{"id":57654,"date":"2023-01-13T14:18:19","date_gmt":"2023-01-13T19:18:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=57654"},"modified":"2023-01-13T14:28:40","modified_gmt":"2023-01-13T19:28:40","slug":"more-bad-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=57654","title":{"rendered":"More \"Bad Things\"…"},"content":{"rendered":"

[Following up on the previous post<\/a>…]\u00a0David Owen wrote the following<\/a> as empirical support for his claim that sentence-initial appositives (\"Bad Things\") are a recent innovation:<\/p>\n

I reread most of Samuel Johnson\u2019s \u201cLives of the Poets,\u201d and skimmed as much as a modern reader can stand of \u201cThe Rambler,\u201d and penetrated as far as it\u2019s humanly possible to penetrate into \u201cRasselas,\u201d and found no examples.<\/span><\/p>\n

So I downloaded Volume 1 of Lives of the Poets<\/em><\/a>, sentencized it, ran the simple search for sentence-initial participles, removed the non-appositives, and found 36 remaining examples of this \"Bad Things\" subset:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Considering botany as necessary to a physician, he retired into Kent to gather plants; and as the predominance of a favourite study affects all subordinate operations of the intellect, botany, in the mind of Cowley, turned into poetry.<\/span>
\nFinding himself able to live in the greatest extremities of love, he concludes the torrid zone to be habitable.<\/span>
\nHaving produced one passage taken by Cowley from Donne, I will recompense him by another which Milton seems to have borrowed from him.<\/span>
\nBeing severely reproved for this folly, he professed, and, perhaps, believed, himself reclaimed; and, to testify the sincerity of his repentance, wrote and published an Essay upon Gaming.<\/span>
\nFinding his rooms too little, he took a house and garden in Aldersgate street[31], which was not then so much out of the world as it is now; and chose his dwelling at the upper end of a passage, that he might avoid the noise of the street.<\/span>
\nHaving exposed the unskilfulness or selfishness of the former government, \"We were left,\" says Milton, \"to ourselves: the whole national interest fell into your hands, and subsists only in your abilities.<\/span>
\nBeing now forty-seven years old, and seeing himself disencumbered from external interruptions, he seems to have recollected his former purposes, and to have resumed three great works, which he had planned for his future employment; an epick poem, the history of his country, and a dictionary of the Latin tongue.<\/span>
\nBeing driven from all publick stations, he is yet too great not to be traced by curiosity to his retirement; where he has been found, by Mr. Richardson, the fondest of his admirers, sitting \"before his door in a grey coat of coarse cloth, in warm sultry weather, to enjoy the fresh air; and so, as well as in his own room, receiving the visits of the people of distinguished parts, as well as quality.\"<\/span>
\nHaving an active and inquisitive mind, he never, except in his paroxysms of intemperance, was wholly negligent of study: he read what is considered as polite learning so much, that he is mentioned by Wood as the greatest scholar of all the nobility.<\/span>
\nHaving disentangled himself from the difficulties of rhyme, he may justly be expected to give the sense of Horace with great exactness, and to suppress no subtilty of sentiment, for the difficulty of expressing it.<\/span>
\nHaving been compelled by his necessities to contract debts, and hunted, as is supposed, by the terriers of the law, he retired to a publick house on Tower hill, where he is said to have died of want; or, as it is related by one of his biographers, by swallowing, after a long fast, a piece of bread which charity had supplied.<\/span>
\nHaving brought him a son, who died young, and a daughter, who was afterwards married to Mr. Dormer, of Oxfordshire, she died in childbed, and left him a widower of about five-and-twenty, gay and wealthy, to please himself with another marriage.<\/span>
\nBeing too young to resist beauty, and probably too vain to think himself resistible, he fixed his heart, perhaps half fondly and half ambitiously, upon the lady Dorothea Sidney, eldest daughter of the earl of Leicester, whom he courted by all the poetry in which Sacharissa is celebrated; the name is derived from the Latin appellation of sugar, and implies, if it means any thing, a spiritless mildness, and dull good-nature, such as excites rather tenderness than esteem, and such as, though always treated with kindness, is never honoured or admired.<\/span>
\nHaving now attained an age beyond which the laws of nature seldom suffer life to be extended, otherwise than by a future state, he seems to have turned his mind upon preparation for the decisive hour, and, therefore, consecrated his poetry to devotion.<\/span>
\nEntised on with hope of future gaine, I suffred long what did my soule displease; But when my youth was spent, my hope was vaine, I felt my native strength at last decrease; I gan my losse of lustie yeeres complaine, And wisht I had enjoy'd the countries peace; I bod the court farewell, and with content My later age here have I quiet spent.<\/span>
\nHaving been educated under a private tutor, he travelled into Italy, and returned a little before the restoration.<\/span>
\nHaving received the first part of his education at Westminster, where he passed six years in the college, he went, at nineteen, to Cambridge[p], where he continued a friendship begun at school with Mr. Montague, afterwards earl of Halifax.<\/span>
\nHaving gone through the first act, he says: \"To conclude this act with the most rumbling piece of nonsense spoken yet:<\/span>
\nBeing asked whether he had seen the Hind and Panther, Crites answers: \"Seen it!<\/span>
\nSupposing the story true, we may remark, that the gradual change of manners, though imperceptible in the process, appears great, when different times, and those not very distant, are compared.<\/span>
\nFed on the lawns, and in the forest rang'd: Without unspotted, innocent within, She fear'd no danger, for she knew no sin.<\/span>
\nCompared with the ode on Killigrew, it may be pronounced, perhaps, superiour in the whole; but without any single part equal to the first stanza of the other.<\/span>
\nConsidering the metrical art simply as a science, and, consequently, excluding all casualty, we must allow that triplets and alexandrines, inserted by caprice, are interruptions of that constancy to which science aspires.<\/span>
\nBeing out of town, I have forgotten the ship's name, which your mother will inquire, and put it into her letter, which is joined with mine.<\/span>
\nBeing thus prepared, he could not but taste every little delicacy that was set before him; though it was impossible for him, at the same time, to be fed and nourished with any thing but what was substantial and lasting.<\/span>
\nHaving formed his plan, and collected materials, he declared, that a few months would complete his design; and, that he might pursue his work with less frequent avocations, he was, in June 1710, invited, by Mr. George Ducket to his house, at Gartham, in Wiltshire.<\/span>
\nBeing now no longer in favour, he contrived to obtain a writ for summoning the electoral prince to parliament, as duke of Cambridge.<\/span>
\nThinking the whole design pernicious to their interest, they endeavoured to raise a faction against it in the college, and found some physicians mean enough to solicit their patronage, by betraying to them the counsels of the college.<\/span>
\nHaving already translated some parts of Lucan's Pharsalia, which had been published in the Miscellanies, and doubtless received many praises, he undertook a version of the whole work, which he lived to finish, but not to publish.<\/span>
\nHaving yet no publick employment, he obtained, in 1699, a pension of three hundred pounds a year, that he might be enabled to travel.<\/span>
\nHaving given directions to Mr. Tickell for the publication of his works, and dedicated them on his deathbed to his friend Mr. Craggs, he died June 17, 1719, at Holland-house, leaving no child but a daughter[192].<\/span>
\nHaving left his apprehension behind him, he, at first, applies what Marcia says to Sempronius.<\/span>
\nFlushed with consciousness of these detections of absurdity in the conduct, he afterwards attacked the sentiments of Cato; but he then amused himself with petty cavils, and minute objections.<\/span>
\nBeing now received as a wit among the wits, he paid his contributions to literary undertakings, and assisted both the Tatler, Spectator, and Guardian.<\/span>
\nHaving few religious scruples, he attended the king to mass, and kneeled with the rest, but had no disposition to receive the Romish faith, or to force it upon others; for when the priests, encouraged by his appearances of compliance, attempted to convert him, he told them, as Burnet has recorded, that he was willing to receive instruction, and that he had taken much pains to believe in God, who made the world and all men in it; but that he should not be easily persuaded \"that man was quits, and made God again.\"<\/span>
\nFinding king James irremediably excluded, he voted for the conjunctive sovereignty, upon this principle, that he thought the titles of the prince and his consort equal, and it would please the prince, their protector, to have a share in the sovereignty.<\/span><\/p>\n

Conclusion: Either David Owen's \"most of Lives of the Poets\" was not actually very much of it, or he didn't read it very carefully.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Following up on the previous post…]\u00a0David Owen wrote the following as empirical support for his claim that sentence-initial appositives (\"Bad Things\") are a recent innovation: I reread most of Samuel Johnson\u2019s \u201cLives of the Poets,\u201d and skimmed as much as a modern reader can stand of \u201cThe Rambler,\u201d and penetrated as far as it\u2019s humanly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-peeving"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57654"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57654\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57659,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57654\/revisions\/57659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}