Butlerism, the little Nicky Flunkies: Another gibe at the president of Columbia University, Nicholas Murray Butler (cf. notes GK 165, 238).

Abelard went to Paris and defeated his precursor: Peter Abelard (1079–1142), controversial French scholar, dialectician, and master of the cathedral school of Notre Dame in Paris, where he eventually set out to discredit his master, William of Champeaux (c.1070–1122), and steal his students. In time, William grew weary of Abelard's tactics and retired.

George H. T inkham: (1870–1956), U.S. House of Representatives member from Massachusetts (1915–43). The Republican Representative corresponded extensively with Pound from 1933 to 1940. The two men first met in Venice in 1936 at the Excelsior Hotel at the Lido and again in Washington, D.C. in 1939. Given Pound's endorsement of Tinkham's “cinema technique,” an expose of the mechanism behind the political theatrics of “tyrants and bleeders,” it is ironic that in a letter to the congressman in 1936 Pound praises Mussolini's “great triumph” of defying England and the League of Nations. Like the Italian dictator, Tinkham also opposed the League of Nations (and campaigned to keep the U.S. out of it). In 1939, Pound would write to the Boston Herald to put Tinkham forward as a candidate for the Presidency. Tinkham appears several times in The Cantos as “Uncle [or “Unkle”] George.”

modus bene vivendi: (L.) “mode of living” or “way of life.” distich: A poetic couplet.

The bust outlasts the throne: Cf. note GK 152.

In the usury system … every thousand men shd. maintain a musician: Cf. Thomas Jefferson in The Cantos,

Gershwin and Puccini: George Gershwin (1898–1937), American composer, most closely associated with popular music of the early twentieth century, and Italian opera composer Giacomo Puccini (cf. note GK 154–55).