(Another bogus in?) Google's metadata mish-mash

[Joel S. Berson]

At 12/21/2010 08:20 PM, Mark Mandel wrote:
>...
>  4. The real thing!
>     *A compleat history of the present state of war in Africa, between the
>Spaniards and Algerines: ...*
>     J Morgan.
>     1632
>
>"States arrived at that Criƒis cannot long subsist". A hit, a palpable hit,
>even with an s-longa + i ligature.
>...
>I give Google Ngrams a D-- here, saved from an F only by that single genuine
>hit.

That is a double minus, is it not? Perhaps it
should be changed to an F+.  I suspect there is a
misprint of the date on the title page, and it
should be 1732.  (1632 would be an antedating of
OED sense 3, although only of 1659.)

Harvard's catalog says:
Author :  Morgan, J., fl. 1739
Title :         A compleat history of the present
state of war in Africa, between the Spaniards and Algerines [etc. etc.]
Published :  London : printed for W. Mears, at
the Lamb in the Old Bailey; and J. Stone,
Bedford-Row, near Gray’s-Inn, M.DC.XXXII. M.DC.XXXII [i.e. 1732]

(The repeated Roman year appears also in ESTC,
which similarly says {i.e. 1732].)  Harvard lists
several other titles it attributes to this
"Morgan, J., fl. 1739" from 1728 through (as a translator) 1744.

Joel

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