( v )
omission or transposition of a few occasional paragraphs, from carelessness of the transcriber. The Lansdowne and College copies are, apparently, of the same date, and both bear corrections which appear to be by Sir William Petty himself. The discrepancies, however, between these two are such as would appear to show that neither of them is copied from the other, nor has any common original been discovered. Perhaps, if a conjecture on a subject not very important may be hazarded, it is not improbable that the narrative part of both may be written from short-hand, taken down by dictation from the author. Stenography is known to have been common at that time; witness the Diary of Pepys, of which the short-hand original remains in the Library of Magdalen College, Cambridge; and the following memorandum, which occurs in a volume of Petty manuscripts, now in the possession of Messrs. Hodges and Smith, of Grafton-street, shows such to have been the practice of Dr. Petty:
"His way was to retire early to his lodgings, where his supper was only an handfull of raisins and a piece of bread. He would bid one of his clarks, who wrote a fair hand, go to sleep; and while he eat his raisins and walked about, he would dictate to the other clark, who was a ready man at short-hand. When this was fitted to his mind, the other was roused, and set to work, and he went to bed, so that next morning all was ready."
This paragraph is among many other curious notices of his habits, in explanation of the manner in which he was able to accomplish the duties of his office, as Clerk of the Council, in addition to his many other duties, as Commissioner of Distribution, Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant, Physician to the Forces, &c. But in regard to our manuscripts, it allows us to suppose that the slight differences are merely such as different clerks might make in transcribing from such an original; as in the works published by Sir William during his life, the
