Workdiary 5 (Miscellaneous collections of aphorisms from the late 1640s)

Content: Moralistic and theological aphorisms (and some long texts) from scattered workdiary pages dating from the late 1640s

General Information

• Creation: late 1640s
• Hands: Robert Boyle (all entries)
• Source: [1]: Royal Society, Boyle Papers 2, fol. 186; [2]: Boyle Papers 3, fol. 90; [3]: Boyle Papers 3, fol. 95; [4]: Boyle Papers 36, fol. 86v
• Languages: English (17 entries)
• Length: 15 unnumbered entries among four small (often one folio) workdiaries, as follows: [1] 6 entries; [2] 4 entries; [3] 1 entry; [4] 4 entries
• Format: Folded large foolscap sheets, all no longer conjugate and appearing as single leaves.
• Note 1: Entries 3-6 on BP 2, fol. 186 are written in the left margin, with their text the same way up as the longer text in the body of the page. They may have been intended for incorporation in that, but if so it is not clear where they are to be inserted and there are no sigla or keys linking them to the longer text. However, the marginal text beginning 'expecting to be called to account ... their Readers' does appear to be part of the longer text and we have incorporated it there.
• Note 2: The long passage in BP 3, fol. 95 ends, on fol. 95v, with three lines which are too heavily deleted to be decipherable. The page ends with the catchwords 'so many'.
• Note 3: The aphorisms on BP 36, fol. 86v appear on the verso of a folio whose recto is titled 'Material & Addenda Design'd towards the Structure & compleating of Treatises already begun or written January the 25th 1649/50', which is transcribed in Works, xiv, 329. Fol. 86v is endorsed by Henry Miles: 'Heads or titles of Tracts written or to be writ so early as 1648/9', followed by the note 'A meere fine Gentleman', which refers to another text which Miles placed with this manuscript and which now appears in Works, xiii, 139-40. This in turn is followed by a piece of Miles's shorthand which reads, 'worn, not to be printed'.