The Devil's Details Read Online Free PDF

than workers write about academics, the former lend permanence to their errors and bear a heavier responsibility to generalize with care. See D. F. McKenzie, “
Printers of the Mind: Some Notes on Bibliographical Theories and Printing-House Practices
,” Studies in Bibliography , vol. 22, 1969, note 17, p. 11.

* Historians are always suspicious of the kind of “color commentary” supplied in this paragraph. Assertions that are not based on firm evidence or, at least, derived from a plausible argument are not admitted to Clio’s noisy court. And this author readily admits there is no evidence Jugge saw, smelled, or thought what is attributed to him, nor that he worried or sniffled on the day he arrived at a solution for the overcrowded margin. However, to present the invention of the footnote as if it were achieved in a disembodied mind, a vacuum, would also be a distortion. We must not let our admiration for the abstract acrobatics of brilliant minds allow us to overlook the pull, the dragging down of daily life. Thought must contend with gravity sooner or later. Einstein had to have his wisdom teeth pulled. Newton once in a while must have had a runny nose, a sore throat. Charles Dickens took long compulsive walks and hid out with a mistress. We know for a fact that Archimedes took baths. Their genius was to defy gravity, not escape it. If the particular details we have supplied Jugge hang on him like a misfitted suit, well, we mustn’t let him walk the streets naked. He must be seen to have invented the footnote with his feet on the ground and his head filled with distractions if we are to honor him properly.

* Just as astronomers know that earlier and earlier stars will be found, we expect someday our research will be superseded by the discovery of an earlier footnote. The exploration of the bottom of early book pages should be encouraged. This author with the cooperation of Simon & Schuster is offering a modest but appropriate recognition for the first discoverer of a qualified footnote that appears in history prior to the (f), and which is used in any future edition of this book: A footnote will record the name of the discoverer, who will be given a celebratory dinner at a restaurant of his or her choice for up to one hundred dollars.

* Young boys were usually employed for this work, but a girl was not unknown.

* See the
Oxford English Dictionary
: “Tang … I. 1. A projecting pointed part or instrument. a. The tongue of a serpent formerly thought to be the stinging organ ….” E. Rayher assures me that type once removed from the mold cools quickly. A child’s fingers would not be burned; but the tang’s rough edge could prick a daydreaming child.

* Tweezers were called botkins; specialized printing terminology has been avoided when possible. Annotation, not the printed book, is our subject; printers enter only because they are necessary to a full understanding of the wonder of the first footnote.

* Sometimes the effort to contain margin notes and repress footnotes is even more obviously connected to the issue of maintaining law and order in an age of exuberance and gunpowder. A dismal treatise on the laws of Moses by John Weemes jumps to mind. Weemes should have been saved by providence for our current era, when he would have served splendidly in traffic court; he delights in minutiae and in the pounding of a gavel. A right-hand column appears in the pages of his book but is used solely for emphasis, never for amplification. No footnotes are allowed, of course. While detailing lawful ceremonies, Weemes confronts a biblical text in which “Lions, Oxen & Cherubims” appear. The cherubims make him nervous. He immediately describes an elaborate system of wings. Wings cover their faces and feet. Two wings stretch out to cover whatever is in between. The text tells us “the Lord would not have them to appeare naked ….” And the margin note echoes