The correctors unlearned
Though it be from Wikipedia, re which I yield to none in generall Doubt and Scorn, yet is this passage worth quoting. The Archbishop of Canterbury addresses the decline in editing skill that gave us the world's all-time best case of "Eds: Insert Dropped 'Not' in 7th graf," also known as the Naughty Bible or Wicked Bible:
I knew the tyme when great care was had about printing, the Bibles especially, good compositors and the best correctors were gotten being grave and learned men, the paper and the letter rare, and faire every way of the beste, but now the paper is nought, the composers boyes, and the correctors unlearned.
True that, Your Worship. The deskly arts have gone to hell in a handbasket since I was a little rimrat too. And their music? It is but noise.
Regular posting resumes shortly, Your Editor being newly returned from the big town and beset with Labours.
I knew the tyme when great care was had about printing, the Bibles especially, good compositors and the best correctors were gotten being grave and learned men, the paper and the letter rare, and faire every way of the beste, but now the paper is nought, the composers boyes, and the correctors unlearned.
True that, Your Worship. The deskly arts have gone to hell in a handbasket since I was a little rimrat too. And their music? It is but noise.
Regular posting resumes shortly, Your Editor being newly returned from the big town and beset with Labours.
posted by fev at 12:22 AM
1 Comments:
Well, that quote's properly sourced!
Here's another I've always loved:
You see in me the Ruines of Time. The day is nearly at an end with me, and truly I am glad of it. I desire not to live in this corrupt age. I foresawe and foretold the late changes, and now easily foresee what will follow after. Alas! O' God's will! It was not so in Queen Elizabeth's time: then youth bare Respect to old Age. (Thomas Tyndale, ca 1665, quoted in Aubrey's "Brief Lives") (and kept off my lawne!)
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