Lempriere's Dictionary Read Online Free PDF

owl.’ He put down the shovel. ‘I’ve been dusting.’ He pointed to the walls. There, perched, poised or nailed, were fixed rows upon rows of stuffed owls of varying widths and heights, beaks hooked downwards, eyes (of glass) fixed straight ahead in attitudes of mute disdain at the indignity of their position. It was rapidly becoming clear to Charles that many of them were not completely cured.
    ‘I have errands to run Mister Bonamy. Will two hours suffice?’
    ‘Splendid, splendid,’ rejoined the other as he polished an eyeball here, wiped a talon there.
    ‘Two hours then, John.’ But his son did not reply as Charles Lemprière hurried to the door in anticipation of the fresher air beyond it. The lensgrinder turned to his subject.
    ‘A legacy from the former occupant,’ explained Ichnabod to the young man.
    John Lemprière was not listening. The glint of owlish eyes impinged dully upon him. Hundreds of them, paired and focused on his dim attempt to return their gaze, his mind adrift. Was this Cecrops’ Hall writ small? They would call softly to each other forming the delicate skein of wisdom’s ligaments as the light faded in the room. The gaping wound, the birth. Ichnabod, a name without precedent … sprang fully armed.
    ‘In here, John Lemprière!’
    He walked slowly past the long counter to the small door at the back of the shop from which the voice had issued and entered. The room was square, its walls formed of the granite which in the shop proper had been concealed behind wooden panelling. The ceiling was disproportionately high and contained a skylight which threw a beam of light down onto a large mahogany chair. At the far end of the room was a large stove, a workbench and several cupboards through which Ichnabod was now searching. The stove burned hotly.
    ‘Sit on the chair.’ He did so, shifting uneasily in the unfamiliar surroundings. Pallas’ antechamber to Hephaestus’ forge thought the sitter. What is he doing? The lensgrinder seemed to find whatever he searched for and advanced on his subject carrying a large tray.
    ‘Hold this.’ And Lemprière’s arms were effectively immobilised as he sat facing the stove and holding the tray of glass disks before him. ‘Now for the frames.’ He loomed towards his subject holding a large wooden contraption.
    Trapped in the chair, Lemprière felt flutters of panic in his stomach and his bladder tightened. He had a strong desire to throw the tray to the floor and fend off the apparatus which now seemed to have extended two large claws towards his face. Ichnabod fitted the bulky test-frames over his head and clicked the fastening shut.
    ‘My own invention,’ he explained proudly. The frames formed a kind of cube encasing the irregular sphere of Lemprière’s head. Singled out from the rest of his body, his skull felt acutely vulnerable in its wooden cage. He stared fixedly ahead suppressing a strong urge to get up and run, wooden cage and all, for the street outside. The lensgrinder took no heed of the young man’s anxiety. Focal length, dynamism, ease of accommodation: these were the subjects which concerned him as he dropped different lenses in front of the defective eyeballs.
    The lens: a talisman for Ichnabod who did not believe in such things. Had not Archimedes used one to fry the Roman force at Syracuse? And did not Ptolemy set one on the tower at Pharos wherein he saw the ships of his enemies, six hundred miles distant? The simple disk, its smooth surface tapering gently to the rim, unchanged in two millennia.
    It had taken him many years to master the basic processes of lens manufacture. But the processes themselves reached back through the centuries. Oh yes, Newton may be the man with his
Opticks
, but he could never apply his own rules. The simple glass ball, the careful cutting into disks with the emril-stone. A dunce might do that, but not the glueing-on of the handle (Colophonia gave the smoothest join), the heating to the prescribed