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Proofread of the Month
November 2012

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January 2013

Short works (8 completed)

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November 2013

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26 validated works

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100000Wikisource contributions
see also Global user contributions
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The current Proofread of the Month is

More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary  (1927)
by Montague Rhodes James.

Last month completed: A Grammar and Vocabulary of the Language of New Zealand

The next scheduled collaboration will begin in January.

Collaboration of the Week

The current community collaboration is for works related to
the Eminent Women Series.

Last collaboration: Slavery in the United States (1837)

works

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quotes

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"As you can imagine, our colleagues have a bit of a proud obsession with making the best possible decisions using the best possible information. When it became clear that SARS-CoV-2, or simply, the latest coronavirus, was spreading globally and likely to become a pandemic, we took it seriously. Our responsibility is to keep Wikipedia online and available for the world, especially in moments of crisis. A world that is changing requires changing how we work." [2]

"What first appears to be merely a simple engineering problem turns out to be indicative of the growing commercialisation of the web, a problem that stems from the dominance of an epistemology that sees knowledge about the world as essentially reducible to depoliticised data that is natural and obvious, rather than what it actually is: a re-constructed representation that obscures the origins of information and, in so doing, reduces the ability of ordinary users to interrogate that data. "[3]

"Look at the facts of the world. You see a continual and progressive triumph of the right. I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice. Things refuse to be mis-managed long. Jefferson trembled when he thought of slavery and remembered that God is just. Ere long all America will tremble." [4]

"urbem venalem et mature perituram, si emptorem invenerit" “A city for sale, and doomed to perish as soon as it finds a purchaser!" [5]

'What had it all been about, these 'ringing cheers and imperial perorations'? As for 'peace with honour,' it was really 'retreat with boasting.' 'this government was no better than a respectable committee of the society of friends, with all its helplessness but without its principles.' 'My lords, you are beginning to be found out. Time is your great accuser ; the course of events is summing up the case against you.' [6] What have you to say—I shall wait to hear—what have you to say why you should not receive an adverse verdict at the hands of your country, as you certainly will be called up for judgment at the bar of history? [7]

"Tell me, ye bloody butchers! ye villains high and low! ye wretches who contrived, as well as you who executed, the inhuman deed! do you not feel the goads and stings of conscious guilt pierce through your savage bosoms? Though some of you may think yourselves exalted to a height that bids defiance to the arms of human justice, and others shroud yourselves beneath the mask of hypocrisy, and build your hopes of safety on the low arts of cunning, chicanery, and falsehood; yet do you not sometimes feel the gnawings of that worm which never dies? Do not the injured shades of Maverick, Gray, Caldwell, Attucks, and Carr, attend you in your solitary walks, arrest you even in the midst of your debaucheries, and fill even your dreams with terror?

"Ye dark, designing knaves! ye murderers! parricides! how dare you tread upon the earth which has drank in the blood of slaughtered innocents, shed by your wicked hands? How dare you breathe that air which wafted to the ear of Heaven the groans of those who fell a sacrifice to your accursed ambition? But if the labouring earth doth not expand her jaws; if the air you breathe is not commissioned to be the minister of death; yet hear it, and tremble! the eye of Heaven penetrates the darkest chambers of the soul; traces the leading clue through all the labyrinths which your industrious folly has devised; and you, however you may have screened yourselves from human eyes, must be arraigned, must lift your hands, red with the blood of those whose deaths you have procured, at the tremendous bar of God."[8]

"Progress in ethics means a constant turning of white into black, and burning what one has adored. There is little of that between St. John and the Victorian era. But if we might discuss this point until we found that we nearly agreed, and if we do agree thoroughly, about the impropriety of Carlylese denunciations and Pharisaism in history, I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favourable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption it is the other way, against the holders of power, increasing as the power increases. Historic responsibility has to make up for the want of legal responsibility. Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority, still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it. That is the point at which the negation of Catholicism and the negation of Liberalism meet and keep high festival, and the end learns to justify the means. You would hang a man of no position like Ravaillac ; but if what one hears is true, then Elizabeth asked the gaoler to murder Mary, and William III. ordered his Scots minister to extirpate a clan. Here are the greatest names coupled with the greatest crimes ; you would spare those criminals, for some mysterious reason. I would hang them higher than Hainan, for reasons of quite obvious justice, still more, still higher for the sake of historical science.

If we may debase the currency for the sake of genius, or success, or rank, or reputation, we may debase it for the sake of a man's influence, of his religion, of his party, of the good cause which prospers by his credit and suffers by his disgrace. Then History ceases to be a science, an arbiter of controversy, a guide of the Wanderer, the upholder of that moral standard which the powers of earth and religion itself tend constantly to depress. It serves where it ought to reign ; and it serves the worst cause better than the purest. . . . My dogma is not the special wickedness of my own spiritual superiors, but the general wickedness of men in authority — of Luther and Zwingli, and Calvin, and Cranmer, and Knox, of Mary Stuart and Henry VIII., of Philip II. and Elizabeth, of Cromwell and Louis XIV., James and Charles and William, Bossuet and Ken." [9]

"'There was never no nation, which had so ignorant ministers; ... the parson against the vicar, the vicar against the parson, the parish against both, and one against another, and all for the belly.'" [10]

"At Oxford he was as conspicuous a failure as he had been at Carlisle, and it was said by his enemies that he was made a bishop because he was so bad a dean. Under his administration Christ Church was in confusion, scandalous altercations took place, and there was reason to fear that the great Tory college would be ruined by the tyranny of the great Tory doctor. In 1713 he was removed to the bishopric of Rochester, which was then always united with the deanery of Westminster. Still higher dignities seemed to be before him. For, though there were many able men on the episcopal bench, there was none who equalled or approached him in parliamentary talents. "[11]

"He was equally eager in the gratification of his lower appetites and ‘persisted, in the words of Arbuthnot, ‘in spite of age and infirmities, in the pursuit of every human vice excepting prodigality and hypocrisy.’ Pope frequently introduces his name in his verses, as in the phrase ‘Chartres and the devil’ " [12]

"See Colonel J. R. J. Jocelyn in Journal of the Royal Artillery, vol. 32, No. II, and sources therein referred to. The account in the Dictionary of National Biography is very inaccurate."[13]

"The Autobiography and Personal Reminescences of Major-General B. F. Butler Butler's Book (New York, 1393), to be used with caution as regards facts." [14]

"was selfish, calculating and contemptuous; he was not naturally generous, and he practised dissimulation till it became part of his nature. In spite of his brilliant talents and of the admirable training he received, his life, on the whole, cannot be pronounced a success."[15]

"Sir Walter Scott writes of 'the malignant assiduity' with which he levelled his charges of of plagiarism (Dryden, Works, ed. Scott, ii. 292), and D'Israeli in his 'Calamities Authors' declares that he 'read poetry only to detect plagiarisms.'" [16]

"Finally he was presented by the dean and chapter of St. Paul's to St. Giles, Cripplegate, of 500l. a year. This presentation, however, embittered his remaining years, as he was speedily involved in parochial disputes and tedious lawsuits in order to recover the proceeds of an alleged assigned tax on peas and beans. " [17]

"For 'John Bull,' the most attractive and remunerative (to the management) piece of its day, he received in all 1,200l. These sums and the profits of the theatre were swallowed up in extravagance and ostentation. Almost from the outset Colman's recklessness involved him in disputes and litigation. He lived for some time in an obscure chamber at the back of the Haymarket Theatre, and afterwards, under the name of Campbell, in a cottage a few miles from town. In 1805 he disposed of shares for 8,000l. in the theatre to David Morris (his brother-in-law)," [18]

"He was a demagogue in the proper sense of the term, a true leader of the people. He exhorted them always to employ the political freedom which he had largely helped to give them, less for their own material advancement than for the best and highest interests of mankind."[19]

"He declined other offers of degrees and also honours of a different kind, but accepted a civil List pension in 1863, the year in which the first part of the ‘Arabic-English Lexicon’ was published, after twenty years of unremitting labour. The succeeding parts came out in 1865, 1867, 1872, 1874, and posthumously, under the editorship of B. Lane-Poole (unfortunately with unavoidable lacunæ), in 1877, 1885, and 1892. The importance of the dictionary was instantly a appreciated by the orientalists of Europe, and the lexicon at once became indispensable to the student of Arabic." [COI?!] [20]

"Bostock arouses expectation and disappoints it, uses superficial knowledge as if it were profound learning, is never concise, and rarely clear; seldom full, but often prolix. [21]

"Berrow never mentions the Jesuit writer, G. H. Bougeaut, from whose 'Amusement Philosophique sur le Langage des Bestes,' translated into English in 1739 (there was a '2nd edition corrected,' 1740), he derived nearly all his theories. Nor does Berrow refer to Hildrop's Examination of Father Bougeaut's Philosophical Amusement,' 1742, from which he also borrowed. Berrow brings in, in the most reckless and uncritical way, the most famous names as holding the doctrine of 'the lapse of souls in a state of pre-existence.' His work is a farrago of ill-digested learning. While Bougeaut jested, Berrow was as grave as a judge. " [22]

"To one fatal propensity Collier sacrificed an honourable fame won by genuine services to English literature. Apart from his labours on Shakespeare and the history of the drama, few have done more to rescue the works of less famous writers from undeserved oblivion. His critical judgment, however, was not always equal to his industry, and he was never a particularly accurate editor. Worse than this, the taint of suspicion necessarily rests upon all his work. None of his statements or quotations can be trusted without verifying, and no volume or document that has passed through his hands (e.g. B. M. Egerton MS. 2623) can be too carefully scrutinised. His maltreatment of the collections to which he was given access was an abuse of confidence which nothing can palliate ; but in literary matters he was apparently devoid of conscience, and probably he regarded as applicable to all his works the motto from Milton prefixed to the earliest of them, 'I have done in this nothing unworthy of an honest life and studies well employed.' In other respects his character was irreproachable, and he had the reputation of a genial, kind-hearted, and amiable man." [23]

"He was somewhat unfortunate in his biographer (Stowell), whose work was 'welcomed with a general disappointment.'" [24]

"The opposition of Governor Cornbury to Makemie continued after the trial, the governor writing of him as 'a preacher, a doctor of physic, a merchant, an attorney, a counsellor-at-law, and, which is worst of all, a disturber of governments.' "[25]

"For his eldest son in childhood D'Arcy Thompson wrote 'Nursery Nonsense, or Rhymes without Reason' (1863-4), and 'Fun and Earnest, or Rhymes with Reason' (1865). These books, admirably illustrated by Charles H. Bennett, and now scarce, were the delight of a past generation of children. " [no COI here at all.] [26]

"Had he a Genius, and Poetic Rage
Great as the Vices of this guilty Age,"[1]

DNB; EB1911; EB1922; NIE; Appletons’ articles

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transcribed Appletons article