Ye Sundial Booke

by T. Geoffrey W. Henslow

“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.