James Cabell: Taboo. A Legend Retold from the Dirghic of Sævius Nicanor, with Prolegomena, Notes, and a Preliminary Memoir

For no short while my indebtedness to you has been such as to require some sort of public acknowledgment, which may now, I think, be tendered most appropriately by inscribing upon the dedication page of this small volume the name to which you are daily adding in significance.

It is a tribute, however trivial, which serves at least to express my appreciation of your zeal in re-establishing what seemed to the less optimistic a lost cause. I may to-day confess without much embarrassment that after fifteen years of foiled endeavors my (various) publishers and I had virtually decided that the printing of my books was not likely ever to come under the head of a business venture, but was more properly describable as a rather costly form of dissipation. People here and there would praise, but until you, unsolicited, had volunteered to make me known to the general public, nobody seemed appreciably moved to purchase.

One by one my books had "fallen dead" with disheartening monotony: then—through what motive it would savor of ingratitude to inquire,—you came to remedy all this in the manner of a philanthropic sorcerer, brandishing everywhither your vivifying wand, and the dead lived again. At once, they tell me, the patrons of bookstores began to ask, not only in whispers for the Jurgen which you had everywhere so glowingly advertised, but with frank curiosity for "some of the fellow's other books."

Whereon we of course began to "reprint," with, I rejoice to say, results which have been very generally acceptable. Barring a few complaints as to the exiguousness of my writing's salacity,—a salacity which even I confess you amiably exaggerated in attributing to my literary manner all qualities which the average reader most desires in novelists,—there has proved to be in point of fact, as my publishers and I had dubiously believed for years, a gratifying number of persons, living dispersedly about America, prepared to like my books when these books were brought to their attention. The difficulty had been that we did not know how to reach these widely scattered, congenial readers. But you—like Sir James Barrie's hero—"found a way."

I cannot say, in candor, that your method of exegetical criticism has always and in every respect appealed to me. Its applicability, for one thing, seems so universal that it might, for aught I know, be employed to interpret the dicta of Ackermann and Macrobius, or even the canons of Doctors Matthews and Sherman herein cited, and thus open dire vistas wherein critic would prey on critic, and the most respectable would be locked in fratricidal strife. Moreover, I have applied your method to many of the Mother Goose rhymes with rather curious results.... But happily, I have here to confess to you, not any disputable literary standards I may harbor, but only my unarguable debt.

In brief, your aid obtained for me overnight the hearing I had vainly sought for a long while; and of such thaumaturgy my appreciation will never be, I trust, inadequate. I therefore grasp at the first chance to express this appreciation in—as I have said,—a form which seems not quite inept.

Dumbarton Grange

December, 1920.

Of The Mulberry Grove the following editions have been collated:

(1) The editio princeps of Mansard 1475. An excellent edition, having, says Garnier, "nearly all the authority of an MS." This edition served as the basis of all subsequent editions up to that of Tribebos, 1553, which then took the lead up to the time of Bülg, who judiciously reverted to that of Mansard.

(2) Bülg, in 4 vols. Strasburg. 1786-89. And in 2 vols. Strasburg. 1786. Both editions containing the Dirghic text with a Latin version, and the scholia and indices.

(3) Musgrave, concerning whose edition Garnier is of opinion that, though it appeared later, yet it had been made use of by Bülg. 2 vols. Oxon. 1800. Reprinted, 3 vols. Oxon. 1809-10.

(4) Vanderhoffen, with scholia, notes, and indices. 7 vols. London. 1807-25. His notes reprinted separately. Leipsic. 1824.

"She went to the tailor's To buy him a coat; When she came back He was riding the goat."

Sævius Nicanor, one of the earliest of the Grammarians, says Suetonius, first acquired fame and reputation by his teaching; and, besides, made commentaries, the greater part of which, however, were said to have been borrowed. He also wrote a satire, in which he informs us that he was a free man, and had a double cognomen.

It is reported that in consequence of some aspersion attached to the character of his writing, he retired into Sardinia, and, says Oriphyles, devoted the remainder of his days to the composition of sardonic [1] [1] Ackermann reads "Sardinian." It is not certain whether the adjective employed is σαρδανιος or σαρδανικος. I suspect that Oriphyles here makes an intentional play upon the words. literature.

He is quoted by Macrobius, whereas divers references to Nicanor in La Haulte Histoire de Jurgen would seem to show that this writer was viewed with considerable esteem in mediæval times. Latterly his work has been virtually unknown.

Robert Burton, for the rest, cites Sævius Nicanor in the 1620 edition of The Anatomy of Melancholy (this passage was subsequently remodeled) in terms which have the unintended merit of conveying a very fair notion of the old Grammarian's literary ethics:—

"As a good housewife out of divers fleeces weaves one piece of cloth (saith Sævius Nicanor), I have laboriously collected this Cento out of divers Writers, and that sine injuria , I have wronged no authors, but given every man his own; which Sosimenes so much commends in Nicanor, he stole not whole verses, pages, tracts, as some do nowadays, concealing their Authors' names, but still said this was Cleophantus', that Philistion's, that Mnesides', so said Julius Bassus, so Timaristus, thus far Ophelion: I cite and quote mine own Authors (which howsoever some illiterate scribblers account pedantical, as a cloak of ignorance and opposite to their affected fine style, I must and will use) sumpsi, non surripui , and what Varro de re rustica speaks of bees, minime malificæ quod nullius opus vellicantes faciunt deterius , I can say of myself no less heartily than Sosimenes his laud of Nicanor."

"I had a little husband, no bigger than my thumb, I put him in my pint-pot, and there I bid him drum."

Pre-eminently the most engaging feature of a topic which pure chance and impure idiocy have of late conspired to pull about in the public prints,—I mean the question of "indecency" in writing,—is the patent ease with which this topic may be disposed of. Since time's beginning, every age has had its literary taboos, selecting certain things—more or less arbitrarily, but usually some natural function—as the things which must not be written about. To violate any such taboo so long as it stays prevalent is to be "indecent": and that seems absolutely all there is to say concerning this topic, apart from furnishing some impressive historical illustration....