
“Anyone may be an honorable man, and yet write verse badly.”
On peut être honnête homme et faire mal des vers.
Act IV, sc. i
Le Misanthrope (1666)
Epigram attributed to Virgil in Donatus' Life of Virgil.
Attributed
Hos ego versiculos feci, tulit alter honores.
“Anyone may be an honorable man, and yet write verse badly.”
On peut être honnête homme et faire mal des vers.
Act IV, sc. i
Le Misanthrope (1666)
The History of Oracles, and the Cheats of the Pagan Priests (1688)
Context: It was to little purpose to excuse the matter, by saying, that the badness of the Verses was a kind of Testimony that they were made by a God, who nobly scorn'd to be tyed up to rules and to be confined to the Beauty of a Style. For this made no impression upon the Philosophers; who, to turn this answer into ridicule, compared it to the Story of a Painter, who being hired to draw the Picture of a Horse tumbling on his Back upon the ground, drew one running full speed: and when he was told, that this was not such a Picture as was bespoke, he turned it upside down, and then ask'd if the Horse did not tumble upon his back now. Thus these Philosophers jeered such Persons, who by a way of arguing that would serve both ways, could equally prove that the Verses were made by a God, whether they were good or bad.<!--pp. 219-220
whence our word "libel"
Source: Democracy Ancient And Modern (Second Edition) (1985), Chapter 5, Censorship in Classical Antiquity, p. 150
“Some may have blamed you that you took away
The verses that could move them on the day”
Reconciliation http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1568/
The Green Helmet and Other Poems (1910)
Context: Some may have blamed you that you took away
The verses that could move them on the day
When, the ears being deafened, the sight of the eyes blind
With lightning, you went from me, and I could find
Nothing to make a song about but kings,
Helmets, and swords, and half-forgotten things
That were like memories of you--but now
We'll out, for the world lives as long ago;
And while we're in our laughing, weeping fit,
Hurl helmets, crowns, and swords into the pit.
But, dear, cling close to me; since you were gone,
My barren thoughts have chilled me to the bone.
Fra tutti il primo Arnaldo Danïello
Gran maestro d'amor; ch'a la sua terra
Ancor fa onor col suo dir strano e bello.
Petrarch Il Trionfo d'Amore, capitolo IV, line 40; uncredited translation from petrarch.petersadlon.com http://petrarch.petersadlon.com/read_trionfi.html?page=I-IV.en
Criticism
Robinson (1989) in Chicago Tribune; As cited in: Myrna Oliver (2004)
“Honor is self-esteem made visible in action.”
The Ayn Rand Letter (1971–1976)
“The young man should be praised, honored, and made immortal.”
Laudandum adulescentem, ornandum, tollendum.
Ad Familiares 11.20.1; the reference is to Octavian, with tollendum carrying the implication of the youth's being slain and thus "made immortal".