Vol. I.—1.
THE
TABLE BOOK.
Formerly, a “Table Book” was a memorandum book, on which any thing was graved or written without ink. It is mentioned by Shakspeare. Polonius, on disclosing Ophelia’s affection for Hamlet to the king, inquires
“When I had seen this hot love on the wing,
—————————— what might you,
Or my dear majesty, your queen here, think,
If I had play’d the desk, or table-book?”
Dr. Henry More, a divine, and moralist, of the succeeding century, observes, that “Nature makes clean the table-book first, and then portrays upon it what she pleaseth.” In this sense, it might have been used instead of a tabula rasa, or sheet of blank writing paper, adopted by Locke as an illustration of the human mind in its incipiency. It is figuratively introduced to nearly the same purpose by Swift: he tells us that
“Nature’s fair table-book, our tender souls,
We scrawl all o’er with old and empty rules,
Stale memorandums of the schools.”
Dryden says, “Put into your Table-Book whatsoever you judge worthy.”[1]
I hope I shall not unworthily err, if, in the commencement of a work under this title, I show what a Table Book was.