I enjoyed these quotes from R.G.M. Nisbet, “William Smith Watt 1913-2002,” Proceedings of the British Academy 124 (2004) 358-372 (via Laudator Temporis Acti):
In one respect Mods went beyond anything offered at Glasgow: the questions set on some of the prepared books dealt predominantly with textual criticism. Candidates were presented with short extracts or ‘gobbets’ from these authors, and invited to consider the various readings with arguments for and against; to conclude that the crux was insoluble and deserving of the obelus might be taken as a sign of precocious perspicacity. The direction of scholars’ studies depends on early influences more than one likes to admit, and all his life Watt was to be superb at doing gobbets, though as time went on he hit the nail on the head more expeditiously than was thought necessary in Mods.
…he described the Lateinische Grammatik of Hofmann and Szantyr as an exciting book…
Few knew of his love of English as well as Latin poetry: as a young man he had learned by heart the whole of Palgrave’s Golden Treasury, much of the anthology of longer poems known as The English Parnassus, and (like Macaulay) all of Paradise Lost, so that fifty years later when given a line he could continue; this was an astonishing achievement even for the days when learning poetry was thought to have more educational value than writing about it. In Latin he knew by heart all of Lucretius and Virgil and much else besides, which he could declaim with an exuberant feeling for the power of rhythm and poetic language; if delayed on a station platform on the way to one of his numerous committees he would recite silently to himself.
I envy him; I get so much pleasure out of my exiguous tatters of memorized poetry (which is indeed useful for mental recitation during boring meetings, or when sleep is fugitive) that I wish I had a great deal more. (But I don’t understand what is meant by “he hit the nail on the head more expeditiously than was thought necessary in Mods”; any ideas?) And if anyone is wondering about the word gobbet, it’s from Middle English gobet, from Old French, diminutive of gobe ‘mouthful’, which is of Celtic origin; the OED (revised 2016) says (s.v. gob):
Probably < Irish gob and Scottish Gaelic gob beak, mouth (Early Irish gop muzzle, snout, beak) < a Celtic base of uncertain, probably expressive, origin.
Notes
It has been suggested that the Celtic base is related to Old Church Slavonic ozobati to consume, to destroy, Lithuanian žėbti to gobble, to covet, but this poses phonological problems.
(But I don’t understand what is meant by “he hit the nail on the head more expeditiously than was thought necessary in Mods”; any ideas?)
A student who was too quick with a good answer seemed glib, or a smart-arse? Activated the faculty’s usually dormant insecurities?
I once saw kebap translated on an Istanbul menu as “meat in gobbets”.
That “quote him something from somewhere in the middle of Paradise Lost and he’ll accurately give you the next line” skill is also said to have been possessed by the somewhat younger Harold Bloom (1930-2019). I don’t know if there’s anyone still alive and walking around the planet who can do it, but I suppose it would be nice if there were even though I’m not much for Milton myself.
he hit the nail on the head more expeditiously than was thought necessary in Mods
I think it just means that he was better at it in later life than anyone taking exams as an undergraduate would have to be or could realistically be expected to be.
I don’t think it’s meant to imply that the examiners would have been offended by a similarly clever answer from a student. I don’t think Balliol examiners are much troubled by self-doubt as a rule. (And in my own limited experience as a viva examiner, I was generally grateful if the candidate could say anything interesting at all.)
I think it just means that he was better at it in later life than anyone taking exams as an undergraduate would have to be.
Ah, you must be right.
Yes, I didn’t pay enough attention to “as time went on”.
By the way, @Hat, the link above to The English Parnassus is not to a collection of long poems but to a 17th-century book subtitled A helpe to English poesie containing a collection of all rhyming monosyllables, the choicest epithets, and phrases : with some general forms upon all occasions, subjects, and theams, alphabeticaly digested : together with a short institution to English poesie, by way of a preface. (I think I’d better read it.)
I did know a chap (untroubled by self-doubt, but a good bloke when you got to know him) who complained about a forthcoming viva that it was a pointless exercise because he knew the subject much better than the examiners.
The thing is, he really did …
I’ve never had this problem myself. It must be dreadful.
I remember also an examiner of the College of Surgeons viva who said that he was so anxious the night before the first viva that he could hardly sleep. “The candidate will have been boning up on this stuff for months. I’ll ask a question, and the candidate will run with it, and it’ll be obvious that I’m out of my depth. I’ll look like a complete idiot in front of the other examiner.” (You examine in pairs.)
He said that in the event, he was relieved to find that most of the candidates were so freaked out that you had to guide them gently through the simplest questions …
One of the two examiners in my own neurology viva in the Fellowship exam was a man I knew well personally: ophthalmology is a small world and this is inevitable sometimes. The rule is (or was) that you both point this out, and then the examiner you know just observes while the other asks all the questions. Afterwards, at the sherry reception for successful candidates, he told me that at one point : “I could have shaken you! I knew you knew the right answer, and you weren’t saying it!“
Here’s the English Parnassus anthology:
https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_English_Parnassus/nyFLAAAAIAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=The+English+parnassus&printsec=frontcover
By the way, @Hat, the link above to The English Parnassus is not to a collection of long poems but to a 17th-century book
Well, that was sloppy of me! Thanks, I’ve replaced the link with an Internet Archive one.
Does “more expeditiously than was thought necessary” imply that the extra expedition was (a) merely superfluous or (b) positively deleterious?
If (b) then I suggest the older Watt spent less time (than a student would or should) considering the lesser readings and zoomed in (too) quickly on the preferred reading(s).
It’s possible that he reversed the natural order of things by coming, as he grew older, to believe that issues were simpler than he had supposed when he was a young man.
But issues have become simpler for me as I grow older. That’s precisely the problem – they are so round, smooth and simple, like marbles, that it’s hard to explain them. There is no fuzziness, no rugose conceptual surface on which younger people could gain purchase.
Also, marbles are easier to lose.
Anthony Esolen, whom I previously knew as a translator of Dante, is memorizing Paradise Lost and occasionally reports his progress on Twitter. He started maybe 2-3 months ago, and had reached Book VI on October 10th, so making excellent progress.
I generally have 20-30 poems of Horace and Catullus in memory at any given time, though I have to practice them to keep them fresh. Then again, the third of fourth time I re-memorize a poem it only takes 5-10 minutes per page. I wish I hadn’t waited until I was near 60 to start memorizing poems on long walks and long drives: they would probably have stuck permanently if I’d begun 40 years earlier.
I’ve memorized 80+ of each at one time or another, including some satires of Horace over 100 lines long, plus a few dozen short pieces by other authors, e.g. Martial’s best epigrams, Hadrian to his soul, and a few bits of Greek, Sophocles’ ‘Ode to Man’, Sappho’s hymn to Aphrodite, occasionally some English verse.
Having this variable repertory may be particularly useful in the next few months. I got a summons for jury duty, though I haven’t been called for a specific trial yet. I expect there will be stretches of sitting around where we’re not allowed to get out a book or a pen and paper to pass the time, but must sit quietly and pretend to listen, even if nothing worth listening to is happening.
By the way, I find that I tend to emend the poems as I practice them, sometimes unconsciously, ‘remembering’ plausible readings that are not in the manuscripts, sometimes consciously. In one case, I was practicing a Catullus poem I had 99% down pat, so I didn’t take the text along on my walk. As I recited it, I thought “These two lines really should be in the opposite order. Too bad we’d have to change ‘et’ to ‘ut’. Too bold?” I got home, checked the Oxford Classical Text edition, and found that the manuscripts all read ‘ut’, and editors all change it to ‘et’, so my inversion of lines was no bolder than everyone else’s emendation. Not exactly a confirmation, but something like one. Certainly worth publishing in one of the classical journals still open to textual criticism.
As for ‘gob’ meaning ‘mouth’, I only know it as one part of ‘gobstopper’, a kind of hard candy mentioned in some British author – I’ve forgotten which one. I take it the name implies a fairly large diameter, so that it mostly blocks or ‘stops’ the sucker’s gob.
kind of hard candy mentioned in some British author – I’ve forgotten which one
Roald Dahl discusses gobstoppers in Boy. The real-life candy store stories there were worked into Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
I haven’t gotten around to reading Dahl, so that’s not where I saw the word. Maybe Amis? Chesterton? C. S. Lewis?
Brighton Rock ?
Haven’t read that either. If I had access to the online OED, I could look through the list of works cited for ‘gobstopper’ and see if it includes any I’ve read.
I only know it as one part of ‘gobstopper’
And gobsmacked, too, perhaps?
IIRC there are Everlasting Gobstoppers in Charlie and the Cbocolate Factory. (Never read it; must have seen it in one of the films. I disliked Roald Dahl before it was fashionable!)
“Gob” itself is entirely familiar to Brits, by the way, in case anybody was wondering. Mostly in the frame “Shut yer _.” Construction grammar! An adjective may be inserted before the noun, but there are significant restrictions on the choice of adjective. It is infelicitous, for example, to say
* Shut yer mellifluous gob!
“ Typing monkey would be unable to produce ‘Hamlet’ within the lifetime of the universe, study finds
by University of Technology, Sydney”
https://phys.org/news/2024-10-monkey-unable-hamlet-lifetime-universe.html
I shall not endeavor to memorize that headline.
Mellifluous gobsmackery:
#
Officially “Zeltinger Schlossberg Riesling Trocken,” this single cadaster bottling joins its neighbor Schmitt, this time in a dry form. I have always loved this wine, even when it was earthy and ornery, because it’s a great big stuffed gob of character.
This has in common with its cousin the Schlossberg GG a certain resistance to flamboyance. Neither does it show the creamy green depths of Schlossberg, though even freshly opened it has the wonderful snarl of Bömer, and a lovely wash of raw dough, mint and slate on the finish.
#
An adjective may be inserted before the noun
Bounder of Adventure’s choice being, of course, “bloody,” familiar even to Americans who spent their memorization capabilities profitably. (The trigger being Watney’s Red Barrel.)
The OED lists gobstoppers in Barton’s The Loving Cup (1959) and in de la Mare’s Come Hither (1928). Either one ring a bell?
There’s also the adjective gobby, not to be confused with its near synonym gabby. (Kissing the Blarney Stone gives one the gift of the gab; dunno what stone is kissed to give the curse of the gob.)
Not to mention the eloquent Anglo-Irish insult: gobshite.
… the eloquent Irish “mild oath” [m-w]: begob. Appears quite a bit in Ulysses IIRC. Also The Playboy of the Western World; Flann O’Brien The Third Policeman(?)
The Third Policeman(?)
Surprisingly, not (if Kindle’s search feature is to be believed.)
Probably too pedestrian for O’Brien.
There are gobs, though; e.g.
as Sergeant Pluck rightly points out. Nor is his opinion based on mere speculation or hearsay. The text continues
Because a man can have more disease and germination in his gob than you’ll find in a rat’s coat and Amurikey is a country where the population do have grand teeth like shaving-lather or like bits of delph when you break a plate.’
Whenever I read a bit of O’Brien I want to spend the rest of my time on earth reading O’Brien.
Another Irish insult, gobaloon, is apparently not related to gob.
Choose from Scot. gaberlunzie, a strolling beggar; ? colloq. gab, to chatter + loony n.
or gobbalew, southwest England dialect for a coastguard exciseman, from French gobe-a-l’eau “one who seizes things on water”.
But one gabs with ones gob, right?
I discover a 1971 episode of Hair Bear Bunch was called “Gobs of Gobaloons”. Must add to my watchlist.
I once saw kebap translated on an Istanbul menu as “meat in gobbets”.
Better gobbets than snippets!
Not if you’re on a diet.
Mmm, tasty snippets!
Whenever I read a bit of O’Brien I want to spend the rest of my time on earth reading O’Brien.
Indeed. The curious quality that you can open at more or less any page, and find up-to-the-minute relevance. (Same applies for Tristram Shandy, mark you. Must be the Uncle Toby phenomenon.)
I have now watched “Gobs of Gabaloons”. It involves buried treasure: gabaloons [misspelled “gobaloons” on IMDB] were gold coins, the 18C currency of Ptomainia [ruled in 1940 by Adenoid Hynkel]. I presume “gabaloon” is a blend of “doubloon”. with some [perhaps arbitrary?] first element.
…he described the Lateinische Grammatik of Hofmann and Szantyr as an exciting book…
Well, naturally. I don’t see anything remarkable about that. It is not as exciting as Bloomfield’s The Menomini Language, but then, what is?