letters shall be inserted in the body of the work, and the genuine ones given at the end as an Appendix."

This has not been found necessary. Heavens! how can first editions make such mistakes, and misunderstand such a number of readers--to whom second editions afterwards offer the warmest and sincerest apologies.]

[Footnote 105: Plin. H. N. vii. 48.]

[Footnote 106: She refers to the widow's pension.]

[Footnote 107: Because it was supposed to be in English verse.--Trans.]

[Footnote 108: In the ranunculus, brown wort, the lower part of the stalk sinks deeper into the ground every year, to replace the root as it rots away.]

[Footnote 109: In enthusiasm, the converse order of things prevails. To learn to know what your firmly established principles of morality are, with more certainty than you can from your resolves and actions, you have only to notice the joy or the sorrow which a moral claim, a piece of news, a disappointment, calls up in you with lightning speed, but which disappears again at once under the influence of reflection and self-control. What great, rotting pieces of the old Adam one finds about one still, now and then!]

[Footnote 110: The wife of Pinarius, under the government of Tarquinius Superbus, was the first woman to quarrel with her mother-in-law (Plut.

in Numa). German history will, perhaps, some day make honourable mention of the first married woman who did _not_ quarrel with her mother-in-law; at least a German Plutarch should set about hunting her out.]

[Footnote 111: Allusion to a certain waterfall which dashes from its rock with a sweep so wide that one can walk under it, and thus be protected front rain.--'_An Artist's Journey in the Alps_.']

[Footnote 112: A bugbear, nine feet high, made of bark and straw, with which the Mandingoes terrify and better their wives.]

[Footnote 113: Walter's 'Physiology.']

[Footnote 114: There are one thousand millions of us crawling on this sphere.]

[Footnote 115: _Vanessa Antiopa_ gets this name in Germany.--Trans.]

[Footnote 116: The purer precious stones are colder and heavier than the less perfect.]

[Footnote 117: Waxen angels used to be put into the grave with the dead.]

THE END.