Friday Links

Annie Dillard's essay "Total Eclipse" puts to shame those of us Americans who were content to view a partial eclipse from the sidelines. “Seeing a partial eclipse bears the same relation to seeing a total eclipse as kissing a man does to marrying him.”

Clare Bowskill reminds us of Evelyn Waugh's battle to preserve the Latin Mass. "I believe, to compare small things with great, that I ‘participate’ in a work of art when I study it and love it silently."

Speaking of Latin, the text of an ancient Latin-language commentary on the Gospels has been recovered and translated into English after being long thought lost. "This prominent cleric had written a Gospel commentary including a series of chapter titles, which Jerome described as 'a pearl without price' and had consulted when writing his own commentary on the Gospel of Matthew."