The study of “ye horologe” is a most pleasing occupation and a most
engrossing science. So much so that when it has come before the special
notice of the great men of bygone ages, it has always effected some
lasting record of their interest, and oft-times improvement, in the
construction of what was a most necessary acquisition for every
establishment.
Shakespeare, in his Richard II. (act v. scene 5), makes King Richard,
who was incarcerated in a dungeon in Pomfret Castle, give utterance to
the following words:—
“I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.
Or now hath time made me his numb’ring clock:
My thoughts are minutes; and, with sighs, they jar
Their watches on to mine eyes, the outward watch,
Whereto my finger, like a dial’s point,
Is pointing still, in cleansing them from tears.”
In Henry VI. Shakespeare again takes notice of the sundial:—
“Methinks it were a happy life
To carve out dials quaintly point by point.”
He also alludes to them in some of his other plays. Mentioned by many
famous men in various ways they are dealt with directly by not a few.
So important did the study of gnomonics become that it was at one time
considered to be a most necessary part of a student’s education. Sir
Christopher Wren was well versed in the art of dialling in his boyhood,
and as a boy Sir Isaac Newton made a sundial which he painted upon the
ceiling of his room; he also carved two dials upon the south end of the
Manor House at Woolsthorpe, in the parish of Colterworth, where he was
born. So numerous are the instances of famous men making or ordering
sundials to be made, that it would be impossible to mention even a
representative number of names.
A beautiful sundial was erected at Abbotsford by Sir Walter Scott, and
all over the country are found dials of various ages and designs, built
by the orders of great and learned men, to be a guide and also a
memorial through years to come. It was Charles Dickens who, in June,
1859, wrote to his daughter and signified his pleasure at receiving from
the contractor for the works, the gift of a balustrade out of the old
Rochester bridge; he stated that without delay he had had a dial
constructed to suit the pedestal, and thus had added to his garden a
fresh item of interest.
All forms of dials have received consideration—perpendicular,
horizontal, pocket and ring dials; even moon dials have not been
neglected.
Thomas Fale, in his book on “The Art of Dialling,” published in 1593,
gives a chapter to “the making of a dial, to know the houre by the
moon;”—while it is certain that portable cylinder dials were in common
use in England as early as the middle of the fifteenth century.
Lydgate, who wrote, about the year 1430, the “storie of Thebes, an
additional Canterbury tale,” which was printed with Chaucer’s works in
1651, writes as if a dial were commonly carried by travellers. He says:—
“Passed ye thrope of Boughton on the Blee:
By my kalendar I gan anon to see
Through the sonne that full clear gan shine,
Of the clock that it drew to nine.”
And Warton gives us a note on the word “kalendar.”
“Chilindre, a cylinder, a kind of pocket sundial.” Many pocket dials of
great beauty, dating from the middle of the 17th century, are in
existence, and, although rare; ivory, silver, brass, and bone dials of
the Stuart period can still be secured from dealers for reasonable sums.
But, like most rarities, they will doubtless soon be bought up and find
their way into museums or the collections of the rich.
How early a date may be fixed for the pocket dial in England cannot be
determined. Nicholas Kratzer, styled the Deviser of Horologies to King
Henry VIII. of England, certainly left us pocket dials of his age, for
in Cardinal Wolsey’s dial made by him we have a fair specimen of his
art. Sixteenth-century pocket dials were made in France, Germany, and
Italy, and although they were of different shapes and sizes, the general
construction of “ye horologe” was the same. In the British Museum, which
is nowhere equalled as a public collection, can be seen a great number
of portable dials.
Large private collections also exist in this country and on the
continent, containing many rare and extremely valuable specimens. It
seems only natural that pocket dials should be popular, and when all
things are considered, it is a matter of considerable surprise that more
do not exist. To-day, even a schoolboy has his watch, and there is
hardly a man who fails to feel his loss when without this indispensable
article, but it must be remembered that we are far more exacting as
regards time than we used to be, and the closer observance of minutes
and seconds demands a portable timekeeper that is not dependent upon the
sun, which is so often hidden from our view. It has been recorded that
George Washington was in the habit of carrying a pocket dial in the
place of a watch; nor does he stand alone in respect to this preference
for a pocket horologe, as many great men have delighted to indulge in
this particular fancy.
An ancient custom, which is still in vogue at a few of our parish
churches, is the ringing of a bell in the morning, at noon, and at
curfew to proclaim the time of day. This has now nearly died out, and
the curfew bell is in most places all that is left of a time-honoured
method of telling the divisions of the day.
What? we might naturally ask, set the hour and fixed the time? Without
doubt the ancient sundial, invariably found on all old churches, or
which might have been carried by the clergyman or clerk in pocket form.
We can imagine how unpunctual people must have been on days that were
dull, and how very differently business matters must have been conducted
in years that are gone from what they are in our own age.
Whatever part the sundial has to play in the future history of
individuals and nations, it must never be forgotten that as a faithful
recorder of the passing hour—under certain conditions—it remains for
ever the most accurate timekeeper that has been discovered by mortal
man.
Great minds have loved to dwell upon its study, and noble men have
handed down to generations that were to come specimens of the
craftsman’s art and the scientist’s discoveries. In our own land exist
many historical dials fashioned to satisfy the fancies of individuals,
and also for the benefit of the public. It is a most noticeable fact
that the majority of sundials attributable to great men have nearly
always a motto or verse inscribed upon them.
From the earliest ages, when “ye horologe” was a popular means of
recording the time of day, “a sundial motto” was considered to be a
necessary part of a well-ordered horologe. Most of the more elaborately
constructed dials possess a motto or inscription of some kind or other,
and not a few have a verse or verses of the most searching and
awe-inspiring nature. Generally speaking, however, the vast majority of
sundial mottoes and verses, are of an inferior standard, and quite
unworthy of the supreme beauty and great wisdom inculcated by this
silent monitor.
For the most part the tendency of the varying ages has been to keep to
the Latin tongue, in which, with scholarly dictum, the average artificer
has in very deed expressed, “Multum in Parvo,” what a humble mind,
unversed in that language, “not easily understanded by ye people,” would
rather have read at greater length in his own mother tongue. Latin
mottoes abound everywhere; generally some pretty conceit of the
unscholarly, but often, too, the genuine relics of an ecclesiastical
influence in matters of education. A careful review of the large number
of mottoes and verses that are known, would, as one might very naturally
expect, show that the great majority were of a religious kind. But the
paucity of ideas they display is painfully evident; being as a rule of a
lugubrious nature they are hardly ever far removed from the most
self-evident facts; and such awe-inspiring words as “Prepare to die,”
“Consider your latter end,” “Beware of the last hour,” “I shall return
but never thou,” do not convey aught of the sunny, sympathetic,
instructive and lovable characteristics that the sundial has to give.
Here and there the thoughts of great minds, aptly expressed to suit the
dial’s power, stand out as red-letter days in a church’s calendar and
proclaim by their individuality an exceptional character. But such
verses are very rare, and where they exist they will generally be found
on dials that have been erected by the order of the writer of the verse
to mark some special occasion.
Verses on sundials are comparatively scarce compared with short mottoes;
and this is surprisingly strange, considering what I would like to term
the poetry of “ye horologe,” for there is hardly anything on this earth
that is better calculated to call forth from man the very finest
expressions relative to our brief life, than the sundial. This important
point in the history of the sundial is hard to account for, unless it be
that the majority of dials were made for chance owners, turned out, in
fact, like the clocks of the present day, only in a lesser degree, and
being actually finished when their destination was known. In this case
there would often be hardly room for a lengthy verse or verses.
Possibly, too, in an economic age, the extra cost was a bar to such;
anyway, the fact remains that verses are seldom found. But, be it verse
or motto, one thing is most noticeable—namely, that nearly every one
gives force by potent words to some weighty, though time-worn idea, and
they teach frail mortal man to moralise and dwell on a subject that he
too readily thrusts from him—the brevity of life.
I should weary the reader if I were to attempt to record at all fully a
fair variety of the mottoes that exist. Indeed, to do justice to such a
subject, it would be necessary to give a very full list collected from
the different lands that have in various ways influenced our own in
matters of learning. This not being possible, I will but quote a few of
those mottoes and verses that have appealed to me as the best of their
class, and, with some short comment, pass on to other items of interest.
What more appropriate or suitable motto could be chosen, than the three
words, “Lead kindly light,” taken from Cardinal Newman’s beautiful hymn.
They are full of power and trustfulness, and, if placed on a dial in the
view of many, would be answerable for innumerable good deeds and noble
resolutions. Again, note the motto—_Cosi la vita_, “Such is Life,” on a
dial at Albizzola. This is of far greater force than “Prepare to die.”
We do not intend to die if we can help it, we intend to live! and so we
put the motto “Prepare to die” from our mind as crude and unfeeling. But
not so the former; it appeals to us, and the imperceptible moving shadow
on the dial’s face that soon will be gone gives with the motto a gentle
lesson that is considered by all.
There are longer mottoes of this class that give useful lessons, and are
of a kind well calculated to do good, such as _Sic transit gloria
mundi_, “Thus passeth the glory of the world;” and _Hora est Orandi_,
“It is the hour for prayer;” and that fine selection from Scripture for
a dial, “I also am under authority.” Such verses are good at all times
and in all places, and are very far removed from those that seem to
contain only the darkest of outlooks and naught of the sunny prospects
of life. There is another style or class of motto or verse that has a
witty vein, and which is by no means uncommon. The following are
amusing:—
“What is the time? come, why do you ask?
Is it to start, or to end your task?”
* * * * *
“Wait a moment never say
When hours you mean, or chance the day.”
* * * * *
“I live in the present, a past I recall,
But my future depends on the strength of this wall.”
* * * * *
“Since I never lose
A fresh excuse go choose.”
* * * * *
“Time was made for slaves, men say;
Yet free-men ask the time of day.”
A verse, written by Andrew Marvell in the reign of Charles II., called
forth by a drunken nobleman of the Court defacing the beautiful sundial
erected by Stone in the Privy Garden at Whitehall, in 1662, is of
interest:-
“For a dial the place is too unsecure,
Since the Privy Garden could not it defend;
And so near to the Court they will never endure
Any monument how they their time may misspend.”
There is a quaint and humorous legend given in “Notes and Queries” (2nd
S, v. ix., p. 279), concerning the motto “Begone about your business,”
placed over a dial at the east end of the Inner Temple terrace, that
makes very good reading. “When the dial was put up, the artist inquired
whether he should (as was customary) paint a motto under it. The
Benchers assented, and appointed him to call at the library on a certain
day and hour, at which time they would have agreed upon a motto. It
appears, however, that they had totally forgotten this; and when the
artist or his messenger called at the library at the time appointed, he
found no one but a cross-looking old gentleman poring over some musty
book. ‘Please, sir, I am come for the motto for the sundial.’ ‘What do
you want?’ was the pettish answer; ‘why do you disturb me?’ ‘Please,
sir, the gentleman told me I was to call at this hour for a motto for
the sundial.’ ‘Begone about your business,’ was the testy reply. The
man, either by design or mistake, chose to take this as an answer to his
inquiry, and accordingly painted in large letters under the dial,
‘Begone about your business.’ The Benchers when they saw it, decided
that it was very appropriate, and that they would let it stand—chance
having done their work for them as well as they could have done it for
themselves.”
Besides mottoes and verses that are of a serious or humorous nature,
there exists many that express in well-chosen words happy ideas of the
present or the past, such as the following:—
“Let not thoughts of time depress
A heart that owes but thankfulness.”
* * * * *
“Some men delight to weigh the showers,
But few attempt to weigh the hours.”
* * * * *
“Like the flowers, ever try
To catch the sun e’er it go by.”
* * * * *
“Believe me, mortals, when I say,
The past is what we make to-day.”
It is, however, a very difficult matter to trace the age of mottoes, and
the dial by no means is necessarily of the same date.
Even from the 16th century onwards we find suitable mottoes engraved on
sundial plates, which called upon the visitor to moralise or dwell upon
the passing beauties of creation. These verses give us an insight into
the home life and secret feelings of many a great mind otherwise silent
on matters concerning the more human side of life. Herein lies the great
charm of the sundial; it stands oft-times at the cross paths of a garden
demanding a passing look, and it bids us stop and think of those things
which we are apt to forget.
Surrounded by all that most appeals to the human mind—transitory gems of
the garden—the sundial exercises a subtle charm and exerts a soft and
more kindly influence which is felt in after life. So much could be said
on the so-called poetry of the sundial that I hasten to control my pen
and deal with a more important item concerning its value.
As an ornament it is the greatest acquisition that any garden can
possess. As a time-keeper, if constructed for the locality and carefully
set, it is beyond compare; and like the flowers themselves it will to
the end of time remain one of the finest monitors that reasoning man can
follow. It is therefore a matter of great surprise that many sundials
should have for so long a period fallen into disuse and decay. But we
live in an age of bustle and excitement, and it is seldom that any day
gives an hour of rest and mental relaxation from the worries that kill.
But when that hour does come, and we find ourselves at peace in our
gardens, far from the maddening crowd, studying the beauties of nature,
our gaze is certain to be centred sooner or later upon the sundial, our
best companion in that quiet hour; and the few moments we spend in
silent contemplation before it, will strengthen us for the bustle and
trials of an exacting life.
T. G. W. H.
The Setting of the Sundial.