18th century books looked like smartphones

Liked this picture of an 18th century book Conjectures on Original Composition by Edward Young:

From Collision Detection

It shows how resilient we are as readers – we can deal with any ‘difficult’ measure. Another possible similarity between now and then is the sheer mass of the stuff we’re publishing; a fact plenty will bemoan, but I rather like this democratic, unpretentious fecundity (he said, pretentiously…) Also chimes with something I wrote many moons ago.