The commonplace book, where early modern thinkers collected ideas, was the internet of its time

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Wayne MacPhail is a journalist living in Hamilton. In 1584, the then-12-year-old English poet John Donne was studying at the University of Oxford along with his younger brother, Henry. This was when the university was just beginning to get its time-burnished reputation. The revered Bodleian Library had not yet opened its doors. But every day, in his tiny Hart Hall room, the young Donne was creating his own private Bodleian in a bit of technology called a commonplace book, or a commonplacer. Donne, who grew up to be the priapic poet and preacher we know him as today, was not...