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Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2000 14:30:35 -0400
To: classics@u.washington.edu
From: James Pfundstein <jmpfund@bgnet.bgsu.edu>
Subject: Re: Ave, Gilberte, moriturus (WAS: TAN: Chesterton Bashing)
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At 11:35 PM -0500 22.11.2000, Alfred M Kriman wrote:
>I don't want to make any large points about the rotund and orotund GKC,
>but a small one:
>
>James Pfundstein quoted the amusing
>
>>        Poets have been  mysteriously silent on the subject of
>>        cheese. Virgil, if I remember right, refers to it several
>>        times, but with too much Roman restraint. He does not
>>        let himself go on cheese.
>
>This is implicitly evidence of Chesterton's originality, though JMP
>makes different points explicitly.  I hope I don't seem too critical of
>borrowed inspiration, but I do want it noted that in Jerome K. Jerome's
>extremely well-known 1889 story, _Three Men in a Boat_, there's a
>section in chapter four on the ``Advantages of cheese as a traveling
>companion'' [[1]].  (Jerome focuses on the odor, but neglects to mention
>the conversation.)  The Chesterton (1874-1936) passage quoted by JMP
>appears in _Alarms and Discursions_ (1910); I don't know exactly when
>this essay ("Cheese" [[2]]) was first published.  From the form, it
>looks like something that could easily have grown out of a review of
>_Three Men in a Boat_ in Chesterton's early days as a reviewer.  OTOH,
>I freely admit I have no direct evidence of borrowing.

The thing is, though, that Jerome's passage is ironically 
anti-cheese, whereas Chesterton's little essay is frantically 
pro-cheese-- in particular pro bread-and-cheese (as opposed to cheese 
and crackers). There isn't a lot of overlap; all this shows is that 
cheese brought out strong feelings (pro and con) in the contemporary 
Englishman. But, to quote Mousebender after he had shot Wensleydale 
in the cheese shop, to spend much more time on this discussion would 
be "a senseless waste of human life."

JMP("Pytho")
.