Aldous Huxley chose these lines of the English Renaissance poet Fulke Greville as the epigraph for the 1928 novel Point Counter Point:
Oh, wearisome condition of humanity!
Borne under one Law, to another bound,
Vainely begot and yet forbidden vanity:
Created sick, commanded to be sound.
What meaneth Nature by these diverse laws –
Passion and reason, self-division’s cause?
This post is dedicated to the memory of Edward Tayler, professor at Columbia, in whose popular courses and seminars he did his best to get us to read Fulke Grevillle — and recognize his importance among the great poets of his time (Sir Thomas Wyatt, Ben Jonson, John Donne, and Andrew Marvell).
— DL