Annotations and comments

Paul Chapin has posted 849 annotations/comments since 17 January 2003.

Comments

First Reading

About Monday 17 December 1666

Paul Chapin  •  Link

Thanks, Bradford. I thought maybe since m'Lud felt obliged to explain what he meant ("which would be little welcome there") he was coining a phrase.

About Monday 17 December 1666

Paul Chapin  •  Link

"Coals to Newcastle" even more interesting. Do you suppose this was actually the first use in history of that cliche?

About Sunday 16 December 1666

Paul Chapin  •  Link

"Dined without any strangers with me, which I do not like on Sundays."
Carl, you read this as saying SP likes having strangers dine with him (so what he doesn't like is the "without"). I got the opposite reading, that he doesn't like having strangers dine with him on Sundays. I don't see any obvious way to resolve the ambiguity directly from the text, but harking back to Sam's many Sunday dinners, it does seem to me that he usually has family and close friends there, and is more likely to dine with business acquaintances, or "strangers", during the work week.

About Wednesday 5 December 1666

Paul Chapin  •  Link

I also think that "ordered" had a less peremptory meaning in the 17th century than it does now, something more on the order of our "asked" or "invited." We see a survival of that gentler meaning in a usage like "I ordered a sandwich," which doesn't mean I demanded one. Unfortunately my OED on CD-ROM couldn't manage the transition to my current operating system, so I can't check the facts for myself.

About Wednesday 28 November 1666

Paul Chapin  •  Link

Graham, I totally agree. I often think of the famous dictum of the late Arthur C. Clarke: any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

About Wednesday 28 November 1666

Paul Chapin  •  Link

That would be a fair point, Graham, if anybody bought the phone to use as a level. The level app is just a cute toy (free for the downloading). The phone itself is the technological marvel.

About Thursday 29 November 1666

Paul Chapin  •  Link

"they having their mother hard by and my wife, and I a wet afternoon to White Hall"
I believe from the context that the comma after "wife" is misplaced, should be after "by". In the next sentence Elizabeth is with him as they go from Whitehall to Westminster Hall.

About Wednesday 28 November 1666

Paul Chapin  •  Link

Only partially on topic, but indulge me. My new Droid phone has a spirit level application. A graphic of a tube level (phone vertical) or a bull's eye level (phone flat) appears on the screen, and the position of the bubble is taken from the phone's internal position sensors. It's extremely accurate, and usable wherever one would use a regular carpenter's level. It tickles me to think how much Sam, and the guys over at the RS, would have loved today's technology. And it sobers me to realize that to some extent we owe it to them.

About Sunday 25 November 1666

Paul Chapin  •  Link

This entry seems to have aroused Lord Braybrooke like few others, evidently to defend Ms. Malet against calumny.

With all respect to CGS's OED excavations, I sense a much earthier interpretation of "kiss her breach."

About Monday 5 November 1666

Paul Chapin  •  Link

@Susan, "fortnight" is not in common usage in American English, although most educated people would understand it when they see it written, certainly better than "se'ennight." Don't know about Canada.

About Thursday 22 November 1666

Paul Chapin  •  Link

Thanks to CGS for that interesting Bill. Lawmakers then as now, wanting government services without the bother of paying for them, claim that eliminating "waste, fraud, and abuse" would cover the cost. And to buttress the claim they can always point out some examples of same, without noting that the amounts involved are a small percentage of the resources actually needed for the intended services.

About Thursday 13 September 1666

Paul Chapin  •  Link

Completely OT, but I can't let pass someone calling Elgar "perhaps Britain's greatest composer." This said of a nation that gave us William Byrd, Henry Purcell, Georg Friedrich Handel (born German, but spent his entire productive life in England), and in our own time, Benjamin Britten. Elgar isn't even in the running. (Pedro, I know it wasn't you, but the author you quoted.)

About Saturday 17 November 1666

Paul Chapin  •  Link

CGS, I think you mean "Gutenberged."

IIRC, Harvard is one of the libraries that has agreed with Google to enter their entire contents into Google's massive digital library over time. If we all live long enough, Hewer's journal may eventually be accessible to all.

About Monday 5 November 1666

Paul Chapin  •  Link

"He do ... conclude it as a thing certain that it was done by plots"

The "paranoid style" didn't begin with American politics.

About Monday 29 October 1666

Paul Chapin  •  Link

@CGS, the market value of a gold guinea has gone up 3 1/2d since Sam bought them, or about 1.4%. If Sam were to sell his gold now he would make a profit of over 20L (allowing for a bid/asked margin on the part of the gold dealers). No derivatives or other fancy financial machinery needed. Of course he would be foolish to sell it, since it is probably going to continue going up in value, and in any case he wants the tangible asset for portability.

About Monday 29 October 1666

Paul Chapin  •  Link

Sam today answers the question we were tossing around back when he bought the guineas. He bought 2,000 of them and paid the discount as a surcharge.

He doesn't mention, maybe it hasn't occurred to him, that his own store of gold has gone up in value with the increase in the discount.