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initial posting 29/03/2009
Take what you have gathered from
Coincidence
— King James authorized bible (The Layman's Atlas, de Selby) Now very rare and a collector's piece. The sardonic du Garbandier makes great play of the fact that the man who first printed the Atlas [Watkins] was struck by lightning on the day he completed the task. It is interesting to note that the otherwise reliable Hatchjaw has put forward the suggestion that the entire Atlas is spurious and the work of 'another hand', raising issues of no less piquancy tha(n) those of the Bacon-Shakespeare controversy. He has many ingenious if not quite convincing arguments, not the least of these being that de Selby was known to have received considerable royalties from a book he did not write, 'a procedure that would be of a piece with the master's ethics.' The theory is, however, not one which will commend itself to a serious student. footnote, The Third Policeman, Flann O'Brien
Hypothesis:
Given a substantial and diverse text and a keyword, then within the text, approximations to the keyword can be found embedded in phrases that support a nominated argument. Discussion:
This admittedly tortuous hypothesis is perhaps best explained by an example from BJ113.
Text — the entire works of William Shakespeare (884,647 words, HCS)
Testing the hypothesis:Keyword — Neville Approximations to keyword — Navile, Anvile, Nevil and Nevel Nominated argument — that Neville is the author of the works attributed to William Shakespeare Outcome — about (we'll address this uncertainty later) 4 matches Example match — "than vile esteem'd"
Text — King James Authorized Bible (774,746 words, BDPF)
Commentary:Keyword — Neville Approximations to keyword — Nevil Nominated argument — that Neville is the compiler of the King James Authorized Bible Approximate outcome —
"an evil" 22 matches
"in evil" 1 match "when evil" 1 match total 24 matches (near miss, "done evil" 4 matches ;-)
Is this matching as significant as that in BJ113?
Affirmitive — more so, only one keyword approximation and many more matches.
Negative — all the BJ113 matches occurred in a single sonnet. Affirmitive — the sonnet was nevertheless chosen from the complete text. ... and so on and so forth.
Actually it seems impossible to devise a test of the BJ113 techniques because of the ill-defined nature of what consitutes a match. James finds a match in lines 9 and 10 of sonnet 121 using a vertical linking method:
No, I am that I am; and they that level
The "nevel" match is formed by sliding the n in "own" up to displace the initial "l" in "level". (The font in BJ113 aligns more closely.)At my abuses reckon up their own:
A problem is that the technique is font and kerning dependent. In a copy of the sonnets to hand, the outcome would be "n level".
No, I am that I am; and they that level
If this match is to be accepted as significant we must assume that Neville stood over the type setter to ensure the kerning was correct.At my abuses reckon up their own: Conclusion:
A relatively high degree of matching (24 matches) was obtained with the test. Because of the flexible nature of what constitutes a match an analytical comparison with BS113 (4 matches) is difficult. Return to Index Last update April 12, 2009 Mal Haysom |