Timothe Bright, doctor of phisicke : a memoir of "the father of modern shorthand" / by William J. Carlton.

  • Carlton, William J. (William John), 1886-1973.
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Timothe Bright, doctor of phisicke : a memoir of "the father of modern shorthand" / by William J. Carlton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

    234/258 (page 196)
    The treatises of both Bright and Bales were quickly reduced to the ranks of obsolete and useless works, for in 1602, just before Bright’s monopoly expired, an anonymous little treatise was published with the title : The art of stenographic, Teaching by plaine and certaine Rules, to the capacitie of the meanest, and for the vse of all professions, The way of compendious Writing. Sub- sequent editions revealed the author as another clergy- man—John Willis, B.D.—of whose personal history little more than half a dozen dates has been given to the world.1 Although Willis’s earliest production makes no direct reference to Timothy Bright, there are un- mistakable allusions to certain defects of the doctor’s method. “ The whole frame of this [his own] worke,” writes Willis, “is so contriued, that the memorie shall not neede to be charged with a tedious labouring of a multitude of Wordes and Characters by hart ; but enured onely to exercise order.” And he warns his pupils against writing, as Bright did, “ from the toppe to the bottome of the leafe,” enjoining them rather to write “ from the left hand towardes the right, according to the manner of writing vsed among vs,” very reasonably arguing that this plan is more natural, rapid, and con- venient than the Oriental method adopted by his pre- 1 The fact that Mr. A. T. Wright, the rescuer of so many steno- graphic worthies of the past from unmerited obscurity, has taken in hand the biographing of “ the father of rational shorthand,” betokens a treat in store for all who take an interest in the early history of the art. Although John Willis owed little or nothing to the shorthand labours of his brother parson, he readily acknow- ledges his indebtedness in another direction by including the name of “ D. Brightus ” among those of half a dozen writers whose works he had consulted in the preparation of his Mnemo- nica, first published in 1618.