2020: Beginnings and endings for a new decade

"Every new Beginning comes from some other beginning's End"  

from Seneca the Younger,  Roman stoic philosopher;  ceramic portrait, Plaza de Espana Seville

This New Year and a new decade is a time for change, and I have decided to focus on the present, on time with friends and family, and the world on my doorstep, instead of the fascinating people and places from the past which have featured in my frozenink blog. The very first post was in July 2012 with a quote from John Evelyn's Diary ( a regular source), and in January 2013 appears the eighteenth century reference to frozen ink, from which my blog was named, but for the foreseeable future this blog will be truly "frozen".  

My very sincere thanks to all my regular followers and to the many people and institutions whose internet material I have enjoyed and used in my research, particularly those sources which are not always properly acknowledged.   My very best wishes to every one of you for a happy and successful New Year 2020. 

"Tomorrow to fresh woods and pastures new."  Lycidas, John Milton

Stoke-by-Nayland, Summer   John Nash c. 1949  
© the artist's estate/Bristol Museum &Art Gallery

The University Carrier

"On the University Carrier who
sickn'd in the time of his vacancy, being
forbid to go to London, by reason of
                   the Plague


'Here lies old Hobson, Death hath broke his girt,
And here alas, hath laid him in the dirt,
Or els the ways being foul, twenty to one,
He's here stuck in a slough, and overthrown.
'Twas such a shifter, that if truth were known,
Death was half glad when he had got him down;
For he had any time this ten yeers full,
Dodg'd with him, betwixt Cambridge and the Bull.
And surely, Death could never have prevail'd,
Had not his weekly cours of carriage fail'd;
But lately finding him so long at home,
And thinking now his journeys end was come,
And that he had tane up his latest Inne,
In the kind office of a Chamberlin
Shew'd him his room where he must lodge that night,
Pull'd off his Boots, and took away the light:
If any ask for him, it shall be sed,
Hobson has supt, and's newly gon to bed.' "


"Another on the Same
'..........
His Letters are deliver'd all and gon,
Onely remains this superscription.'  "


Poems  John Milton

"Q"

"A good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life."

Areopagitica  John Milton,   quoted on the fly-leafs of "The Kings Treasuries of Literature" series,  General Editor  Sir Arthur T. Quiller-Couch

Heavenly spheres

"Mortals, that would follow me
Love virtue, she alone is free,
She can teach ye how to climb
Higher than the sphery chime;
Or if virtue feeble were,
Heav'n itself would stoop to her."

Comus  John Milton

Areopagitica -- in defence of beleaguered truth

"Behold now this vast city: a city of refuge, the mansion house of liberty, encompassed and surrounded with his protection; the shop of war hath not there more anvils and hammers waking, to fashion out the plates and instruments of armed justice in defence of beleaguered truth, than there be pens and heads there, sitting by their studious lamps, musing,  searching, revolving new notions and ideas wherewith to present, as with their homage and their fealty, the approaching Reformation: others as fast reading, trying all things, assenting to the force of reason and convincement.  What could a man require more from a nation so pliant and so prone to seek after knowledge?  What wants there to such a towardly and pregnant soil, but wise and faithful labourers, to make a knowing people, a nation of prophets, of sages, and of worthies?  We reckon more than five months yet to harvest;  there need not be five weeks;  had we but eyes to lift up, the fields are white already."

Areopagitica: a speech of Mr John Milton for the liberty of the unlicenc'd printing, to the Parliament of England 
John Milton, 1644