“It was no summer progress. A cold coming they had of it at this time of the year, just the worst time of the year to take a journey, and specially a long journey in. The ways deep, the weather sharp, the days short, the sun farthest off, in solstitio brumali, ‘the very dead of winter.’” –
Lancelot Andrewes Bishop of Winchester, died in 1626 ***A cold coming we had of it, /
Just the worst time of the year /
For a journey, and such a long journey: /
The ways deep and the weather sharp, /
The very dead of winter. –
T.S. Eliot’s “The Journey of the Magi” – Published in 1930
The fact that T.S. Eliot copies Lancelot Andrewes almost verbatim deeply demonstrates Eliot’s closing to his essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent”:
“The emotion of art is impersonal (meaning has its life in the art, not the artist). And the poet cannot reach this impersonality without surrendering himself wholly to the work to be done. And he is not likely to know what is to be done unless he lives in what is not merely the present, but the present moment of the past, unless he is conscious, not of what is dead, but of what is already living.”