{"id":65,"date":"2006-10-14T11:13:24","date_gmt":"2006-10-14T15:13:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/hydeblog\/2006\/10\/14\/a-repre-hensible-false-hood\/"},"modified":"2006-10-14T11:13:24","modified_gmt":"2006-10-14T15:13:24","slug":"a-repre-hensible-false-hood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hydeblog\/2006\/10\/14\/a-repre-hensible-false-hood\/","title":{"rendered":"A repre-hensible false-hood"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This <a href=\"http:\/\/lms01.harvard.edu\/F?func=find-c&amp;CCL_TERM=sys=09276661\">rare broadside<\/a> commemorates an even rarer occurrence\u2014 Samuel Johnson publicly caught in a mistake. The satirist and agitator John Wilkes seized upon Johnson\u2019s remark in the Dictionary that the letter H \u201cseldom, perhaps never, begins any but the first syllable.\u201d Wilkes gleefully composed a letter to the <em>Public Advertiser<\/em> which employed no fewer than 27 counterexamples. Even Boswell, always Johnson\u2019s stoutest defender, was forced to concede, \u201cThe position is undoubtedly expressed with too much latitude.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Wilkes letter\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/hydeblog\/files\/2006\/10\/Hletter.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This rare broadside commemorates an even rarer occurrence\u2014 Samuel Johnson publicly caught in a mistake. The satirist and agitator John Wilkes seized upon Johnson\u2019s remark in the Dictionary that the letter H \u201cseldom, perhaps never, begins any but the first syllable.\u201d Wilkes gleefully composed a letter to the Public Advertiser which employed no fewer than [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":245,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[769],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-john-overholt"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hydeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hydeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hydeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hydeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/245"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hydeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hydeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hydeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hydeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hydeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}