The End

I like when a website officially ends, rather than just fading away and leaving any readers to wonder if new content will ever appear.  

And so, I end the Keith Huddleston blog.

Shakespeare's Reputation over time

 Wow, Wikipedia for the win here, big time. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reputation_of_William_Shakespeare: 

Dryden's sentiments about Shakespeare's imagination and capacity for painting "nature" were echoed in the 18th century by, for example, Joseph Addison ("Among the English, Shakespeare has incomparably excelled all others"), Alexander Pope ("every single character in Shakespeare is as much an Individual as those in Life itself"), and Samuel Johnson (who scornfully dismissed Voltaire's and Rhymer's neoclassical Shakespeare criticism as "the petty cavils of petty minds"). The long-lived belief that the Romantics were the first generation to truly appreciate Shakespeare and to prefer him to Ben Jonson is contradicted by praise from writers throughout the 18th century. Ideas about Shakespeare that many people think of as typically post-Romantic were frequently expressed in the 18th and even in the 17th century: he was described as a genius who needed no learning, as deeply original, and as creating uniquely "real" and individual characters (see Timeline of Shakespeare criticism). To compare Shakespeare and his well-educated contemporary Ben Jonson was a popular exercise at this time, a comparison that was invariably complimentary to Shakespeare.

 See also:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Shakespeare_criticism

Wowie, wowie, such a time to be alive. 

Fake Lao Tzu Quotes

 A website I am glad exists.

https://www.taoistic.com/fake-laotzu-quotes/

Did you know that Alexander Pope . . .

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Pope :  

After Shakespeare, Pope is the second-most quoted writer in English, according to The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, some of his verses having become popular in common parlance (e. g., damning with faint praise). He is considered a master of the heroic couplet.

Naturally enough, as far as my studies have gone, Pope was of English Catholic stock.   I believe his Essay on Man will be an interesting enough count-point to the early Enlightenment when I move my studies to 1700-1750. 

Pope was born in that Glorious Year (for Protestants) of 1688. 

Cura > curiosity

 I am reading Philip Ball's book Curiosity: How Science Became Interested in Everything. It claims that curious comes from the Latin cura, to care and that earlier uses of the word included working "with diligence and caution." 

I have a conjecture based on this -- one would not be at all surprised is completely wrong -- that as curious take up the usage we currently see it used that the word "care" came in to fill that vacuum.  

I would like this to be true because I have always been a bit confused by the etymology of care, which comes from the old English for sorrow, whereas the was we use the word is important to the way a real artist works.  Using the word care the way we do, it is safe to say that when we look at an artifact we evaluate it by how much care we believe was put into it.  We don't mean sorrow here; we mean something like one of the archaic uses of curiosity.   And we very much need to a word with that meaning, especially those of us who see art as our salvation from the the void.  

Onward Meta-rationality

 I'm glad someone -- here Scott Alexander -- showed me the front door on Dave Chapman's project. 

https://metarationality.com/introduction

Simple Benny Graham

 More for my own bookmarking:

http://www.ndir.com/SI/articles/MS1005.shtml

Simple Benny Graham, for simple people. 

Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_St_John,_1st_Viscount_Bolingbroke

Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke (/ˈsɪndʒɪn ˈbɒlɪŋbrʊk/; 16 September 1678 – 12 December 1751) was an English politician, government official and political philosopher. He was a leader of the Tories, and supported the Church of England politically despite his antireligious views and opposition to theology.  He supported the Jacobite rebellion of 1715 which sought to overthrow the new king George I. Escaping to France he became foreign minister for the Pretender. He was attainted for treason, but reversed course and was allowed to return to England in 1723. According to Ruth Mack, "Bolingbroke is best known for his party politics, including the ideological history he disseminated in The Craftsman (1726–1735) by adopting the formerly Whig theory of the Ancient Constitution and giving it new life as an anti-Walpole Tory principle."

Hume summing up Charles II

 . . .  and, really, the Stuarts as a whole.  

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/19216/19216-h/19216-h.htm : 

The French greatness never, during his whole reign, inspired Charles with any apprehensions; and Clifford, it is said, one of his most favored ministers, went so far as to affirm, that it were better for the king to be viceroy under a great and generous monarch, than a slave to five hundred of his own insolent subjects. 

Threads the needle as a starting point for both Hume's and T.R.'s view of the Stuarts -- as well the wider topic of Parliamentarianism versus Monarchism 

But more on this interesting person of a most interesting time.  

If we survey the character of Charles II. in the different lights which it will admit of, it will appear various, and give rise to different and even opposite sentiments. When considered as a companion, he appears the most amiable and engaging of men; and indeed, in this view, his deportment must be allowed altogether unexceptionable. His love of raillery was so tempered with good breeding, that it was never offensive; his propensity to satire was so checked with discretion, that his friends never dreaded their becoming the object of it: his wit, to use the expression of one who knew him well, and who was himself a good judge, could not be said so much to be very refined or elevated, qualities apt to beget jealousy and apprehension in company, as to be a plain, gaining, well-bred, recommending kind of wit. And though, perhaps, he talked more than strict rules of behavior might permit, men were so pleased with the affable communicative deportment of the monarch that they always went away contented both with him and with themselves.

Gallica

 So, I just found out the National Library of France is super psyched about the notion of sharing information with me, ie any random citizen of the world.  

https://gallica.bnf.fr/accueil/en/content/accueil-en?mode=desktop

Viva free books!

Marin Mersenne

 The book I read described him as a hub in the intellectual internet of his time.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marin_Mersenne : 

Marin Mersenne (also known as Marinus Mersennus or le Père Mersenne; French: [mɛʀsɛn]; 8 September 1588 – 1 September 1648) was a French polymath, whose works touched a wide variety of fields. He is perhaps best known today among mathematicians for Mersenne prime numbers, those which can be written in the form Mn = 2n − 1 for some integer n. He also developed Mersenne's laws, which describe the harmonics of a vibrating string (such as may be found on guitars and pianos), and his seminal work on music theory, Harmonie universelle, for which he is referred to as the "father of acoustics". Mersenne, an ordained Catholic priest, had many contacts in the scientific world and has been called "the center of the world of science and mathematics during the first half of the 1600s" and, because of his ability to make connections between people and ideas, "the post-box of Europe". He was also a member of the Minim religious order and wrote and lectured on theology and philosophy.

A deeply religious Catholic -- though notably in France not in the Spain of the Inquisition.  

Milton on his Italian visit

From Areopagitica: a speech for the liberty of unlicensed printing. To the Parliament of England via

 https://www.gutenberg.org/files/44733/44733-0.txt

I have seen and heard in other countries, where this kind of

     inquisition tyrannizes; when I have sat among their learned

     men, (for that honour I had,) and been counted happy to be

     born in such a place of philosophic freedom, as they supposed

     England was, while themselves did nothing but bemoan the

     servile condition into which learning amongst them was

     brought; that this was it which had damped the glory of

     Italian wits; that nothing had been there written now these

     many years but flattery and fustian. There it was that I found

     and visited the famous Galileo, grown old, a prisoner to the

     Inquisition, for thinking in astronomy otherwise than the

     Franciscan and Dominican licensers thought. And though I knew

     that England then was groaning loudest under the prelatical

     yoke, nevertheless I took it as a pledge of future happiness,

     that other nations were so persuaded of her liberty.