We’re solidly into the semester and it feels like time is flying by - we’re almost a quarter of the way through already! I’ve been splitting time between Spectator quotes and the Quotation Matcher database and thankfully making quite a bit of headway in each. Something I have found to be very rewarding is the achievements for reaching different increments in the database: eight levels in total and I have already reached the third one! Last semester I barely cleared the first milestone, so I feel quite accomplished and it really helps to see how much progress I have already made this year. The first award, the Matching Apprentice, is awarded once you have matched fifty quotes, the Johnson Scholar comes at one hundred, and for my current level, the Dictionary Prodigy, you must have matched 250 quotes. As you may have guessed from the pattern formed from the first three, the next award in the sequence will be at five hundred. Currently, I’m sitting at a very nice three hundred and thirty-three (not including my Spectator count), so now I just need one or two more!
A self-created reward is the extra exciting moment when, searching for the author for a Spectator quote, I get one that isn’t in the standard rotation. Generally, it’s one of three possible ‘names’: C., L., or T. (you may understand now why I say ‘names’ in quotations). This week I happened to see a few different authors, including one that we know was a real person: Peter Motteux! I wasn’t able to find much information on him outside of physical books (and limited amounts at that), but I was able to find a little about him on his Wikipedia entry. Funnily enough, he already had an entry in the dictionary too! It seems he worked on a translation of Don Quixote that was initially published in 1700 as well as in a semi-contemporary magazine, The Gentleman’s Journal. Considering how many people lived at the time, to see the crossover between people of the same period, in the same general area, all this time later, is really fascinating. If you’re interested in learning a bit more you can take a look at the letter he submitted to The Spectator here!
Moving back to the future, I now know what my final exam will be: a new informational repository for The Spectator. This will be a central page on the dictionary’s site that will include general background on the magazine, more details about the different volumes, and a section that explains the research done on the magazine by Donald Bond (which, if you’re interested, you can see here). There’s also a portion of the site where you can browse quotes in the dictionary by author and I plan to include that on the page as well. I specifically want to make sure there’s a focus placed on the authors used in the magazine. Currently, all the quotes are linked under Joseph Addison, which (no surprise) if you’re interested you can find here.
Thanks for sticking around for all my thrilling link drops - see you next week!