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The Lives of John Donne and George Herbert
Izaak Walton
The Lives of John Donne and George Herbert.
The Harvard Classics.
The Life of Dr. Donne
Paras. 5099
In the first and most blessed times of Christianity, when the clergy were looked upon with reverence, and deserved it, when they overcame their opposers by high examples of virtue, by a blessed patience and long suffering, those only were then judged worthy the ministry whose quiet and meek spirits did make them look upon that sacred calling with an humble adoration and fear to undertake it; which indeed requires such great degrees of humility, and labour, and care, that none but such were then thought worthy of that celestial dignity. And such only were then sought out, and solicited to undertake it. This I have mentioned, because forwardness and inconsideration could not, in Mr. Donne, as in many others, be an argument, of insufficiency or unfitness; for he had considered long, and had many strifes within himself concerning the strictness of life, and competency of learning, required in such as enter into sacred orders; and doubtless, considering his own demerits, did humbly ask God with St. Paul, Lord, who is sufficient for these things? and with meek Moses, Lord, who am I? And sure, if he had consulted with flesh and blood, he had not for these reasons put his hand to that holy plough. But God, who is able to prevail, wrestled with him, as the angel did with Jacob, and marked him; marked him for his own; marked him with a blessing, a blessing of obedience to the motions of his blessed Spirit. And then, as he had formerly asked God with Moses, Who am I? so now, being inspired with an apprehension of Gods particular mercy to him, in the Kings and others solicitations of him he came to ask King Davids thankful question, Lord, who am I, that thou art so mindful of me? So mindful of me, as to lead me for more than forty years through this wilderness of the many temptations and various turnings of a dangerous life; so merciful to me, as to move the learnedest of Kings to descend to move me to serve at the altar! So merciful to me, as at last to move my heart to embrace this holy motion! Thy motions I will and do embrace; and I now say with the blessed Virgin, Be it with thy servant as seemeth best in thy sight; and so, Blessed Jesus, I do take the cup of salvation, and will call upon thy name, and will preach thy gospel.
Such strifes as these St. Austin had, when St. Ambrose endeavoured his conversion to Christianity; with which he confesseth he acquainted his friend Alipius. Our learned authora man fit to write after no mean copydid the like. And declaring his intentions to his dear friend Dr. King, then Bishop of London, a man famous in his generation, and no stranger to Mr. Donnes abilities,for he had been chaplain to the Lord Chancellor at the time of Mr. Donnes being his Lordships secretary,that reverend man did receive the news with much gladness; and, after some expressions of joy, and a persuasion to be constant in his pious purpose, he proceeded with all convenient speed to ordain him first deacon, and then priest not long after.
Now the English Church had gained a second St. Austin; for I think none was so like him before his conversion, none so like St. Ambrose after it: and if his youth had the infirmities of the one, his age had the excellencies of the other; the learning and holiness of both.
And now all his studies, which had been occasionally diffused, were all concentered in divinity. Now he had a new calling, new thoughts, and a new employment for his wit and eloquence. Now, all his earthly affections were changed into divine love; and all the faculties of his own soul were engaged in the conversion of others; in preaching the glad tidings of remission to repenting sinners, and peace to each troubled soul.
To these he applied himself with all care and diligence; and now such a change was wrought in him, that he could say with David, O how amiable are thy tabernacles, O Lord God of Hosts! Now he declared openly, that when he required a temporal, God gave him a spiritual blessing. And that he was now gladder to be a door-keeper in the house of God, than he could be to enjoy the noblest of all temporal employments.
Presently after he entered into his holy profession, the King sent for him, and made him his chaplain in ordinary, and promised to take a particular care for his preferment.
And though his long familiarity with scholars and persons of greatest quality was such as might have given some men boldness enough to have preached to any eminent auditory, yet his modesty in this employment was such that he could not be persuaded to it, but went usually accompanied with some one friend to preach privately in some village, not far from London, his first sermon being preached at Paddington. This he did, till his Majesty sent and appointed him a day to preach to him at Whitehall; and, though much were expected from him, both by his Majesty and others, yet he was so happywhich few areas to satisfy and exceed their expectations: preaching the Word so, as showed his own heart was possessed with those very thoughts and joys that he laboured to distil into others; a preacher in earnest; weeping sometimes for his auditory, sometimes with them; always preaching to himself, like an angel from a cloud, but in none; carrying some, as St. Paul was, to heaven in holy raptures, and enticing others by a sacred art and courtship to amend their lives; here picturing a vice so as to make it ugly to those that practised it, and a virtue so as to make it beloved even by those that loved it not; and all this with a most particular grace and an unexpressible addition of comeliness.
There may be some that may incline to thinksuch indeed as have not heard himthat my affection to my friend hath transported me to an immoderate commendation of his preaching. If this meets with any such, let me entreat, though I will omit many, yet that they will receive a double witness for what I say; it being attested by a gentleman of worth,Mr. Chidley, a frequent hearer of his sermons,in part of a funeral elegy writ by him on Dr. Donne; and is a known truth, though it be in verse
Each altar had his fire
He kept his love, but not his object; wit
He did not banish, but transplanted it;
Taught it both time and place, and brought it home
To piety which it doth best become.
. . . . . .
For say, had ever pleasure such a dress?
Have you seen crimes so shaped, or loveliness
Such as his lips did clothe religion in?
Had not reproof a beauty passing sin?
Corrupted Nature sorrowd that she stood
So near the danger of becoming good.
And, when he preached, she wishd her ears exempt
From piety, that had such power to tempt.
How did his sacred flattery beguile
Men to amend?
More of this, and more witnesses, might be brought; but I forbear and return.
That summer, in the very same month in which he entered into sacred orders, and was made the Kings chaplain, his Majesty then going his progress, was entreated to receive an entertainment in the University of Cambridge; and Mr. Donne attending his Majesty at that time, his Majesty was pleased to recommend him to the University, to be made doctor in divinity. Dr. Harsnett, after Archbishop of York, was then Vice-Chancellor, who, knowing him to be the author of that learned book,
The Pseudo-Martyr,
required no other proof of his abilities, but proposed it to the University, who presently assented, and expressed a gladness that they had such an occasion to entitle him to be theirs.
His abilities and industry in his profession were so eminent, and he so known and so beloved by persons of quality, that within the first year of his entering into sacred orders he had fourteen advowsons of several benefices presented to him; but they were in the country, and he could not leave his beloved London, to which place he had a natural inclination, having received both his birth and education in it, and there contracted a friendship with many, whose conversation multiplied the joys of his life: but an employment that might affix him that place would be welcome, for he needed it.
Immediately after his return from Cambridge his wife died, leaving him a man of a narrow, unsettled state, andhaving buried fivethe careful father of seven children then living, to whom he gave a voluntary assurance never to bring them under the subjection of a step-mother; which promise he kept most faithfully, burying with his tears all his earthly joys in his most dear and deserving wifes grave, and betook himself to a most retired and solitary life.
In this retiredness, which was often from the sight of his dearest friends, he became crucified to the world, and all those vanities, those imaginary pleasures, that are daily acted on that restless stage; and they were as perfectly crucified to him. Nor is it hard to thinkbeing, passions may be both changed and heightened by accidentsbut that
abundant affection which once was betwixt him and her, who had long been the delight of his eyes and the companion of his youth; her, with whom he had divided so many pleasant sorrows and contented fears, as common people are not capable of;not hard to think but that she being now removed by death, a commensurable grief took as full a possession of him as joy had done; and so indeed it did; for now his very soul was elemented of nothing but sadness; now grief took so full a possession of his heart, as to leave no place for joy: if it did, it was a joy to be alone, where, like a pelican in the wilderness, he might bemoan himself without witness or restraint, and pour forth his passions like Job in the days of his affliction: Oh that I might have the desire of my heart! Oh that God would grant the thing that I long for! For then, as the grave is become her house, so I would hasten to make it mine also; that we two might there make our beds together in the dark. Thus, as the Israelites sat mourning by the rivers of Babylon, when they remembered Sion, so he gave some ease to his oppressed heart by thus venting his sorrows: thus he began the day, and ended the night; ended the restless night and began the weary day in lamentations. And thus he continued, till a consideration of his new engagements to God, and St. Pauls Woe is me, if I preach not the gospel! dispersed those sad clouds that had then benighted his hopes, and now forced him to behold the light.
His first motion from his house was to preach where his beloved wife lay buried,in St. Clements Church, near Temple Bar, London,and his text was a part of the Prophet Jeremys Lamentation: Lo, I am the man that have seen affliction.
And indeed his very words and looks testified him to be truly such a man; and they, with the addition of his sighs and tears, expressed in his sermon, did so work upon the affections of his hearers, as melted and moulded them into a companionable sadness; and so they left the congregation; but then their houses presented them with objects of diversion, and his presented him with nothing but fresh objects of sorrow, in beholding many helpless children, a narrow fortune, and a consideration of the many cares and casualties that attend their education.
In this time of sadness he was importuned by the grave Benchers of Lincolns Innwho were once his companions and friends of his youthto accept of their lecture, which, by reason of Dr. Gatakers removal from thence, was then void; of which he accepted, being most glad to renew his intermitted friendship with those whom he so much loved, and where he had been a Saul,though not to persecute Christianity, or to deride it, yet in his irregular youth to neglect the visible practice of it,there to become a Paul, and preach salvation to his beloved brethren.
And now his life was a shining light among his old friends; now he gave an ocular testimony of the strictness and regularity of it; now he might say, as St. Paul adviseth his Corinthians, Be ye followers of me, as I follow Christ, and walk as ye have me for an example; not the example of a busy body, but of a contemplative, a harmless, an humble and an holy life and conversation.
The love of that noble society was expressed to him many ways; for, besides fair lodging that were set apart, and newly furnished for him with all necessaries, other courtesies were also daily added; indeed so many, and so freely, as if they meant their gratitude should exceed his merits: and in this love-strife of desert and liberality, they continued for the space of two years, he preaching faithfully and constantly to them, and they liberally requiting him. About which time the Emperor of Germany died, and the Palsgrave, who had lately married the Lady Elizabeth, the kings only daughter, was elected and crowned King of Bohemia, the unhappy beginning of many miseries in that nation.
King James, whose motto
Beati pacifici
did truly speak the very thoughts of his heart, endeavoured first to prevent, and after to compose, the discords of that discomposed State: and, amongst other his endeavours, did then send the Lord Hay, Earl of Doncaster, his ambassador to those unsettled Princes; and, by a special command from his Majesty, Dr. Donne was appointed to assist and attend that employment to the princes of the union; for which the Earl was most glad, who had always put a great value on him, and taken a great pleasure in his conversation and discourse: and his friends at Lincolns Inn were as glad, for they feared that his immoderate study and sadness for his wifes death would, as Jacob said, make his days few, and, respecting his bodily health, evil too; and of this there were many visible signs.
At his going he left his friends of Lincolns Inn, and they him, with many reluctations; for, though he could not say as St. Paul to his Ephesians, Behold, you, to whom I have preached the Kingdom of God, shall from henceforth see my face no more, yet he, believing himself to be in a consumption, questioned, and they feared it: all concluding that his troubled mind, with the help of his unintermitted studies, hastened the decays of his weak body. But God, who is the God of all wisdom and goodness, turned it to the best; for this employmentto say nothing of the event of itdid not only divert him from those too serious studies and sad thoughts, but seemed to give him a new life, by a true occasion of joy, to be an eye-witness of the health of his most dear and most honoured mistress, the Queen of Bohemia, in a foreign nation; and to be a witness of that gladness which she expressed to see him: who, having formerly known him a courtier, was much joyed to see him in a canonical habit, and more glad to be an ear-witness of his excellent and powerful preaching.
About fourteen months after his departure out of England, he returned to his friends of Lincolns Inn, with his sorrows moderated, and his health improved; and there betook himself to his constant course of preaching.
About a year after his return out of Germany, Dr. Carey was made Bishop of Exeter, and by his removal the Deanery of St. Pauls being vacant, the King sent to Dr. Donne, and appointed him to attend him at dinner the next day. When his Majesty sat down, before he had eat any meat, he said after his pleasant manner, Dr. Donne, I have invited you to dinner; and, though you sit not down with me, yet I will carve to you of a dish that I know you love well; for, knowing you love London, I do therefore make you Dean of St. Pauls; and, when I have dined, then do you take your beloved dish home to your study, say grace there to yourself, and much good may it do you.
Immediately after he came to his deanery he employed workmen to repair and beautify the chapel; suffering, as holy David once vowed, his eyes and temples to take no rest till he had first beautified the house of God.
The next quarter following, when his father-in-law, Sir George Morewhom time had made a lover and admirer of himcame to pay to him the conditioned sum of twenty pounds, he refused to receive it; and said, as good Jacob did when he heard his beloved son Joseph was alive, It is enough; you have been kind to me and mine. I know your present condition is such as not to abound, and I hope mine is, or will be such as not to need it: I will therefore receive no more from you upon that contract; and in testimony of it freely gave him up his bond.
Immediately after his admission into his deanery, the vicarage of St. Dunstan in the West, London, fell to him by the death of Dr. White, the advowson of it having been given to him long before by his honourable friend, Richard, Earl of Dorset, then the patron, and confirmed by his brother, the late deceased Edward, both of them men of much honour.
By these, and another ecclesiastical endowment which fell to him about the same time, given to him formerly by the Earl of Kent, he was enabled to become charitable to the poor, and kind to his friends, and to make such provision for his children that they were not left scandalous, as relating to their or his profession and quality.
The next Parliament, which was within that present year, he was chosen Prolocutor to the Convocation, and about that time was appointed by his Majesty, his most gracious master, to preach very many occasional sermons, as at St. Pauls Cross, and other places. All which employments he performed to the admiration of the representative body of the whole clergy of this nation.
He was once, and but once, clouded with the Kings displeasure, and it was about this time; which was occasioned by some malicious whisperer, who had told his Majesty the Dr. Donne had put on the general humours of the pulpits, and was become busy in insinuating a fear of the Kings inclining to Popery, and a dislike of his government; and particularly for the Kings then turning the evening lectures into catechising, and expounding the Prayer of our Lord, and of the Belief and Commandments. His Majesty was the more inclinable to believe this, for that a person of nobility and great note, betwixt whom and Dr. Donne there had been a great friendship, was at this very time discarded the courtI shall forbear his name, unless I had a fairer occasionand justly committed to prison; which begot many rumours in the common people, who in this nation think they are not wise unless they be busy about what they understand not, and especially about religion.
The King received this news with so much discontent and restlessness, that he would not suffer the sun to set and leave him under this doubt; but sent for Dr. Donne, and required his answer to the accusation; which was so clear and satisfactory, that the King said he was right glad he rested no longer under the suspicion. When the King had said this, Dr. Donne kneeled down and thanked his Majesty, and protested his answer was faithful, and free from all collusion, and therefore, desired that he might not rise till, as in like cases, he always had from God, so he might have from his Majesty, some assurance that he stood clear and fair in his opinion. At which the King raised him from his knees with his own hands, and protested he believed him; and that he knew he was an honest man, and doubted not but that he loved him truly. And, having thus dismissed him, he called some lords of his council into his chamber, and said with much earnestness, My doctor is an honest man; and, my lords, I was never better satisfied with an answer than he hath now made me; and I always rejoice when I think that by my means he became a divine.
He was made dean in the fiftieth year of his age; and in his fiftyfourth year a dangerous sickness seized him, which inclined him to a consumption: but God, as Job thankfully acknowledged, preserved his spirit, and kept his intellectuals as clear and perfect as when that sickness first seized his body; but it continued long, and threatened him with death, which he dreaded not.
In this distemper of body, his dear friend, Dr. Henry King,then chief residentiary of that church, and late Bishop of Chichester,a man generally known by the clergy of this nation, and as generally noted for his obliging nature, visited him daily; and observing that his sickness rendered his recovery doubtful, he chose a seasonable time to speak to him to this purpose:
Mr. Dean, I am, by your favour, no stranger to your temporal estate, and you are no stranger to the offer lately made us, for the renewing a lease of the best Prebends corps belonging to our church; and you know twas denied, for that our tenant being very rich, offered to fine at so low a rate as held not proportion with his advantages: but I will either raise him to a higher sum, or procure that the other residentiaries shall join to accept of what was offered; one of these I can and will by your favour do without delay, and without any trouble either to your body or mind: I beseech you to accept of my offer, for I know it will be a considerable addition to your present estate, which I know needs it.
To this, after a short pause, and raising himself upon his bed, he made this reply:
My most dear friend, I most humbly thank you for your many favours, and this in particular; but in my present condition I shall not accept of your proposal; for doubtless there is such a sin as sacrilege; if there were not, it could not have a name in Scripture; and the primitive clergy were watchful against all appearances of that evil; and indeed then all Christians looked upon it with horror and detestation, judging it to be even an open defiance of the power and providence of Almighty God, and a sad presage of a declining religion. But instead of such Christians, who had selected times set apart to fast and pray to God, for a pious clergy, which they then did obey, our times abound with men that are busy and litigious about trifles and church ceremonies, and yet so far from scrupling sacrilege, that they make not so much as a quaere what it is: but I thank God I have; and dare not now upon my sick-bed, when Almighty God hath made me useless to the service of the Church, make any advantages out of it. But if He shall again restore me to such a degree of health, as again to serve at his altar, I shall then gladly take the reward which the bountiful benefactors of this church have designed me; for God knows my children and relations will need it. In which number, my motherwhose credulity and charity has contracted a very plentiful to a very narrow estatemust not be forgotten. But, Dr. King, if I recover not, hat little worldly estate that I shall leave behind methat very little, when divided into eight partsmust, if you deny me not so charitable a favour, fall into your hands, as my most faithful friend and executor, of whose care and justice I make no more doubt than of Gods blessing, on that which I have conscientiously collected for them; but it shall not be augmented on my sickbed; and this I declare to be my unalterable resolution.
The reply to this was only a promise to observe his request.
Within a few days his distempers abated; and as his strength increased, so did his thankfulness to Almighty God, testified in his most excellent Book of Devotions, which he published at his recovery; in which the reader may see the most secret thoughts that then possessed his soul, paraphrased and made public: a book that may not unfitly be called a sacred picture of spiritual ecstasies, occasioned and applicable to the emergencies of that sickness; which book, being a composition of meditations, disquisitions, and prayers, he writ on his sick-bed; herein imitating the holy patriarchs, who were wont to build their altars in that place where they had received their blessings.
This sickness brought him so near to the gates of death, and he saw the grave so ready to devour him, that he would often say his recovery was supernatural: but that God that then restored his health continued it to him till the fifty-ninth year of his life; and then, in August 1630, being with his eldest daughter, Mrs. Harvey, at Abury Hatch, in Essex, he there fell into a fever, which with the help of his constant infirmityvapours from the spleenhastened him into so visible a consumption that his beholders might say, as St. Paul of himself, He dies daily; and he might say with Job, My welfare passeth away as a cloud, the days of my affliction have taken hold of me, and weary nights are appointed for me.
Reader, this sickness continued long, not only weakening, but wearying him so much, that my desire is he may now take some rest; and that before I speak of his death, thou wilt not think it an impertinent digression to look back with me upon some observations of his life, which, whilst a gentle slumber give rest to his spirits, may, I hope, not unfitly exercise thy consideration.
His marriage was the remarkable error of his lifean error which, though he had a wit able and very apt to maintain paradoxes, yet he was very far from justifying it; and though his wifes competent years, and other reasons, might be justly urged to moderate severe censures, yet he would occasionally condemn himself for it; and doubtless it had been attended with an heavy repentance, if God had not blessed them with so mutual and cordial affections, as in the midst of their sufferings made their bread of sorrow taste more pleasantly than the banquets of dull and low-spirited people.
The recreations of his youth were poetry, in which he was so happy, as if nature and all her varieties had been made only to exercise his sharp wit and high fancy; and in those pieces which were facetiously composed and carelessly scatteredmost of them being written before the twentieth year of his ageit may appear by his choice metaphors that both nature and all the arts joined to assist him with their utmost skill.
It is a truth, that in his penitential years, viewing some of those pieces that had been looselyGod knows, too looselyscattered in his youth, he wished they had been abortive, or so short-lived that his own eyes had witnessed their funerals: but, though he was no friend to them, he was not so fallen out with heavenly poetry as to forsake that; no, not in his declining age; witnessed then by many divine sonnets, and other high, holy, and harmonious composures. Yea, even, on his former sick-bed he wrote this heavenly hymn, expressing the great joy that then possessed his soul in the assurance of Gods favour to him when he composed it
Wilt thou forgive that sin where I begun,
Which was my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt thou forgive that sin through which I run,
And do run still, though still I do deplore?
When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
For I have more.
Wilt thou forgive that sin, which I have won
Others to sin, and made my sin their door?
Wilt thou forgive that sin which I did shun
A year or two;but wallowd in a score?
When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
For I have more.
I have a sin of fear, that when Ive spun
My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;
But swear by thyself, that at my death thy Son
Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore;
And having done that, thou hast done,
I fear no more.
I have the rather mentioned this hymn, for that he caused it to be set to a most grave and solemn tune, and to be often sung to the organ by the choristers of St. Pauls Church, in his own hearing, especially at the evening service; and at his return from his customary devotions in that place, did occasionally say to a friend, The words of this hymn have restored to me the same thoughts of joy that possessed my soul in my sickness, when I composed it. And, O the power of church-music! that harmony added to this hymn has raised the affections of my heart, and quickened my graces of zeal and gratitude; and I observe that I always return from paying this public duty of prayer and praise to God, with an unexpressible tranquillity of mind, and a willingness to leave the world.
After this manner the disciples of our Saviour, and the best of Christians in those ages of the church nearest to his time, offer their praises to Almighty God. And the reader of St. Augustines life may there find that towards his dissolution he wept abundantly, that the enemies of Christianity had broke in upon them, and profaned and ruined their sanctuaries, and because their public hymns and lauds were lost out of their churches. And after this manner have many devout souls lifted up their hands and offered acceptable sacrifices unto Almighty God, where Dr. Donne offered his, and now lies buried.
But now, O Lord! how is that place become desolate!
Before I proceed further, I think fit to inform the reader, that not long before his death he caused to be drawn a figure of the body of Christ extended upon an anchor, like those which painters draw when they would present us with the picture of Christ crucified on the cross: his varying no otherwise, than to affix him not to a cross, but to an anchorthe emblem of hope;this he caused to be drawn in little, and then many of those figures thus drawn to be engraven very small in Heliotropium stones, and set in gold; and of these he sent to many of his dearest friends, to be used as seals, or rings, and kept as memorials of him, and of his affection to them.
His dear friends and benefactors, Sir Henry Goodier and Sir Robert Drewry, could not be of that number; nor could the Lady Magdalen Herbert, the mother of George Herbert, for they had put off mortality, and taken possession of the grave before him: but Sir Henry Wotton, and Dr. Hall, the then late deceased Bishop of Norwich, were; and so were Dr. Duppa, Bishop of Salisbury, and Dr. Henry King, Bishop of Chichesterlately deceased,men in whom there was such a commixture of general learning, of natural eloquence, and Christian humility, that they deserve a commemoration by a pen equal to their own, which none have exceeded.
And in this enumeration of his friends, though many must be omitted; yet that man of primitive piety, Mr. George Herbert, may not; I mean that George Herbert who was the author of
The Temple, or Sacred Poems and Ejaculations.
A book in which, by declaring his own spiritual conflicts, he hath comforted and raised many a dejected and discomposed soul and charmed them into sweet and quiet thoughts; a book, by the frequent reading whereof, and the assistance of that spirit that seemed to inspire the author, the reader may attain habits of peace and piety, and all the gifts of the Holy Ghost and heaven; and may, by still reading, still keep those sacred fires burning upon the altar of so pure a heart, as shall free if from the anxieties of this world, and keep it fixed upon things that are above. Betwixt this George Herbert and Dr. Donne there was a long and dear friendship, made up by such a sympathy of inclinations, that they coveted and joyed to be in each others company; and this happy friendship was still maintained by many sacred endearments; of which that which followeth may be some testimony.
A Sheaf of Snakes used heretofore to be my Seal, which is the Crest of our poor family
Qui priùs assuetus serpentum falce tabellas
Signare, hæc nostræ symbola parva domûs,
Adscitus domui Domini
Adopted in Gods family, and so
My old coat lost, into new Arms I go.
The Cross, my Seal in Baptism, spread below,
Does by that form into an Anchor grow.
Crosses grow Anchors, bear as thou shouldst do
Thy Cross, and that Cross grows an Anchor too.
But he that makes our Crosses Anchors thus,
Is Christ, who there is crucified for us.
Yet with this I may my first Serpents hold;
God gives new blessings, and yet leaves the old
The Serpent, may, as wise, my pattern be;
My poison, as he feeds on dust, thats me.
And, as he rounds the earth to murder, sure
He is my death; but on the Cross, my cure,
Crucify nature then; and then implore
All grace from him, crucified there before.
When all is Cross, and that Cross Anchor grown
This Seals a Catechism, not a Seal alone.
Under that little Seal great gifts I send,
Both works and prayers, pawns and fruits of a friend.
Oh! may that Saint that rides on our Great Seal,
To you that bear his name, large bounty deal.
Quòd Crux nequibat fixa clavique additi,
Tenere Christum scilicet ne ascenderet,
Tuive Christum
Although the Cross could not here Christ detain,
When naild unto t, but he ascends again;
Nor yet thy eloquence here keep him still,
But only whilst thou speakstthis Anchor will:
Nor canst thou be content, unless thou to
This certain Anchor add a Seal; and so
The water and the earth both unto thee
Do owe the symbol of their certainty.
Let the world reel, we and all ours stand sure,
This holy cables from all storms secure.
I return to tell the reader that, besides these verses to his dear Mr. Herbert, and that hymn that I mentioned to be sung in the choir of St. Pauls Church, he did also shorten and beguile many sad hours by composing other sacred ditties; and he writ an hymn on his death-bed which bears this title:
March 23, 1630
Since I am coming to that holy room,
Where, with thy Choir of Saints, for evermore
I shall be made thy music, as I come
I tune my instrument here at the door,
And, what I must do then, think here before.
Since my Physicians by their loves are grown
Cosmographers; and I their map, who lye
Flat on this bed
So, in his purple wrapt, receive my Lord!
By these his thorns, give me his other Crown:
And, as to other souls I preachd thy word,
Be this my text, my sermon to mine own,
That he may raise; therefore the Lord throws down.
If these fall under the censure of a soul whose too much mixture with earth makes it unfit to judge of these high raptures and illuminations, let him know, that many holy and devout men have thought the soul of Prudentius to be most refined, when, not many days before his death, he charged it to present his God each morning and evening with a new and spiritual song; justified by the example of King David and the good King Hezekiah, who, upon the renovation of his years paid his thankful vows to Almighty God in a royal hymn, which he concludes in these words: The Lord was ready to save; therefore I will sing my songs to the stringed instruments all the days of my life in the temple of my God.
The latter part of his life may be said to be a continued study; for as he usually preached once a week, if not oftener, so after his sermon he never gave his eyes a rest, till he had chosen out a new text, and that night cast his sermon into a form, and his text into divisions; and the next day betook himself to consult the fathers, and so commit his meditations to his memory, which was excellent. But upon Saturday he usually gave himself and his mind a rest from the weary burthen of his weeks meditations, and usually spent that day in visitation of friends, or some other diversions of his thoughts; and would say, that he gave both his body and mind that refreshment, that he might be enabled to do the work of the day following, not faintly, but with courage and cheerfulness.
Nor was his age only so industrious, but in the most unsettled days of his youth his bed was not able to detain him beyond the hour of four in the morning; and it was no common business that drew him out of his chamber till past ten; all which time was employed in study; though he took great liberty after it. And if this seem strange, it may gain a belief by the visible fruits of his labours; some of which remain as testimonies of what is here written: for he left the resultance of 1400 authors, most of them abridged and analysed with his own hand; he left also six score of his sermons, all written with his own hand; also an exact and laborious treatise concerning self-murder, called Biathanatos; wherein all the laws violated by that act are diligently surveyed, and judiciously censured: a treatise written in his younger days, which alone might declare him then not only perfect in the civil and canon law but in many other such studies and arguments as enter not into the consideration of many that labour to be thought great clerks, and pretend to know all things.
Note 1.
1656. [
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Top 150
] ·
World Lit


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Hi guys,
It's my first post.
I'm searching for a graphical plugin like gruff or scruffy because I
found problems installing ImageMagick lib on the production server.
Also like gruff, the plugin must generate graphics in a suitable image
format (PNG for example) because I not only display the graphics on the
HTML page I also export them in a PDF format.
Searching for a Graphic plugin (gruff like) not using ImageM
marouen #1
Hi guys,


text:
Indiana's Cheaney leaving for job at Saint Louis
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (AP) — Indiana is losing former star Calbert Cheaney to Saint Louis, where he will be a full-time assistant coach for fellow former Hoosier Jim Crews.
Cheaney has been the Hoosiers' director of basketball operations since June 2011. Cheaney was a sophomore in high school when Crews said he first met him, and he joins a school that's 54-16 the last two seasons.
"I have known Jim Crews for a long time, and I'm eager to work with him and the rest of the SLU staff," Cheaney said in a statement. "This is a great coaching situation to step into."
Coach Tom Crean issued a statement late Tuesday night, crediting Cheaney with helping Indiana to reclaim a prominent spot on the national college basketball map over the past two seasons. Crean also said he believes Cheaney has a bright coaching future.
"He is of high character and has a great combination of work habits and work ethic," Crews said. "Calbert is very good at transferring his knowledge to the players."
Cheaney won the Wooden, Naismith and Big Ten player of the year awards following the 1992-93 season, when he averaged 22.4 points and 6.2 rebounds. With 2,613 career points, Cheaney is still the Big Ten's career scoring leader.
Cheaney replaces Jim Whitesell, associate head coach the last two seasons at Saint Louis before taking an assistant coaching job at St. John's earlier this month. Whitesell has 24 seasons of head coaching experience at three NCAA levels.


text:
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Temporizing ...
I've been trying to make sense of the latest revelations concerning the Pat Tillman investigation. It's slow going, but I promise a Simply Appalling post on the matter tomorrow.
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text:
Shopping for eyewear?
Suppose you could go somewhere to experience the coziness of a small practice—cookies, fresh coffee, and a comfortable place to sit when you come in—but that also has the sophistication and expertise of a large organization.
Impossible? Not when it comes to Your Eye Care Team at any of its five locations—Family Eye Care in Chilton, New Holstein, and Kiel, Visionary Eye Care in Sheboygan, and Perspective of Cedar Creek Eye Care in Cedarburg.
It might be compared to an extended family unified into one close-knit group. A member clinic is never out of touch no matter how far away it is from the others, geographically speaking. And this is where the customer benefits.
For instance, a resident of Chilton can visit the Family Eye Care facility at 17 E. Main Street to shop for a pair of frames but have a specific style and color in mind. After examining the choices, let's say he doesn't find exactly what he had in mind. No problem. He can put in his order for a specific shape and color and come back the next day to try on numerous pairs forwarded from one or more of Your Eye Care Team's other clinics. In fact, in the future, links from the company's website will make it possible for the customer to view all the frames available at any location online.
After all, glasses aren't just to correct vision; they make a fashion statement as well.
"They really are like an accessory," said Karin Wille, manager of clinic operations. They're like jewelry for your face. They enhance your best features, and yet they help you to see."
Some customers shop for multiple pairs—one for dressy occasions, one for casual and a pair to wear with jeans.
And with its five locations, Your Eye Care Team is able to pass the savings from ordering in larger quantities on to its customers.
Own lab an advantage
Of course, picking out frames might be the fun part, but the lens is the most critical part of eye wear. The fact that Your Eye Care Team has its own lab in its Sheboygan clinic makes it possible to produce a high-quality product in about a week or so—even more quickly if the customer has an urgent need. The frames and prescription go right to the lab where the lenses are installed on site. They arrive back to the clinic ready for a few minor adjustments before the customer walks out the door.
The team at the clinic does all it can to make the process as painless and easy as possible. As soon as they come through the door, patients are greeted by the receptionist at check in. The insurance information is collected and processed quickly by a knowledgeable member of the staff. Then, they are taken to a private exam room where a staff member will question them about their medical history and enter that into the computer—no complicated forms to fill out—Your Eye Care Team clinics are paperless.
Finally, one of organization's four doctors will conduct the exam, which often includes a dilated eye exam.
"We're not looking just at the prescription and selling the patient glasses," said owner and team leader, Dr. Cheryl Roers. "We want to make sure their eyes are healthy. We're checking for glaucoma, cataracts, macular degeneration and other eye diseases or problems."
But that's not all.
"The only place in the body where you can look directly at blood vessels as they work, without opening the skin, is in the eye," she said.
That being the case, the doctor can learn a lot about the patient's circulation, blood pressure, and cholesterol simply by examining the eye. Often diabetes can be detected early in this way, and the eye doctor will refer the patient to his general practitioner for immediate attention, before the disease gets out of control.
Doctor saves a life
In fact, Dr. Tracey Strombeck, another part of the team, was able to detect plaques in some of the vessels in one of her patient's eyes, indicating a condition that could lead to a stroke. Dr. Strombeck sent him to his cardiologist, who told the patient, "You should thank your eye doc-
Turn to EYE CARE/page 22 B


text:
Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
You are not logged in.
Registrations are currently closed because of a technical problem. Please send email to
The forum administrator reserves the right to request users to plausibly demonstrate that they are real people with an interest in the topic of eggcorns. Otherwise they may be removed with no further justification. Likewise, accounts that have not been used for posting may be removed.
Thanks for your understanding.
Chris -- 2018-04-11
The world of eggcorns is vast, evergreen and no one can know its limits, especially in the face of the jorkelian stealth eggcorn (sorry jorkel, that's the last time I'll adjectivize you). And there is every reason to believe that a significant fraction of the everyday language that we take for granite has been bent, bowed over and rewound multiple times before it trips so innocently off the tongue – here be eggcrons. Be that as it may, all is not eggcorn.
If I can piece together the history of this forum, from my fragmentary contact with the apocrypha, it was set up to have a
dual tripartite role. First, it draws eggcorn-generated heat away from the Language Log. Second, it serves as a strongbox for certain canonical eggcornical finds. These exist in a hermetic capitalized Database. The Eggcorn Faery and certain of her Cohort have the spell that opens it, and they occasionally sneak a ripe one in.
Third, the forum increases the efficiency and the joy of the hunt for eggcorns by opening the door to anyone with the patience to email chris dot waigl and wait for inscription. This gatekeeping rigamarole wards off spammers, who did apparently arrive at the gates by the cartload at some time in the recent past. The assembled might of the forum's members now resembles the thousand-armed (or 5-thousand fingered, give-or-take), thousand-eyed bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara who was able to see and hear all the suffering of the world at once. A thousand used to be a large number.
Over time, the posts to the forum have been separated into five Eggcornish Meeting Places. This soapbox is one, a congenial place to talk about ways to improve the forum. I'd like to use it to call upon others to provide alternative places for the expression of interest in the way shapes are formed in English. Any suggestions for other word fora for occasional meandering way off topic? For pikers like myself?
At the same time, I remember being interested but confused and hesitant with respect to the post by nilep in which he exhorted us to submit doubtful eggcorns to the wikipedia help:eggcorns page first for group rumination before entry here. Can you expand on that vision, nilep?
I think what you're looking for may be the "Alt.usage.english" newsgroup—which has its intro site here: http://alt-usage-english.org/ They're a far more expansive bunch than we are, embracing a much wider range of topics—and they're generally far more willing to go off-topic. Unlike this site and most other online discussion forums, they famously don't honor the usual taboo on commenting on another poster's spelling or grammar errors—an inadvertent sillycism has been known to set off piranha-like behavior there.
There are a bunch of very good smaller blogs out there. One of the best link round-ups I can think of is over at The Double-Tongued Dictionary. We're not listed there, but most of the usage/etymology/"linguablogger" sites of any real prominence are included: http://www.doubletongued.org/index.php/ … t/#langpub
I hadn't seen that list of language sites, Pat. A good one.
I see we aren't in the list yet. You should send them an email (the email address is at top of list) with a small blurb about the eggcorn forum (I would do it, but you would still have to send them a note correcting the mistakes in my note).
Last edited by kem (2009-04-18 12:15:19)
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
Grant Barrett at Double-tongued can't possibly be unaware of us, given his interests, and I think it's a good bet that if he'd wanted us there, we'd be there. I have qualms about writing to someone and saying, "Your link roundup is so good that it's unfair of you to exclude us." Doesn't feel right to me.
Barrett's list includes virtually all the relevant sites I usually go to, but a lot of people here have more interest in wordplay than I do, and such folks may find the list at the Verbatim site really interesting: http://www.verbatimmag.com/links.html There's surprisingly little overlap with the Double-tongued catalogue, and Verbatim's includes links to sites on palindromes, Newfoundland English, and much more. It also has a link to the website of The Willard Espy Foundation—a very solemn site dedicated to the memory of one of the most light-hearted of writers on language.
(stumbles back in with extensive grammatical retinal bleaching) Perfect, Pat, thanks. It is an anomaly that this site is not on the Double-Tongued dictionary list. The readers of that list would enjoy the Eggcorn Forum, without a doubt.
burred wrote:
At the same time, I remember being interested but confused and hesitant with respect to the post by nilep in which he exhorted us to submit doubtful eggcorns to the wikipedia help:eggcorns page first for group rumination before entry here. Can you expand on that vision, nilep?
Sorry, obviously I didn't make myself clear in the post burred cites.
Wikipedia has an Eggcorn page. Since it's Wikipedia, anyone can contribute to the page, and users often add examples. Those additions are sometimes inappropriate for various reasons, so the preferred practice is to add them to the Discussion page rather than directly to the encyclopedia page. I've actually suggested that Wikipedia users who want to add eggcorns to a discussion forum should come here, not vice versa.
I'm not sure whether I've just made that clearer or more muddled?
I'm a cornfused newbie. Having unearthed the eggcorn website yesterday, it appears to me that eggcorns are a special category of malaprops. The hyper-approriate malaprop. Gems among chestnuts. Cognac among the Schlitz beer of malaprops.
Does the forum and database consider only unintentional "wild" eggcorns?
Does one need a better than thou attitude, so we can make fun of idiots who have no right to use language? Make that "more bitter than thou"?
Or, can we mold new figurines of speech, to compost our own eggcorns?
Who knows what dramafications may arise!
Last edited by stevekirkp (2010-01-01 12:39:12)
Welcome to the forum, stevekirkp.
Linguists who specialize in malaprops—like Arnold Zwicky, one of the people instrumental in setting up this site—do technically consider eggcorns a form of malapropism. Not all of us on this site are so careful about the specialist definition of "malaprop"; some of us will occasionally talk about eggcorns and malaprops as being mutually exclusive categories—in that eggcorns make some sense and malaprops don't. That's a useful shorthand, and it answers to the popular sense of malapropisms as reshapings that don't make sense in context.
You won't find much mockery of eggcorners round these parts. We've seen too much. Everybody malapropizes or eggcorns from time to time, and the forum has many examples of reshapings collected from the pages of well-known writers and well-established magazines, etc. The people who make their way here and stick around tend to be fascinated with non-standard constructions—and what they imply about linguistic intuition and creativity—rather than scornful of them.
Yes, eggcorns by definition are unintentional reshapings; if you consciously worked it up, then it's not an eggcorn for you—though exploration on the internet may demonstrate that it's an eggcorn for others. We try to keep the "Contribute" page of the forum reserved for eggcorn candidates, but people do use the "Slips" page for word-play, non-eggcornish malaprops and other stuff.
It seems that if Sheridan popularized malaprops, through intentional and creative means, then the same could be done with eggcorns.
I would rather plant eggcorns than to root around for random droppings.
However, it appears that some of you have found the mother oak.
If I stumple over such odd, Quercus leavings, then I'll contribute.
Last edited by stevekirkp (2010-01-01 16:13:56)
lol what the hell
Pat said:
Linguists who specialize in malaprops—like Arnold Zwicky, one of the people instrumental in setting up this site—do technically consider eggcorns a form of malapropism. Not all of us on this site are so careful about the specialist definition of "malaprop"; some of us will occasionally talk about eggcorns and malaprops as being mutually exclusive categories—in that eggcorns make some sense and malaprops don't. That's a useful shorthand, and it answers to the popular sense of malapropisms as reshapings that don't make sense in context.
The way I define eggcorns and malapropisms separates them into two exclusive groups according to a single criterion: The meaning of all words in eggcorns are shared by utterer and listener alike, but at least one word in a malapropism is from the private lexicon of the utterer. (We may further restrict "shared meaning" to those listed in some widely used source such as a dictionary … OED, if you prefer).
Last edited by jorkel (2010-02-03 09:57:39)
To my last posting, Templair said lol what the hell.
I had tried to channel James Joyce, substituting approximate words, that have some meaning themselves. Quercus is like quirky, and it's the Genus for oak trees. So, after mentioning that some of you have found the mother oak (mother lode) of eggcorns, "Quercus leavings" (or droppings) can refer to eggcorns (quirky findings) or actual acorns.
I thought I had my writer's juices flowing, but maybe I was full of sap.
Not to worry about that commenter, steverkirkp. None of his postings were all that serious.
Yeah, I'm with Jorkel. Templair made a small bunch of posts in a couple of days and then disappeared. I couldn't figure him/her out—didn't look like a typical spambot, not mean or rude enough for a random troll, and apparently not interested in eggcorns. We're a little tiny inlet of a humongous ocean; you never know who or what will come swimming upstream.


text:
The city of Los Angeles — which knows something about "three-peats" — has notified Olympic officials that it wants to host yet another Summer Games.
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa sent a letter to the U.S. Olympic Committee confirming that civic, business and community leaders have lined up to express their "enthusiastic interest" in bidding for the 2024 Olympics and Paralympics.
That would bring the sporting world's grandest event back to the site where it took place in 1932 and 1984.
"We are proud of our city's sports heritage and tradition," Villaraigosa wrote to the USOC. "And we stand ready to work with you to bring the Olympic Games back to the United States."
The Summer Olympics have not been held in the U.S. since 1996 in Atlanta.
Relations between the U.S. and the International Olympic Committee had cooled over a disagreement about sharing sponsorship revenue that flows largely from American corporations. After Chicago was ousted early in voting for 2016 — Rio de Janeiro eventually won — the USOC skipped the 2020 bidding process.


text:
Rolling Stone July 24, 1980
Motion Pictures
Slaves To The Empire
The 'Star Wars' Kids Talk Back: By Timothy White
*The Force has two sides. It is not a malevolent or a Benevolent thing. It has a bad side to it, involving hate and fear, and it has a good side, involving love, charity, fairness and hope.* --George Lucas
"There's no place for personal triumph in a film like this," says Harrison Ford dryly, referring to his return to the screen as mercenary adventurer Han Solo in 'Star Wars'' monumental sequel, 'The Empire Strikes Back'. Although Ford shares star billing, he is painfully aware that he and the other featured performers are mere pawns in a projected nine-part series of sci-fi films, cartoonlike components with little more dimension than the hapless androids C-3PO and R2D2.
'Star Wars', the creation of writer-director-producer George Lucas, is the largest-grossing film of all time-- over $400 million at last count-- and 'Empire', directed by Irvin Kershner, looks to be its nearest box-office rival. Yet the cast of this spectacular saga seems almost lost in an interplanetary shuffle.
"The star is the movie," says Mark Hamill, a.k.a. Luke Skywalker, and his cohorts sadly concur. Indeed, Harrison Ford has learned so little about his own character that he cannot explain why Solo is being pursued by bounty hunters throughout 'Empire'.
"There's no, er, I don't know *why* that is." He shrugs, red-faced. "I can imagine, but basically, I just work here, you know what I mean? In fact, I didn't get the script to the second picture until three weeks before we started shooting. [Some of the actors in 'Empire' were given only partial scripts to ensure the secrecy of plot twists.] I haven't gotten the script for the third one, 'The Revenge of the Jedi'.
"One of George's real strengths," adds Ford, "is not giving you all the information you need, yet at the same time not denying you anything essential. You have a feeling that you want to know more at all times."
"I have heard frequently," he continues, "that there is a certain kind of disappointment with the ending of the second film. I've heard people say, 'There's no end to this film' or 'I can't wait to find out what happens.' But they *will*, and that's exactly the effect intended by the ending."
To feed the seemingly insatiable appetite for news about 'Star Wars', Twentieth Century-Fox and Lucasfilm (George's production company) have mounted a promotional onslaught whose scope resembles a rock & roll world tour. Over the last few weeks, the films' stars have been hustled from Los Angeles to New York to Washington to London to Japan and then on to Australia to sit for literally hundreds of newspaper, radio and television interviews. The effort is further supported by a multi-million-dollar ad campaign and a glut of aggressive merchandising schemes that include everything from a soundtrack album to a proposed Yoda doll, the gnomelike Jedi master.
The films' principles were not often together on the sets--especially during the shooting of 'Empire'--and the same goes for their promo tours. While they get along well with one another, there's little sense of a shared experience. And as for the actual creation of the film fantasy, vivid anecdotes are rare; Carrie Fisher, who plays Princess Leia, admits that the actors had to "pretend a lot."
"On the set, I would have to say, 'Don't blow up my planet, please!' and all I'm doing is looking at a board with and X on it, held by an assistant director who couldn't wait for the tea break.
"There are certain things you can bring to a movie that have substitutions in your life," she adds. "Well, you can't do that in this type of film. I had never seen hyperspace till I saw the finished films, so I could never imagine how they would do it. You just make what Kierkegaard called the 'great leap of faith.'"
"I felt curiously detached watching 'Empire'," says Hamill. "I sound like my therapist, but you do start taking these things to heart, thinking, 'Yes, you are a terrible actor, and it was *only* the special effects that made it all memorable.'"
It is perhaps a sign of the times that the biggest entertainment phenomenon in history is also a wondrous cliffhanger that is as mesmerizing as it is manipulative. At this rate, we will have to wait until the year 2000 to see the final episode of Lucas' cinematic fairy tale, while the actors, who were paid sizable salaries ( and, in the case of Star Wars, a reported bonus cut of Lucas' own profits), may never derive any great satisfaction from the most celebrated roles of their careers.
The man getting the most personal gratification from this project must be Lucas himself, who, after miraculously surviving a car crash at the age of eighteen, decided, "I should do something positive with my life because I was spared for a reason. Maybe I was here for 'Star Wars'."*
*For the benefit of anyone in this galaxy who is unaware of the 'Star Wars' plot, the epic concerns Princess Leia Organa of Alderraan, the lovely leader of the Alliance to Restore the Republic, and her struggle to mount a successful rebellion against the evil Galactic Empire. Formerly a noble federation guarded by the righteous order of Jedi Knights, the massive republic eventually decayed from within, thanks to the power-mad efforts of a wicked self-appointed emperor and his strong right arm, fallen Jedi Darth Vader. The first film found Leia soliciting allies for her courageous quest, including aging Jedi Master (Ben) Obi-Wan Kenobi; adventurer Han Solo and his Wookiee comrade, Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew); droids C-3Po and R2D2 (Kenny Baker); and Skywalker. 'The Empire' is essentially a nonstop battle, the action built upon all the lore thus far implanted in the imaginations of millions of fans. *
None of the actors are apologetic about their part in this unfolding drama, but one gets the feeling that they would relish a greater comprehension of, and control over, the science-fiction serial that has assumed such power over their lives and careers. (Ford, Hamill, Fisher, Billy Dee Williams and most of the other costars are signed for 'The Revenge of the Jedi'.)
"The Force is what *you* perceive it to be," Lucas notes, "and it is always changing."
"I was nineteen, chosen at random, and told to lose weight, which at the time was a problem," says pretty, petite Carrie Fisher, 23, curled up in an overstuffed chair in her New York apartment. "This time around, for 'Empire', I was told to *gain* weight. The only film I'd done before 'Star Wars' was 'Shampoo'. But they decided to go with me anyway, a strong girl with a low voice and self-righteous nature."
*Sardonic* would be a better word. Fisher's flippant outlook on life may be the result of a childhood spent enduring mother Debbie Reynolds' two celebrated divorces ("She's a Texas chain-saw survivor; she's real great") and the gossip magazine prattle that plagued father Eddie Fisher ("He's a little shell shocked from thirteen years of doing speed, but he's real friendly"). Her quick-witted style, heavily influenced by the blas�-just-before-the gallows banter of 'Saturday Night Live' alumnus Michael O'Donoghue (who's a close chum), contains traces of Joan Rivers, Bette Midler and a dollop of Dorothy Parker.
"I liked whenever Harrison and I yelled at each other," she giggles, recalling her favorite scenes from both films. "And whenever Darth Vader came in, a lot of the scenes were funny, because he was physically depicted by David Prowse, this muscle man from Cornwall or Devon. [Vader's eerie, wheezing voice was dubbed in by James Earl Jones.] And 'cause he had this Devon farmer's accent, we used to call him Darth Farmer!
"Lucas always had to remind me to 'Stand up! Be a princess!' And I would act like a Jewish princess and lean forward, slouching, chewing gum."
The talk shifts to Leia's romance with Han Solo in 'Empire', and Carrie slyly speculates that "if she had her wits about her, she would have fallen for the big, strong Wookiee. She's not that experienced, but because she's a princess, she would have some kind of problem with whoever she dated. Like, 'She can't marry out of her solar system' or something."
Gazing around her apartment crammed with antique toys, dolls and the whimsical knickknacks one might expect to find in a little girl's bedroom, I realize there are few 'Star Wars' souvenirs.
"They sent me everything at first, as if I had some child lurking about, but I gave most of it away. On Halloween, I had no candy so I gave two children in the building something, and then the whole building descended on me, and I gave a lot of stuff away.
"You know," she says in a mock stage whisper, "they send me 'Star Wars' sheets. I just gave the last ones away to some of the 'Saturday Night Live' writers. They called me back and said, 'You don't have them for *double* beds, do you?' "The merchandising, it's very funny. Harrison used to get so upset; 'Mark gets to be a *puzzle*, why don't I?!' Those kinds of arguments. And we'll go, 'Wait a minute! Why don't I get to be on the pencil box for goodness sake! I mean, if I'm gonna be in this and I'm gonna end up being two sizes of dolls, and a belt, and a cookie, and a hat, then why don't I get to be on an eraser, too?'
"I," Fisher boasts, "was on a Princess Leia eraser."
"Do the kids who buy these erasers come up to you in supermarkets," I wonder, "and ask you about the "Millenium Falcon' or 'Jawas' or. . .?"
"No! they come to my home. I swear to you! I sometimes find them *in* my home, and there are a lot of little girls. One girl named Yolanda sat here and waited for me. That's when I started locking my door. One night--this is great--some *real* strange guy with crossed eyes came up here and said he had bought my address for twenty dollars. Peter Aykroyd [Dan's brother] was here and chased him down the block.
"Weird," she says with a shudder. "you know, I remember falling asleep one day on the set and dreaming about half-robots, half-people. You're hanging around the set for three or four months and you're going to lunch with midgets and giants every day; eventually it permeates the brain. So I had these violent nightmares, dreams where you keep trying to imposed *your* reality and you can't. It gets you crazy."
Fisher has since awakened to another equally unsettling fact;: her involvement in these films has not made her more in demand in Hollywood.
"Not at all." She nods with an even smile. "It hasn't translated into jobs, into other work. It's not an actor's performance. You have fun doing it to a degree, but I'm famous in this weird way because I'm this children's cartoon character.
"*Balls*, people recognize me more from 'Saturday Night Live!' I mean, people know who I am, but nothing can be bigger than this movie no matter what happens. When we all kick off, we will be the princess and Luke and Han."
"How does that make you feel?" I ask.
Her smile vanishes and the color drains from her face. "Helpless."
"George tells me that the wisest thing I could tell anyone is that I'm retired," says Mark Hamill, 28, only half joking as he nibbles nachos in a sunlit Malibu eatery called Alice's Restaurant. "Then I would have the best of both worlds. There's no pressure to put out a product, and if you do get a part, you can say, 'The role was so good it lured me out of retirement.'
"Who knows," he says in exasperation, "I think he's probably right." Hamill views his contribution to Lucas' work-in-progress as "the classic thankless role. I'm the straight man, the earnest storyteller.
"You know," he offers with a hard swallow, "thirty years ago, the studios would have built our careers. We're all freelancers now. I'm finally looking like a grown-up, after all these years. I always got the 'Hey, dad, can I borrow the keys to the car tonight?' parts. That's why I'm waiting. I really have a feeling 'Empire' is going to help me.
"I've got one of the best collections of 'Star Wars' memorabilia," he suddenly volunteers, "but it's all put away because I'm a serious collector."
"How valuable to sci-fi buffs is the Luke Skywalker doll?" I ask.
"I've been marked down in price," he moans. "But it doesn't look anything like me, anyway. My wife and I went into a Toys 'R Us store a while back, and they had all these kids' costumes. They'd made a bunch of 'Star Wars' ones; four of 'em, and I was one.
"They had sold out Darth Vader, Chewbacca and C-3PO," he murmurs, "and I was the only one available. There were just boxes and boxes of me."
The son of an itinerant navy captain, Hamill grew up in Virginia and Japan, and became absorbed in acting while in high school. Although he has had extensive TV experience, including a short-lived series with Gary Busey called 'The Texas Wheelers', he confesses that "one of the best things I think I ever did was Snoopy in 'You're a Good Man Charlie Brown'. I was embarrassed to mention it before, because it was in high school in Japan."
Hamill's anxiety about landing choice roles was tragically accelerated when his BMW ran off the freeway in 1977. 'Star Wars' had not yet been released, and his face was sufficiently ravaged that he wondered whether he would be able to retain any part of his angular good looks, let alone fulfill the remainder of his three-picture deal with Lucas. That mental anguish was only intensified when the film proved to be an international smash.
"It's the crux of my dilemma right now. For an actor to have massive facial surgery is 'traumatic'. I thought it jeopardized everything," he admits, wincing when I note that a small lip scar is still visible. "I thought it could possibly be pretty much over for me, unless. . ."
Since 'Star Wars', Hamill's only other film stints have been the role of "an emotional hard-luck case" in the obscure 'Corvette Summer' and the slightly meatier part of a fragile young infantryman in Sam Fuller's 'The Big Red One', a World War II story filmed in 1978 and only now being released.
"After I came back from filming 'Empire Strikes Back', my first job offer was to walk on nails and swallow fire on some celebrity circus in Las Vegas-- whatever *that* was. It's so bizarre. Here I am a grown-up and this is how I earn my living. What's my son gonna think of me? All of a sudden there are so many elements that aren't in your control. You wind up almost being another one of the public watching this 'public' you.
I'd work for scale for somebody willing to take a chance with me, because it's real frustrating to be n something this big and popular and not really feel you're stretching yourself. I met Milos Forman yesterday on an interview [for the film version of the best-selling novel 'Ragtime'], and I would kill to work with that man!
"I was dying to get a reading on 'Midnight Express', 'cause I thought for them to use that squeaky-clean image of Luke and then have that [drug imprisonment] happen to him would be great dramatically.
"You keep saying to yourself, 'Don't worry, you won't get trapped. 'I can stick it out," he decided, "as long as I'm careful with my money."
He changes the subject, speaking with enthusiasm about his wife, Marilou, their infant son and the house they've just purchased in Malibu. I wonder whether his wife knew of his interstellar alter ego before they began dating.
"I didn't think so," he says, "but since then I've discovered that she knew. But then again, I don't think she was impressed by it. Seriously, from being a dental hygienist in Westwood, she knows more people in the business than I do. That's how I got invited to a recent Eagles concert-- she knows them from doing their teeth!
"A lot has happened to me since the first movie," Hamill confides wearily. "And you feel that to go cross-country on these promotional tours is sort of a waste. They're hard, real hard. One of the reasons I feel so empty and lacking when I talk to interviewers is because you ask me these questions and I don' know, I'm searching for the answers myself."
"Do you want to see the scars?" asks Anthony Daniels, the suave, soft spoken British actor who animates the gleaming gold hardware known as C-3PO, 'Star Wars' fussy butler of a robot. Seated next to Hamill on a long couch in a suite at Manhattan's Sherry-Netherland Hotel, the delicately handsome Daniels unbuttons his tan silk shirt to reveal a gruesome network of old wounds.
"The whole first film was a miasman of pain," says Daniels. "It was the metal pieces of the suit shoving me about, meeting with another piece of metal to pinch me horribly. I was like sticking your fingers in an electric socket, again and again.
"Fortunately, it was much easier for 'Empire', because the costume was redesigned. It's slightly more flexible. I even tap-dance recently, did a metallic soft-shoe on 'The Muppet Show'. What makes it bearable is that, between us, we make up a somewhat beautiful piece of sculpture." Daniels frequently discusses C-3PO in terms of "we."
"In the end, I turned him from an American version of a robot programmed to be a servant into a swishy British twit, but he's quite nice."
"I think a psychiatrist would enjoy being in there with me," Daniels observes, "Because you can really watch people, and watch people's reactions to me. It's fascinating. Sometimes I would be standing next to the costume and people would come up and say, 'That guy must be incredibly *stupid* to do this part.'"
He then relates the mortifying experience of nearly being expelled by security guards from the backstage area of the 1977 Academy Awards ceremony because he was, of course, out of costume.
"I'd forgotten my ID badge." He shrugs, rolling his eyes. "I literally had to beg them to find the guy who was looking after me. There's not a lot of dignity involved in being in these 'Star Wars' films; I have no dignity left whatsoever. I mean, if I've got an itchy crotch, somebody has to scratch it for me. I actually can't do that-- my hands don't go that far."
"He's one of the most famous characters in cinema!" Hamill exclaims, jumping up and stalking about the room like an exasperated press agent. "Yet no one would recognize him on the street!
"Just to show you how famous *I* am," Hamill offers, "a lady came up to me after a reception and said, 'Are you the skinny guy in the gold robot suit? I know he's here someplace and you're the skinniest person here.' I said, 'Okay, I'll sign an autograph,' and wrote: 'Best wishes always, the skinny guy in the robot suit.'
I took the 'Star Wars' trivia test and failed," Hamill says to Daniels impishly. "They asked who your former owner was and I couldn't remember."
"Somebody in Tower Records on Sunset [Boulevard, in Los Angeles] recognized my voice one day," says Daniels, striving to cheer himself up. "All I said was, 'I want to buy a record. Can I have this please?' And he said, '*You're Anthony Daniels!*' I was really shocked."
"The first day we got here, we had a press conference at nine in the morning," says an exhausted Harrison Ford, rubbing his eyes as he lifts his stocking feet onto a coffee table in New York's Plaza Hotel. "And then from about 9:20 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. we met a gross of journalists around a dozen tables, twelve at a time, and moved from one table to another, and so we did about 150 interviews in four hours. An hour off for lunch, and then we came back and did fifteen five- to ten-minute television interviews in four hours and then went back to our rooms and passed out. The next day we did twenty-seven television interviews, and on into Sunday. This morning I've done the Today show and, uh, about four or five interviews with print media."
In his eyes, I see murky bog pits on the planet Dagobah.
"The last time we were on tour together," Mark Hamill had told me earlier, "Harrison was the publicity sheriff. He would give us report cards: 'Humility--B. I like what you said about not being in the business for money--A for that.'" Right now, Ford is too fatigued to grade anyone, himself included. "I had no experience with science fiction beforehand," he says weakly. "And I didn't go to those Buck Rogers matinees, either. In fact, I have never been much of a film fan."
The son of an advertising executive and the grandson of a vaudeville trouper, Ford did a little summer stock in Wisconsin before flunking out of college three days before graduation.
"That's when I first considered being an actor for money, and I knew I had to go either to LA or to New York, and damned quick, 'cause it was starting to snow in Wisconsin. So I flipped a coin. It came up New York, so I flipped it again so I could go to LA I wasn't gonna starve *and* freeze."
Ford was fortunate enough to quickly land a seven-year contract with Columbia. "I did a year and a half and got kicked out on my ass for being too difficult," he says, laughing. "I was very unhappy with the process they were engaged in, which was to re-create stars the way it had been done in the Fifties. They sent me to get my hair pompadoured like Elvis Presley, all that shit, for $150 a week."
Ford had a wife and child to support, so he went into freelance carpentry, rebuilding his own home for starters, then constructing a $100,000 recording studio for Sergio Mendes. He took film work whenever he deemed it "decent" and wound up in 'American Graffiti', Francis Coppola's 'The Conversation', the TV movie 'The Court Martial of Lt. Calley', 'Star Wars', 'Heroes', and 'Force 10 from Navarone', the last of which kept him in Yugoslavia while the sci-fi spectacular was exploding across the nation.
Ford says, quite convincingly, that 'Empire' "is the first time I've ever seen anything I've done that I'm happy with." He then states that he does *not* enjoy watching himself on the screen.
I suggest that one of the most engaging moments in 'Empire' is the tense few seconds before Darth Vader sends Han into a potentially fatal carbon freezing chamber to subdue him.
"I love you!" the forlorn Leia divulges desperately to her hero.
"I know," Solo replies with a crowd pleasing arrogance.
With a little coaxing, Ford admits that "to a certain degree," Solo's cocky cachet is his own. "In the script," he explains with a smirk, "it read, 'I love you too!' But that was too much on the nose. If you didn't have something else there at that point you would not get your full payoff in that scene. You know, there's a sense of dread and mystery there, and there's no satisfying conclusion in 'I love you too!' I wanted the moment to have another complexion. Kershner agreed, and that's the way we shot it.
"People who are expecting a repetition of the emotional experience of the first film are not going to find exactly that. The audience that saw the first film is more sophisticated now, three years later, in the same way the techniques are more film.
"This film is much more emotional, and some of the emotions are extremely difficult to deal with. The accomplishment of saying something true about those emotions is great.
"What's also great for me," he adds with a wink, "is to watch the kids watch that love scene [in the 'Millennium Falcon', when Han and Leia kiss] and they don't go, 'Yucky.'"
'The Revenge of the Jedi' will begin shooting in the summer of 1981 (in addition, the BBC plans a radio serial), and most of the regulars will be back, the chief holdout currently being Anthony Daniels.
"Well," he demurs, "do I feel that I want to do it today? *No*. Definitely not. But let's leave it for a bit and possibly. . . it will be all right."
Actually, the most enthusiastic of all the cast members seems to be newcomer Billy Dee Williams, who signed on for 'Empire' as Lando Calrissian, a con artist and former sidekick of Solo's. Williams loves the character, whom he views as a "Burt Reynolds kind of charmer" who complements Han's hotheadedness.
"It's more then pure entertainment," he says of the whole enterprise over tea one rainy afternoon. "I see it from at least three levels: a philosophical level, a real level and a cartoon level-- and they're all great.
"People will say, 'Why did you do 'Star Wars' after doing all those other things? This doesn't seem to be important for you.' That's really what they're saying. But it is important, because it's part of my growth.
"The introduction of Lando is a good one," he says firmly. "I talked to George when 'Star Wars' came out and I was very candid. I said, 'Look, there's Darth Vader, the dark, *black* fear, and there's Alec Guinness playing the *white* knight, Ben Obi-Wan Kenobi. Here we go again, perpetuating that same old stuff.'
"And now, by having Lando [who slowly becomes an ally of Leia's cause and vows to rescue Solo], we're gonna have to put aside
the old point of view. Now, we're talking about *symbols*-- *darkness* as averse to *clarity*. Black, white, red, we're all included in
the human dilemma, and Darth is scarier this time, because now we learn he's *human*-- he's not a mechanical monster."
About Me|


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What is an RN?
Registered Nurses (RNs) have a broad health care background that allows them to assess conditions and develop plans to help their patients promote health, prevent diseases, and address health concerns while working closely with the rest of the healthcare team. At One Medical, RNs are a core part of our Virtual Medical Team, providing 24/7 support for both patients and providers.


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Glenn Eugene Sell, 75, Neosho, went home to be with his Lord and Savior on Oct. 26, 2012, at 6:05 p.m.
Glenn Eugene Sell, 75, Neosho, went home to be with his Lord and Savior on Oct. 26, 2012, at 6:05 p.m. He passed away at the Northwest Regency Hospital in Springdale, Ark., following a short illness.
Glenn was born in Long Island, Kan. on Nov. 25, 1936, to John Taylor and Josephine Elizabeth (Russell) Sell. He moved with his family when he was a small child to Chowchilla, Calif., where he grew up attending school and the Brethren Church. Glenn graduated from Chowchilla Union High School in 1955. Glenn served in the United States Air Force at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, Chanute Air Force Base in Rantoul, Ill. and Ellsworth Air Force Base in Piedmont, S.D.
On May 28, 1959, Glenn was united in marriage to the love of his life, Evelyn (Skelton) Sell. Together they shared 52 years of marriage before their passing.
In 1971 Glenn, along with his wife and children, moved from California to Neosho. While living here and raising his family, he worked at Robinson Davis Lumber Yard, Teledyne and East Newton High School. He also attended Crowder College, where he received with honors his associates degree in business management. In 1976, Glenn and his family moved from Neosho back to California where he worked as a manager of Copeland Lumber until his retirement. During his spare time, he was an avid wood worker and enjoyed attending craft shows on the weekends with his wife and grandchildren.
In 2001, Glenn and his wife, Evelyn, made the move once again back to Neosho, where they made their final home to be with their family. Glenn loved woodworking, reading, traveling, family and friends.
His family remembers him as a quiet, but kind, caring, loving, and an extremely giving man. His grandchildren always loved to hear his impression of the character "Donald Duck."
Glenn is survived by his daughter, Renee Sell; and his son, Jeffrey Sell; both of Neosho; three grandchildren, Jennifer Fry and husband, Jeff, Joplin, Michelle Brown and husband, Nick, Neosho, Brandon Matlock, Joplin; five great-grandchildren, Isaac, Breana and McKenna Fry, Joplin, Naylen and Nevaeh Brown, Neosho; one sister, Lois Mae Mills and husband, Raymond, Dos Palos, Calif.; two brother-in-laws, Danny Skelton, William Skelton and wife, Carol; a sister-in-law, Mary Skelton, all of Chowchilla, Calif.; several nieces and nephews, as well as a host of other family and friends.
He was preceded in death by his parents; and his wife, Evelyn.
The body has been cremated. Memorial services will be held at 11:30 a.m. Saturday at the Promiseland Fellowship Church 23197 E. Hwy. 86, Granby; with Pastor Todd Laughlin officiating. Burial will be at a later time.
Memorial contributions may be made to the Glenn Sell Memorial Fund C/O Clark Funeral Home P.O. Box 66 Neosho, 64850
Arrangements are under the direction of Clark Funeral Home Neosho.


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U.S. Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission
Meeting of March 20, 2013 - Development of a Quality Control Plan for Private Sector Investigations and Conciliations
Rae Vann became EEAC's General Counsel in 2007. She previously served as Counsel to EEAC from July 2000 to December 2003, when she resigned to relocate with her family to Connecticut. Rae also has served as Assistant Commission Counsel at the Connecticut Commission on Civil Rights, and as an employment lawyer with two large Connecticut law firms. She earned her J.D. at the University of Connecticut School of Law, and a B.S. in Public Policy and Management from Carnegie Mellon University.


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HTC was the first to update a phone to Android 4.0, but not by much. Samsung has started pushing out its Android 4.0 update for the Samsung Galaxy S II in Korea, Poland, Hungary and Sweden with a UK release scheduled for the week of March 19. Naturally, the Android 4.0 rollout "will be dependent upon each network's own software approvals process."
The upgrade will begin in European countries including Poland, Hungary, Sweden, as well as Korea today and gradually roll out to other markets,Samsung
Samsung notes that the Android 4.0 upgrade for the Galaxy Note, Galaxy S II LTE, Galaxy Tab 8.9 and 10.1 will be available soon, along with a new Android 2.3 update for the Galaxy S, Galaxy Tab 7", Galaxy S Plus, Galaxy S SCL and Galaxy W. This update will start hitting devices by the end of March and includes features like Face Unlock, Photo Editor and Snapshot.
Samsung made no mention as to when the Android 4.0 or Android 2.3 update will be available for the Galaxy S and S II variants in the US market. For now, all we can do is wait.
How long do you think it will be before we see Samsung's Android 4.0 update for the Galaxy S II hit our shores?