Early Modern Whale

For a malapropism: Clown. … for mine own part, I am (as they say, but to perfect one man in one poor man) Pompion the great sir. Bero...

John Allen's Printer's Mark. In some printing jobs, he collaborated with Richard Noon, whose sign was the seven stars. I hav...

I have been lecturing on George Herbert, and this led me to Joseph Beaumont’s Psyche (1648 and 1651), where there is a remarkable tribute...

I have been reading, belatedly considering my interests, Walter Stephens’ Demon Lovers . My only excuse is that the library had it shelved (...

Mary Barton's poem about Charity In 1661, William Barton was a man of 28 years, a butcher by trade, married and living in Shrewsbur...

To the church at Alton Priors, in Wiltshire. I tend to find that a deconsecrated church like this, cleared of the necessary human cl...

Kilcolman Castle, which I was pleased to be able to revisit a few days ago, having misplaced the photographs I took on a visit two or t...

 I spend a lot of time looking at these things, so I posted a picasa web album. And as a break from the dusty dead, another of orchids. The ...

The OED cites this phrase from Sir Philip Sidney writing circa 1586: a 1586 SIDNEY Arcadia II. (1867) 190 Yet he durst not but kiss ...

The 1638 Folio of Suckling’s Aglaura on EEBO, with its alternate Act V, also preserves an answer song to Suckling’s famous lyric, ‘Wh...