clever, but I don't think it's true. Otherwise people when they get drunk wouldn't start to get argumentative and dissatisfied with life.
Perhaps it's more a normal distribution, at the beginning with a light buzz the ways of God seem to be more OK, at its height in the middle everything God ever did is GREAT, and then the fall and the eventual conclusion that everything is unjust and then vomiting.
>at best it helped them express their dissatisfaction.
Which is good. All roads start with a single step and to make this step you have to realize where are you now. And expressing this dissatisfaction verbally can be a very goods first step as long as you are not just drinking it away.
Not trying to say that this is as good as therapy or something and alcohol my lead to some bad results but still.
Interesting. I had somehow read halfway through the text in the image not even noticing them, but got completely stuck at "preuaile". When I saw it there, I could only see it as the yogh character, maybe because it has a tail that make it look more like a modern 3 than a modern 2.
I guess yogh was obsoleted long before this text though as there as several of "gh" and "ch" clusters e.g. "chastise", "chased" and "fought".
I was specifically thinking of its use in words like night, not sure what I was thinking when I used those examples... was just scanning the text quickly for some ch clusters and didn't think too much about the words!
John Milton must have been extremely wealthy. He was writing on the margins of that book, printed in 1587. These books were not manuscripts, so not as expensive as the books before Gutenberg, but still.
Some years ago I did some volunteer work where I had to go through some thousands of old books at a library and find the valuable ones. I came to the conclusion that around 1850 there was a "phase change" in printing. You could tell the books before 1850, they were works of love. After 1850, I think mass printing took off, or something, but you can feel books were not luxury items anymore.
In any case, this gentleman here has in his possession a book before 1600, and he writes on its margins. Maybe this was a form of conspicuous consumption. But just look how gorgeous that book was. And the guy just scribbled some stuff on it.
One of favorite pastimes out here in the northwest is getting old books from pay by the pound thrift stores.
I've found over the years at anything past the 1880s people find worth scraping at their local thrift store. Based on the volume of them that I see it is definitely indictive of printing production of the time.
I think that’s mostly survivorship bias. The vast majority of books weren’t worth keeping so few survive. They were mostly religious texts, reprints of Greek and Roman classics and the equivalent of modern cheap fiction paperbacks, like a bunch of fantasy novels about Arthur and the Knights of the Roundtable. They weren’t that expensive because they didn’t have anything beyond black and white print and a simple binding. The really expensive books were hand colored.
Most of the books that survive from that era are family bibles because they were the books treasured and passed down by families, rather than thrown away after reading. The book in TFA was in essence a historical reference so it makes sense he would add notes. These were literally the only places where that kind of knowledge would be stored
Yes - but do consider the possibility that this sort of notation will also add further value to an old book. There could be an mercenary angle, eg the possibility that this will bring in additional visitors to the Library.
This is the second paragraph from the article:
> Add one more title to that small list, as scholars recently discovered a copy of Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland in the Phoenix Public Library, containing handwritten notes in Milton's distinctive hand. This makes the volume extra-special, since only two other books once owned by Milton also contain handwritten notes. The scholars detailed their findings in a new article published in the Times Literary Supplement.
> After 1850, I think mass printing took off, or something, but you can feel books were not luxury items anymore.
I guess it depends on what you think of as "mass printing", but estimates have it that in the 16th century Venice alone produced around 25,000 editions of books. You can also find references to Italy producing relatively mass amounts of paper by that time, distributed to western Europe and Constantinople through Venice. You really didn't need to be "enormously wealthy" to buy a paper book at the time. Wealthy, to some extent? Yes, moreso revealed by the fact that you were literate, but not crazy wealthy.
Also, in general, people simply often had a different relationship to books than we do today. They were not regarded as priceless objects, or as things ruined by marginalia. Writing marginalia was seen as a fundamental part of reading and owning a book, part of how one understands a book and makes it theirs. Having a personal library was as much about having the books on hand as well as having your margin notes.
> I came to the conclusion that around 1850 there was a "phase change". You could tell the books before 1850, they were works of love. After 1850, I think mass printing took off, or something....
The latter half of the 1800s saw the commoditization of consumer goods as industrial manufacturing processes replaced craftsmen. I became aware of this dynamic when I started collecting textiles. The arts and crafts movement in the latter 1800s was founded in direct response to (what they perceived to be) the soulless products produced at scale in factories.
The style is called Blackletter or Gothic script. It was very common (maybe the most common) in Europe for several hundred years. When I was little, it had pretty much disappeared in the UK, and I only discovered it as a curiosity in a handful of books in my mum's old book collection. Apparently, when she was at school they were still taught to read it as part of learning German as most of the German texts they were given used it.
What do you mean? It looks nothing like cursive cyrillic handwriting.
A couple of characters can be tricky at first because they look different to late modern latin script, like the s that has two forms in this font. It's actually very easy to read for being an old book.
"Great troubles he had in both but little he did PSEUAILE in the latter, before he had over come the FIRA and therefore minding to CHADILE the rebels..."
Not sure what you mean, you seem to handle it well, since you only stumble on a few words in that sentence. The spelling is slightly more french than later english in some words, and some characters are a bit different, like the r you've noticed, f, s, t. Once you figure those out you'll be fluent and it won't take long.
I think the type is a variation on a w rather than a ligature, 'dw', but I'm not entirely sure. In one of the facsimiles in the article you can see the same type in 'and so and so fwrth for that time'.
There are a lot of Ws in the passage, and they all seem to have a serif at the top left. This is even true where the W is not word-initial and that serif may seem to interfere with part of the preceding letter:
> The sword and the law he made to be the foundation of his governement,
> in the bogs he pursued them, in the thickets he followed them,
Following up, the same glyph appears elsewhere on the page you mention:
> This duke before his voiage, calling at Fiscam (?) all his nobilitie unto him, caused them to sweare fealtie unto his yoong sonne William, whome he then at his journie betooke unto the governance of earle Gilbert, and the defense of the governour unto Henrie the French king.
Why do we think it's more plausible that the words are being spelled "dw", "fwrth", "ywng", and "betwke" than "doo", "foorth", "yoong", and "betooke"? "Took" is still spelled that way today, and "poor" uses the same vowel as "forth".
Whereas to the best of my knowledge, W can only appear as a vowel in Welsh.
32 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 75.9 ms ] threadIllumine, what is low raise and support;
That to the highth of this great Argument
I may assert th’ Eternal Providence,
And justifie the wayes of God to men.
Perhaps it's more a normal distribution, at the beginning with a light buzz the ways of God seem to be more OK, at its height in the middle everything God ever did is GREAT, and then the fall and the eventual conclusion that everything is unjust and then vomiting.
That just means they were dissatisfied with life before drinking. Just were holding it inside.
Whether those drinking realise this is another matter.
I suspect there are more people who have tried alcohol and no longer drink than have read Milton. Perhaps we need some data on that!
Which is good. All roads start with a single step and to make this step you have to realize where are you now. And expressing this dissatisfaction verbally can be a very goods first step as long as you are not just drinking it away.
Not trying to say that this is as good as therapy or something and alcohol my lead to some bad results but still.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_rotunda
I guess yogh was obsoleted long before this text though as there as several of "gh" and "ch" clusters e.g. "chastise", "chased" and "fought".
Some years ago I did some volunteer work where I had to go through some thousands of old books at a library and find the valuable ones. I came to the conclusion that around 1850 there was a "phase change" in printing. You could tell the books before 1850, they were works of love. After 1850, I think mass printing took off, or something, but you can feel books were not luxury items anymore.
In any case, this gentleman here has in his possession a book before 1600, and he writes on its margins. Maybe this was a form of conspicuous consumption. But just look how gorgeous that book was. And the guy just scribbled some stuff on it.
My understanding is that writing notes in the margin has always been a very normal thing to do going back to the middle ages.
Most of the books that survive from that era are family bibles because they were the books treasured and passed down by families, rather than thrown away after reading. The book in TFA was in essence a historical reference so it makes sense he would add notes. These were literally the only places where that kind of knowledge would be stored
This is the second paragraph from the article:
> Add one more title to that small list, as scholars recently discovered a copy of Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland in the Phoenix Public Library, containing handwritten notes in Milton's distinctive hand. This makes the volume extra-special, since only two other books once owned by Milton also contain handwritten notes. The scholars detailed their findings in a new article published in the Times Literary Supplement.
16th century, yet only "recently discovered".
I guess it depends on what you think of as "mass printing", but estimates have it that in the 16th century Venice alone produced around 25,000 editions of books. You can also find references to Italy producing relatively mass amounts of paper by that time, distributed to western Europe and Constantinople through Venice. You really didn't need to be "enormously wealthy" to buy a paper book at the time. Wealthy, to some extent? Yes, moreso revealed by the fact that you were literate, but not crazy wealthy.
Also, in general, people simply often had a different relationship to books than we do today. They were not regarded as priceless objects, or as things ruined by marginalia. Writing marginalia was seen as a fundamental part of reading and owning a book, part of how one understands a book and makes it theirs. Having a personal library was as much about having the books on hand as well as having your margin notes.
The latter half of the 1800s saw the commoditization of consumer goods as industrial manufacturing processes replaced craftsmen. I became aware of this dynamic when I started collecting textiles. The arts and crafts movement in the latter 1800s was founded in direct response to (what they perceived to be) the soulless products produced at scale in factories.
A couple of characters can be tricky at first because they look different to late modern latin script, like the s that has two forms in this font. It's actually very easy to read for being an old book.
"Great troubles he had in both but little he did PSEUAILE in the latter, before he had over come the FIRA and therefore minding to CHADILE the rebels..."
FIRA - First
CHADILE - Chastise
> The sword and the law he made to be the foundation of his governement,
> in the bogs he pursued them, in the thickets he followed them,
> This duke before his voiage, calling at Fiscam (?) all his nobilitie unto him, caused them to sweare fealtie unto his yoong sonne William, whome he then at his journie betooke unto the governance of earle Gilbert, and the defense of the governour unto Henrie the French king.
Why do we think it's more plausible that the words are being spelled "dw", "fwrth", "ywng", and "betwke" than "doo", "foorth", "yoong", and "betooke"? "Took" is still spelled that way today, and "poor" uses the same vowel as "forth".
Whereas to the best of my knowledge, W can only appear as a vowel in Welsh.
The Ses look about as normal as could be to me. What's distinctive about them?
If anything, I'm surprised John Milton's handwriting looks so similar to modern handwriting.