A Commonplace Book

Digestive cheese and fruit there sure will be; But that which most doth take my muse and me, Is a pure cup of rich Canary wine, Which is the Mermaid's now, but shall be mine; Of which had Horace or Anacreon tasted, Their lives, as do their lines, till now had lasted.

O there is nothing like fine weather, and health, and Books, and a fine country, and a contented Mind, and Diligent-habit of reading and thinking, and an amulet against the ennui -- and, please heaven, a little claret-wine cool out of a cellar a mile deep...

[I]t was during those tranquil evenings with Sebastian that I first made a serious acquaintance with wine and sowed the seed of that rich harvest which was to be my stay in many barren years. We would sit, he and I, in the Painted Parlour with three bottles open on the table and three glasses before each of us; Sebastian had found a book on wine-tasting, and we followed its instructions in detail. We warmed the glass slightly at a candle, filled it a third high, swirled the wine round, nursed it in our hands, held it to the light, breathed it, sipped it, filled our mouths with it, and rolled it over the tongue, ringing it on the palate like a coin on a counter, tilted our heads back and let it trickle down the throat. Then we talked of it and nibbled Bath Oliver biscuits, and passed on to another wine; then back to the first, then on to another, until all three were in circulation and the order of glasses got confused, and we fell out over which was which, and we passed the glasses to and fro between us until there were six glasses, some of them with mixed wines in them which we had filled from the wrong bottle, till we were obliged to start again with three clean glasses each, and the bottles were empty and our praise of them wilder and more exotic. '... It is a little, shy wine like a gazelle.' 'Like a leprechaun.' 'Dappled, in a tapestry meadow.' 'Like a flute by still water.' '... And this is a wise old wine.' 'A prophet in a cave.' '... And this is a necklace of pearls on a white neck.' 'Like a swan.' 'Like the last unicorn.' And we would leave the golden candlelight of the dining-room for the starlight outside and sit on the edge of the fountain, cooling our hands in the water and listening drunkenly to its splash and gurgle over the rocks. 'Ought we to be drunk every night?' Sebastian asked one morning. 'Yes, I think so.' 'I think so too.'

This morning Poetry has conquered -- I have relapsed into those abstractions which are my only life -- I feel escaped from a new strange and threatening sorrow. -- And I am thankful for it -- There is an awful warmth about my heart like a load of Immortality.

She halted at the gateway, telling The housekeeper a slow good-bye; And came to the abandoned dwelling Next day before the sun was high. Into the silent study, setting Aside all timid thoughts, forgetting The world without, Tatyana crept, And there she stayed ,and wept, and wept. The volumes at long last succeeding In catching Tanya's eye, she took A glance at many a curious book, And all seemed dull. But soon the reading Absorbed the girl, and she was thrown Headlong into a world unknown. Onegin's taste for books had vanished Long since, but notice if you please That there were works he never banished From his affection; they were these: Lord Byron's tales, which well consorted With two or three bright-backed imported Romances, upon every page Exhibiting the present age, And modern man's true soul divulging: A creature arid, cold, and vain, Careless of others' joy and pain, In endless reverie indulging, One whose embittered mind finds zest In nothing, but can never rest. Some pages held a sharp incentive To reading, where a finger-nail Had marked the place; and, more attentive, Tatyana scanned them without fail. She noted, trembling and excited, What passage, what remark delighted Onegin, what shrewd line expressed A thought in which he acquiesced. She found the margins most appealing: The pencil-marks he made with care Upon the pages everywhere Were all unconsciously revealing: A cross, a question-mark, a word -- From these the man might be inferred.

The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can't lick 'em, join 'em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else.

Academicism runs in the blood like syphilis.

But at my back I always hear Time's winged chariot hurrying near: And yonder all before us lie Deserts of vast eternity. Thy beauty shall no more be found; Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound My echoing song: then worms shall try That long-preserved virginity: And your quaint honour turn to dust; And into ashes all my lust. The grave's a fine and private place, But none, I think, do there embrace.