The compleat footnote
Last night I noted that several readers wrote in to correct my spelling of "compleat" in the heading of the post below. Berkeley Professor J.W. Morris writes, as did readers Lawrie McFarlane, John Morris and Chris Moseley: "Surely they know Izaak Walton's Compleat Angler. If not, I am sad at what they have missed." Professor Morris adds: "Not surprisingly, my spellcheck marks 'compleat' as misspelled."
Professor Dilip Balamore also wrote an unusually kind message headed "The Compleat Commentator." I thought it might be of interest:
I really enjoyed your essay on Wordsworth. Quite accidentally, I was unpacking my myriad books on moving to a new apartment, also on Long island, and a packet of photographs fell all over the carpet. They were all from about eight years ago, of the Wye Valley, walking along which I got a view of Tintern Abbey from about 300 feet above it. Actually, it was from a rock called the Devil's Pulpit, from which mischief-makers used to hurl rocks at the monks below them. One of the joys of walking in Britain is that one comes across so many interesting things almost without planning. I had not thought about the prospect of walking by the Abbey, but there it was below me, framed by a gap in the trees.The Weekly Standard review by Jeffrey Hart of a new Wordsworth biography that prompted Professor Balamore's message is "The poet of meaning."Instead of sorting out the photographs, I decide to read Power Line, and there you were talking about that very area. I have visited that Wye Valley, near Monmouth, several times, and I too have had sad, existential thoughts. If you ever visit the area, don some good hiking boots and walk along Offa's Dyke, perhaps starting from Monmouth, and going South.
I must say that I have come to recognize your individual styles. It comes of logging on to your page several times a day. John I recognize by his humor and a certain lightness of touch. Paul is magisterial, except when he writes about soccer. And you, I feel, are the one who most often hears that still sad music of humanity. Poetry reveals itself to you, and so does music. You seem to continue to be moved by the songs of the Sixties, as I am, although I can no longer agree with the current positions taken by the authors of those songs. I just wanted to say that I enjoy reading you, largely because you are not unwilling to reveal the subtlety of your emotions.
Coming to the use of the word "compleat," to me it is a word redolent of the 18th century. (My friend, a fellow physicist, and I were discussing Charles James Fox, and we decided that that was the century in which one would have wanted to live in England—as a man of comfortable means, of course.) Your use of the word "compleat" is a witticism enjoyed between you and the reader. We have all read Walton's Compleat Angler, and books of that sort.
The word brings with it an antique atmosphere, and to use it in the context of of the Democratic Meltdown is your wit. That witticism is for us, your readers who appreciate and enjoy your style. To have to explain your use of that word to suspicious louts, who question your motives in using it, is as ghastly as having to explain a joke to a person who does not speak one's language.
Some time ago, I was re-reading and laughing over 1066 and All That, by Seller and Yeatman, when a rather surly student of mine, who was passing by, asked me what the point of being educated was when knowing history and poetry and "all that shit" led nowhere. I said that at the very least it made it possible for me and my friends to enjoy a variety of jokes quite out of reach of the uneducated.
I wonder if that was also the accepted proposition at Dartmouth, in those far off days, when you and I were at University: that education is enjoyable in itself, even if it has no other use.
