Adventures among Books [54]
with lying fables"--a "lazy, idle boy," like him who dallied with Rebecca and Rowena in the holidays of Charter House.
Saint Augustine, like Sir Walter Scott at the University of Edinburgh, was "The Greek Dunce." Both of these great men, to their sorrow and loss, absolutely and totally declined to learn Greek. "But what the reason was why I hated the Greeke language, while I was taught it, being a child, I do not yet understand." The Saint was far from being alone in that distaste, and he who writes loathed Greek like poison--till he came to Homer. Latin the Saint loved, except "when reading, writing, and casting of accounts was taught in Latin, which I held not for lesse paynefull or penal than the very Greeke. I wept for Dido's death, who made herselfe away with the sword," he declares, "and even so, the saying that two and two makes foure was an ungrateful song in mine ears; whereas the wooden horse full of armed men, the burning of Troy, and the very Ghost of Creusa, was a most delightful spectacle of vanity."
In short, the Saint was a regular Boy--a high-spirited, clever, sportive, and wilful creature. He was as fond as most boys of the mythical tales, "and for that I was accounted to be a towardly boy." Meanwhile he does not record that Monica disliked his learning the foolish dear old heathen fables--"that flood of hell!"
Boyhood gave place to youth, and, allowing for the vanity of self- accusation, there can be little doubt that the youth of Saint Augustine was une jeunesse orageuse. "And what was that wherein I took delight but to love and to be beloved." There was ever much sentiment and affection in his amours, but his soul "could not distinguish the beauty of chast love from the muddy darkness of lust. Streams of them did confusedly boyl in me"--in his African veins. "With a restless kind of weariness" he pursued that Other Self of the Platonic dream, neglecting the Love of God:
"Oh, how late art thou come, O my Joy!"
The course of his education--for the Bar, as we should say--carried him from home to Carthage, where he rapidly forgot the pure counsels of his mother "as old wife's consailes." "And we delighted in doing ill, not only for the pleasure of the fact, but even for the affection of prayse." Even Monica, it seems, justified the saying:
"Every woman is at heart a Rake."
Marriage would have been his making, Saint Augustine says, "but she desired not even that so very much, lest the cloggs of a wife might have hindered her hopes of me . . . In the meantime the reins were loosed to me beyond reason." Yet the sin which he regrets most bitterly was nothing more dreadful than the robbery of an orchard! Pears he had in plenty, none the less he went, with a band of roisterers, and pillaged another man's pear tree. "I loved the sin, not that which I obtained by the same, but I loved the sin itself." There lay the sting of it! They were not even unusually excellent pears. "A Peare tree ther was, neere our vineyard, heavy loaden with fruite, which tempted not greatly either the sight or tast. To the shaking and robbing thereof, certaine most wicked youthes (whereof I was one) went late at night. We carried away huge burthens of fruit from thence, not for our owne eating, but to be cast before the hoggs."
Oh, moonlit night of Africa, and orchard by these wild seabanks where once Dido stood; oh, laughter of boys among the shaken leaves, and sound of falling fruit; how do you live alone out of so many nights that no man remembers? For Carthage is destroyed, indeed, and forsaken of the sea, yet that one hour of summer is to be unforgotten while man has memory of the story of his past.
Nothing of this, to be sure, is in the mind of the Saint, but a long remorse for this great sin, which he earnestly analyses. Nor is he so penitent but that he is clear-sighted, and finds the spring of his mis-doing in the Sense of Humour! "It was a delight and laughter which tickled us, even at the very hart, to find that we were upon the point of deceiving them who feared no such
Saint Augustine, like Sir Walter Scott at the University of Edinburgh, was "The Greek Dunce." Both of these great men, to their sorrow and loss, absolutely and totally declined to learn Greek. "But what the reason was why I hated the Greeke language, while I was taught it, being a child, I do not yet understand." The Saint was far from being alone in that distaste, and he who writes loathed Greek like poison--till he came to Homer. Latin the Saint loved, except "when reading, writing, and casting of accounts was taught in Latin, which I held not for lesse paynefull or penal than the very Greeke. I wept for Dido's death, who made herselfe away with the sword," he declares, "and even so, the saying that two and two makes foure was an ungrateful song in mine ears; whereas the wooden horse full of armed men, the burning of Troy, and the very Ghost of Creusa, was a most delightful spectacle of vanity."
In short, the Saint was a regular Boy--a high-spirited, clever, sportive, and wilful creature. He was as fond as most boys of the mythical tales, "and for that I was accounted to be a towardly boy." Meanwhile he does not record that Monica disliked his learning the foolish dear old heathen fables--"that flood of hell!"
Boyhood gave place to youth, and, allowing for the vanity of self- accusation, there can be little doubt that the youth of Saint Augustine was une jeunesse orageuse. "And what was that wherein I took delight but to love and to be beloved." There was ever much sentiment and affection in his amours, but his soul "could not distinguish the beauty of chast love from the muddy darkness of lust. Streams of them did confusedly boyl in me"--in his African veins. "With a restless kind of weariness" he pursued that Other Self of the Platonic dream, neglecting the Love of God:
"Oh, how late art thou come, O my Joy!"
The course of his education--for the Bar, as we should say--carried him from home to Carthage, where he rapidly forgot the pure counsels of his mother "as old wife's consailes." "And we delighted in doing ill, not only for the pleasure of the fact, but even for the affection of prayse." Even Monica, it seems, justified the saying:
"Every woman is at heart a Rake."
Marriage would have been his making, Saint Augustine says, "but she desired not even that so very much, lest the cloggs of a wife might have hindered her hopes of me . . . In the meantime the reins were loosed to me beyond reason." Yet the sin which he regrets most bitterly was nothing more dreadful than the robbery of an orchard! Pears he had in plenty, none the less he went, with a band of roisterers, and pillaged another man's pear tree. "I loved the sin, not that which I obtained by the same, but I loved the sin itself." There lay the sting of it! They were not even unusually excellent pears. "A Peare tree ther was, neere our vineyard, heavy loaden with fruite, which tempted not greatly either the sight or tast. To the shaking and robbing thereof, certaine most wicked youthes (whereof I was one) went late at night. We carried away huge burthens of fruit from thence, not for our owne eating, but to be cast before the hoggs."
Oh, moonlit night of Africa, and orchard by these wild seabanks where once Dido stood; oh, laughter of boys among the shaken leaves, and sound of falling fruit; how do you live alone out of so many nights that no man remembers? For Carthage is destroyed, indeed, and forsaken of the sea, yet that one hour of summer is to be unforgotten while man has memory of the story of his past.
Nothing of this, to be sure, is in the mind of the Saint, but a long remorse for this great sin, which he earnestly analyses. Nor is he so penitent but that he is clear-sighted, and finds the spring of his mis-doing in the Sense of Humour! "It was a delight and laughter which tickled us, even at the very hart, to find that we were upon the point of deceiving them who feared no such