[1] From: "Norman D. Hinton" <hinton@springnet1.com> (6)
Subject: Re: 12.0460 quotation? images?
[2] From: Randall Jones <rljones@email.byu.edu> (6)
Subject: Re: source of quotation
[3] From: Jack Lynch <jlynch@andromeda.rutgers.edu> (16)
Subject: Re: 12.0460 quotation? images?
[4] From: Jim Marchand <marchand@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> (5)
Subject: quotation
--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sat, 27 Feb 1999 19:59:06 +0000
From: "Norman D. Hinton" <hinton@springnet1.com>
Subject: Re: 12.0460 quotation? images?
I have this version:
"What is valuable is not new, and what is new is not valuable",
attributed to Henry Peter Brougham, Baron Brougham and Vaux, in _The
Edinburgh Review_, 1802, in a review of _The Work of Thomas Young_.
(I assume this Thomas Young is the 18th-19th c. English scientist
(medicine, physics, Egyptology), not the Scottish theologian of more
than a century earlier.)
--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sat, 27 Feb 1999 19:59:16 +0000
From: Randall Jones <rljones@email.byu.edu>
Subject: Re: source of quotation
Unfortunately I do not have the exact reference for Willard, but in
a book titled, _The Portable Curmudgeon_ by Jon Winokur the
following is one of hundreds of quotations: "Your manuscript is
both good and original; but the part that is good is not original,
and the part that is original is not good. SAMUEL JOHNSON"
Maybe you can track it fown from there.
Randall Jones
--[3]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sat, 27 Feb 1999 19:59:37 +0000
From: Jack Lynch <jlynch@andromeda.rutgers.edu>
Subject: Re: 12.0460 quotation? images?
Can any kind Humanist give me an exact reference for Dr. Johnson's cooly
damaging statement (which here I undoubtedly paraphrase), 'What is new about
this is not interesting, and what is interesting is not new.'?
It's usually quotd as "Your manuscript is both good and original,
but the part that is good is not original and the part that is
original is not good." Problem is, it's nowhere in Johnson's
published works, his letters, or in Boswell, Hawkins, Thrale, or
Burney; _Bartlett's_ and the _Oxford Dictionary of Quotations_
don't mention it; and those guides to quotations that do carry it
never give a citation. There's a slim chance it's in one of the
obscure biographies or in something discovered comparatively
recently -- a letter, some of the Boswell papers -- but I
wouldn't bet on it. I've been asked this many times, and have
concluded it's probably apocryphal. Johnson's one of a small
group -- Shakespeare, Churchill, Lincoln, Twain -- who apparently
said much more after their deaths than during their lives.
If someone has a citation, though, I'll be glad to hear about it.
--[4]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sat, 27 Feb 1999 19:59:54 +0000
From: Jim Marchand <marchand@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Subject: quotation
This is such a common chiasm, Willard, that it is difficult to say where it
comes from. In German we say: "Das Gute war nicht neu, und das Neue war
nicht gut," often attributing it to Herder. Bartlett's has one from Daniel
Webster: "What is valuable is not new, and what is new is ont valuable."
This, they say, is from "Toast at the Charleston Bar Dinner [May 10, 1847]."
Jim Marchand.
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