Da Inglese a Italiano Scienze Modi di dire/Massime/Proverbi scienza del XVII secolo

For historians of writing the seventeenth century has often been an
era to move quickly over. Perhaps we are embarrassed by the impossible
posturing of the writing masters, those self-important characters that
Isaac Disraeli would dismiss as Vive la Plume men. Everything seems
to be flourished and insubstantial. But in the documents and notebooks
of the new scientists, chemists and philosophers of the Royal Society
and their correspondents we can see the first handwriting that is recognizably
modern. The modest looped cursive of Descartes, the flowing
hand of the astronomer Edmund Halley, and Boyle the chemist, and
Newton’s hand, look as if they might have been written any time in the
last century; but not always so. Sometimes they revert; this is still a time
when writing is in ‘transition’. Robert Boyle’s (1627–91) handwriting is
particularly variable over the course of his life. On one particular page of
his notebook No. 21 (Fig. 38, p. 154), we can see a functional and flowing
hand at the top of the page (entry 201) and then a complete contrast
beneath, a stiffer flourished hand that reminds one of Billingsley.134 In
the margin to the left of the passage, where the change occurs he has
written the word ‘Transcribed’. It appears that the act of transcription
has made him socially self-conscious again; he feels he has to PUT ON A BIT OF A SHOW – this is his careful writing.