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not to be seen by Q.S.P. or could not you make
him send it me himself.
A day or two I had a sanghir in the morning
& who should it be but our shabby cruz. of Woolwich.
However he is a great man now, having
been round the world on the last expedition: he was
Capt.'s Clerk & Purser on board the smallest ship, &
has made some little money by it. He was strongly
recommended by his Capt. (now dead) to the Pres.
of the Roy. Soc: of whose curiosities on board the
ship he has had the charge:& who has in consequence
promised him his interest with the great
man in that time. He is just now gone from
me. He has been drinking tea here after dining
with Q.S.P. The creature is a good deal improved
since he has been abroad,
& from that circumstance is become worth talking
about with. a great he is
vastly communicative unintelligent. He has
told me a number of , some of
which may be to you where you are.
These perhaps I may give you some account of ,
but if I do it shall be in a spate letter
for obvious reasons.
Composing. Method Of.
As to the plan of writing upon loose
strips of paper which you so much
you seem not to recollect that it is the same
I set out with, & gave up several years ago
from my experience of the inconvenience of it.
If your slips of paper are not all of a size, a
collection of them makes the greatest Babel
imaginable: if they are, they will be either
small or large: if small, one single subject
will sometimes occupy a number of them.
There is then the greatest plague imaginable in
keeping them together & preventing
mixing with the rest — if large, then if
the article is small there is an immense
quantity of room running to work.
As to the being able to shuffle backward
& forwards, that is of little use when the
articles are of any length; & as for conformity
upon my plan of loose sheets doubled folded in
the ordinary way I can compare any thing
with any thing else, just what is on
one side of a leaf with what is on the other
side of the same leaf.
The great use of compositing is when the
articles are very short in the forma of heads
Accordingly I have all my heads, as you have
seen upon an open sheet ruled in columns.
By this means I can shuffle & cut & confound
and transfer at pleasure. In this
, articles generate one another most
While I am writing a chapter,
loose hints that I am afraid to lose go down
immediately upon one of these open sheets
they are ruled in narrow columns not such
room is lost, so that the greatest possible quantity
of matter presents itself at a view: and
as fast I have made use of any hint
and rolled the matter of it into write form , I
draw a great gash through it: when the
all the hints of a sheet are thus made use of
the sheet goes into the fire: or if a column
or so remains not made use of, that column
is pinned on to another sheet.
If you would have grace to copy the mag.
contents of your inserenda in this manner, you
would find the variety multiplicity of them a
as it is now: but I suppose you are too indolent
to make marg. contents, as well as to copy them
out when made. If you could bring yourself to it, you
would find the very operation of marginal contenting
would make set the articles a generating — and so, good night
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Identifier: | JB/539/109/001 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 539.
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1780-12-01 |
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539 |
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109 |
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001 |
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Correspondence |
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Jeremy Bentham |
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