From a recent Sotheby’s catalogue:
LOT 4141
MIDDLETON, CHRISTOPHER.
A REJOINDER TO MR. DOBB’S REPLY TO CAPTAIN MIDDLETON; IN WHICH IS EXPOS’D, BOTH HIS WILFUL AND REAL IGNORANCE OF TIDES; &C. HIS JESUITICAL PREVARICATIONS, EVASIONS, FALSITIES, AND FALSE REASONING; HIS AVOIDING TAKING NOTICE OF FACTS, FORMERLY DETECTED AND CHARGED UPON HIM AS INVENTIONS OF HIS OR HIS WITNESSES; THE CHARACTER OF THE LATTER, AND THE PRESENT VIEWS OF THE FORMER, WHICH GAVE RISE TO THE PRESENT DISPUTE. IN A WORD, AN UNPARALELLED DISINGENUITY, AND (TO MAKE USE OF A VERODOBBSICAL FLOWER OF RHETORIC) A GLARING IMPUDENCE, ARE SET IN A FAIR LIGHT. LONDON: M. COOPER, G. BRETT, R. AMEY, 1745
Estimate
2,000—3,000 GBP
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{ 22 comments }
Mrs Tilton 02.13.08 at 9:38 am
Surely 3,000 quid is a staggering bargain for a verodobbsical flower of rhetoric.
Neil 02.13.08 at 11:08 am
Searching on google for “verodobbsical” returns two hits, both to this very post(I suppose it will be three now).
Matt 02.13.08 at 12:11 pm
I’m certainly going to start using “verodobbsical” in my speech and writing from now on. I was worried that I didn’t really know what it meant but given Neil’s research I guess that doesn’t really matter.
chris y 02.13.08 at 12:43 pm
See, you three have ruined a perfectly good googlewhack.
thompsaj 02.13.08 at 1:29 pm
verodobbsical
thompsaj 02.13.08 at 1:31 pm
like James Dobson, better yet “Bob” Dobbs
AlanM 02.13.08 at 1:37 pm
“A glaring impudence” set “in a fair light”? Was the word meant to be “paradoxical”? Did a funny thing happen on the way to the typeset?
norbizness 02.13.08 at 4:02 pm
Man, there was a lot of dicking around back in the day.
dsquared 02.13.08 at 4:22 pm
“Verodobbsical” is almost certainly from “vero” and “Dobbs” – ie, “In the true style of Dobbs”, the author is mocking Mr Dobbs for having a pretentious prose style.
jt 02.13.08 at 5:34 pm
Make light of his disengenuity and impudence all you want; the real dig is at the man’s willful ignorance of tides. I mean, c’mon!
DCA 02.13.08 at 5:36 pm
If you’d spent a frozen winter in Hudson’s Bay, you’d get exited too.
Mrs Tilton 02.13.08 at 6:27 pm
Daniel,
was it really necessary to spoil a perfectly good bit of charming and euphonious nonsense by offering a plausible explanation?
As an aside, if somebody capable of writing what’s quoted in the Sotheby’s catalogue — that’s just the title of his work! — finds Dobbs too verodobbsical, I’d hate to have to hack my way through Dobbs himself.
Chris Bertram 02.13.08 at 6:45 pm
Almost certainly right, Daniel. It does offer some possibilities, though.
“Verokammsical” or maybe “Verokammical”?
Luis Enrique 02.13.08 at 6:54 pm
I’d like to know to what extent Kamm’s prose is tongue in cheek. He does glory in it, but whether the comic aspect is intended or not, I don’t know.
Doug K 02.13.08 at 7:53 pm
not much verodobbsian hits, but quite a bit on the controversy in general..
http://pubs.aina.ucalgary.ca/arctic/Arctic19-1-77.pdf
MIDDLETON, CHRISTOPHER,
d. 1770
A vindication of the conduct of Captain Christopher Middleton, in a
Late Voyage on Board His Majesty’s Ship the Furnace, for Discovering a
North-west Passage to the Western American Ocean. In answer
To certain
Objections and Aspersions of Arthur Dobbs, Esq; with an appendix: Con-
taining The Captain’s Instructions; Councils held; Reports of the Inferior
Officers; Letters between Mr. Dobbs, Capt. Middleton, &c. Affidavits and
other Vouchers refer’d to in the Captain’s Answers &c. With as much of
the Log-Journal as relates to the Discovery. The Whole as lately deliver’d
to the Lords Commissioners
of the Admiralty. To which is Annex’d, An
Account of the Extraordinary Degrees and Surprizing Effects of Cold in
Hudson’s-Bay, North America, read before the Royal Society. By Chris-
topher Middleton, Late Commander of the Furnace and F.R.S. London:
Printed by the Author’s Appointment; and Sold by Jacob Robinson, at the
Golden-Lion in Ludgate-Street.
1743.
[a], 206, 48p.
More interesting reading at
http://books.google.com/books?id=-m-odt0LgSoC&pg=PA115&lpg=PA115&dq=mr+dobb+s+reply+to+captain+middleton&source=web&ots=aamXqQRrKh&sig=Rp5Llp3zznNuq2hMGih6e-kWVJs
Turns out Capt. Middleton was right..
David Kane 02.13.08 at 8:14 pm
No such thing as bad publicity, I guess.
Latest (pdf) about the Lancet studies from Mike Spagat.
Crooked Timber readers in Denver (or members of the American Statistical Association going to JSM) are invited to attend a panel that I am organizing on mortality in Iraq. Presenting will be Safaa Amer of NORC, Michael Spagat of Royal Holloway College, University of London, Mohamed Ali of WHO and Debarati Guha-Sapir of WHO Collaborating Centre for Research on Disaster Epidemiology. Would Daniel Davies consider all these folks to be “denialists?” Just curious.
I notice that all my Lancet defender friends at Crooked Timber seemed to have vacated the field on this topic. How about a thread devoted to the recent paper (pdf) from CRED? They argue that the L2 number is 4-5 times too large.
Kevin Donoghue 02.13.08 at 10:54 pm
A verospagatical paper by an economist on sabbatical! What fun! And indeed, Section 3.1, describing how the author got a high R-squared when he fitted a regression line to three data-points, is one of the funniest things of its kind I’ve seen – worthy of a Kane Award.
Incidentally David, since you are having a go at Daniel Davies for (alleged) misuse of the term “denialist”, you might want to have a think about your use of “friends” and “recent” (as in “recent paper”).
SG 02.14.08 at 2:59 am
that’s hilarious kevin. I couldn’t get through the bit about standards, which was laughable, but the R-squared is plumbing new depths.
Someone at Deltoid pointed out that Spagat is starting his own conflict research studies centre in Bogota, and Royal Holloway use the data from IBC, so it’s in his interest to discredit alternative models and data-sets. The comment is #11 here.
derek 02.14.08 at 8:12 am
dsquared wrote: “Verodobbsical†is almost certainly from “vero†and “Dobbs†– ie, “In the true style of Dobbsâ€, the author is mocking Mr Dobbs for having a pretentious prose style.
Not only that, but I would guess that “a glaring impudence” is a direct quote from Dobbs, that Middleton is flinging back in his face.
bi 02.14.08 at 3:13 pm
Friends, be not ſo hard on our Honored Guest, David Kane. For, he doth endeavor to learn humbly from us all, even whilst he tries to ſhew that he is the greatest, and that we are all utterly wrong.
SG 02.15.08 at 12:22 am
lo, oh bifurcaceous friend, though I own mercy and compassion the dearest traits of noble Man, verily do I find our Honoured Guest’s squawking passing incommodious, though it be much italicised, and cannot bear to extend it even that much tolerance as would befit a huegenot.
David Bernstein 02.19.08 at 12:58 am
Is Crooked Timber still around?
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