re: Eats, Shoots & Leaves page 9

Then I checked the a.f.u files. Without quoting vast ... true unless you make that non-truth very, very clear.

Let's take one of those as an example. Here's the original Bryson, from Mother Tongue Ch.5 under the ... could check it in fact, it would be very useful to do exactly that, if anyone has Potter's book.

I recently googled for this description of St Paul's Cathedral and found it attributed to every monarch from Queen Anne back to an amazingly prophetic Charles I.

Then I checked the a.f.u files. Without quoting vast ... true unless you make that non-truth very, very clear.

Let's take one of those as an example. Here's the original Bryson, from Mother Tongue Ch.5 under the ... could check it in fact, it would be very useful to do exactly that, if anyone has Potter's book.

I recently googled for this description of St Paul's Cathedral and found it attributed to every monarch from Queen Anne back to an amazingly prophetic Charles I.

Martin Watts typed thus:

"Simeon Potter notes that when James II first saw St ... useful to do exactly that, if anyone has Potter's book.

I recently googled for this description of St Paul's Cathedral and found it attributed to every monarch from Queen Anne back to an amazingly prophetic Charles I.

There was a perfectly awful and entirely artificial St Paul's Cathedral in place for hundreds of years before the Great Fire. Wren was working on stabilising the tower when the when the place burned down, which handed him the job of replacing it entirely.

David
==

Let's take one of those as an example. Here's the original Bryson, from Mother Tongue Ch.5 under the ... I don't think you can fault Bryson, writing for his intended audience, to do other than write what he wrote.

I went back to the discussion on a.f.u to see if it had any useful clues. Here is a post different from the one that said it was in Bryson's "Mother Tongue:

I checked out that last, the website of "Quote...Unquote." It looked intriguing at first, with hundreds of quotations in search of verified authors (Ben Zimmer, better stay away), but then I saw that the solutions weren't posted, they were only sold at $6 per inquiry. Didn't seem quite fair.
Their query about the "awful, artificial" story quotes Potter:

Q421 Simeon Potter's Our Language (1976) has: 'When King James II observed that the new St Paul's Cathedral was amusing, awful and artificial, he implied that Sir Christopher Wren's creation was "pleasing, awe-inspiring, and skilfully achieved".' A source for James's remark?

So that would appear to answer your question of what was it that Simeon Potter said, exactly.
Although, what do those internal quotes signify? Who was Potter quoting when he said "pleasing, awe-inspiring, and skilfully achieved"?

ABE books has 83 copies of "Our Language" by Simeon Potter, with edition dates from the 1950s to at least 1985. Bryson's appendix specifies the
1976 edition.

Best Donna Richoux

There was a perfectly awful and entirely artificial St Paul's Cathedral in place for hundreds of years before the Great Fire. Wren was working on stabilising the tower when the when the place burned down, which handed him the job of replacing it entirely.

I bet the acoustic in the old one was better.
Farther OT: is King's Chapel, Cambridge, one of the great engineering marvels of the world, or are there several like it? When I'm in there, and I wish it were often, I always suffer paralysing gobsmacking.

Mike.

I recently googled for this description of St Paul's Cathedral and found it attributed to every monarch from Queen Anne back to an amazingly prophetic Charles I.

Well, we can rule out Queen Anne: she was dead. Which was Not a Good Thing.

Mike.

Let's take one of those as an example. Here's the original Bryson, from Mother Tongue Ch.5 under the ... I don't think you can fault Bryson, writing for his intended audience, to do other than write what he wrote.

Potter attributes the statement to King James II without qualification:

"When King James II observed that the new St Paul's Cathedral was amusing, awful, and artificial, he implied that Sir Christopher Wren's recent creation was 'pleasing, awe-inspiring, and skilfully achieved'."
(Simeon Potter, Our Language , Penguin Books, pub. 1950, p.116)

So Bryson paraphrased what Potter said King James II meant.

This quote from Potter is just one of three examples he gives of famous people using words with meanings other than their current ones, the other famous people being Francis Bacon and Dr. Johnson.
Richard Sabey Visit the r.p.crosswords competition website cryptic fan at hotmail.com http://www.rsabey.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/rpc /

There was a perfectly awful and entirely artificial St Paul's ... down, which handed him the job of replacing it entirely.

I bet the acoustic in the old one was better. Farther OT: is King's Chapel, Cambridge, one of the great ... are there several like it? When I'm in there, and I wish it were often, I always suffer paralysing gobsmacking.

I think it was a larger version of the chapel at Eton College, completed a little earlier. In my first week at King's I went on the special tour of the Chapel, conducted by an eccentric Fellow named John Saltmarsh; the space between the vaulted ceiling and the wooden roof is simply amazing and awesome, and a testament to the artifice of those fifteenth century masons.
Matti

I recently googled for this description of St Paul's Cathedral ... from Queen Anne back to an amazingly prophetic Charles I.

Well, we can rule out Queen Anne: she was dead. Which was Not a Good Thing.

This must be some sort of obscure allusion, because she was alive and the queen when the cathedral was completed. Is it going to be Monty Python and the parrot?

Best Donna Richoux