Make no mistake. Rape is a serious matter. Yet when we read one of the wittiest poems in the language, we find that it can be the raw material of a parable about what to take seriously. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. So says the old proverb. Wit, fun and pun are part of good humour. And when good humour is lacking, things can go badly wrong. Here we find Pope enticing us to look into that unavoidable question: ‘How do we know what to take seriously in life?’
This could floor us. We could spend a lifetime looking at this question from all angles and yet be no wiser. Alexander Pope gave thought to this. He approached it obliquely. He wrote a mock-heroic poem about exalting trifles to a prime position. ‘The Rape of the Lock’ is a parable on such miscalculation. In the comfortable days of Queen Anne he did the opposite of cutting something down to size. He inflated a trifle into an epic. He invited us to exercise a sense of proportion.
George Eliot went about this rather differently. We are invited to consider the dismal scholarly Casaubon in ‘Middlemarch’. He spent a lifetime searching for the same thing as Einstein – a formula to explain everything. Mathematicians and physicists are nowadays working at full stretch on this. But like the alchemists with the search for the elixir of life, today’s investigators have an elusive quest in hand.
If we think it important to know what to take seriously, we have to weigh the benefits of exploring Mars as against finding cures for motor neurone disease and other ailments. We shall take a sceptical view of the partial factors presented to us by marketers and snake-oil salesmen. We shall find ourselves cutting our way through the jungle of competing religious interests.
We shall, of course, make mistakes. We shall be taken in by quacks trading on our fears and our ignorance. We shall become entangled in the wiles of people who have themselves been sold a pup. But, Rome wasn’t built in a day. When all’s said and done, there’s more said than done. The man who never made a mistake never made anything. I could go on. With the help of our store of proverbs I could go on for a very long time. I’m back to where I came in.
BEACONSFIELD
A website and a stylish magazine are shop-windows for a parish church. Beaconsfield knows this and provides plenty for a visitor. The 52-page magazine deserves special mention. It’s interested in everything that goes on in the village. Jeremy Brooks leads the ministry team. His wife Dorothy is senior chaplain at Great Ormond Street children’s hospital. Nearby is Bekonscot, the world’s oldest model village. It opened in 1929 and has welcomed 15m visitors so far.
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