Tea at Trianon: The Fall of Gondolin

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Saturday, April 14, 2018

The Fall of Gondolin

From the BBC:

JRR Tolkien's The Fall of Gondolin, which the author described as "the first real story" set in Middle-earth, is to be published as a stand-alone book for the first time. The book charts the story of an elven city sacked by the Dark Lord, Morgoth. The author started writing it in 1917, before returning to Middle-earth for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien Society chair Shaun Gunner said many fans regarded The Fall of Gondolin as "the Holy Grail of Tolkien texts". The Fall of Gondolin is the second "new" work to be edited and released by Tolkien's son Christopher Tolkien in two years. (Read more.)