AI, Clowder’s Golden Soup coffeehouse, London, ca. 1702
And spoil till time and tides go bump,
The shrimpy life of E*** M***,
The putrid cod of Milord T****.
—Praise-God Barebone, Reply to the Impertinent and Frivolous Answer of E.M. to the Discourse of P.D. (1677).
"What devil language is that? Is it double Dutch coiled against the sun?”
John Davis, Travels . . . in the United States of America (1803)
Said Gulliver* to Godfrey William,*
By happenstance they chanced to meet
at Clowder’s Coffeehouse, Bow Street,
Covent Garden, called by some
La soupe d’Or—the Golden Soup,
each petting a cat amid the clutter,
they spoke a French and Latin mutter,
for Leibniz knew scant English,
and Gulliver little versed in Double Dutch:
“Fontenelle† avers ‘in Old times all
People were born Poets. . . . [T]hey
had no sooner drank a little freely,
but they made Verses; they had no
sooner cast their eyes on a Handsom [sic]
Woman, but they were all Poesy,
and their very common discours
fell naturally into Feet and Rhime:
. . . But now [alack!] this Poetick
Genius has deserted mankind.’
How comes it then, Sir, that you write only prose?”
“Fontanelle's a rake-hell, Heaven knows,”
Godfrey William replied. “I hear tell
that encountering the delectable Minette‡ when ninety, he audaciously observed:
‘Ah! Mademoiselle,
si je n’avais que quatre-vingts ans !’††
He's a unique specimen, though, of freedom of the will—it does exist, you know,
but you must want it—and few do;
Newton himself’s a Fifth Monarchy Man
For all his mathematical and optic works,
And looks to Christ’s Second Coming
Much as old Praise-God Barebone did."‡‡
"Ma foi!" said Gulliver. "You've got that gossip wrong! The fair Minette herself this day
will not be born for twenty year!
Perhaps you're thinking of her sainted dam?"
"Beg pardon!" GW exclaimed. "Damn
my eyes, if so!! But Popular Mechanics will one day prove that time's an illusion—and Einstein badly mixes things up, methinks, by calling luck a scam!"***
* Jonathan Swift (1667–1745).
† Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716), co-discoverer with Isaac Newton of the infinitesimal calculus (on this meeting, see Petrus Tornarius, Imaginary Conversations).
‡ Bernard Le Bouyer de Fontenelle (1657–1757), https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Le_Bovier_de_Fontenelle
** "Minette" = Anne-Catherine de Ligniville, Madame Helvétius (1722–1800).
†† “Oh, Madame, if I were but eighty again!”
‡‡ Praise-God Barebone (1598–1679); https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praise-God_Barebone
Thursday, January 30, 2025
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