J. H. Plumb (1911–2001)

I reread this book both to brush up on English history in the eighteenth century and also to review the English backdrop to the American Revolution. While it is dated in both years (first published in 1950) and, in many respects, tone, it is a succinct, interesting and, to my mind, authoritative history of the period. Although it is a slim volume, it is packed with information covering the years 1714-1815. As any good history should, it not only instructs but also sensitizes the reader to show more the contingencies of history. For example, if George III had not dismissed Chatham as Prime Minister and undercut Chatham’s wartime achievements in the peace treaty ending the Seven Years War, would the American Revolution have occurred at all or been successful? The book also feeds a desire to dig deeper into the many topics it covers.

Even though it is an introduction, it does take some knowledge for granted, for example, that William Pitt the Elder and Lord Chatham were the same person. While I found myself looking at Wikipedia to understand some references, I also think Professor J.H. Plumb’s approach enabled him to write a more thought-provoking and in-depth book than if he had taken no knowledge for granted.

He breaks the period down into three “ages”: the Age of Walpole, the Age of Chatham and the Age of Pitt (i.e., Pitt the Younger). For each age, he covers general governmental, social, economic, artistic, scientific and cultural developments before turning to the narrative of political developments relating to his three principals. We get both a snapshot of English society in three succeeding periods and an understanding of the changes that took place over those three periods. Some readers might find it easier going to start with the narrative chapters in each section and then go back to the thematic background chapters.

The Age of Walpole (1714-1742)

The Age of Walpole covers the ascendancy of the Whigs following the decline of the Tories into a group of rural gentry grievance and supporter of Stuart pretenders (thereby alienating the new Hanoverian dynasty). The age is characterized by the perfection of the patronage system by which the King and his ministers allocate offices within the country to leading families in the parliamentary majority controlling the government. The relationship of King and Parliament evolved as Robert Walpole and King George II developed a small inner cabinet of the chief officers of the realm. The pre-existing Privy Council and Cabinet Council ceased to play much of a role in politics. Robert Walpole emerged as the first Prime Minister, the minister who carried the most weight in the cabinet and who acted as the principal intermediary between the cabinet and the King. The Court remained the heart of social and political life, and all decisions and appointments had to be discussed with the King. However, supreme power remained not with the King but with Parliament, on whom the King depended for revenue and to whom the ministers were also responsible.

The Age of Walpole is also characterized by Robert Walpole’s careful management of the government’s finances (including the creation of the Sinking Fund, a percentage of taxes that were set aside to pay off debts of previous wars), pursuit of economic prosperity and efforts to avoid expensive new wars. Walpole’s successful management of the consequences of the South Sea Bubble market crash made him the leader of the Whigs (who were not yet a formal political party) and gave him the dominant role in the government. Walpole reduced tariffs to encourage trade while continuing to protect key English industries. New technologies emerged to serve the textile industry and iron and coal production. French Huguenots brought new industrial processes to England, and in 1716 the Englishman John Lombe stole from Italy the secret of machine manufacture of silk yarn. The factory system began to develop. However, the growth of English industry was still held back by factors such as the monopolies of the great chartered companies, the influence of Tudor-era guilds, the lack of adequate capital and the “appalling” state of transport in England.

In the 1730’s, the country began to lose patience with Walpole’s prudent running of the country, and after he resigned in 1742, William Pitt the Elder eventually emerged as Prime Minister intent upon expansion of Great Britain’s economic and global power -- through war as necessary. In Plumb’s words:

England has never known a prime minister more adroit in handling men than Walpole, but he was too rooted in reality, too sensitive to the everyday world to be a great statesman. It was Chatham, ignorant of men, ignorant of politics, who knew with utter certainty England’s destiny and showed her the way to it.

The Age of Chatham (1742-1784)

Around 1760, the tempo of the Industrial Revolution began to speed up. Revolutionary changes began to take place, and it became clear that there were two worlds, the old and the new. The continued expansion of markets, the availability of adequate capital and a growing labor force made the Industrial Revolution possible. Completion of the enclosure of common lands enabled farmers to become more independent and thus agricultural improvements became feasible. Roads were improved and banks developed in the countryside. Technological change became a constant factor. The problems of the Industrial Revolution also intensified such as cruel factory conditions and child labor. However, there was a general improvement in urban conditions that caused the death rate to decline “until the wholesale introduction of the water closet forced it up. Instead of being carried away to the country, excrement was swept in the Thames which provided London’s drinking water. Typhoid returned.” (p. 87)

The Anglican Church failed to meet the spiritual needs of the inhabitants of industrial villages and suburbs. John Wesley was an Anglican who tried to serve the new industrial workingman through the established church, which closed its doors to him. As a result, he created the Methodist Church and established 356 chapels in locations where there were no traditional churches. Wesley was the boss of his church, and his enemies called him Pope John. He was a conservative who opposed John Wilkes and saw the French Revolution as the work of Satan. In Methodism,” the Puritan ideal was reborn shorn of its political radicalism.” It achieved material success at the price of losing spiritual fervor. Wesley did not support primary education for children but rather thought they should work, and he hated Catholics and Jews. Plumb describes him as follows:

Wesley himself was a great and complex character, a man in some ways comparable to Luther, Lenin, Gandhi or even Napoleon. Few men have had his transcendental capacity to stir the heart; none has combined this with his genius for organization. (p. 90)

This period also saw significant developments in the arts and sciences. In the theater, Goldsmith and Sheridan; in painting, Joshua Reynolds, who influenced Gainsborough, Romney and Ramsey, and William Hogarth; in architecture, James Gibb, William Kent and Robert Adams. In science, Henry Cavendish was the greatest scientist of the time, although he kept most of his discoveries relating to gases and electricity to himself. (Faraday later had to discover independently much of what Cavendish had discovered.) Joseph Priestly isolated oxygen from air in 1774 but tried to fit it into the phlogiston theory (according to which metals were composed of compounds of metallic earth and phlogiston). “Although [the phlogiston] theory did not by any means meet all the known facts, its adherents clung to it with the tenacity of martyrs” and Priestly “refused to believe his own experiments and elaborated the most extraordinary reasons to make the facts fit the phlogiston theory. “(p. 103) In dining with Priestly, Antoine Lavoisier realized the significance of Priestly’s discoveries. After completing his own experiments, Lavoisier destroyed the phlogiston theory once and for all and declared the existence of oxygen, without acknowledging Priestly, who continued to believe in the phlogiston theory. Following these discoveries in his seclusion, Cavendish broke down water into oxygen and hydrogen and isolated argon.

The political machine Robert Walpole had established did not fall with him, despite the complaints of the opposition to his government. The City, which under that system lacked influence in Parliament, relied on William Pitt (later Lord Chatham) to protect its interests. As the City prospered, it thought it could ignore the corruption of Parliament. The new post-Walpole government, with Carteret in charge of foreign affairs, returned to a policy of full involvement in Continental wars. Pitt had criticized Carteret’s policy, but was brought into the government in 1746 after England suffered defeats in 1745. Pitt lacked Walpole’s warmth in personal relations but “could create a sense in all who listened to him that he was the mouthpiece of destiny.” (p. 108.) Pitt saw France as England’s only rival, and he thought England should aim at supremacy at sea and the capture of all French trading posts and French Canada. By 1756, Pitt had risen to leadership of the House of Commons and direction of the war. His victories over France were decisive: England captured France’s Canadian trade by taking Québec and Montréal; it captured Guadeloupe and Martinique in the West Indies and Dakar in Africa. Clive’s victories in India established English dominance. The only English defeat was at Mauritius. The attack on Manila in the Philippines brought control of the China tea trade. The French fleets were destroyed.

Pitt intended to follow up on these successes by attacking Spain’s foreign holdings. But King George II died in 1760, and the new King, George III, did not favor his grandfather’s servants. King George III rejected an attack on Spain and drove Pitt out of the government. The peace treaty of 1763 ending the Seven Year’s War “enraged” Pitt and his friends because of the return of Guadeloupe, Martinique and Dakar to France and of fishing rights off of the coast of Newfoundland. Pitt’s main objective in capturing Canada was to gain control of those fishing rights. The peace treaty ended Pitt’s dream of crushing France as a rival. The City, which had the most to gain in the capture of trade from the French, lost out because it lacked political power in the Commons to support Pitt’s aims. These developments caused the City to turn to politics. “The day of the bourgeois radical dawned.” (p. 115)

George III had made other changes to foreign policy. He took a harsh approach towards Hanover, broke the treaty with Frederick the Great and made peace with France. He tore down the system of patronage which had benefited the Pelham family under King George II, but it was difficult to build another stable ruling group. He was forced to shift from one ministry to another until cohesion was finally achieved under Lord North. George III’s clashes with John Wilkes in Parliament demonstrated Parliament’s unrepresentative nature, its dependence on the Crown, and its corruption and prejudice, and showed Parliament to be a threat to personal liberty. Because of the worsening situation in America, the government was becoming increasingly unpopular, and organized public opinion began to play a significant role in politics.

The efforts of William Wilberforce and the Clapham Sect made up largely of Members of Parliament to abolish the slave trade made significant progress in this period. In Somerset’s case (1772), Lord Mansfield made his famous judgment declaring slavery illegal in England. The Clapham Sect was also responsible for the foundation of Freetown in Sierra Leone, imtended as a haven for freed slaves. As discussed below, the slave trade was finally abolished effective in 1808.

The American colonists appealed to the same principles of liberty that were propounded by Wilkes and his allies. Lords Rockingham and Chatham and Edmund Burke became leaders of reform as well as showing sympathy to the American’s position. Lord North’s ministry disintegrated in 1782; Rockingham came to power and make peace with America. It appeared that reform would occur in Parliament as well. The Walpole system of political patronage could no longer work in an increasingly complex and growing society. William Pitt the Younger would emerge as the next important Prime Minister.

The Age of Pitt (1784-1815)

The Age of Pitt saw further advances in the Industrial Revolution, the impact of the French Revolution on English society and politics and the wars with France. England’s first census in 1801 showed an increasing population and by 1811 London was the largest city in the Western world with over a million people. Manchester, Glasgow and Edinburgh were also growing rapidly, and there was a general population shift from the south and east to the north and west. Construction of canals, road improvements and growth of ports all enhanced England’s transportation network. However, the naval war with France disrupted overseas trade, caused depressions and made it harder to feed the growing population.

The French Revolution made the middle classes aware of the power of the lower classes and the risk of social revolution. English radicalism split, a left-wing consisting of workingmen and middle-class leaders favoring the goals of the French Revolution and a right wing of Whigs under the leadership of Charles James Fox continuing to pursue the cause of parliamentary reform and wanting peace with France. Edmund Burke, for whom the French Revolution was a European catastrophe, turned against both wings and wanted to use force against the French. Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France met Thomas Paine’s reply in The Rights of Man. As Prime Minister, Pitt cracked down on radical clubs and societies including obtaining passage of treason and sedition acts.

In literature, writers like the Defoe, Fielding, Sterne, Smollett and Richardson broke with the restraints and formal attitudes of poetry and were forerunners of the Romantics. Wordsworth and Coleridge made a conscious effort to break with the immediate past which led to the cultivation of the art and culture of the Middle Ages at the price of the loss of confidence in contemporary taste. Printing of newspapers and books boomed, and encyclopedias became popular. There was a huge expansion in scientific research and study and important advances in chemistry by Sir Humphrey Davy and John Dalton. Science had become woven into the nation’s life.

At this point, Plumb devotes two chapters to the sorry tale of the British in India and Ireland during the eighteenth century. Following Clive’s defeat of the French, India entered a period of political instability, and the East India Company lacked the resources to manage the situation. Warren Hastings stabilized the situation by implementing a systematic policy of war and imperial expansion in the country. Burke and the Whigs objected to Britain’s Indian policy on grounds of morality and expediency. To protect the Indian peasantry from the effects of opium, Hastings insisted on the export of opium products to China. In Harding’s view, ”the end justified the means: without the China trade there was a danger of the whole British rule in India collapsing, and the collapse of British rule would mean a return to anarchy and civil war.” (p. 177)

England was also responsible for the sorry state of Ireland, whose economy was intertwined with that of England to the advantage of the English. The concentration on sheep and cattle raising imposed famine on the peasantry and the introduction of the potato in Ireland helped to save lives. Famines in 1730 and 1741 led to rebellions which were harshly put down. The English took land away from the Irish in retribution and each rebellion led to harsher laws against Catholics. This harsh system worked from 1714 to 1760 but then both Catholics and Protestants in Ireland began to develop a sense of common destiny and Dublin became a real capital. Reformers wanted to free the Irish economy from English control. During the American Revolution, Henry Grattan and the Earl of Charlesmont took charge of the reform movement. Irish prosperity was threatened by the loss of American markets. England made concessions, and in 1785 Pitt sought to make the British Isles a single physical unit permitting trade between the islands and the rest of the Empire. The Irish Parliament approved this reform but the House of Commons rejected it, and Pitt took no further action. Reform having failed, the Irish turned to rebellion and French support. In the end, England maintained its supremacy but at the price of renewing the old tradition of brutality, destruction and massacre in Ireland. Pitt’s last effort was to seek to merge the Irish Parliament and the British Parliament, but George III blocked this proposal and Pitt resigned (temporarily).

As noted above, the old political system of the King’s patronage and rule by prominent families who coalesced around a leader had broken down with the collapse of Lord North’s government in 1782. There were four contenders to lead the government: Charles James Fox, the leader of the younger Whigs who was close to the Prince of Wales; Lord Shelburne, a more capable administrator than Fox but lacking leadership skills; Edmund Burke, the philosopher of the Rockingham Whigs who lacked wealth and a pedigree of birth; and William Pitt, the younger son of Lord Chatham. After the general election of 1784, Pitt emerged as the new leader and succeeded in creating an enduring system of political stability, despite being unable to achieve all his desired political reforms. He became the Prime Minister at age 24 and apart from one short break remained the Prime Minister for the rest of his life. Importantly, he had the support of the City.

Pitt was “inept” in foreign affairs. At first, he sought to avoid war with France in connection with the French Revolution, and failed to prepare Britain for war when it came. He tried to maintain neutrality but this policy failed when France declared war on England in February 1793. Pitt continued to make misjudgments, insisting on conditions for peace that France could never afford to accept. Plumb devotes two chapters to the wars with France, first the war at sea from 1793 to 1802 and then the want land from 1802 to 1815.

Pitt died on January 23, 1806, at the age of 46. Plumb sums him up as follows:

He was a great orator; a dexterous and astute parliamentary politician, but without Walpole’s humanity; his approach to the critical problems of his time was always narrowly rational, and frequently mistaken; a sound administrator, atrociously bad in all questions of strategy, with astonishing strength and persistence of will; a drunkard. Yet his nature and abilities are so twisted into the fabric of our history that this age of war is truly his more than any other man, far more than Burke, he riveted the new, emerging world of nineteenth century England to the country’s past, to its tradition and to its history. (p. 208)

Fox, who was close to death himself, succeeded Pitt as Prime Minister. He had two objectives: peace and the abolition of the slave trade. As of January 1808, he succeeded in the latter. The war continued. Plumb sums up the situation in 1815. On the one hand, Great Britain had emerged as the strongest, richest and most powerful country in the world and after a century of war had defeated France in the struggle for commercial empire. On the other hand, it faced huge difficulties: it was on the edge of bankruptcy and social revolution and to many the future looked dark. “In 1815, at the end of long endurance, there was fear, and envy, and greed, but little hope.” (p. 214) show less

I read this book for a general overview of the eighteenth century before I launched into my reading for my qualifying exams, which spanned 1780 to 1925. Some specific background knowledge on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries seemed like it would be worthwhile. This book was maybe not all that I hoped; Plumb seemed to assume a level of general knowledge with the era's politics that I simply did not possess, as the whole book was organized around three principal prime ministers who were show more referred to as though I was already an expert. So it was okay, but I find that I've already forgotten much of the knowledge it contained. (Maybe I should have taken notes as I read?)

added June 2025:
Some thirteen years later, I reread this, with the added context this time of having read the previous six volumes of the series. J. H. Plumb takes a similar approach to A. R. Myers in volume four, dividing his era into three sub-eras, in this case by three Prime Ministers: Walpole (1714-42), Chatham a.k.a. "Pitt the Elder" (1742-84), and Pitt a.k.a. "Pitt the Younger" (1784-1815). Unlike Myers, though, who carried out a strictly parallel construction in each of those three sections, Plumb has a bunch of different chapters that covers a lot of topics very quickly, though there is usually one on literature in each section. He's also fond of giving a quick biography of a key figure in a single chapter, such as John Wesley (founder of Methodism), John Wilkes (a reform journalist), and each of the three prime ministers. I think this probably has the most chapters of any Pelican History, with twenty-five in total. (Some of the earlier volumes had just five!) Like some of the earlier volumes, though, Plumb focuses less on giving you a blow-by-blow.

My old review above indicates I was not a big fan; as another reviewer here says, "this is an introduction to the period for educated people. So names are used as if you should know who they are. I think when it was written that would have been alright, today it isn't, sadly." I'm not sure that Plumb ever explicitly says that Chatham and Pitt the Elder are the same person! But I did find it a bit easier to follow this time, no doubt thanks to having read the preceding six volumes and thus having a grounding in the time and era.

One thing I've been tracking as I read these book is not just how each writer structures their volumes, but also what kind of thesis they give about their era. Plumb's volume is diminished, I think, by not having one. Across the twenty-five chapters, he tries to cover a lot: politics, empire (the loss of America and the acquisition of India both happen here), religion (like I said, Wesley gets a chapter), the Napoleonic Wars, moves toward full democracy. It's hard to say that one thing dominates the book. I can see why Plumb might take this approach, wanting to give a broad view of a time period, but it does mean that I finished the book having felt I received a lot of glimpses of interesting bits but not a coherent panorama of the entire time. The problem is he does kind of give a thesis at the end, but he's been so all over the place in terms of details up until that point, that it doesn't feel very supported: "To thinking men the horizon was dark and foreboding.... [I]n 1815, at the end of long endurance, there was fear, and envy, and greed, but little hope" (214). Why?

The potted biographies of the prime ministers are particularly interesting and frustrating; Plumb hints at a lot but explains little. Apparently Pitt the Elder was insane? And sick every year of his life, both mentally and physically? But somehow a great prime minister anyway? How does this all add up? Once again, I find myself wanting to do some outside reading; I guess I will be tracking down a full-length biography of him at some point. Similarly, when talking about Pitt the Younger, he calls him an "enigma," "narrowly rational, and frequently mistaken," "atrociously bad in all questions of strategy," and "a drunkard" (208)! So what was he good at?

To the extend that Plumb does have a focus, however, it seems to be trade. He shows how trade both drove England's prosperity during this time, and also failed to transfer all of that prosperity to members of the working classes: "There were more families of middling wealth than ever before, but the vast bulk of the population fell within the contemporary category of 'labouring poor'.... [T]he poorest working men today would have found the lives of their ancestors almost unbearable.... [T]he human animal broke down under the burden..." (150). This is the time where England's economic prosperity takes off, leading us into the Victorian period.

Trade policy is the major area of focus he discusses with the three prime ministers. Plus, trade was also the impetus for empire, of course, in both India and Ireland, and the crippling of trade was a key outcome of the American Revolution. Trade so much drove the empire that, in the 1780s, we wouldn't really recognize imperialist rhetoric in India: "They were traders, proud of their race, determined to make money as fast as they could, but they were wholly free from the sense that manifest destiny had called them to rule the native people" (171). By the end of the century, there was a very different attitude: "Distasteful as it was for the Englishman to live in India, the provision of good government was an obligation which he could not avoid. It was his destiny" (178). Plumb himself, though, is a bit of an imperialist, suggesting "the British Raj was more just, and less extortionate, than its native counterpart" (178). Doubt you would see that in a 2020s history book!

Other things of interest: Like I said, he focuses on the slow transition toward wider democratic enfranchisement; I found his discussion of the reformers' own view of history fascinating: "they helped to foster the strange national mythology of the Victorians. They believed... that Saxon England was the golden age of political democracy. This was destroyed by the Normans and a monarchical tyranny imposed. A long struggle ensued. The first triumph was the Magna Carta... but final success was jeopardized by the corruption of George III's government.... Misleading, yet simple..." (136). If you've read the earlier volumes of this series, particularly three and six, you'll know just how wrong this is!

Anyway, I still found this one of the weaker volumes of the series but on the other hand, I got more out of it than I did on my previous pass. Lots of interesting tidbits even if not much of a coherent whole. show less

A book divided, augmented: first half by Plumb, second half, chapter biographies by Origo on Pius II, Kenneth Clark on Michelangelo, Bronowski on Leonardo. Origo writes like a Renaissance humanist, “Success comes most swiftly and completely not to the greatest or perhaps even the ablest men, but to those whose gifts are most completely in harmony with the taste of their time”(241). Plumb's chapter on Renaissance Florence notes it was dominated by "the sword and the florin": banking, and show more to build that, military defenses against neighbors. Earlier, by the 13C, the guilds grew central: the lanuoli (wool), sete (silk-weavers), notaio (notaries, still overpayed in modern IT), and bankers (including money-changers, with a balance). For fascinating maps of where each guild tended to live, see online Burr Litchfield's "Florence Ducal Capital 1530-1630." For example, the shoemakers tended to live all over the city, all men, whereas the hosiers concentrated toward the center city, most on the Via di Calzaiuoli between Piazza Signoria and the Duomo. Probably the stockings were made by women all over the city, at home.

Plumb's chapter on the Image of Man covers from Alberti's sense of grandeur to Aretino's bisexual amorality. Still, Aretino was such a good writer that he was summoned to Rome by the man he had supported for the papacy, the second Medici pope, Clement VII. He entertained the Papal court until he got into a terrible fight with the husband of a wife he had seduced, and the Pope sent him away. Of course, Aretino filled his house in Venice with women and boys--evidently he had asked the Duke of Mantua to send him a boy he fancied (120). Even if we disapprove his life, we must approve Aretino's death: "in his sixties he roared too vehemently at a bawdy joke, had apoplexy, and died"(121).
Clark's Michelangelo is rich. Turns out M was the only Renaissance artist from aristocratic roots, his father claiming lineage from the Duke of Canossa, and strongly objecting to his son's becoming an artisan/ artist. Even when his son had obtained great fame (and always sent him money), the father considered his work with "bewildered incredulity" (194). Having grown up in Florence, making sculptures like the Greek, he was noticed by Lorenzo Medici; and, he grew up knowing Leo X, Lorenzo's son. But he also knew his predecessor Julius II, for whom he made a famous tomb featuring Moses with horns, a Vulgate mistranslation from the Hebrew for beams of light. When the sculptor returned to Florence, the city magistrates ordered something to stand outside the Palazzo Vecchio to do justice to the city. The David resulted.
What do American cities order to exhibit their pride? Where I taught for 35 years had a fireworks display every August 15, Feast of the Assumption, but since it couldn't be called that, it was named for the city. Boston may consider the Marathon its true face. Maybe Kansas City Missouri, so filled with public sculptures, ordered a sculpture. Urra if they did.

Plumb’s own essay on Florence recaps my year of post-doc study under Tony Molho, an economic historian of Italy; his seminar produced an international scholar in criminal history at John Jay and Padova, a college president, a prominent art historian at Notre Dame, a couple other scholars in the south, and me. Plumb notes that wealth alone allowed Florentine survival, so the bankers, the Medici and Acciaioli with their international branches, anchored the Republic which became a Dukedom, with banker-dukes, because of the money loaned by the bankers. (Beware indebtedness, Oh Republic!) One of Tony’s guest speakers, Brown colleague Burr Litchfield (now my neighbor), is a specialist on Renaissance Florentine neighborhoods, where the various guilds and primates lived—the lanuoli, the sete, the notai, the Signorie. The heads of government, the Priors of the Signorie, only ruled for two months, which both diminished and augmented the battles to achieve that eminence, and thereby control the only manipulation in a mostly-free market capitalism.

Pietro Aretino wrote unbridled satires on anyone who would pay to suppress them, from business giants to Cardinals; he developed the tamer pasquinades posted on a statue near Piazza Navona—near Giordano Bruno’s raised three centuries later. Aretino satirized Cardinal Medici competitors for the Papacy after thee death of Leo X. He himself had varied sexual tastes, asked the Duke of Mantova to send him a boy who struck his fancy. The humanists, after all, knew Plato and Jove’s love of Ganymede.(120). Aretino grew rich from “extracting money from the entrails of the rich,” lived on Venice’s Grand Canal; Titian did several portraits, and the satirist wrote explicit poems illustrating a series of 16 obscene drawings by Giulio Romano (the only painter mentioned by Shakespeare). Most delightfully, Aretino literally died laughing, roaring at a bawdy joke. This is a cautionary tale since I am a laugher myself--my laugh scares infants.
Here’s one of his verses I translated for a colleague’s retirement, his "Dubbi Amorosi 14":

Lawyer Pataffio, to lower his taxes, and raise
His son’s reputation, married him to Denise.
But after feasting, the boy didn’t have enough vigor
To plunge his arrow into her virgin quiver;
Whence, to keep from shame and dishonor,
The old gentleman jumped back upon her
And showed the customary sheets: The question:
Can he claim a deduction for his full contribution?

The Decision

You must recall all kinds of distinctions
Between exemptions, exclusions and extinctions.
In this case, since the old man passed sixty-five,
He deserves an exemption for being alive.
Yet to Portia, he can’t claim a contribution
Unless she’s a non-profit institution:
But, he can claim the total depreciation
For the cost of the sheets, plus inflation. show less

This book is, slightly, let down by its age: it was produced in 1964, when colour plates were far too expensive for a humble paperback book. This does have an effect upon the discussion of Renaissance art, but that is a minor niggle about a tome that has taught me all that I know about the period.

It is difficult not to take modern lessons from this collection of essays; it is easy to see the move away from religious belief to the god of Mammon. The same belief that the acquisition of goods show more will bring contentment. The same corruption amongst the leadership. To be fair, this latter was not a new concept, leaders have always been b*$!@rds, and probably, always will.

The book is written in that style of the mid twentieth century, whereby the professorly writer will brook no argument but, is helped by the multiple nature of the authors. This does enable the reader to get a descent all round view of the age. show less