Ye Sundial Booke

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:—

In Henry VI. Shakespeare again takes notice of the sundial:—

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:—

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:—

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:-

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:—

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.