Sunday Night Fifth February 1860

Source

The shorthand notebooks of Charles Dickens and Arthur P. Stone [ref: cdc5890011_03], Free Library of Philadelphia, Philadelphia.

Description

A shorthand dictation exercise based upon 'Lecture XIV, On the Beautiful – Part II', by the philosopher Sydney Smith. Smith's lecture begins with a quotation from another lecture by Sir Joshua Reynolds entitled Seven Discourses Delivered in the Royal Academy by the President, or Seven Discourses on Art, by Joshua Reynolds (14 December 1770).

Sixteen lines of Brachygraphy shorthand characters written in pencil fill the page of a notebook. At the top is a longhand title, which reads 'Sunday Night Fifth February 1860', with the word 'Fifth' partially crossed through. In the top right corner is the number one, indicating a page number. In the middle of the page, a vertical line runs from top to bottom. The symbols are not arranged in relation to this line, perhaps suggesting that it was added later.

'Sunday Night Fifth February 1860' Part 1. Courtesy of the Free Library of Phildadelphia.

Transcription

All the objects which are exhibited to our view by Nature, says Reynolds, [on/upon] close examination will be found to have their blemishes and defects. The most beautiful forms have something about them like weakness, minuteness or imperfection. But it is not every eye that perceives these blemishes. It must be an eye long used to the contemplation and comparison of these forms and which, by a long habit of observing what every set of objects of the same kind have in common, has acquired the power of discerning what each wants in particular. This long, laborious comparison should be the first study of the painter who aims at the greatest style. By this means he acquires a just idea of the beautiful forms. He corrects Nature by herself, her imperfect state by her more perfect. His eye being enabled to distinguish the accidental deficiencies, excrescences and deformities of things from their general figures, he makes out an abstract idea of their forms more perfect than any one original

Source text

Sydney Smith, 'Lecture XIV, On the Beautiful – Part II', Elementary Sketches of Moral Philosophy (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1856), pp.177.

N.B. The reference is to a contemporary edition, rather than necessarily the edition that Dickens used.

Transcription credits

With thanks to: Ken Cox and Shane Baggs, who identified the source text for this exercise.

Rights

Courtesy of the Free Library of Philadelphia. Please seek further permission from the Free Library to reuse the image.