According to microbiologist Robert Young, excess protein causes the pH of the body’s tissues to become too acidic. He emphasizes that this acidic condition is unhealthy and signals to bacteria in and around the body that the body is weak, decaying, and dying.16 When any animal dies, as the life ebbs out of it, its flesh becomes increasingly acidic, signaling microorganisms in the region that it is time for them to do their job and break the flesh down so that it can return to the earth and be recycled. According to his research, instead of harboring primarily beneficial bacteria that aid in the various life-support processes of the body, the bodies of human omnivores may tend to harbor primarily destructive bacteria that are simply trying to do their natural job of breaking the body down because it gives signals, by the high acid content of the tissues and the presence of putrefying animal flesh, that it is dying.
I now reckon upon a speedy dissolution. I have suffered very little pain from my disorder; and what is more strange have, notwithstanding the great decline of my person, never suffered a moment's abatement of spirits; insomuch that were I to name the period of my life which I should most choose to pass over again, I might be tempted to point to this later period. I possess the same ardour as ever in study, and the same gaiety in company; I consider, besides, that a man of sixty-five, by dying, cuts off only a few years of infirmities; and though I see many symptoms of my literary reputation's breaking out at last with additional lustre, I know that I could have but few years to enjoy it. It is difficult to be more detached from life than I am at present. "To conclude historically with my own character, I am, or rather was (for that is the style I must now use in speaking of myself); I was, I say, a man of mild dispositions, of command of temper, of an open, social, and cheerful humour, capable of attachment, but little susceptible of enmity, and of great moderation in all my passions. Even my love of literary fame, my ruling passion, never soured my temper, notwithstanding my frequent disappointments. My company was not unacceptable to the young and careless, as well as to the studious and literary; and as I took a particular pleasure in the company of modest women, I had no reason to be displeased with the reception I met with from them. In a word, though most men any wise eminent, have found reason to complain of calumny, I never was touched or even attacked by her baleful tooth; and though I wantonly exposed myself to the rage of both civil and religious factions, they seemed to be disarmed in my behalf of their wonted fury. My friends never had occasion to vindicate any one circumstance of my character and conduct; not but that the zealots, we may well suppose, would have been glad to invent and propagate any story to my disadvantage, but they could never find any which they thought would wear the face of probability. I cannot say there is no vanity in making this funeral oration of myself, but I hope it is not a misplaced one; and this is a matter of fact which is easily cleared and ascertained.
Meantime the Trojans run, where danger calls; They line their trenches, and they man their walls. In front extended to the left they stood; Safe was the right, surrounded by the flood. But, casting from their tow'rs a frightful view, They saw the faces, which too well they knew, Tho' then disguis'd in death, and smear'd all o'er With filth obscene, and dropping putrid gore. Soon hasty fame thro' the sad city bears The mournful message to the mother's ears. An icy cold benumbs her limbs; she shakes; Her cheeks the blood, her hand the web forsakes. She runs the rampires round amidst the war, Nor fears the flying darts; she rends her hair, And fills with loud laments the liquid air. "Thus, then, my lov'd Euryalus appears! Thus looks the prop my declining years! Was't on this face my famish'd eyes I fed? Ah! how unlike the living is the dead! And could'st thou leave me, cruel, thus alone? Not one kind kiss from a departing son! No look, no last adieu before he went, In an ill-boding hour to slaughter sent! Cold on the ground, and pressing foreign clay, To Latian dogs and fowls he lies a prey! Nor was I near to close his dying eyes, To wash his wounds, to weep his obsequies, To call about his corpse his crying friends, Or spread the mantle (made for other ends) On his dear body, which I wove with care, Nor did my daily pains or nightly labor spare. Where shall I find his corpse? what earth sustains His trunk dismember'd, and his cold remains? For this, alas! I left my needful ease, Expos'd my life to winds and winter seas! If any pity touch Rutulian hearts, Here empty all your quivers, all your darts; Or, if they fail, thou, Jove, conclude my woe, And send me thunderstruck to shades below!" Her shrieks and clamors pierce the Trojans' ears, Unman their courage, and augment their fears; Nor young Ascanius could the sight sustain, Nor old Ilioneus his tears restrain, But Actor and Idaeus jointly sent, To bear the madding mother to her tent.
Holmes laughed softly to himself and stretched himself out upon the cushioned seat. "Both you and the coroner have been at some pains," said he, "to single out the very strongest points in the young man's favour. Don't you see that you alternately give him credit for having too much imagination and too little? Too little, if he could not invent a cause of quarrel which would give him the sympathy of the jury; too much, if he evolved from his own inner consciousness anything so outré as a dying reference to a rat, and the incident of the vanishing cloth. No, sir, I shall approach this case from the point of view that what this young man says is true, and we shall see whither that hypothesis will lead us. And now here is my pocket Petrarch, and not another word shall I say of this case until we are on the scene of action. We lunch at Swindon, and I see that we shall be there in twenty minutes."
The guileful phantom now forsook the shroud, And flew sublime, and vanish'd in a cloud. Too late young Turnus the delusion found, Far on the sea, still making from the ground. Then, thankless for a life redeem'd by shame, With sense of honor stung, and forfeit fame, Fearful besides of what in fight had pass'd, His hands and haggard eyes to heav'n he cast; "O Jove!" he cried, "for what offense have Deserv'd to bear this endless infamy? Whence am I forc'd, and whether am I borne? How, and with what reproach, shall I return? Shall ever I behold the Latian plain, Or see Laurentum's lofty tow'rs again? What will they say of their deserting chief The war was mine: I fly from their relief; I led to slaughter, and in slaughter leave; And ev'n from hence their dying groans receive. Here, overmatch'd in fight, in heaps they lie; There, scatter'd o'er the fields, ignobly fly. Gape wide, O earth, and draw me down alive! Or, O ye pitying winds, a wretch relieve! On sands or shelves the splitting vessel drive; Or set me shipwrack'd on some desart shore, Where no Rutulian eyes may see me more, Unknown to friends, or foes, or conscious Fame, Lest she should follow, and my flight proclaim."
"Extremely," replied he; "she looked so pale this morning, I scarcely knew her." These apparently simple words pierced Morrel to the heart. This man had seen Valentine, and spoken to her! The young and high-spirited officer required all his strength of mind to resist breaking his oath. He took the arm of Chateau-Renaud, and turned towards the vault, where the attendants had already placed the two coffins. "This is a magnificent habitation," said Beauchamp, looking towards the mausoleum; "a summer and winter palace. You will, in turn, enter it, my dear d'Epinay, for you will soon be numbered as one of the family. I, as a philosopher, should like a little country-house, a cottage down there under the trees, without so many free-stones over my poor body. In dying, I will say to those around me what Voltaire wrote to Piron: 'Eo rus, and all will be over.' But come, Franz, take courage, your wife is an heiress."
One of the next arrivals was a stout, heavily built young man with close-cropped hair, spectacles, the light-colored breeches fashionable at that time, a very high ruffle, and a brown dress coat. This stout young man was an illegitimate son of Count Bezukhov, a well-known grandee of Catherine's time who now lay dying in Moscow. The young man had not yet entered either the military or civil service, as he had only just returned from abroad where he had been educated, and this was his first appearance in society. Anna Pavlovna greeted him with the nod she accorded to the lowest hierarchy in her drawing room. But in spite of this lowest-grade greeting, a look of anxiety and fear, as at the sight of something too large and unsuited to the place, came over her face when she saw Pierre enter. Though he was certainly rather bigger than the other men in the room, her anxiety could only have reference to the clever though shy, but observant and natural, expression which distinguished him from everyone else in that drawing room.
"My father," said the young man, bending his knee, "bless me!" Morrel took the head of his son between his two hands, drew him forward, and kissing his forehead several times said, "Oh, yes, yes, I bless you in my own name, and in the name of three generations of irreproachable men, who say through me, 'The edifice which misfortune has destroyed, providence may build up again.' On seeing me die such a death, the most inexorable will have pity on you. To you, perhaps, they will accord the time they have refused to me. Then do your best to keep our name free from dishonor. Go to work, labor, young man, struggle ardently and courageously; live, yourself, your mother and sister, with the most rigid economy, so that from day to day the property of those whom I leave in your hands may augment and fructify. Reflect how glorious a day it will be, how grand, how solemn, that day of complete restoration, on which you will say in this very office, 'My father died because he could not do what I have this day done; but he died calmly and peaceably, because in dying he knew what I should do.'"
In the wider field of their comic or romantic drama it is yet easier to distinguish the respective work of either hand. The bias of Fletcher was towards mixed comedy; his lightest and wildest humour is usually crossed or tempered by an infusion of romance; like Shakespeare in this one point at least, he has left no single play without some touch on it of serious interest, of poetic eloquence or fancy, however slight and fugitive. Beaumont, evidently under the imperious influence of Ben Jonson's more rigid theories, seems rather to have bent his genius with the whole force of a resolute will into the form or mould prescribed for comedy by the elder and greater comic poet. The admirable study of the worthy citizen and his wife, who introduce to the stage and escort with their applause _The Knight of the Burning Pestle_ through his adventurous career to its untimely end, has all the force and fulness of Jonson's humour at its best, with more of freshness and freedom. In pure comedy, varied with broad farce and mock-heroic parody, Beaumont was the earliest as well as the ablest disciple of the master whose mantle was afterwards to be shared among the academic poets of a younger generation, the Randolphs and Cartwrights who sought shelter under the shadow of its voluminous folds. The best example of the school of Jonson to be found outside the ample range of his own work is _The Scornful Lady_, a comedy whose exceptional success and prolonged popularity must have been due rather to the broad effect of its forcible situations, its wealth and variety of ludicrous incidents, and the strong gross humour of its dialogue, than to any finer quality of style, invention or character. It is the only work of Beaumont and Fletcher which a critic who weighs the meaning of his words can admit to be as coarse as the coarsest work of Ben Jonson. They are prone, indeed, to indulge elsewhere in a wanton and exuberant licence of talk; and Fletcher, at least, is liable to confuse the shades of right and wrong, to deface or efface the boundary lines of good and evil, to stain the ermine of virtue and palliate the nakedness of vice with the same indecorous and incongruous laxity of handling. Often in mere haste to despatch the business of a play, to huddle up a catastrophe or throw out some particular scene into sharp and immediate relief, he will sacrifice all seemliness and consistency of character to the present aim of stage effect, and the instant impression of strong incident or audacious eloquence. His heroines are too apt to utter sentiments worthy of Diana in language unworthy of Doll Tearsheet. But in this play both style and sentiment are throughout on a lower level, the action and emotion are of a baser kind than usual; the precept of Aristotle and the practice of Jonson have been so carefully observed and exaggerated that it might almost be said to offer us in one or two places an imitation not merely of the sorrier but of the sorriest qualities of human nature; and full as it is of spontaneous power and humorous invention, the comedy extolled by the moral Steele (with just so much of reservation as permits him to deprecate the ridicule cast upon the clerical character) is certainly more offensive to artistic law and aesthetic judgment by the general and ingrained coarseness of its tone, than the tragi-comedy denounced by the immoral Dryden as exceeding in licence his own worst work and that of his fellow playwrights; an imputation, be it said in passing, as groundless as the protest pleaded on their behalf is impudent; for though we may hardly agree with the uncompromising panegyrist who commends that play in particular to the approval of "the austere scarlet" (remembering, perhaps, that Aristophanes was the chosen bedfellow of Chrysostom), there is at least no such offence against art or taste in the eccentricity of its situations or the daring of its dialogue. The buoyant and facile grace of Fletcher's style carries him lightly across quagmires in which a heavier-footed poet, or one of slower tread, would have stuck fast, and come forth bemired to the knees. To Beaumont his stars had given as birthright the gifts of tragic pathos and passion, of tender power and broad strong humour; to Fletcher had been allotted a more fiery and fruitful force of invention, a more aerial ease and swiftness of action, a more various readiness and fulness of bright exuberant speech. The genius of Beaumont was deeper, sweeter, nobler than his elder's; the genius of Fletcher more brilliant, more supple, more prodigal, and more voluble than his friend's. Without a taint or a shadow on his fame of such imitative servility as marks and degrades the mere henchman or satellite of a stronger poet, Beaumont may fairly be said to hold of Shakespeare in his tragedy, in his comedy of Jonson; in each case rather as a kinsman than as a client, as an ally than as a follower: but the more special province of Fletcher was a land of his own discovering, where no later colonist has ever had power to settle or to share his reign. With the mixed or romantic comedy of Shakespeare it has nothing in common except the admixture or alternation of graver with lighter interest, of serious with humorous action. Nothing is here of his magic exaltation or charm of fairy empire. The rare and rash adventures of Fletcher on that forbidden track are too sure to end in pitiful and shameful failure. His crown of praise is to have created a wholly new and wholly delightful form of mixed comedy or dramatic romance, dealing merely with the humours and sentiments of men, their passions and their chances; to have woven of all these a web of emotion and event with such gay dexterity, to have blended his colours and combined his effects with such exquisite facility and swift light sureness of touch, that we may return once and again from those heights and depths of poetry to which access was forbidden him, ready as ever to enjoy as of old the fresh incomparable charm, the force and ease and grace of life, which fill and animate the radiant world of his romantic invention. Neither before him nor after do we find, in this his special field of fancy and of work, more than shadows or echoes of his coming or departing genius. Admirable as are his tragedies already mentioned, rich in splendid eloquence and strong in large grasp of character as is the Roman history of _The False One_, full of interest and vigour as is the better part of _Rollo Duke of Normandy_, and sublime in the loveliness of passion as is the one scene of perfect beauty and terror which crowns this latter tragedy, Fletcher may claim a yet higher and more special station among his great dramatic peers by right of his comic and romantic than by right of his tragic and historic plays. Even in these he is more a romantic than a tragic poet. The quality of his genius, never sombre or subtle or profound, bears him always towards fresh air and sunshine. His natural work is in a midday world of fearless boyish laughter and hardly bitter tears. There is always more of rainbow than of storm in his skies; their darkest shadow is but a tragic twilight. What with him is the noon of night would seem as sunshine on the stage of Ford or Webster. There is but one passage in all these noble plays which lifts us beyond a sense of the stage, which raises our admiration out of speech into silence, tempers and transfigures our emotion with a touch of awe. And this we owe to the genius of Beaumont, exalted for an instant to the very tone and manner of Shakespeare's tragedy, when Amintor stands between the dead and the dying woman whom he has unwittingly slain with hand and tongue. The first few lines that drop from his stricken lips are probably the only verses of Beaumont or Fletcher which might pass for Shakespeare's even with a good judge of style-- Entry: BEAUMONT
Briefly summarized, the outline of his career, as given in the German _Lanzelet_ and the French prose _Lancelot_, is as follows: Lancelot was the only child of King Ban of Benoic and his queen Helaine. While yet an infant, his father was driven from his kingdom, either by a revolt of his subjects, caused by his own harshness (_Lanzelet_), or by the action of his enemy Claudas de la Deserte (_Lancelot_). King and queen fly, carrying the child with them, and while the wife is tending her husband, who dies of a broken heart on his flight, the infant is carried off by a friendly water-fairy, the Lady of the Lake, who brings the boy up in her mysterious kingdom. In the German poem this is a veritable "Isle of Maidens," where no man ever enters, and where it is perpetual spring. In the prose _Lancelot_, on the other hand, the Lake is but a mirage, and the Lady's court does not lack its complement of gallant knights; moreover the boy has the companionship of his cousins, Lionel and Bohort, who, like himself, have been driven from their kingdom by Claudas. When he reaches the customary age (which appears to be fifteen), the young Lancelot, suitably equipped, is sent out into the world. In both versions his name and parentage are concealed, in the _Lanzelet_ he is genuinely ignorant of both; here too his lack of all knightly accomplishments (not unnatural when we remember he has here been brought up entirely by women) and his inability to handle a steed are insisted upon. Here he rides forth in search of what adventure may bring. In the prose _Lancelot_ his education is complete, he knows his name and parentage, though for some unexplained reason he keeps both secret, and he goes with a fitting escort and equipment to Arthur's court to demand knighthood. The subsequent adventures differ widely: in the _Lanzelet_ he ultimately reconquers his kingdom, and, with his wife Iblis, reigns over it in peace, both living to see their children's children, and dying on the same day, in good old fairy-tale fashion. In fact, the whole of the _Lanzelet_ has much more the character of a fairy or folk-tale than that of a knightly romance. Entry: LANCELOT
On these figures the following remarks may be made:--(i.) In Genesis the chronology of the Priestly Narrative ("P") is not consistent with the chronology of the other parts of the book ("JE"). Three or four illustrations will suffice: (a) The author of Gen. xii. 10-20 evidently pictures Sarai as a comparatively young woman, yet according to P (xii. 4, xvii. 17) she was 65 years old. (b) In Gen. xxi. 15 it is clearly implied that Ishmael has been carried by his mother, yet according to xvi. 16, xxi. 5, 8, he must have been at least 15 years old. (c) In Gen. xxvii. Isaac is to all appearance on his death-bed (cf. ver. 2), yet according to P (xxv. 26, xxvi. 34, xxxv. 28) he survived for _eighty_ years, dying at the age of 180. Ussher and others, arguing back from the dates in xlvii. 9, xlv. 6, xli. 46, xxxi. 41, infer that Jacob's flight to Haran took place in his 77th year. This reduces the 80 years to 43 years, though that is scarcely less incredible. It involves, moreover, the incongruity of supposing that _thirty-seven_ years elapsed between Esau's marrying his Hittite wives (xxvi. 34) and Rebekah's expressing her apprehensions (xxvii. 46) lest Jacob, then aged seventy-seven, should follow his brother's example. (d) In Gen. xliv. 20 Benjamin is described as a "little one"; in P, almost immediately afterwards (xlvi. 21), he appears as the father of ten sons; for a similar anomaly in xlvi. 12, see the _Oxford Hexateuch_, i. p. 25n. (ii.) The ages to which the various patriarchs lived (Abraham, 175; Isaac, 180; Jacob, 147), though not so extravagant as those of the antediluvian patriarchs, or (with one exception) as those of the patriarchs between Noah and Abraham, are much greater than is at all probable in view of the structure and constitution of the human body. (iii.) The plain intention of Ex. xii 40, 41 is to describe the Israelites as having dwelt in Egypt for 430 years, which is also in substantial agreement with the earlier passage, Gen. xv. 13 ("shall sojourn in a land that is not theirs, ... and they shall afflict them 400 years"). It does not, however, accord with other passages, which assign only four generations from Jacob's children to Moses (Ex. vi. 16-20; Num. xxvi. 5-9; cf. Gen. xv. 16), or five to Joshua (Josh. vii. 1); and for this reason, no doubt, the Sam. and LXX. read in Ex. xii. 40, "The sojourning of the children of Israel in the land of Egypt, _and in the land of Canaan_, was 430 years," reducing the period of the sojourn in Egypt to half of that stated in the Hebrew text, viz. 215 years. This computation attained currency among the later Jews (Josephus and others; cf. the "400 years" of Gal. iii. 17). The forced and unnatural rendering of Ex. xii. 40 in the A.V. (contrast R.V.), which was followed by Ussher, is intended for the purpose of making it possible. From the facts that have been here briefly noted it must be evident how precarious and, in parts, how impossible the Biblical chronology of this period is. (iv.) It has been observed as remarkable that 2666, the number of years (in the Hebrew text) from the Creation of Man to the Exodus, is, in round numbers, just two-thirds of 4000; and the fact has suggested the inference that the figure was reached by artificial computation. Entry: 3
ARIOSTO, LODOVICO (1474-1533) Italian poet, was born at Reggio, in Lombardy, on the 8th of September 1474. His father was Niccolo Ariosto, commander of the citadel of Reggio. He showed a strong inclination to poetry from his earliest years, but was obliged by his father to study the law--a pursuit in which he lost five of the best years of his life. Allowed at last to follow his inclination, he applied himself to the study of the classics under Gregorio da Spoleto. But after a short time, during which he read the best Latin authors, he was deprived of his teacher by Gregorio's removal to France as tutor of Francesco Sforza. Ariosto thus lost the opportunity of learning Greek, as he intended. His father dying soon after, he was compelled to forego his literary occupations to undertake the management of the family, whose affairs were embarrassed, and to provide for his nine brothers and sisters, one of whom was a cripple. He wrote, however, about this time some comedies in prose and a few lyrical pieces. Some of these attracted the notice of the cardinal Ippolito d'Este, who took the young poet under his patronage and appointed him one of the gentlemen of his household. This prince usurped the character of a patron of literature, whilst the only reward which the poet received for having dedicated to him the _Orlando Furioso_, was the question, "Where did you find so many stories, Master Ludovic?" The poet himself tells us that the cardinal was ungrateful; deplores the time which he spent under his yoke; and adds, that if he received some niggardly pension, it was not to reward him for his poetry, which the prelate despised, but to make some just compensation for the poet's running like a messenger, with the risk of his life, at his eminence's pleasure. Nor was even this miserable pittance regularly paid during the period that the poet enjoyed it. The cardinal went to Hungary in 1518, and wished Ariosto to accompany him. The poet excused himself, pleading ill health, his love of study, the care of his private affairs and the age of his mother, whom it would have been disgraceful to leave. His excuses were not received, and even an interview was denied him. Ariosto then boldly said, that if his eminence thought to have bought a slave by assigning him the scanty pension of 75 crowns a year, he was mistaken and might withdraw his boon--which it seems the cardinal did. Entry: ARIOSTO