Cacoethes scribendi
Oliver Wendell Holmes’ poem “Cacoethes Scribendi” was first published in 1890. The title is a Latin phrase derived from “Satire VII” of the Roman poet Juvenal, “… Tenet insanabile multos / Scribendi cacoethes et aegro in corde senescit”, which the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations translates as, “Many suffer from the incurable disease of writing, and it becomes chronic in their sick minds”.
Oliver Wendell Holmes was born on 29 August 1809 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, and he died on 7 October 1894 in Boston, Massachusetts, US, at the age of 85.A physician, poet, and polymath, Holmes was among a group known as the fireside poets, and he was acclaimed as one of the best writers of the day. Counting Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow as his friends, he was a major influence on the literary world of the 19th century, especially in and around his native Boston.
External links:
If all the trees in all the woods were men; And each and every blade of grass a pen; If every leaf on every shrub and tree Turned to a sheet of foolscap; every sea Were changed to ink, and all earth’s living tribes Had nothing else to do but act as scribes, And for ten thousand ages, day and night, The human race should write, and write, and write, Till all the pens and paper were used up, And the huge inkstand was an empty cup, Still would the scribblers clustered round its brink Call for more pens, more paper, and more ink.