The Anathemata
The Lady of the Pool (continued)
of a’ admirable scab-shin Nominalist?a —shall know the total compass of the thronging waters and assert regiment over the whale’s entire domain.1
And of these such, yet to come,
a tidy many from the many hithes of this river, captain, by and large—some from this, here, very haw,b captain . . .
dona eis requiem
sempiternam.
David Jones notes
1 See the description of Drake’s voyage of 1577-80 published in 1628 as The World Encompassed: ‘touching ordnance and great guns, the late invention of a scabeshind friar among us in Europe’ with reference to Bacon, known as Doctor Mirabilis, whose thirteenth-century researches make him a harbinger of methods and instruments without which sixteenth-century techniques and our own subsequent sea-power could not have been. In common opinion, if you were a Franciscan you were a Nominalist and certainly Bacon’s preoccupations link him with Nominalism and with English empiricism. He appears to be nearer his namesake of 300 years later than to the saint from whom that namesake got his Christian name: though it’s a long long way from Assisi to Verulam.
Cf. the A.S. Chronicle, entry under AD 973. See note 1 to page 146 above.
additional notes
a This is not the place to discuss the medieval philosophical dispute between nominalism and realism, which at times became very aggressive and personal. See Wikipedia.
DJ note 1: the Bacon here referred to is Roger Bacon (1214-1292), an English philosopher and Franciscan friar who placed considerable emphasis on the study of nature through empirical methods. His namesake is Francis Bacon (1561-1626), an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, orator, essayist and author. He was created Baron Verulam (= St Albans, Hertfordshire) in 1618.
As on page 146 referred to, for 973 read 975.
see also
semantic structures
glossary
b haw: an enclosed yard (here, a shipyard).
comments
Elen finishes her blessing on seafarers past present and future.