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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 26/07/16, SPi

The Literary Agenda

Literature and the Public Good


OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 26/07/16, SPi

The Literary Agenda

Literature and the


Public Good
RICK RYLANCE

1
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 26/07/16, SPi

3
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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 26/07/16, SPi

To my daughter Annie, with great love


OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 26/07/16, SPi

Series Introduction

The Crisis in, the Threat to, the Plight of the Humanities: enter these
phrases in Google’s search engine and there are 23 million results, in a
great fifty-year-long cry of distress, outrage, fear, and melancholy.
Grant, even, that every single anxiety and complaint in that catalogue
of woe is fully justified—the lack of public support for the arts, the
cutbacks in government funding for the humanities, the imminent
transformation of a literary and verbal culture by visual/virtual/digital
media, the decline of reading . . . And still, though it were all true, and
just because it might be, there would remain the problem of the
response itself. Too often there’s recourse to the shrill moan of offended
piety or a defeatist withdrawal into professionalism.
The Literary Agenda is a series of short polemical monographs that
believes there is a great deal that needs to be said about the state of
literary education inside schools and universities and more fundamen-
tally about the importance of literature and of reading in the wider
world. The category of ‘the literary’ has always been contentious.
What is clear, however, is how increasingly it is dismissed or is unrec-
ognised as a way of thinking or an arena for thought. It is sceptically
challenged from within, for example, by the sometimes rival claims of
cultural history, contextualized explanation, or media studies. It is
shaken from without by even greater pressures: by economic exigency
and the severe social attitudes that can follow from it; by technological
change that may leave the traditional forms of serious human commu-
nication looking merely antiquated. For just these reasons this is the
right time for renewal, to start reinvigorated work into the meaning
and value of literary reading for the sake of the future.
It is certainly no time to retreat within institutional walls. For all the
academic resistance to ‘instrumentalism’, to governmental measure-
ments of public impact and practical utility, literature exists in and
across society. The ‘literary’ is not pure or specialized or self-confined;
it is not restricted to the practitioner in writing or the academic in
studying. It exists in the whole range of the world which is its subject-­
matter: it consists in what non-writers actively receive from writings
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viii Series Introduction


when, for example, they start to see the world more imaginatively as a
result of reading novels and begin to think more carefully about
human personality. It comes from literature making available much of
human life that would not otherwise be existent to thought or recog-
nizable as knowledge. If it is true that involvement in literature, so far
from being a minority aesthetic, represents a significant contribution
to the life of human thought, then that idea has to be argued at the
public level without succumbing to a hollow rhetoric or bowing to a
reductive world-view. Hence the effort of this series to take its place
between literature and the world. The double-sided commitment to
occupying that place and establishing its reality is the only ‘agenda’
here, without further prescription as to what should then be thought
or done within it.
What is at stake is not simply some defensive or apologetic ‘justifi-
cation’ in the abstract. The case as to why literature matters in
the world not only has to be argued conceptually and strongly tested
by thought, it should be given presence, performed and brought to life
in the way that literature itself does. That is why this series includes
the writers themselves, the novelists and poets, in order to try to
close the gap between the thinking of the artists and the thinking of
those who read and study them. It is why it also involves other kinds
of thinkers—the philosopher, the theologian, the psychologist, the
neuro-scientist—examining the role of literature within their own
life’s work and thought, and the effect of that work, in turn, upon liter-
ary thinking. This series admits and encourages personal voices in an
unpredictable variety of individual approach and expression, speaking
wherever possible across countries and disciplines and temperaments.
It aims for something more than intellectual assent: rather the literary
sense of what it is like to feel the thought, to embody an idea in a person,
to bring it to being in a narrative or in aid of adventurous reflection. If
the artists refer to their own works, if other thinkers return to ideas that
have marked much of their working life, that is not their vanity nor a
failure of originality. It is what the series has asked of them: to speak out
of what they know and care about, in whatever language can best serve
their most serious thinking, and without the necessity of trying to cover
every issue or meet every objection in each volume.
Philip Davis
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Contents

Introduction: Platforms  1
1. Value Problems 9
I. A Theft 9
II. Costs and Benefits 11
III. Books and Benefits 21
IV. The Public Good 27
V. Who Reads? 30
VI. Screening Out? 32
VII. ‘All the Instruments Agree . . .’ 40
2. Some Answers 55
I. Plato 55
II. Sir Philip Sidney 64
III. A Peacock and His Tail 70
IV. And After 80
3. Money 89
I. Revenues 90
II. Money 105
4. Goods 131
I. Three Types of Good 131
II. The Price of Literature 138
III. Old Misery 153
5. The Power of Empathy 163
I. Ambiguity and a Celebration 163
II. Hardship and Beyond 170
III. The Worlds of Others 179
IV. Being You 186

Acknowledgements 203
Bibliography 205
Index 219
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 26/07/16, SPi

Introduction
Platforms

At first I thought she might fall. Engrossed in her book and close to
a platform edge, her eyes rove greedily over the central chapters of
Middlemarch at 7.00 a.m. on the London Tube. The book is close to her
face; she is oblivious to the roar of the arriving train which lies on the
other side of the silence of reading; her clothes billow. The train stops,
she wheels aboard in a practised way, the fate of Dorothea Brooke
and the others entirely absorbing her in the crush.
The next day, travelling later, I get a seat, rare in London. The chap
sitting next to me is reading. I glance sideways. He is reading Moby Dick,
and as deep in it as the sea. I look around the carriage. Of the sixteen
people in my section, nine are reading; four are sleeping, staring, or
fiddling with their luggage; two are playing games on their mobile
phones with twitchy intensity; and one (me) is looking at them all.
Nine of sixteen is 56 per cent, which is close enough to the average
proportion of British people—about two-thirds—who read books
regularly (see Chapter 3). These nine are not all reading books, but
of those who are there is an interesting array of titles: three novels,
something called The Puzzle of Ethics, a book to teach oneself Russian,
something large whose title is obscured by the reader’s hand, and
another on a tablet device. You can see it is fiction from the page layout
but it’s too far away to see what it is. It is said that the textual anonym-
ity of screen readers allows people to read erotica like E. L. James’s
Fifty Shades of Grey in public. This chap doesn’t look the type. Two
others are reading free newspapers. One is doing what looks like late
homework. One of the non-readers gets out a magazine. The train
sways and rattles into a station. Someone gets on and settles deep into
an Ian McEwan, his earpieces hissing with ferocious music.
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2 Literature and the Public Good


I look above their heads. Among ads for Internet dating sites, fast
food delivery, and strange and unnecessary medicines, are ones for
audio books: ‘she is travelling with a killer . . .’; ‘his journey is full of
danger . . .’; ‘she is waiting to discover Mr Right . . .’; ‘He’s off to a
different galaxy . . .’. Sometimes (always pleasing) there are ‘Poems on
the Underground’—a set of striking and nicely designed posters for
passengers to contemplate. Launched in 1986, there are fewer now,
but they are still ‘Golden in the heydays of his eyes’—a line from
Dylan Thomas’s ‘Fern Hill’, the one that happens to be before me.
Transport for London (Tf L), which runs the Tube, has taken to its
own poetry. Admonitory ditties with cartoonish line drawings sprinkle
trains and platforms telling one how to behave, what to do if you get
sick, and not to eat smelly food. One goes:
We really do not mean to chide
But try to move along inside,
So fellow travellers won’t have to face
An invasion of their personal space.
The cartoon features a young woman so absorbed in her book she
blocks the aisle leaving passengers fuming behind her. Tf L is open to
suggestions:
Writing a poem, limerick or rhyme
Is a lovely way to pass the time.
If you haven’t a subject yet
May we suggest ‘travel etiquette’?
Tell us in verse what’s wrong or right
And you could end-up on a poster site.
You may want to have a go at TFL.gov.uk/writeapoem. It’s better
than consumer questionnaires.
The Tube has always been a congenial home for reading and writing.
Railway reading was boosted by the nineteenth- and twentieth-century
growth in more rapid commuting. This influenced genres (the growth
of the short story) and literary institutions. In their different ways
W. H. Smith and Penguin are said to have origins on train station
platforms. In recent times, Tf L sometimes distributes little pamphlets
for particular occasions like the centenary of the outbreak of the First
World War in 2014. The pamphlet, War Poems on the Underground, had
full text work by Owen, Sassoon, and others, and more recent verse.
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Introduction: Platforms 3
You can pick it up for free from racks offering Tube maps and warnings
about ‘planned engineering works’. Tf L offers a free audio book on
their website, and 2015 was declared ‘Summer of Penguin’, celebrating
the publisher’s eightieth birthday with two free ‘bite-size reading morsels,
perfect to enjoy on your commute’.
I reach my destination. The station walls are thick with adverts for
novels hoping to be bestsellers. Over a year I observe how they change,
from beach reads as the summer approaches, to curling up with a rug
and a glass of wine as winter comes. Celebrity authors are always
popular: the new Philippa Gregory, Dan Brown, John le Carré, or
Hilary Mantel. So is anything endorsed by the ‘Richard and Judy
Bookclub’, filmed, or ‘featured on TV’. Eclectic endorsements, from
broadsheet reviews to Good Housekeeping, are prominent. These are large
posters, nearly as large as house doors. Some stations feature reading
more intensively than others and one might deduce the recreational
demography, maybe the educational history, of a district from the ads at
the local station. I see from one poster that the South Bank Centre, as
part of its ‘London Literary Festival’, is putting on a four-day reading of
Moby Dick by actors and writers in relay, something done earlier at the
Merseyside Maritime Museum. I should tell my neighbour on the train.
Rising up the escalator, the posters are smaller but still promote
reading matter. There are also adverts for other kinds of literary
event, particularly theatre. Theatrical posters are as ubiquitous as
spots of chewing gum. I notice four in a line: The Commitments (based
on Roddy Doyle’s novel); War Horse (based on Michael Morpurgo’s
novel); The Importance of Being Earnest; and several Shakespeares at the
Globe. I look across. On the downward-side are The Curious Incident of
the Dog in the Night-time (novel by Mark Haddon), a P. G. Wodehouse
spin-off, and The Woman in Black (novel by Susan Hill). There is a lot of
children’s theatre: Matilda, Hetty Feather, Wind in the Willows, Snowman,
Mary Poppins—all based on written texts, as are the musicals: Phantom
of the Opera, Les Misérables, Cats. One may want to distinguish between
Shakespeare and Aliens Love Underpants but the London Tube is an
environment saturated by literature. During the London Blitz of
1940–1, when Londoners sheltered underground, fifty-two lending
libraries were opened in the Tube.1
Poets write about it, of course, from early twentieth-century Imagist
poems, through T. S. Eliot’s ‘East Coker’, to Seamus Heaney’s ‘The
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4 Literature and the Public Good


Underground’, which reworks the Orpheus myth. There is fiction too,
and film. The sixties’ ‘Counter Cultural’ writer and activist Alexander
Trocchi planned a ‘poster magazine’ on rented advertisement panels
called The Moving Times. London Transport (as it then was) declined to
rent him the space, so Trocchi distributed it by hand.2 Peter Ackroyd
recounts a 2010 project called ‘Alight Here’ which collected poems
about particular stations (p. 152). Commentators remark on the inter-­
penetration of the solitary and the communal in reading on the Tube,
and the way it mixes social memory, as you travel through historic
locations, with introspection. John Lanchester’s 2013 book on the
District Line (one of twelve Penguin volumes by distinguished writers,
each about a different line), states that there are 1.1 billion journeys on
the Tube each year and 3.5 million each day; 600,000 people travel
on the network at any one time (which therefore has more people than
Glasgow, the UK’s fourth biggest city); and, of these, he estimates,
875,000 (a quarter of the daily travelling population) read at least
twice daily.3 So publishers have a market to reach for. It is said—truly
or not I don’t know—that publishers or their advertisers plant con-
spicuous readers in train carriages to flaunt a promoted book.
The Tf L accounts report that £169.5 million was earned from
advertising in 2014–15. It has 31,000 poster sites and, on 4 December
2015, a record 4,821,000 passengers travelled on the Tube in one day.
Advertising rates depend on many variables, including whether the ad
is placed on the train or the platform, in the booking hall or corridors,
in the lift or on the floor (as a ‘floor graphic’). It is a heavily segmented
provision. The location of the station is important (does it have inter-
secting lines for instance?), as is the station footfall where prices
discriminate between 5–12 million or over 12 million passengers
annually. Costs vary by the season, and whether the ads are paper
posters or moving screen (called ‘illuminated galleries’), to be found
on some escalators. How many ads are taken in a batch is influential,
as is the negotiating power of the handling agency. A typical cost for
posters at 2015 prices might be £67k for forty-eight sheets and £170k for
site rental. Panel adverts on trains cost £52k for four weeks. Advertising
in the top ten so-called ‘Platinum Stations’ (mainly in central enter-
tainment districts) carry a premium. Oxford Circus, London’s busiest
station (which carries 100 million passengers a year and was closed
113 times in 2015 because of congestion) costs £265k a month for
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Introduction: Platforms 5
displays on ‘five ways and entrance domination’. By contrast, adverts
on the Tyne and Wear Metro in north-east England cost £4–10k for
the same period. So there is gold in these escalators and poster sites.
(The price information was disclosed to me by an advertising insider,
incidentally, and is not citeable.)
A number of things are clear from this. That literature has a promi-
nent public presence; that it carries a significant economic signature; and
that it negotiates between the privacy and inwardness of an individual’s
reading and the public formation in which it participates and on which
it draws. These will be central themes—platforms—in this book.

* * * * * *
Immersive reading is not a retreat from public life, nor its opponent.
There is no choice to be made on this, and this book opposes views
that require one to be an ‘intrinsicist’ or an ‘instrumentalist’ in how
one regards art. These are unnecessary and unhelpful alternatives.
The Victorian psychologist G. H. Lewes has a wonderfully telling
image for the way one thinks about the relation of mind to brain. One
does not need—as so many of his contemporaries did—to choose
between them, boosting mind to the glory of God and the human
race, or reducing mind to the after-effects of living matter. The two
are, Lewes says, like the convex and concave surfaces of a sphere. One
can discriminate between them, but not separate them.4 When one is
deeply immersed in a book on the London Tube, the world may roll
away mentally, but one is still in it, surrounded by the commerce of
the book trade. The opportunities for new reading are offered. Others
are busy in the same way. Sometimes strangers ask about your reading;
they would like to know about it too.
In much of the material presented in this book, literature is deeply
embedded and consequential. To my mind, seeing private experience
and public presence as hostile to each other, or unaccommodating, is
as untrue in argument as it is in fact. The case will be argued as we
proceed, but the often testy opposition of aesthetic values to utilitar-
ian ones is false, except as part of a rather elderly debate. I cannot see
why private enthusiasm and public benefit are mutually exclusive.
A work of literature exists in the mind of its reader with pleasure,
excitement, and joy; simultaneously it has public presence bringing
those things to others and staging continuously the great debates of
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6 Literature and the Public Good


our or any era. Literature contributes to this, to individual nurturing
and well-being, and to prosperity both economic and cultural. It is
among the greatest of assets which we enjoy and which we depreciate
at our peril. It is a public good and a gift to the world.
What is a ‘public good’? Subtler answers to this question will be
discussed in Chapters 1 and 4. But for now we might note that both
words are challenging. ‘The reading public’, sometimes characterized
as marginal or ‘elite’, is in fact the majority of the population in the
UK. So reading and literature touch most of us, either directly through
our reading, or indirectly in ways described in Chapters 3 and 4.
‘Public’ is also opposed to ‘private’, and reading, especially literary
reading, can be characterized, not least by some of its champions, as
sensitive, inward, and withdrawn, a compensation for the rough and
inimical ways of the world. We will encounter some of this in what
follows, and, if one reflects on one’s own experience, we can see truth
in it. Reading through childhood (as described in Chapter 5) and into
older years, retains this authority, and I doubt it would carry its social
effects so powerfully without it. But private reading, though precious,
is not comprehensive as an account of the way literature functions in
our lives, any more than the literary text alone is sufficient without
understanding context and purpose. ‘Public’ therefore includes the
range of engagements in which literature has presence in society, and
the open and necessary debate to which it contributes about what is
good or otherwise. Chapter 4 sets out other ways in which ‘good’
might be understood in this context, and I won’t trespass upon it,
except to note that valuing ‘good literature’—that is works in lan-
guage that quicken our hearts and minds, create beauty, and allow us
to rethink the world—cannot be other than essential for the book’s
argument, as for life.
This book has nothing so austere as a method, nor so grave as a
theory. It has a way of proceeding which, no doubt hubristically, I like
to compare to that of the great American anthropologist Clifford
Geertz’s idea of ‘thick description’.5 I have therefore accumulated
material in some places to render the texture of current debate, pay-
ing attention to diverse sources, including those produced outside
mainstream academia in the so-called ‘grey literature’ (research pro-
duced for specific purposes by policy units, ‘think tanks’, and the like)
and from an eclectic range of disciplines. Sometimes this can be
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Introduction: Platforms 7
expressed as lists which, more than one friendly reader has remarked,
do accumulate. But I wanted to offer this sense of the ‘thick’ presence
of literature and the unresolved complexity of reasoning in some of
the argument. If it is not to your taste, I encourage readers to acquire
skills developed by the late-nineteenth-century autodidact George
Acorn noted in Chapter 5. Acorn was troubled by doctrinal literature
and ‘it was necessary in self-defense to pick out the interesting
parts . . . a practice at which I became very dexterous’. I feature some
close and detailed analysis of literary texts in the same spirit of ‘thick-
ness’. It would be odd in a book recommending the value of immersive
reading not to do so.
As noted, there is plentiful historical debate about the public benefit
of literature and of culture more generally. The sheer scale of this,
both now and over time, illustrates how important the issue is for us
and our society. It is not and never has been a matter of mere ‘academic’
debate, in that unnecessarily pejorative sense people use. Today, and
probably always, discussions are held by practitioners, policymakers,
and politicians daily, as well as ordinary people. They write papers—
including, as I write, a seventy-page UK government publication, The
Culture White Paper ‘Presented to Parliamentary by the Secretary of
State for Culture, Media & Sport by Command of Her Majesty’6—
and they argue about funding, priorities, and benefits. This book
pays selective attention to this over time, perhaps disproportionately
attending to recent deliberations at the expense of more lasting and
weighty figures such as Matthew Arnold who only smiles or scowls
from the wings. But space permits only so much, and Arnold’s views,
and those of others of similar importance, will be known already to
most readers. I have tried to shuttle between recent debates and their
ancestors to give a sense of continuity as well as to illuminate the pres-
ent through the past.
The book is structured as follows: Chapter 1 discusses ‘Value
Problems’ in reflections on the benefits of literature, while Chapter 2
looks at selected responses to that problem over time. Chapters 3
and 4 examine the economics of literature, and the literary commu-
nity’s complex attitude to this economic power. I argue that the
worth of the literary economy has been under-appreciated and look
at literary responses to the financial crisis of 2008, the most urgent
and far-­reaching of our time. Chapter 4 develops a more general
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8 Literature and the Public Good


discussion of what we mean by ‘a good’. Chapter 5 returns to the
reading of texts and how they shape our individual and collective
lives for the better.

* * * * * *
I am aware that the London Tube is atypical in intensity, volume,
and sheer economic clout, as well as for demographic reasons. But, as
commentators always note, it has great metaphoric power. Writers
exploit this of course, as Heaney does in the poem mentioned above.
My observations of people reading were initially innocent of purpose,
but, as time and trains rolled on, reading on the Tube seemed com-
pelling not only as a metaphor but as a practice. That this practice
is both personally immersive, but also immersed in public activity, is
the point.

Notes
1. Peter Ackroyd, London Under (London, Vintage, 2012), p. 171.
2. David Ashford, London Underground: A Cultural History (Liverpool, Liverpool University
Press, 2013), pp. 145–6.
3. John Lanchester, What We Talk About When We Talk about the Tube: The District Line
(London, Penguin, 2013), pp.75–6, 82.
4. G. H. Lewes, Problems of Life and Mind: First Series: The Foundations of a Creed, 2 vols
(London, Trübner, 1874), vol. I, p. 112.
5. Clifford Geertz, ‘Thick Description: Towards an Interpretative Theory of Culture’
in The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (London, Fontana, 1993), pp. 3–30.
6. https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/
509942/DCMS_The_Culture_White_Paper__1_.pdf (accessed 21/4/16).
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 26/07/16, SPi

1
Value Problems

I. A Theft
On the night of 19–20 December 2011, thieves drove into Dulwich
Park in south London, unloaded their equipment, cut from its base
Barbara Hepworth’s 1970, seven-foot, bronze Two Forms (Divided
Circle), loaded it on their truck, and escaped. They left a concrete
plinth and two metal residues the size and shape of cow pats. Police
believe the sculpture was stolen for scrap and it has not been recovered.
Increasingly in the UK, thieves target public assets and facilities—
sculptures, war memorials, manhole covers, railway lines, utility cables,
street signs, school and hospital equipment, church roofs, and arte-
facts such as crosses, crucifixes, and lecterns. These are sold as
antiques or, more usually, to feed the growing world demand for
basic metals. The police estimate that the thefts cost the UK around
£700 million a year and, to give one indication, ecclesiastical insurance
claims rose by 50 per cent in 2011. Hepworth’s sculpture was insured
for half a million pounds—way below its likely price at auction—but
its scrap value was probably no more than a few hundred as scrap
bronze then fetched about £2.50 a kilo. The global economy came
that night to a poor London borough and took some metal—and a
work of art.
The robbery received wide attention in the UK media and
prompted recollection of similar stories stretching back to a high-profile
theft in 2005 of a two-ton reclining figure by Henry Moore from a
Hertfordshire village. Its estimated meltdown value was £1,500,
which was subsequently confirmed to be its fate. It was traced from
Essex scrap dealer to Essex scrap dealer before ending up in Rotterdam.
Its art market value was somewhere in the region of £3 million.
A month later, a monumental Lynn Chadwick bronze (­market value
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10 Literature and the Public Good


around £300,000; scrap value about £1,000) was stolen from
Roehampton University. In July 2012, a Moore sundial, estimated to
be worth half a million pounds, was sold to a scrap dealer for £46.
The thoughtful dealer contacted the police and two men were jailed
for twelve months each. In October 2013, a Moore bronze was stolen
from an open-air site in Dumfries in Scotland and has not been recov-
ered. Such stories—with their human interest (desecrated war memo-
rials, plundered churches, and so forth)—cause unease for many
Britons. As sampled through the press coverage, concerns include: the
trade-off between open amenities and security; the value of public
spaces for communities (the loss of the Hepworth, according to the
Friends of Dulwich Park, was ‘like losing a finger’); the molestation of
the public interest by private greed—more than one commentator
connected the Hepworth episode to the continuing banking crisis; the
importance of the public display of works of art for Britain’s sense of
community; and (at a more rarefied level) the relationship of art to its
material and economic forms. For many, the Dulwich theft was an
outrage against trust and sociability. For others, it prompted another
round of discussion of art and the public good.
Two days after the robbery, the novelist Philip Hensher described
the aesthetic value of Hepworth’s sculpture with eloquent feeling in
The Independent newspaper:
what I love most about the Two Forms (Divided Circle) is not the
bronze at all, but the holes. Other sculptors have specialised in
holes, but nothing is as radiant as the air that fills the gaps in a
Hepworth—here, two shining holes and a vertical empty line,
like light joining the heavens and the earth. And all around the
Hepworth, a shining aura. It gathers up the air around it, and
makes it blaze with energy.
The value of such objects therefore is non-material: ‘You can value
the bronze in a Hepworth: you can weigh it up and cost it, and melt it
and turn it into widgets. But how are you going to price up the holes,
the gap, the shining aura? . . . There is no price to be placed on it. . . . It
is just a gift from the sculptor to us, not worth anything. It just makes
our souls sing, that’s all.’ For Hensher, ‘Art, in the end, is more than a
copper alloy on a base, just as a poem is more than ink impressed on
to a paper, and a beautiful chair is more than wood and cloth. To put
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Value Problems 11
a price on it is to humiliate it, whether in assessment of the value of
its substance, or costing up its aesthetic value. . . . [t]he holes and the
gaps, the arranged air, the beauty that has no cost and no price—
everything beyond the grasp of money is what matters.’1
These are themes that will run through this book.

II. Costs and Benefits


The problem of how to assess aesthetic value and the personal and
social benefits it brings is perennial, but is particularly vexed in the
Western world just now. The self-questioning provoked by the eco-
nomic disaster of 2008 spurred criticism of materialist values and of
wealth as a goal in life. There is strong debate about the relationship
between private actions and the public interest, and revitalized discus-
sion of the responsibilities and expectations of individuals, agencies,
and corporations in public contexts. There is vivid argument in many
places about, among other things, spirituality in a secular age; respect
for values in public life and disrespect for the public good by private
selfishness; tolerance for different modes of life and beliefs; concern
about the modern role of established traditions and institutions;
unease about how we define quality of life; and uncertainty about
how priorities in public policy are determined.
These debates are of particular relevance to the topic of this book.
Should cultural policy, for instance, be determined by the needs of an
ailing economy? (This is a question complicated by the growing eco-
nomic power of the ‘creative industries’ in the UK, now—at 7 per cent
of GDP—rivalling sectors like financial services.) And there is debate
about how we fund costly public goods like education and research
when the benefits of these things, though notionally ‘public’, are often
realized as private advantage (such as enhanced career prospects and
lifetime earnings for successful students). In these discussions, artists,
culturalists, and humanists often feel hard-pressed and are vocal about
the apparently increasing dominion of practical science and instru-
mental policymaking. For many, it is alleged, society looks at a
Hepworth and sees only bronze (or at least an auctioneer’s catalogue)
where it should see space, air, and radiance.
The role of government, decision-makers, and policy planners in
these debates can be an uncomfortable one. Public cries for immediate
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12 Literature and the Public Good


action on grave problems often arise prior to full understanding and
demand resources beyond capability. Priority-making is therefore
itself a priority. However, finding good guidance can be as complex as
the problem itself. It will involve the deliberation of political and other
sorts of values and processes; it will require standards of comparative
measurement; and it will call for evidence to demonstrate the advan-
tage of one course of action over another. Nobody paying attention to
current debates about how to revitalize the deteriorating economies
of numerous countries can be under any illusion that this is straight-
forward; nor that the value problem lies at its heart.
Meanwhile, people reach for ways of understanding their situations
and there seems a declining number who think the humanities have
much to say of practical interest. Popular-audience books on the
economics of the 2008 crisis by authors such as Paul Krugman, John
Lanchester, Robert Skidelski, and Joseph Stiglitz have boomed.2
Newspaper columnists recommend turning away from reading fiction
to reading books such as these. ‘When the news is so apocalyptic, and
there is so much to understand’, wrote Zoe Williams in The Guardian at
the back end of 2011 as the Hepworth was about to be pinched, ‘it
feels more than frivolous to read about made-up people. It feels unpat-
riotic. Or to put it another way, it is like watching the telly when you
have homework.’3 Suspicions that literature is mere fantasy, and a
guilty, unworthy, and unhelpful pleasure, are not unknown. Williams’s
severance of hard fact from soft musing is symptomatic, and it is not
unrelated to the separation of material form from aesthetic aura in
the experience of artworks. Bronze trumps space.
This book will argue that these separations are neither necessary
nor true. But to work towards that conclusion we have to understand
something about the ways in which the criteria for priority-setting in
public policy are developed, and how data, information, and analysis
inform these decisions. For many, the techniques in use are not felt
congenial to the interests of art and culture, nor appropriate to their
nature.
The UK government references project decisions to the so-called
Treasury ‘Green Book’, a manual on ‘Appraisal and Evaluation in
Central Government’.4 It is a hard-nosed document founded on the
not-unreasonable assumption that project proposals should undergo
cost-benefit analysis. The method for conducting this analysis is,
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Value Problems 13
­ owever, more contentious. It requires money values to be the com-
h
mon point of reference for all activity. This, it is claimed, ensures sound
financial decision-making, and establishes a common unit of compar-
ison between very unlike things such as a new battleship or support for
research in the arts and humanities, as a Treasury official once put it
to me. Her options were provocative and hypothetical, but the anec-
dote illustrates the need for equivalent comparison. The Green Book
requires ‘analysis which quantifies in monetary terms as many of the
costs and benefits of a proposal, including items for which the market
does not provide a satisfactory measure of economic value’ (p. 4). It
accepts that factors outside market pricing ‘are equally as important
as market impacts’, and that determining these values is ‘complex’
(p. 57). But it recommends the use of a battery of techniques described
in a thorough annex. These techniques are used across many different
domains (health, environment, transport, culture, etc.) and are
designed to generate a bottom line that can be compared. For cultural
projects, they include ‘preference techniques’. These calculate on the
basis of surveys, or by comparison with ‘consumer behaviour in a
similar or related market’ (p. 57), what people would pay for some-
thing were it to be chargeable. A money value is therefore derived.5 It
is easy to see that we are at some distance from a close encounter with
an art object but (to construct a fanciful example) it might be possible
to calculate the value of Hepworth’s sculpture by aggregating the
value of the metal, a hypothetical sale value derived from interna-
tional art market prices, and some judgment of the social effects of
having or losing the sculpture in a public place derived from a prefer-
ence study. In fact, as this is a loss rather than a proposed acquisition,
the calculation would not be done—at least not by the British Treasury.
But some cultural economists, most impressively David Galenson at
the University of Chicago, use art market data in interesting analyses
of how canons of value are formed in art history.6
The tools of measurement referred to in the Green Book are
unlikely to set lips smacking among those primarily interested in aes-
thetics or the meaning and significance of artworks. And it excites
strong criticism. But it poses an important challenge to those making
the transition from personal, or even shared, convictions about aes-
thetic values to policy recommendations. Not all things are affordable
in political reality, and if one wants to make a case for arts funding, or
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14 Literature and the Public Good


humanistic education, then bypassing this thinking is a disappointing
road. On the other hand, there is a risk that the values belonging more
naturally to the arts—vividly evoked by Philip Hensher—will be com-
promised by the uninspiring process of instrumental calculation. This
is a not-infrequent double bind for arts advocates, or humanities
researchers asked to specify the ‘impact’ of their work to justify fund-
ing. It is felt a disturbance of natural method and language (and some-
times free enquiry). Many fear that the baby vanishes with the
economic bathwater; others fear children will be unwashed. The
dilemma is sharpened in straightened economic times through proce-
dures such as ‘zero-based budgeting’: the assumption that one starts
afresh with nothing allocated or assumed, despite any past history of
favourable spending decisions or existing commitments, or historic
preferences. In such circumstances the need to build the case on first
principles takes a sharp and urgent form. Is the case to be made on
grounds of intrinsic merit or instrumental advantage?
The use of measurement data and justificatory requirements of
this kind are ubiquitous in public life and rile humanistic opinion.
When decision-makers demand ‘value assurance’, humanists see a
category mistake. The intrinsic value of art, or scholarly learning, or
abstract ideas, or faith beliefs, or one’s inwardness with foreign lan-
guages, for example, are said to be good in themselves. They demon-
strate their worth by existing, and only incidentally through worldly
activity stimulated by them.
The rival view claims that instrumental consequences determine
value. The use to which a thing is put, and the benefits realized
thereby, disclose value, or fail to. The first view is often called categori-
cal, referring to the special nature of categories such as art or learning.
The second view is consequentialist in that value inheres in the conse-
quences of a thing and not the thing itself. Consequentialist propositions
are characteristic of utilitarian thinking whereby value judgements
are based on assessments of usefulness. In its crudest form, the greater
the quantity of utility derived, added arithmetically, the greater the
value. The figurehead of radical British nineteenth-century utilitari-
anism, Jeremy Bentham, notoriously asserted that the game of push-
pin was as valuable as poetry when one calculated the recreational
pleasure brought by both. He claimed to see no essential difference in
intrinsic properties.7 We are again gazing at bronze, not sculpture.
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Value Problems 15
Conversely, it is difficult to conceive of pure ‘intrinsic-ness’, an ethe-
real quality never knowingly impacting on humans who experience it.
What would it be? A play never watched? A book never read? A pic-
ture under a veil? Silent music?
The conflict between categorical and consequentialist, intrinsic and
instrumental, opinion has been long and aggressive. (Chapter 2
describes the antagonism between utilitarianism and literary culture
during Britain’s nineteenth-century industrial and commercial expan-
sion.) However, in specific cases, it is difficult to determine where
claims about intrinsic worth end and instrumental properties appear.
Nor is it easy to determine which view should have weight on any
particular occasion. Philip Hensher describes with inspiring passion
his life-long response to Barbara Hepworth’s work in the article
quoted at the beginning of this chapter: ‘I first glimpsed her work in
an introduction to modern art for children. . . . It was just love at first
sight. . . . Her forms went straight to my soul, and stayed there. You
can’t explain, always, why you love what you love . . .’. This is the out-
come of a particular human sensibility, with its particular needs,
wishes, and preferences, encountering a prized aesthetic object in joy-
ful appreciation. But interaction between subject and object produces
the response, not the object alone. These feelings, and the values
attached to them, are not transferred directly in the same way that,
say, ice produces cold or electricity a shock. Hepworth’s Two Forms
might be said to be the instrument of, or at least the vehicle for, the
pleasure and inspiration Hensher and others (including me) gain from
her work. In his poem ‘Tintern Abbey’ (1798), Wordsworth wrote of
the ‘the mighty world / Of eye and ear,—both what they half create /
And what perceive’ (ll. 105–7), and we are in something of the same
territory here.
The novelist Elizabeth Bowen describes a similar process in reading
literature:

the process of reading is reciprocal; the book is no more than a


formula, to be furnished out with images out of the reader’s
mind. At any age, the reader must come across: the child reader
is the most eager and quick to do so; he not only lends to the
story, he flings into the story the whole of his sensuous experi-
ence which from being limited is the more intense.8
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16 Literature and the Public Good


It is therefore difficult to maintain that these values are somehow nat-
ural properties or emanations of an artwork. They are products of
particular people, at particular times, in particular circumstances,
doing a particular kind of thing. Conversely of course, as is often
pointed out, it is meaningless to talk about the instrumental conse-
quences of artworks if they have no intrinsic merit. An object about
which no one cares will produce no instrumental consequences and
certainly not those elevating affects claimed to be among the benefits
of art.
Somewhat repetitive, set-piece encounters between proponents of
intrinsic and instrumental values can make for lively punch-ups from
time to time, and of late this binary opposition has coloured discus-
sion of cultural and educational issues in the humanities, despite
measured efforts at moderating positions.9 Disagreements are regis-
tered in different vocabularies—materialists (or mechanists) versus
spiritualists; philistines versus connoisseurs; populists versus elitists,
and so on. But, the adversarial binary is the limiting and defining
condition. Taking the larger view, a number of questions are
important.
First, how do we describe the nature and functioning of value in
complex situations? Second, how does a society come to know about
itself and know what is appropriate knowledge for the decisions to be
made? And, third, where is the source of authority to make these
decisions? Might it be through popular consultation? Or by profes-
sional groups who derive authority from historical expertise and cre-
dentials, although opponents allege they are elite groups with vested
interests? Even if one answers that expert groups are best placed to
make these decisions, it is unclear which should have the upper hand:
civil service mandarins? Ivory-tower academics? Self-interested arts
practitioners?
Meanwhile, the use of economistic techniques for assessing value
has been widely extended. Acknowledging imperfection has been part
of the process but usually to argue for further refinement. The report
produced in 2008 by three gurus of international economics—Joseph
Stiglitz, Amartya Sen, and Jean-Paul Fitoussi—to advise the French
government on these questions is characteristic of the approach.10
Blaming the financial crisis on the failure of current measurement
systems and standardized metrics, they recommend more extensive
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Value Problems 17
data-gathering to enable better judgement. Data on social welfare
topics should sit alongside narrow measures of economic perfor-
mance such as GDP. Their influential report stimulated similar con-
clusions internationally and fed into valuable work by the United
Nations, described in Chapter 5.
One high-profile outcome has been the so-called ‘happiness index’
in Britain, paralleling similar projects elsewhere which attempt to
ascertain the well-being of populations. The British survey was first
conducted by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) in 2011 with the
intention of gaining large amounts of qualitative data about how peo-
ple feel about their lives.11 The supposed ‘science of happiness’ is con-
tentious and need not detain us (except to recognize that cultural
factors barely figure in the ONS surveys). But what is noteworthy is
that it is subject to the same disputes afflicting arguments about cul-
tural and artistic value; that is, that the techniques of measurement
are inappropriate to the nature of the object being measured.12 Karen
Scott, an advocate of well-being research whose recent book Measuring
Wellbeing (2012) is a lucid account of this little history, thinks that art-
works present an instructive limit case:
How do we measure the value of a painting? We might assess its
economic value, we might measure its physical size, we might
categorise the era it was painted in, the medium used, the type
of art, the nationality of the artist, the subject of the painting.
We might go on to consider the range of pigments used, the
compositional factors, the symbolic components. However by
looking only at this information, rather than the actual thing
itself, we could not possibly understand how these dimensions
relate to produce this painting. How could we tell if this paint-
ing was mediocre or a work of art?13
She argues that it is only by professional inspection of these matters,
and their correlation with accepted ways of judging, that such ques-
tions find answers.
These ideas have spread. Researchers in environmental protec-
tion, for instance, have sought evidence for the value of taken-for-
granted aspects of our environment such as open spaces, biodiversity,
tranquillity, and the beauty of landscapes. Inexpensive Progress?, a 2012
report commissioned by the Campaign to Protect Rural England, the
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18 Literature and the Public Good


National Trust, and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds,
was provoked by concerns that revisions to the national planning
framework might allow building in green spaces. It argues that weight
should be given to the ‘non-market values’ of land and related amen-
ities, and it uses the kinds of technique outlined in the Treasury
Green Book: ‘Economic techniques’, it states, ‘can reveal the values
which people place on these public goods’.14 Torbay in Devon
became the first British local authority to monetize the value of trees
growing in its administrative area. A value of £280 million was pro-
posed on the basis of factors like carbon cleansing, replacement cost,
wildlife protection, and amenity value to residents and visitors. There
are 800,000 trees in Torbay; their previous accounting value was a
notional £1.15
It may well be that initiatives such as these follow pragmatic path-
ways to produce evidence in forms thought persuasive in government.
But the approach is contagious. Similar methods are used in the US
and, increasingly, are extended to include art and culture.16 Counting
New Beans: Intrinsic Impact and the Value of Art is a locally developed and
locally published study of theatre and performance in the San
Francisco Bay Area. It addresses evaluation in ways that try to get
beyond audience figures, revenue raising, and ticket pricing: or,
indeed, assertions of the self-evident value of drama. Like many such
studies it uses qualitative as well as quantitative data gathered locally
and informed by practitioner opinion. Public preferences are impor-
tant; lobbying for funding is a reality; and a more rounded assessment
of value, escaping the intrinsic/instrumental cul-de-sac, is necessary
to understand the realities of drama and performance in public situa-
tions.17 Similarly, the US National Endowment for the Arts (NEA)—
which supported the New Beans project—is, for the first time, awarding
grants for research into the value and impact of the arts with a view
to assessing their local or regional impacts. 2011 projects include: stud-
ies of the cognitive development of children participating in the arts;
assessment of factors that influence the economic sustainability of
arts organizations; studies of the influence of these organizations on
civic engagement, community-building, and social tolerance; and the
impact of the arts on neighbourhood prosperity.18 Another NEA study
demonstrated that ‘literary reading strongly correlates other forms of
active civic participation’ including volunteering.19
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
Vertat vt in brutum de racione virum:
Ex oculis primum dabis, vt retinere secundum
Possis, dum causam lex regit ipsa tuam.
Causidici nubes sunt ethera qui tenebrescunt,508
Lucem quo solis nemo videre potest:
Obfuscant etenim legis clarissima iura,
Et sua nox tetra vendicat esse diem;
Istis inque viris perdit sua lumina splendor,
230 Verum mentitur, fraus negat esse fidem.
Lex furit et pietas dormit, sapiencia fallit,
Pax grauat, et lites commoda queque ferunt:
Et sic lex legis a ledo ledis in isto,
Et ius a iurgo, tempore iura legit.
Vnio set populi firmo si staret amore,
Causidici vanus tunc foret ille status.
Est bona lex in se fateor, tamen eius inique
Rectores video flectere iura modo.
Non licet, vt dicunt, quod conspiracio fiat,
240 Non tamen hoc faciunt quod sua iura docent:
Contra causidicum si quid michi lex det agendum,
Et peto consilium iuris habere meum,
Tunc dicunt alii, nolunt obstare sodali;
Sic ledunt, set eos ledere nemo potest.
Sic sibi causidicus mundi perquirit honores,
Subuertens lingue iura vigore sue:
Castiget reliquos lex quos vult, non tamen ipsos,
Quos deus aut mundus nescit habere probos.

Hic loquitur qualiter isti causidici et iuris


aduocati, in sua gradatim ascendentes
facultate, Iudicisque aspirantes officium,
iudicialis solii tandem cacumen attingunt; vbi
quasi in cathedra pestelencie509 sedentes,
maioris auaricie cecitate percussi, peioris quam
antea condicionis existunt.
Capm. iiii. Est Apprenticius, Sergantus post et Adultus,
250 Iudicis officium fine notabit eum.
Si cupit in primo, multo magis ipse secundo,
Tercius atque gradus est super omne reus;
Et sic lex grauibus auri moderatur habenis,
Quod modo per iustas non valet ire vias.
Libera qualis erat lex non est, immo ligatam
Carcere nummorum ceca cupido tenet:
Aurea ni clauis dissoluerit ostia clausa,
Eius ad introitum nullus habebit iter.
Nil manus in pulsu, nil vox clamore iuuabunt
260 Te cum lege loqui, qui sine claue venis:
Dux tibi si nummus non sit, conducat et ipse
Custodes legis, cassus abire potes.
Et sic causidicus causam, iudex neque iustum
Iudicium cernit, dux nisi nummus erit.
Sunt tria precipue, quibus est turbacio legis,
Vnde sui iuris perdit vbique locum;
Munus, amicicia, timor, hec tria iure negante
Pacta ferunt, quod eis obstat in orbe nichil.
Dicit enim Salomon oculos quod Iudicis aurum
270 Cecat, et est racio contaminata lucro;
Scimus et hoc omnes, qui iudicis extat amicus,
Perdere iudicio nil valet ipse suo.
Nouimus hoc eciam, tangat si causa potentem,
Cernere iusticiam dat timor inde fugam;
Horrendasque minas iudex non sustinet ipsas,
Sepius et precibus flectitur absque minis:
Litera magnatis dum pulsat iudicis aures,
Tollit vis calami debita iura sequi.
Set super omne modo sibi ve, qui pauper egendo
280 Quid petit in lege, dum nequit ipse dare!
Publica sunt ista nobis, quod lege moderna
Pauperis in causa ius negat acta sua.
Sic ego non video mea que sunt, set dubitando
Auribus attonitis quero cauenda malis.
Ecce dies in qua, fuerat que iuris amica,
Nunc magis econtra lex gerit acta sua:
Larua tegit faciem, confundit glosaque textum,
Vertit et in logicam lex variata scolam;
Absque tamen numero sunt legis in orbe scolares,
290 Plurima sunt folia, fructus et inde minor.
Nomine sub iusto quam sepe nephanda parantur,
Subque dolus facie plurima iuris agit:
Qui magis in causis discernunt talibus orbem,
Crimina sunt cautis ista timenda viris.
Grandia per multos tenuantur flumina riuos,
Alueus et sterilis sic vacuatur aquis:
Pluribus expensis patitur thesaurus eclipsim,
Fit, nisi preuideat, sepeque diues inops:
Sic humus ista breui ditissima tempore pauper,
300 Excessus legum ni moderetur, erit.
Tollere nodosam nescit medicina podagram,
Sic nec auaricie lex medicamen habet.
Est mea bursa potens, lex inde subacta silebit,510
Preueniens auro singula iura fugo:
Aut si magnatis michi curia sit specialis,
Nil opus est legum viribus, ipse loquor.
Continuata diu sic vlcerat illa cicatrix,
Non habet vlterius iam noua plaga locum.

Hic loquitur quasi per epistolam Iudicibus


illis directam, qui in caduca suarum diuiciarum
multitudine sperantes, deum adiutorem suum
ponere nullatenus dignantur.

Capm. v. O qui iudicia vite mortis quoque rerum


310 Clauditis in manibus appreciata lucris,
De qua iusticia vosmet saluare putatis,
Cum sit lex aliis vendita vestra dolis?
O dilectores mundi falsique potentes,
Terre quique deos esse putatis opes,
O qui mundanos sic affectatis honores,
Est quibus assidua sollicitudo comes,
Discite precipitem quia sepius ardua casum
Expectant que leui mobilitate cadunt.
Sepius alta cadit ventorum flatibus arbor,
320 Planta satis placido permanet atque gradu:
Aerias alpes niuibus candescere scimus,
Quas subito torquent frigus et omne gelu;
Est ibi ventorum rabies seuissima, dumque
Temperiem gratam proxima vallis habet.
Sic vobis numquam desunt aduersa, potentes,
Nec pax est vobis certa nec vlla quies.
Dic michi diuitibus si quando defuit hostis:
Quin magis hos quassat sepe ruina grauis.
Non dat securos nec ebur nec purpura sompnos,
330 Paupertas vili stramine tuta iacet:
Perdere quo possunt, torquet timor omnis auaros,
Vanaque sollicitis incutit vmbra metus.
Auri possessor formidat semper, et omnem
Ad strepitum fures estimat esse prope;
Arma, venena timet, furtum timet atque rapinas,
Fiduciam certam diues habere nequit.
Hunc, dum querit opes, cruciat miseranda cupido,
Cum iam quesitas cepit habere, timor.
Sic igitur miser est, dum pauper querit habere,
340 Et miser est diues, perdere dumque timet.
Dum iacet in plumis, vigilans mens aspera sentit,
Feruet enim variis exagitata dolis:
Dicit, ‘Habere volo vicini pauperis agrum,
Est etenim campus proximus ille meis.’511
Sic fugat a domibus pupillos iste paternis,
Insequitur viduas iudiciisque premit:
Deliciis fruitur de rebus pauperis iste,
Dampna set alterius computat esse nichil.
Si posset mundum lucrari, quis deus esset,
350 Vlterius scire nollet in orbe deum.
Iudex, nonne tui fulgor tibi sufficit auri,
Vt careat tenebris mens tua ceca tuis?
Aproprias aurum tibi fertile, nec tamen vmquam512
Ad sterilem vitam respicis ipse tuam.
Iusticie montes Iudex vix ardua purus
Scandit, dum mundi rebus onustus erit.
Agrorum fines longos extendere queris,
Nec reputas vite tempora curta tue.
Quid petis argentum tibi? spem quid ponis in
aurum?
360 Sunt nam communes omnibus orbis opes.
Sepius ista dei data conspicis hostibus esse,
Ante deum nulla laus et habetur eis:
Ista paganus habet, Iudeus, latro cruentus;
Crede quod iratus sepe dat ista deus.
Parua puto, quecumque malos contingit habere,
Non est prauorum copia grande bonum.
O quociens vir iustus eget, scelerosus habundat,
Hic set non alibi, ius quia regnat ibi.
Dilectus domini moritur, dum viuit adulter,
370 Non tamen hii Cristi sunt in amore pares:
Egrotat iustus, dum sanus floret iniqus,
Fine tamen proprium quisque reportat onus.
Si tamen in mundo iudex sibi ferre salutem
Possit, non curat quid sibi finis erit.
O qui cuncta cupis, cur temet deseris? Omne
Est quod in orbe tenes, set neque temet habes.
O qui scis alios non te, tu notus ad omnes,
Non tibi quid prodest illa sciencia, nil.
Te noscas igitur primo, me nosce secundo,
380 Rectum iudicium sic sapienter age.
Omnia que mundi sunt diligis, omnia Cristi
Linquis, et ex nichilo credis habere satis:
Tu celum perdis, mundum lucraris, inane
Corpus supportas, spiritus vnde cadit.
Est tibi perfectum vanum, tibi mobile firmum,
Talis enim iudex non bene sentit opus:
Edificas turres, thalamos nouitate politos,
Quicquid et est orbis plus deitate colis:
Edificas ampla, fossa clauderis in arta,
390 Quo medium frontis ostia clausa prement.
Quid vestes referam, lectos vel iudicis edes,
Quorum luxuries nescit habere pares?
Qui modo prospiceret habitacula queque fuerunt,
Alterius nouiter diceret illa Iouis.
Gloria nonne tuis erit aut tibi pompa perhennis,
Quas facis in domibus, dum tua lucra rapis?
En cecidit Babilon, cecidit quoque maxima Troia,
Romaque mundipotens vix tenet illa locum.
Omnis habet subitum mundana potencia finem,
400 Atque fuga celeri deserit ipsa suos:
Iudex, ergo time, magnos qui scandis honores,
Teque ruinoso stare memento loco.
Omne quod est mundi tibi carum transiet a te,
Inque tuis meritis iudicat ipse deus:
Equaque lex domini tunc que modo cernis
ineque513
Discernet, que tibi pondera iusta dabit.
Cum te terribilis exactor missus ab equo
Iudice sulphurei merget in yma laci,
Prodolor! infelix tunc, quamuis sero, dolebis,
410 Talibus in falsis spem posuisse bonis:
Gemma vel argentum nec ibi descendet et aurum,
Nec fragilis mundi gloria lapsa breui.
Iudicibus populi vanum tamen est quod in ista
Materia scripsi; perdita verba dedi:
Que nam iusticia, que vel sit Iudicis equa
Condicio, non est tempore visa modo:
Iusticiarius est; sub tali nomine fallit,
Qui sine iusticia nomen inane gerit.

Hic loquitur de errore Vicecomitum,


Balliuorum, necnon et in assisis iuratorum, qui
singuli auro conducti diuitum causas iniustas
supportantes, pauperes absque iusticia
calumpniantur et opprimunt.

Capm. vi. Nunc eciam vicecomitibus quid dicere possum?


420 Numquid in assisis dant nocumenta viris?
Macra fit hec causa, de qua viget vnccio nulla
Distillans, vt eis vncta sit inde manus:
Legis in assisa si sint tua dona recisa,
Ius perit et causa scinditur inde tua;
Si tamen assessa sint pre manibus tua dona,
Tunc potes assisis sumere lucra tuis.
Vtque bouem, precio qui stat conductus aratro,
Sic tibi iuratos munere ferre vales:
Hii tibi proque tuis vendent periuria nummis,
430 Sic aurum iura vincit in vrbe mea:514
Diuitis iniustam causam sic cerno quietam,
Et iustam causam pauperis esse ream.
Non comes a vice, set vicio comes accipit ortum,
Iuris auaricie fert tamen ipse vices.
Sic dico vicecomitibus, quod munere victi
Communi populo dant nocumenta modo:
Nec sibi iurati sapiunt quid, sit nisi lucri,
De sale conditum quod dabis ante manum:
Causidici lanam rapiunt, isti quoque pellem
440 Tollunt, sic inopi nil remanebit oui.
Sic ego legiferis concludens vltima primis,
Dico quod ex bursa lex viget ecce noua;
Vt margaritas si porcus sumat in escas,
Sumunt legiferi sic modo iura sibi.
Vendere iusticiam quid id est nisi vendere
Cristum,515
Quem Iudas cupido vendidit ipse dolo?
Numquid adhuc Iude similis quis viuit in orbe?
Immo sibi plures viuere credo pares.
Namque semel Iudam talem committere culpam
450 Nouimus, hunc et eo penituisse lego;
Nunc tamen vt merces vendunt communiter
omnes,
Gaudentes lucrum sic habuisse suum.
Rettulit hoc precium Iudas quod cepit iniqum,
Nec liquet hinc veniam promeruisse suam:
Nunc erit ergo quid hiis, vendunt qui iura sinistris,
Est quibus hora fori cotidiana quasi?516
Vt vorat et stricte tenet ipsa vorago gehenne,
Nec redit vllus homo liber ab ore suo,
Sic modo qui vendunt leges que premia carpunt,
460 Hec valet a manibus tollere nemo suis;
Et quia sic similes inferno suntque tenaces,
Credo quod infernus fine tenebit eos.
Quid seu Balliuis dicam, qui sunt Acherontis
Vt rapide furie? Tu magis inde caue.
Quo portas intrant, prenostica dampna figurant,
Cunctis namque viis ve comitatur eis.
Vt Crati bufo maledixit, sic maledico
Tot legum dominis et sine lege magis.

Hic loquitur quod sicut homines esse super


terram necessario expedit, ita leges ad eorum
regimen institui oportet, dummodo tamen legis
custodes verum a falso discernentes vnicuique
quod suum est equo pondere distribuant. De
erroribus tamen et iniuriis modo contingentibus
innocenciam Regis nostri, minoris etatis causa,
quantum ad presens excusat.517

Capm. vii.Pro transgressore fuerant leges situate,


470 Quilibet vt merita posset habere sua:
Nunc tamen iste bonus punitur, et alter iniqus,
Dum viget ex auro, iustificatur eo.
Omnia tempus habent et habet sua tempora
tempus,
Causaque sic causas debet habere suas.
Quid mare conferret, altis dum fluctuat vndis,
Sit nisi nauis ei quam vehit vnda fluens?518
Set quid fert nauis nisi nauta regens sit in illa?
Quid valet aut nauta, si sibi remus abest?
Quid mare, quid nauis, quid nauta, vel est sibi
remus,
480 Sit nisi portus aquis ventus et aptus eis?
Gens sine lege quid est, aut lex sine iudice quid
nam,
Aut quid si iudex sit sine iusticia?
In patria nostra si quis circumspicit acta,
Hec tria cernet ibi sepe timenda michi.
Omnia dampna grauant, set nulla tamen grauiora,
Quam cum iusticiam iustus habere nequit.
Ex iniusticia discordia crescit, et inde
Cessat amor solitus, murmurat atque domus:
Murmur si veniat, venit et diuisio secum,
490 Terraque diuisa non bene stabit ea;
Et quodcumque sit hoc per se quod stare nequibit,
Ve sibi, nam subito corruet absque modo.
Testis enim deus est, dicens quod regna
peribunt519
In se diuisa, credoque dicta sua.
Ergo videre queunt quotquot qui regna gubernant,
Nostre pars sortis maxima spectat eis.
Quicquid delirant reges, plectuntur Achiui,
Nam caput infirmum membra dolere facit:
Dux si perdat iter, errant de plebe sequentes,
500 Et via qua redient est dubitanda magis.
Propter peccatum regis populi perierunt,
Quicquid et econtra litera raro docet;
Regia set bonitas fert plebi gaudia pacis,
Nam deus ad sancti regis agenda fauet:
Si viciosus enim sit rex, quia lex nequit, ipsum
Vult punire deus, qui super omne potest.
Expediens populo foret vt bene viueret omnis
Rex, iacet in manibus sors quia bina suis:
Vna salus populi rex qui bene viuit habetur,
510 Plebis et in pestem rex malus acta parit;
Eius enim scelera constat magis esse nociua,
Cuius habent populi condita iura sequi.
Cum sit maior homo, sunt plus sua crimina
tanto;
Dum cadit ex altis, leditur inde magis.
Plures cerno reos, magis attamen omnibus ipsos,
Legiferi qui sunt et sine lege manent.
Cum sine lege furit regni viciata potestas,
Esse nichil toto tristius orbe potest:
Sanccius esse pecus animoque capacius ipso
520 Estimo, qui iura dat neque seruat ea.
Imperium Regis non solum bella triumphis
Ornant, set leges seruet vbique bonas.520
Nonne domus poterit componere se sine lignis;
Set sibi quid ligna, si nec acuta foret?
Set quid acuta valet, nisi persistens operantis
Vnitis causis sit manus artificis?
Hec sibi si fuerint coniuncta, per omne iuuabunt,
Et si diuisa, pars sibi nulla iuuat.
Terra quid est sola, populus nisi sistat in illa?
530 Quid populus ve sibi, rex nisi regnet ibi?
Est quid rex, nisi consilium fuerit sibi sanum?
Sunt quid consilia, rex nisi credat ea?
Attamen in nostra sic stat diuisio terra,
Quod sibi quisque suam iam legit ire viam:
Conciues hodie discordia vexat in vrbe,
Extinguit quod ius quilibet alterius;521
Nec lex campestris est iam memorata magistris,
Set qui plus poterit, ipse magister erit.
Nunc clerus populum, populus culpat quoque
clerum,
540 Et tamen in culpa perstat vterque sua:
Invidus alterius nunc culpat quemlibet alter,
Parsque suum proprium nulla reformat iter.
Si videas vtrumque statum, dices quia certe
In magnis lesi rebus vterque sumus.

Nunc magis i n s p e c i e v o x p l e b i s
clamat vbique
Pectore sub timido que metuenda
fero.
Curia que maior defendere iura
t e n e t u r,
Nunc magis iniustas ambulat ipsa
vias:
Infirmo capite priuantur membra
salute,
Non tamen est medicus qui modo
550 curat opus.
Est ita magnificus viciorum morbus
abortus,
Quod valet excessus tollere nulla
manus:
Sic oritur pestis, per quam iacet
obruta virtus,
Surgit et in vicium qui regit omne
forum.
Rex, puer indoctus, morales
n e g l i g i t a c t u s ,522
In quibus a puero crescere possit
homo:
Sic etenim puerum iuuenilis concio
ducit,
Quod nichil expediens, sit nisi
velle, sapit.
Que vult ille, volunt iuuenes sibi
consociati,
I l l e s u b i n t r a t i t e r, h i i q u e s e q u n t u r
560 eum:
Va n u s h o n o r v a n o s i u u e n e s f a c i t
esse sodales,
Vnde magis vane regia tecta
colunt.
Hii puerum regem puerili more
subornant,
Pondera virtutum quo minus ipse
gerit.
Sunt eciam veteres cupidi, qui
lucra sequentes
Ad pueri placitum plura nephanda
s i n u n t :523
Cedunt morigeri, veniunt qui sunt
viciosi,
Quicquid et est vicii Curia Regis
habet.
Error ad omne latus pueri
consurgit, et ille,
Qui satis est docilis, concipit omne
570 malum:
Non dolus immo iocus, non fraus
set gloria ludi
Sunt pueris, set ei sors stat aborta
doli.
Sunt tamen occulte cause, quas
nullus in orbe
Scire potest, set eas scit magis
ipse deus:
Nescit enim mater nato que fata
p a r a n t u r,
Fine set occultum clarius omne
patet.
Ta l i a v o x p o p u l i c o n c l a m a t v b i q u e
moderni
In dubio positi pre grauitate mali:
Sic ego condoleo super hiis que
tedia cerno,
Quo Regi puero scripta sequenda
580 fero.
545-580 Text SCEHGDL As follows in TH₂

Nunc magis ecce refert verbi clamantis ad


aures524
Vox, et in hoc dicit tempore plura grauant.
Crimen et, vt clamat, fert maius curia maior,
Que foret instructor, legibus extat egens.
Ad commune bonum non est <modo> lingua
locuta,525
550* Immo petit proprii commoda quisque lucri.
Agmen adulantum media procedit in aula,
Quodque iubet fieri, curia cedit eis:526
Set qui vera loqui presumunt, curia tales
Pellit, et ad regis non sinit esse latus.
Stat puer immunis culpe, set qui puerile
Instruerent regimen, non sine labe manent:
Sic non rex set consilium sunt causa doloris,
Quo quasi communi murmure plangit humus.
Tempora matura si rex etatis haberet,
560* Equaret libram que modo iure caret:
Regis namque modus alios moderatur, et
omnis527
Iuris ad officium dicitur esse caput.
Si bonus esse velit rex, hii qui sunt bonitatis
Sunt magis edocti condicione bona:528
Si malus esse velit, simili rex sorte clientes,
Vt sibi complaciant, eligit, ornat, amat:529
Hoc set eum tangit discretum quem probat etas,
Non puerum, quia tunc fit sibi culpa minor
Non est nature lex nec racionis, vt illud
570* Quod mundum ledit sit puerile malum;
Non dolus, immo iocus, non fraus set gloria ludi,
Sunt pueris, nec ibi restat origo mali.
Dixit enim Daniel, quod de senioribus orta
Exiit impietas, quam furor orbis habet:
Omne quod est mundi vicium plantant veterani,
Et quasi de peste spersa venena serunt.530
Horum namque scelus fertur maculare figuras
Tocius mundi, quo furit ira dei.
Iamque supercreuit dolus et defecit honestas,531
580* Sentit et opprobrium quod fuit ante decus.

Hic loquitur quod, exquo omnes quicumque mundi status


sub regie magestatis iusticia moderantur, intendit ad presens
r e g n a t u r o532 i a m Regi nostro quandam epistolam
d o c t r i n e c a u s a533 editam scribere consequenter, ex qua
ille rex noster, qui modo in sua puerili constituitur etate, cum
vberiores postea sumpserit annos, gracia mediante diuina, in
suis regalibus exercendis euidencius instruatur. Et primo dicit
quod, quamuis regalis potencia quodammodo supra leges
extollatur, regiam tamen decet clemenciam, quod ipse bonis
moribus inherendo, quasi liber sub iusticie legibus se et suos in
aspectu Regis altissimi assidue gubernet.

Capm. viii. Cumque sui Regis legi sit legius omnis


Subditus, et toto corpore seruit ei,
Est ita conueniens quod eum de corde fideli
Mentis in affectu legius omnis amet:
Regis et est proprium, commissam quod sibi
plebem
Dirigat, et iusta lege gubernet eam.
Hinc est, quod normam scriptis de pluribus ortam
Regis ego laudi scribere tendo mei.
O pie rex, audi que sit tua regula regni,
590 Concordans legi mixtaque iure dei.
Legum frena tenens freno te forcius arce;
Dum nullum metuis, sis metus ipse tibi:
Namque timor, virtus humilis, fugit omne
superbum,
Et quasi virtutum clauiger esse solet.
Est tibi, rex, melius quod te de lege gubernes,
Subdere quam mundi singula regna tibi:
Est propter mundum tibi subdita sors aliorum,
Tu propter celum subditus esto deo.
Vt tibi deseruit populus de lege subactus,
600 Cristi seruiciis temet ad instar habe:
Vincere te studeas, alios qui vincis, et omnes
Excessus animi subdere disce tui:
Iustificans alios cupias te iustificare,
Iuraque dans plebi, des ita iura tibi.
Qui superas alios, temet superare labora;
Si rex esse velis, te rege, rex et eris.
Qua fore se regem poterit racione fateri,
Mentis qui proprie non regit acta sue?
Non valet hoc regimen aliis conferre salutem,
610 Dum sibi non fuerit rector, vt esse decet.
Dum tibi cuncta licent, ne queras cuncta licere,
Res etenim licite noxia sepe ferunt:
Tu super es iura, iustus set viue sub illis,534
Spesque tui nobis causa salutis erit.
Est mors ira tua, potes id quod non licet, et te
Prestita vota tamen ducere iuris habent:
Quod licet illesa mentis precordia seruat,
Omne tamen licitum non probat esse probum:
Quod licet est tutum, set que potes illa sub arto
620 Discute iudicio fultus honore tuo.
Micius acta regas, aliter nisi causa requirat;
Asperitas odium seuaque bella mouet.
Non te pretereat populi fortuna potentis
Publica, set sapiens talia fata caue.
Vita Pharaonis et gesta maligna Neronis,
Que iusto regi sunt fugienda docent.
O bone rex iuuenis, fac quod bonitate iuuentus
Sit tua morigeris dedita rite modis.
Quid tibi forma iuuat vel nobile nomen Auorum,
630 Si viciis seruus factus es ipse tuis?
Doctor Alexandri Magni prauos sibi mores
Primitus edocuit, dum puer ipse fuit:
Rex puer hec didicit, que post dum dedidicisse
Temptauit, primus obstat abusus ei:
Vicit Alexander Darium simul et Babilonem,
Set nequit impressum vincere corde malum.
Nuper in exemplis scripserunt sic sapientes,
Quod prius imbuerit, testa tenere solet:
Rex, igitur cicius viciosos pelle remotos,
640 Nam vix turpe vetus nescit abire foras.
Plaude bonis, fuge prauorum consorcia, labem
De pice tractata contrahit egra manus.

Hic loquitur qualiter rex535 sibi male


consulentes caucius euitare, proditoresque
regni sui penitus extinguere, suorum eciam
conditiones ministrorum diligencius
inuestigare, et quos extra iusticiam errantes
inuenerit, debita pena corrigere debet et
districcius castigare.

Capm. ix. Sordibus implicitos falsosque cauebis amicos,


Qui tua deposcunt, te nec amare volunt:
Blanda dolosorum fugias per verba leuari,
Ne speciale tuum nomen ad yma ruant:
Verba nimis leuiter audire que credere dicta
Sepe supervacuos cogit inire metus.
Vir qui bella mouet, qui predas consulit, et qui
650 Conspirat taxas plebis habere tue,
O rex, oro tuas quod claudas talibus aures,
Ne tua nobilitas lesa fatiscat eis.536
Consilium regale tuum vir nullus auarus
Tangat, set tales mortis ad instar habe.
Illud in orbe malum non est, q u o d c o r d i s
auari
Non latet in cella, dum sitit inde lucrum:
Ambulat in tenebris, opus exercet tenebrarum,
Odit et impugnat nil nisi pacis opus.537
Qui mel in ore gerens, set habens in corde
venenum,
660 Pacis habet verbum, mente notando malum,
Hic est versutus, inimicis regis amicus,
Semper venalis, dum vacat ipse lucris;
Vipereum genus et vanum plenumque veneno,538
Fraudibus, insidiis, artibus arma parat:
Semper in insidiis sedet incautisque nocere
Temptat, et occulto fabricat ipse dolos.
Hic rimans animos hominum secreta reuelat,
Et similis Iude fabricat acta sua.
Qui te sollicitat, rex, et subuertere temptat,
670 Qui te persuadet soluere iussa dei,
Quis sit et ipse vide, qualis vel condicionis,
Aut tibi si vera dicere verba velit.
Discute mente prius animum temptantis, et audi
Si vel constanter vel dubitanter agat,
Si tibi preponat dubium, mendacia fingens:
Semper deprendi verba dolosa timent.
Cum sit causa doli, pie rex, tu credere noli,
Si quis agat praue, tu sua facta caue.
Multus non credit, nisi cum res noxia ledit;539
680 Ante manum sapiens prouidet acta regens:
Decipiuntur aues per cantus sepe suaues;
Blande, rex, lingue mellea verba fuge.
Rex, bona digna bonis da premia, rex, et iniquis
Que sua promeruit premia culpa dabis:
Latro bonus veniam Cristo miserante meretur,
Penam promeruit in cruce latro malus.
Obsequium prauum trahit e manibus graue
donum,
Que sunt facta suo fine notabit homo.
Si scelus vlcisci racio certissima poscit,
690 Iustus in hoc casu quod decet illud age.
Ficta tibi pietas non mulceat aspera iuris,
Vlcio iudicium compleat immo tuum:
Sepe pericla fera fert iudicis vlcio tarda,
Destruit ille bonos qui sinit esse malos.
Diuersas penas diuersis addito culpis,
Mille mali species, mille salutis erunt.
Iudicii signum gladius monstrare videtur,
Proditor vt periat, rex tenet arma secus:540
Rex iubeat tales laqueo super alta leuari,
700 Ne periat Regis legis et ille status.541
Rex, age, ne plebis furiens discordia dicat,
‘Lex caruit rege iura paterna regens’:
Absit et hoc vulgo ne dicat, iure remoto,
Quod nichil auxilii principis vmbra facit.
Fraus cum fraude sua periat de morte remorsa,541
Vt stet iusticia regia laude tua:
Sic dicant populi, ‘Sit semper gloria regi,
Quo bona pax viguit, quo reus acta luit.’
Precipitur gladius vibratus semper haberi,
710 Prompcius vt crimen iudiciale ferat:
Ense quiescente, compescere non valet orbem;
Qui regnare cupit sanguine iura colat.
Arma ferunt pacem, compescunt arma rapacem,
Vt reus hec timeat, rex probus arma gerat;
Nomine subque tuo ledant ne forte quirites,
Plebem te tenero corde videre decet:
Si vis namque tuos non castigare ministros,
Crimen habet culpe regia culpa sue.
Euolat ancipiter ad predas, lucra suisque
720 Deseruit dominis in rapiendo cibos:
Sic sunt qui regi famulando suos et ad vsus
Tollunt pauperibus dampna ferendo nimis.
In prece pondus habet pauper qui clamat egenus
Ad dominum, memor est pauperis ipse sui.
Sicut enim presul, qui custos est animarum,
Pondus in officio debet habere suo;
Compotus vtque suus, sic stabit et vltima merces,
Gloria vel pena perpetuatur ei;
Rex ita qui nostrum moderaris legibus orbem,
730 Dona tuis meritis conferet equa deus.
Posse tuum grande, rex, est, que potencior ille,
Omne tuum cuius dextera librat opus.

Hic dicit quod rex sano consilio adhereat,


ecclesie iura supportet et erigat,542 equs in
iudiciis et pietosus existat, suamque famam
cunctis mundi opibus preponat.

Capm. x. Sperne malos, cole prudentes, compesce


rebelles,
Da miseris, sontes respue, parce reis.
Quicquid agas, vicio numquam mergatur
honestum;
Fama lucro, rebus preficiatur opus.
Nil tibi, rex, fingas pro mundo, quo reputeris
Iustus apud proceres et reus ante deum:
Ecclesiam studeas multa pietate fouere,
740 Cuius enim precibus vult diadema geri.
Pauperis et vidue dum cernis adesse querelas,
Iudicium miseris cum pietate geras.
Expedit interdum sanccita remittere legum,543
Ne periat pietas de feritate tua:
Indulgere tuis tua sic dignetur honestas,
Nam puto sepe deum viuere velle reum.
Par quoque portet onus sic nobilis atque colonus,
Et nichil archanum polluat ante manum.
Ardua si causa tibi sit, videas, quia certe
750 Tarda solet magnis rebus inesse fides.
Rebus in ambiguis tu certum ponere noli,
Fallitur augurio spes bona sepe suo:
Est magis humani generis iactura dolori,
Nescit principium quid sibi finis aget.
Dum tibi suadet opus tractare negocia regni,
Consilium regat hoc cum seniore senex.
Ibit in occasum quicquid dicemus ad ortum,
Lingua loquax habitum nesciat ergo tuum.
Consilium prauum regalem turbat honorem,
760 Prouocat inque scelus que bona pacis erant.
Iura dabit populo senior, discretaque iustis
Legibus est etas vnde petatur honor.
Est satis ille senex, cuius sapiencia sensum
Firmat in etate, sit licet ipse minor.
Non stabiles animos veteres fatuam ve
iuuentam544
Comprobo, non etas sic sua iura dedit:
In sene multociens stat condicio iuuenilis,
Dum iuuenis mores obtinet ipse senis.
Caucius ergo statum videas, pie rex, ad vtrumque;
770 Vnde legas homines, tu prius acta proba.
Qui tibi seruicium prebet nec invtilis aurum
Appetit, hic seruus debeat esse tuus:
Dulcius est mercede labor qui regis honorem
Spectat, et in tali spem tibi ferre potes.
Est qui pacificus, est vir qui iuris amicus,
Liber auaricie, largus ad omne bonum,
Vtere consilio tali, pie rex, vt habundet
Cronica perpetue laudis in orbe tue.
Fama volans gratis, nullo soluente cathenas,545
780 Proclamat meritis ista vel illa tuis:
Nomen, crede, bonum gasas precellit, honorem
Conseruat, remouet scandala, laude viget:
Tange bonum florem, dulcem prestabit odorem,
Sic virtusque viri fragrat vbique boni.
Consule doctores legis, discede malorum
A conventiculis, concomitare bonos:
Vt granum de messe tibi, de fonte salubri
Pocula, de docto dogmata mente legas.

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