Well Said II
--by Ben Henneke

I wish I'd said that.

Recently, a feuilleton of mine titled, “Well Said,” was printed here. It was full of words and phrases others have coined that I wished I had thought of first. You know the sort of thing: rather than talk of a herd of birds, or a summer of hummers, the “well-sayer” spoke of an “exultation of larks.” A lady who has a book of common nouns, in which we both found that phrase, said she preferred “a gaggle of geese,” but since only last week I met three training-bra age lassies, I prefer “a giggle of girls.”

Those young women were full of wonder of the world, and I full of wonder of them. Francis Bacon spoke of wonder as “the seed of knowledge.” I wish I'd said that.

Surely, you have buried away somewhere a Commonplace Book with comments you enjoyed copying, and just as surely there is in it a quotation from Sir Francis's Essay of Studies. How much did you copy of “Reading maketh a full man; Conference a ready man; and Writing an exact man?”

Did you go on and transcribe “Histories make men wise; Poetry witty; the Mathematicks subtill; Natural Philosophy deepe; Morall grave; Logick and Rhetorick able to contend?”

Four hundred years before Sir Francis, and eight hundred before I started writing down quotable quotes in a dime-store notebook, my first common book, there was the Venerable Bede, who in describing himself, described me and those other frequent faculty types.

“I have taken delight to learn, or to teach, or to write.”

Anytime I've grown too impressed with my great work as a teacher, I remind myself of the contrary opinion of Ambrose Bierce. I'll substitute a blank for the proper name.

“Professor _______ is nothing if not accurate, and he is not accurate.”

I wish - well, I might not have said it, but I wish I had been the one to think that.

Another writer of the time of Francis Bacon, John Ayres, was a great wonderer, too:

"When did this wondrous, mystic art arise,
Of painting speech and speaking to the eyes.
That we, by tracing magic lines are taught
How to embody and colour thought?"

I regret that illustrated manuscripts no longer embody and colour thought: Initials brave in blue or crimson or gold, other letters represented by dragons with their tails in their mouths showing forth “D” or some other exotic, and all the doodles of a public phone booth wall to capture the missionary enthusiasm of the Book of Kells.

I regret that I am by nature verbose, although I treasure the one-liner.

• “History has yet to become a record of human dignity.” - H. G. Wells.
  
• "Man is the only animal that blushes - or needs to.” - Mark Twain
  
• “Whoever is solitary by nature is either a wild beast or a God.” - Aristotle.
• “Rule yourself by law, and your subjects by love.” - Hildebert, Archbishop of Anjou, 1131.

We're into the season of the year when many quotable phrases have become unforgettable. I have never wished to have said the words Charles Dickens gave to Scrooge or Tiny Tim, but I have wished to describe a miracle as simply as St. Luke:

"And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying,  'Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men'".

Amen.