INTRODUCTORY NOTE

The following text of the lectures, unlike Bolton's transcript published in 1929 reproduces exactly that in the original manuscript volumes, written for Soane by his pupils. Bolton omitted certain extended passages, amounting to about two and a half thousand words, and made constant changes to word order as part of an attempt to ‘improve’ Soane's grammar and language; in this process he also introduced, changed, or eliminated numerous prepositions. I have returned to the original text in all cases, although this inevitably results in occasional infelicities such as singular verbs following plural nouns.

Soane's scribes divided the text into paragraphs, frequently of considerable length, which were divided, not into sentences, but into long phrases separated only by semicolons and dashes. Like Bolton, I have turned these phrases into sentences, for the sake of clarity, but, unlike Bolton, I have not introduced any linking words of my own. It is thus possible to retain the rhythm of Soane's prose which, it should be remembered, was written to be spoken not read. I have occasionally modernised spelling where the original might lead to confusion, and have also removed the capitalisation, since this was arbitrary, varying from lecture to lecture.

Soane introduced numerous footnotes of his own. To avoid competing with these, and to leave Soane's text to speak for itself, I have kept my own footnotes to a minimum. In the following text of the lectures, Soane's footnotes are numbered with letters of the alphabet, mine with arabic numerals.