Sheep May Temporarily Graze

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 939, 9 August 1957, Page 26

Sheep May Temporarily Graze

by

SUNDOWNER

JULY 17

SURPOSE it does researchers good to flap their wings occasionally and crow. In any case it does me good to listen to them. Even when I neither understand nor believe them I feel the mental titillation it must be their aim

to produce when they look about, above, and

below them and give one confident shout of coming triumphs. It is Goldsmith's, ig grown up (or core of the see 8 u hile words is length, and thund’ring Amazed the gazing rustics rang’d around. I am one of the rustics and the schoolmaster has dropped languages for physics and chemistry. But I think the rustics of Auburn must sometimes have wondered when they got home if the scholar’s big words meant anything; if that "one small head" had not grown a little hot; if carrying all it knew had not upset its balance a fraction; and if their familiar world was not a better place-more comfortable and more enduring-than his wordy world of wonders. So I am beginning to think already that my sheep, with their costly conversion of grass into meat, will outlive the chemists who threaten to destroy them. It troubled me for an hour or two when Dr Truscoe, a biochemist at Victoria University, said last week

that such "frightfully wasteful producers" as sheep might some day be dropped from our economy. Then I noticed that the day was "not anything like in sight yet." Then my _ heart started beating again and I knew, as my chemistry returned to normal, that Dr Truscoe had merely stretched himself and yawned. It is a habit men of science have, and the biochemical reasons for it are no doubt as plain to them as my cat’s whiskers are to me. But I suspect sometimes that the purpose of it.is to push ignorance back a little and keep science in front. ~ te *

JULY 20

T is not often nowadays that consigning a man to hell alarms the man if he is alive or disturbs his relatives and friends if he is dead. But that can apparently still happen even in high places. The editor of the New Statesman the other day, after reading a book about Sir Roger Casement (hanged for

treason in the First Worid War) went to sleep. A little

later, he telis us, he woke up suddenly, turned on the light, and scribbled these two sentences on the pad that he seems to keep in his bed: Those who do not believe in hell may regret that they cannot believe that Birkenhead is in it. Those who do believe in hell will regret that the ethics of their religion (continued on next page)

forbid their rejoicing in the knowledge of his torments. So far so bad. But he adds that he agreed with himself next morning, thus damning Birkenhead deliberately in the presence of two or three hundred thousand readers. It was violent, and it was vulgar, since there are Birkenheads (or Smiths) still living, and one of them was not long in protesting. But how did he protest? Not in the language most of us would have used in such circumstances, but with this headlong rush into anticlimax: "Critic’s" indecently expressed wish that my father is now frying in Hell, gives to my mind an ominous glimpse into his own peculiar character. I can only say that if I had written such vindictive words about a distinguished man, whose wife and children were still alive, I should be deeply ashamed. That is almost as feeble as "Critic’s" defence-that no sane person now believes in hell-fire, and that what he said could not therefore have hurt anyone’s feelings. Though the children of the famous must accept the comments of posterity, they are under no obligation to accept them sweetly, or even meekly. I should have liked to hear what Dr Johnson would have said (and/or done) to anyone who attacked his father in such a fashion. (My trouble in the meantime is that I admire the editor of the New Statesman and have never admired the first Lord Birkenhead.) x BD ae

JULY 24

WAS embarrassed recently by a request for an opinion on a private anthology. It was not one of those cases where it was difficult to be honest and kind, since the compiler’s range of reading had been wider than my own, and the high note was sustained all the way. What embarrassed me was the thought

that whatever I said must, in the nature of things, be

impertinent or useless. If I called it a good anthology (as I did) I could mean no more than that it was good for me.'If I hesitated to praise it that could mean no more than that it. left me cold, or unstimulated, or unedified. An. anthology, I told myself, is a collection of flowers-a gathering together of all the wise or witty or moving things one has read, and marked, and preserved. It can be, and in this case was, a spiritual pilgrimage, which put it beyond the reach of criticism or praise. It cannot be a path to be followed by a second person, recommended ‘to a second person, or, beyond a certain point, left hopefully in the way of a second person. I mean, it can’t be that kind of thing ideally. It may turn out to be that in practice; may light, or level, or smooth another person’s path; but in general it can be no more than a sharing of good things; and those who know them to be good are not likely to be in need of them. But I no sooner express such opinions than I know them to be nonsense. They could be supported if we were all intelligent, all cultivated, all born with good

taste and reared within reach of the printed sources of wisdom. In practice- we are starved and stumbling in nine cases out of ten. We neither possess nor are likely to find even the crumbs that fall from wisdom’s table unless some- . one guides us to them; and when we are fortunate enough to find a whole slice or a whole loaf we look round for someone to eat with us.

An anthology compiled with an improving or propagandist purpose remains an abomination. One that compiles itself, grows as the compiler grows, and turns, and twists, and rises, and falls as he does, is as valuable as fellowship with a richly endowed friend; and in my experience quite as rare. (To be continued)

(C) Punch