Note 35 — Chapter VII
Reading edition
Mag. II, 511. Philemon Holland. See Rees’ Encyc., Aiken’s Biog. Mem. of Medicine. He was the translator general of his age, a man of incredible industry. In Fuller’s Worthies of England we learn that Holland, having written several translations with one pen, made the following stanza:
“With one solo pen I writ this book, Made of a gray goose quill; A pen it was when I it took, And a pen I leave it still.”
A familiar story is told of Gibbon, in writing the “Decline and Fall,” and that he presented the pen to the Duchess of Devonshire, who honored it with a silver case. These stories are probably fabulous. The contrivances which these men must have used to make one pen, or even one quill, do so much work, would deserve the appellation above quoted from Douglass, “otiosorum hominum negotia,” or, the notions of men who had plenty of leisure.