Oxford University has done us the great service of putting pages from 18th and 18th C journals online. “Notes and Queries” is just like the SD.
http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/ilej/
Click BROWSE on the left-hand side
Then pick an issue and pages
NOTE: Sometimes these pages are down for a week at a time, if it’s not working when you try, check back again in a week or so.
Fascinating!
From page 2 of Issue 1 of “Notes and Queries”:
Or, on other words,
Did people really speak and think in that slow convoluted style as a daily occurrence, or was it a literary style?
Notes & Queries is also the name of the modern-day questions and answers section of The Guardian newspaper, which has been running for years.
Doesn’t this, “Nay, we are sure that the proprietors would find themselves much benefited even if we were to do nothing more than to induce them to look over their own collections,” sound a lot like "Jesus, why don’t you schmucks just search the archives-- this has been done before.:rolleyes: "?
It is very interesting. Not for Christmas eve though. (Urp)
I’ve bookmarked this for further perusal.
BTW did the “f” represent “s?”
‘Long S’. Looked a lot like an ‘f’. For funsies, read ‘blessings’ as ‘bleffings’.
There was a column about this, http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_110.html. Basically the “f” you see really is an “s”, it just looks look like an “f”.
Hah-- I was sorely disappointed to find no 18th Century nekkid chicks in the Gentelmen’s Magazine 
. . . er, Gentleman’s Magazine
Cleophus, Lodrain, thank’f.
Jake