Thought for today- the English

"A True-Born Englishman's a contradiction,

In speech an irony, in fact a fiction."

 Daniel Defoe, author and journalist   M. Vandergucht engraving, after Jeremiah Taverner 1703

"From this amphibious ill-born mob began

That vain ill-natured thing, an Englishman.

The customs, surnames, languages and manners,

Of all these nations are their own explainers:

Whose relics are so lasting and so strong,

They ha' left a shibboleth upon our tongue;

By which with easy search you may distinguish

Your Roman-Saxon-Danish-Norman English."

The True-Born Englishman: A Satyr  Daniel Defoe, 1700.

Defoe, a Non-conformist, was attacking the prejudice against the new king, William III and his Dutch friends.

"Accidentally, on purpose"

This useful and expressive phrase goes back several centuries, and is particularly pertinent when faced with entrenched bureaucracy.  Thus, Sylvester Brounower writes to John Locke with news from London in 1697.

John Locke , plumbago drawing by Sylvester Brounower (Locke's amanuensis) c. 1685

© National Portrait Gallery, London

Whitehall April the 24th: 1697   

"Mrs Smithsby…presents her service to you and would be glad to see you [Locke] in Town again, as some in our Office [the Dept of Trade and Plantations] do, she has been served just as we are, for her Petition and the King's reference upon it; and Our Establishment with the King's reference upon it, are both, accidentally, on purpose, lost in the Treasury."

(Mrs Smithsby had petitioned for 12 years' arrears of a pension originally granted to her father and her petition was referred to the Surveyor-General of Crown Lands in July 1696.  See Correspondence footnote.)

The Correspondence of John Locke  ed. E. S. de Beer   © Oxford University Press

June 9th, 1698

"I went to Deptford to view how miserably the Tzar of Moscovy had left my house after three moneths making it his Court, having gotten Sir. Cr: Wren his Majesties Surveyor & Mr London his Gardener to go down & make an estimat of the repairs, for which they allowed 150 pounds in their Report to the L: of the Treasury: Then I went to see the foundations of the Hall & Chapell, wharfe & other parts of the Greenwich Hospital: & so returned."

The Diary of John Evelyn  edited by E.S. De Beer