Commonplace

Does anyone believe that Kenneth Grahame made an arbitrary choice when he gave his principle character the form of a toad, or that a tag, a pigeon, a lion, would have done as well? The choice is based on the fact that the real toad's face has a grotesque resemblance to a certain kind of human face--- a rather apoplectic face with a fatuous grin on it. This is, no doubt, an accident in the sense that all the lines which suggest the resemblance are really there for quite different biological reasons. The ludicrous quasi-human expression is therefore changeless: the toad cannot stop grinning because its 'grin' is not really a grin at all. Looking at the creature we thus see, isolated and fixed, an aspect of human vanity in its funniest and most pardonable form; following that hint Grahame creates Mr. Toad--an ultra-Jonsonian 'humour'. And we bring back the wealth of the Indies; we have henceforward more amusement in, and kindness toward, a certain kind of vanity in real life.

~ "On Stories" C.S. Lewis




The McIntoshes' have a beautiful birch in front of their home. I love the shape and lightness and delicacy and translucency and kinetic quality of the leaves. All through recitation we talked about Aristotle on sense perception using the "yellowness" of the tree as an example. The birch has turned an intense golden yellow and its leaves float down in small drifts.

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