3 Matching Annotations
  1. May 2022
    1. As Richard Yeo has noted, Locke’s ‘New Method’ was recommended in Ephraim Chambers’s Cyclopaedia (1728), but it’s still interesting to see that it was well-known enough that a Scottish student should be using it half a century after it Locke’s death. In fact, the next thing Boswell does in his new book is to copy out the exact passage from Locke about how to draw it up.

      James Boswell had a commonplace book in which he created index pages not only similar to John Locke's method, but he actually copied out a passage from Locke about how to draw it up. Beyond this there were only a few pages of the volume that were actively used.

      Reference: Folger M.a.6

  2. Apr 2022
    1. James Boswell (1740–95) defended the state of learning in his day: “It has been maintained that this superfoetation, this teeming of the press in modern times, is prejudicial to good literature, because it obliges us to read so much of what is of inferiour value, in order to be in the fashion; so that better works are neglected for want of time, because a man will have more gratification of his vanity in conversation, from having read modern books, than from having read the best works of antiquity. But it must be con-sidered that we now have more knowledge generally diffuse; all our ladies read now, which is a great extension.”

      Link to earlier note about Caleb Deschanel