The Universe of Discourse

On baroque long S
Jokes about the long medial 's' are easy to make. Stan Freberg's album Stan Freberg Presents: The United States of America, Volume I: The Early Years has a scene in which John Adams or Benjamin Franklin or one of those guys is reading Thomas Jefferson's draft of the Declaration of Independence: "'Life, liberty, and the purfuit of happinefs'? Tom, all your s's look like f's!"

A story by Frances Warfield, appropriately titled "Fpafm", gets probably as much juice out of the joke as there is to be got. I believe the copyright has expired, so here it is, in its entirety:

FPAFM

by Frances Warfield

I ordered ham and eggs, as I always do on the diner, and then, as I always do, looked around for pamphlets. There was one handy, "Echoes of Colonial Days," it was called, "being a little fouvenir iffued from time to time, for the benefit of the guefts of The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company as a reminder of the pleafant moments fpent..." Involuntarily, my lips began to move. I reached for a pencil. But the man across from me already had his pencil out. He had written:

"Oh, fay can you fee?"

I said, "Fing Fomething Fimple."

"Filly, ifn't it?" he said, and kept on writing.

I wrote: "Fing a Fong of Fixpence."

"Oh, ftop the fongs," he said, "Too eafy." He wrote: "The Courtfhip of Miles Fandifh," "I fee a fquirrel," "I undereftimate ftatefmanfhip," "My fifter feems fuperfenfitive," and, seeing that I did not appreciate the last one, which he evidently thought very fine, he wrote: "Forry to fee you fo ftupid."

I ate my lunch grouchily. How could I help it if he was in practice and I was not? He had probably taken this train before.

"Pafs the falt," I said.

"Pleafe pafs the falt," he triumphed.

I paid no attention. "Waiter!" I said. The waiter did not budge.

"You muft fpeak the language," said the man opposite me. "Fay, Fteward!"

The waiter jumped to attention. "Fir?" he said.

"Pleafe fill the faltcellar."

"The faltcellar fhall be replenifhed inftantly," replied the waiter, with a superior gleam in his eyes.

I smiled and my companion unbent a little. "Let's try for hard ones," he invited.

"Farcafm," he said.

"Fubftance."

"Fubfiftence," he scored.

"Fcythe."

"S's inside now," he ruled.

Perfuafive," I said instantly.

"Lanfguifh."

"Bafilifk."

"Quiefcent."

"Nonfenfe," I finished. "Fon of a fpeckled fea monfter."

"Ftep-fon of a poifonous fnake!" he cried.

"You don't fay fo!" I retorted.

"I do fay fo," he replied, getting up and leaving the diner.

"Fool!" I called after him, fniffiling.

Reading Baroque scientific papers, you see a lot of long-medial-s. Opening to a random page of the Philosophical Experiments and Observations of Robert Hooke, for example, we have:

The ſecond Experiment, was made, to ſhew a Way, how to find the true and comparative Expanſion of any metal, when melted, and ſo to compare it both with the Expanſion of the ſame metal, when ſolid, and likewiſe with the Expanſion of any other, either fluid or ſolid Body.

What hasn't happened, however: it hasn't become completely transparent. The long s really does look a lot like an f, so much so that I can find it confusing when the context doesn't help me out. The fact that these books are always facsimiles and that the originals were printed on coarse paper and the ink has smudged, does not make it any easier to tell when one is looking at an s and when at an f. So far, the most difficult instance I have encountered involved a reference to "the Learned Dr. Voſſius". Or was it Voffius? Or Vofſius? Or was it Voſfius? Well, I found out later it was indeed Vossius; this is Dr. Gerhard Johann Voss (1577-1649), Latinized to "Vossius". But I was only able to be sure because I encountered the name somewhere else with the short s's.

This typographic detail raises a question of scholarly ethics that I don't know how to answer. In an earlier article, I needed to show how 17th-century writers referred to dates early in the year, which in common nomenclature occurred during one year, but which legally were part of the preceding year. Simply quoting one of these writers wasn't enough, because the date was disambiguated typographically, with the digit for the legal year directly above the digit for the conventional year. So I programmed TeX to demonstrate the typography:

1. Most permissible is to replace the original 17th-century font with a modern one.

2. Slightly less permissible would be to reduce the heavy 17th-century usage of italic face, in Royal Society for example, replacing it with roman typefaces.

3. Slightly less permissible still would be to replace the 17th-century capitalization conventions with 20th-century conventions. For example, in C20 we would not capitalize "Remark".

4. Then can I replace obsolete 17th-century contractions such as "consider'd" with 20th-century equivalents such as "considered"? If that is acceptable, then what about "'tis"? Can I replace "3dly" with "thirdly"?

5. Can I replace obsolete Baroque spellings such as "plaister", "fatt", and "it self" with "plaster", "fat", and "itself"?

6. Can I replace obsolete Baroquisms such as "strow'd" in "strow'd on Ice" with "strewn", or "stopple" with "stopper"?

7. At the bottom of the list, I could just rewrite the whole thing in a modern style and pass it off as what Derham actually wrote.

[ Addendum 20060405 ]

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