Workdiary 1 ('Diurnall Observations, Thoughts & Collections Begun at Stalbridge April 25th 1647')

Content: Literary aphorisms from 1647 in English and French, largely from Gaultier de Costes, sieur de la Calprenède, Cassandre (Paris, 1642 and subsequent editions to 1666), a chivalric romance set in ancient Greece and Persia.

General Information

• Creation: From April 1647
• Hands: Robert Boyle (all entries)
• Source: Boyle Papers 44, fols. 94-107
• Languages: English (72 entries) French (244 entries)
• Length: 297 entries, unnumbered
• Format: The pages are quarto-format and appear to have been taken from a notebook of that size. Original pagination, 1-28.
• Note 1: The entries consist of a series of short aphorisms or bon mots, most of no more than a sentence long. The beginning of each sentence is marked by a sign, usually a tilde, sometimes a tilde with a small tick mark over it, and sometimes a figure which looks like a tilde with a 'p' at the end (that is, a tilde with a backward loop which ends with a downward stroke through the tilde). The significance of these different symbols, if there is any, has not been determined. We have been able to represent the tilde with modern Web character sets, but not the variations on that sign which are described literally in the transcription. Other entries begin with numbers (5, 6 and 56); their significance also has not been determined.