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Introduction The story of Keats’ ecstatic discovery of Chapman’s Homer resonates with the universal experience of connecting with other people through books; whether the writer is living or dead, the connection can still be immediate and deeply felt.

Charles Cowden Clarke’s account of his close relationship with John Keats contains one of the most famous and affecting examples of a token of friendship. Clarke had borrowed “[a] beautiful copy of the folio edition of Chapman’s translation of Homer”, and one night in October 1816, he and Keats went “to work […] turning to some of the ‘famousest’ passages, as we had scrappily known them in Pope’s version”. Overwhelmed by his first encounter with Chapman’s Homer, Keats returned to his lodgings after daybreak; Clarke relates that, on finally surfacing for breakfast, “I found upon my table a letter with no other enclosure than his famous sonnet, ‘On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer’”.

This was more than a gift: it represented a profound level of literary engagement and influence. The poem’s confidence and complexity marked a turning point in Keats’ development, and as Leigh Hunt remarked, it “completely announced the new poet taking possession”. But the work’s genesis was social: two friends, sitting together into the early hours, transfixed by reading a celebrated 17th-century translation of a classical Greek epic – and comparing it to an equally famous 18th-century translation by Pope. And it is Pope whose spirit moves through this catalogue, from the uncertain attribution of annotations in Aubrey’s Miscellanies (item 1) to the important twoway influence of his friendship with Sir William Trumbull (item 12), the sealing of affection and shared ideas shown by his mutual friends John Arbuthnot and Jonathan Swift (item 8), and further, but quieter echoes in other books and manuscripts.

Two items in our catalogue are especially resonant examples of a work of literature reverberating across time: a first edition of Chapman’s Homer gifted between scholars and a Terence incunable profusely annotated by a Shakespearean schoolboy.

Our copy of Chapman’s The Whole Works of Homer (item 5) looks both backward and forward, from the ancient Greek original to its exchange between the Shakespearean scholar George Steevens and the classicist Gilbert Wakefield (of whom the former gifts his copy of Homer in 1794 to the latter, who two years later published his annotated edition of Pope’s Homer). Although Wakefield held Pope in high regard, it was not for his skills as a Latinist, and after comparing Pope’s translation with those by Dryden, Dacier, Ogilby, and Chapman (presumably using this copy) he suggests in the introduction to his edition that Pope drew heavily on previous translations, which, combined with his “ignorance in Greek and Roman languages” lead to “scandalous blunders”. However, Pope’s early translation of Boethius, contained in the Trumbull manuscript mentioned above, raises a question mark over Wakefield’s assertion concerning Pope’s lack of grounding in classical languages.

In a similar fashion, our rare incunable, Terence’s Comoediae, (item 6) prodigiously annotated by an Elizabethan grammar school boy, abounds with echoes reaching from the pre-Christian era to Shakespeare’s schooldays; the African Roman dramatist provided the structures not only of playwriting, but of thought, and these in turn helped to define Shakespeare’s great works and laid the foundations of the way we understand ourselves today.

We move from the exalted literary sphere of Shakespeare, who, like Terence, was interested in the implications of movements between public and private spaces, to their wider influences in provincial Georgian England. In item 2 of our catalogue, the amateur playwright Sarah Parker deploys seemingly ‘feminine’ domestic space to stage a play written for women actors by a woman which reflects on the external views and value of women in contemporary society.

By contrast, this expansion from the microcosm to the macrocosm is seemingly reversed when matters of political import are addressed in intimate private spheres and the domestic space is crucial to the movements of both male and female protagonists in the public realm: Morton Eden’s ‘Dinner Book’ (item 11) from the late 18th century could be taken at first glance to be no more than a list of dinner companions, but a closer examination discloses the diplomatic movements of prominent international figures against the backdrop to the French Revolutionary Wars, all played out in the ‘domestic’ space.

A strong sense of community pervades several items with a notably rural aspect, revealing multifarious social interactions between their authors and subjects. The Owen and Kilvert memorandum book (item 3) offers an insight into the everyday busyness of rural life through 80 years of local accounts and sermon notes. Item 9 traces the rapid journey of a rare cosmetics book from its Oxford origins to rural Wales, where its new owner looks back to Ovid for plaintive expression on the passing of time. Susanna Harrison’s notebooks (item 4) are filled with the creative energies of an 18th-century Lincolnshire woman. And Holland’s heraldic manuscript (item 7) shows itself to be an evolving workbook that builds on the contributions of several forebears. These interactive texts have taken on richer meanings over time, as new layers were added by their different contributors. The passing on of communal information, along with the passing of time, offers new layers of meaning to these truly social artefacts.

Clarke’s famous story about his friend John Keats has its rightful place in the biographical canon. The examples in our catalogue, which reach from the grandeur of Homer, Terence, and Shakespeare, to the quotidian lives and concerns of people of the ‘middling sort’, encapsulate just some of the different ways— material and textual—that artefacts record their histories and stand testament to the power of texts to ‘speak’ to readers and continue to echo through time. They remind us of the transformative power of books, of how social bonds and shared ideas can be mutually reinforcing, and of how words on a page can propel readers into previously undiscovered worlds.

1. COLLECTING EVIDENCE AUBREY, John (1626-1697); POPE, Alexander (1688-1744). Miscellanies, upon the following subjects. I. Day-Fatality. II. Local-Fatality. III. Ostenta. IV. Omens. V. Dreams. VI. Apparitions. Vii. Voices. Viii. Impulses. IX. Knockings. X. Blows Invisible. XI. Prophesies. XII. Marvels. XIII. Magick. XIV. Transportation in the Air. XV. Visions in a Beril, or Glass. XVI. Converse with Angels and Spirits, XVII Corps-Candles in Wales. XVIII. Oracles. XIX. Exstasie. XX. Glances of Love and Envy. XXI. Second-Sighted-Persons. XXII. The discovery of two murders by an apparition. Collected by John Aubrey, Esq; F.R.S. The second edition, with large additions. To which is prefixed, some account of his life.

London: printed for A. Bettesworth, and J. Battley in Pater-NosterRow, J. Pemberton in Fleetstreet, and E. Curll in the Strand, M.D.CC.XXI. [1721].

Octavo. Pagination [4], x, [6], 236, [2], p. Collated and complete with the engraved plate and first and final blank leaves. With two engraved portraits of Pope tipped in at the front; a manuscript page with a clipped signature of Pope affixed is tipped in (see below). Annotations to 63 pages which range from a few words to profuse marginalia.

Binding: 19th-century diced Russia gilt, a.e.g. Front cover detached; lower portion of backstrip missing; some spots and marks; collector’s notes in ink to two preliminary leaves; extensive marginal ink annotations throughout, some trimmed by the binder.

“THE FAMOUS SYKES COPY” ¶ A certain ambiguity attends the history of this copy of Aubrey’s Miscellanies. According to a manuscript note to the front free endpaper, “This book belonged to Alexander Pope: of with whose hand writing this Book Abounds”. We do not know whether this note was written by an optimistic bookseller or by the book’s erstwhile owner, Sir Mark Masterman-Sykes (see below). Either way, the ink annotations, which run throughout the volume, continued to be attributed to Pope until relatively recently. A letter with Pope’s signature pasted on (“Odd Observations on St Pauls Cathedral From ye London Journal of Sat Feb. 15. 1723/24” with a slip signed “yr Friend & Sert A. Pope Aug. 16. 1732”) were probably added for comparison with the annotations. But are the annotations really by him? This is a vexed question: many of the distinguishing features of Pope’s hand changed markedly over his lifetime, and even comparison with manuscripts in library collections that are known to be his hand often do not resemble each other. We will try to weigh up the evidence of provenance, palaeography, and content.

PROVENANCE The book has the gilt arms of Sir Mark Masterman-Sykes (17711823) to the front and rear boards and his shelf-mark, initials and address, “Sledmere”, to the front endpaper. MastermanSykes, a baronet and member of parliament for York, was well known in his time as a bibliophile who amassed an impressive library.

Sykes’s collection was auctioned by Robert Harding Evans in 1824, as detailed in the Catalogue of the splendid, curious, and extensive library of the late Sir Mark Masterman Sykes, Bart 1. The first part of the sale began on 11 May and continued for ten days; the second part ran from 28 May to the five following days; and the third part was on 3 June 21 and continued on seven following days (in all sales, Sundays were excepted).

There were some 3,700 lots in total, which brought nearly £18,000.

This book was lot 98 in the Sykes catalogue, where it was laconically described as “Aubrey’s Miscellanies with manuscript Notes by Pope, and his Autograph”. This surely refers to our added manuscript page and Pope’s signature, so it seems these were added at an early stage. A pencil note to the front endpaper reads “Sykes Sale 1824 Lot 98 £3.15.0.” The book was acquired by the celebrated collector Richard Heber (1773-1833); a note of the cost of this book at the Sykes sale and commission of 11 shillings to the London bookseller, Thomas Thorpe (1791-1851) is written at the upper left corner of the endpaper.

The book reappeared on the market just over a decade later in the famous sale of Heber’s library, Bibliotheca Heberiana 2. Once again, the annotations were ascribed to Pope: “101 Aubrey’s (John) Miscellanies with numerous Manuscript Notes by Pope, and his Autograph, russia, portraits inserted, 1721”.

So, in the Sykes and Heber catalogues the annotations were attributed to Pope. However, an early 20th-century bookseller’s catalogue entry (clipped and loosely inserted) is more equivocal: “THE FAMOUS SYKES COPY, long supposed to be Alexander Pope’s, with a profusion of manuscript annotations said to be in his hand (according to a contemporary note on flyleaf). A genuine signature of Pope is bound in for comparison.”

When the book was sold at Sotheby’s (1970), they gave no attribution, and opted instead for “extensive annotations through the book in a contemporary hand including an inserted leaf with Pope’s signature pasted on to it”. The Sotheby’s catalogue also describes a further autograph item, namely a receipt to John Fownes, signed by Pope, for a subscription to Pope’s translation of Homer. There are remnants of paper where this item was probably attached. This seems to be the earliest mention of a receipt, so we assume it was added in the 20th century. Either way, it became separated from the book at some point and later turned up inserted into to a set of Pope’s Homer sold by Bauman Rare Books in New York.

In 1976, the book was sold at Swann Galleries with the Sykes provenance noted, but they seem to have simply elided the issue of Pope’s hand, instead making no mention of annotations despite their profusion. The book then went into a private collection before reappearing on the market recently.

PALAEOGRAPHY Any comparison of our annotations with those known to be in Pope’s hand is contentious because his hand differs depending upon time and context.

Joseph Hone charts these changes in Alexander Pope in the Making (2023). In his early years, Pope carefully prepared his manuscripts and “precisely imitates the swashes, serifs, and ligatures of printed type”.3 Hone also cites Pope’s literary executor, who observed that Pope’s manuscripts were so beautifully written, “one can hardly believe they are not really from the press”. But over time Pope became less concerned with appearance and his later manuscripts and annotations were in a “less careful hand”.

Similarly, the young Alexander Pope inscribed his books “Alexandri Popei” in imitation roman and swash italic, whereas our book has no inscription. However, as Hone observes in ‘Pope and the Blounts’ (2023), “It is important to note that although as a young man Pope habitually inscribed his books, with age he became increasingly lax” 4.

Perhaps the early manuscripts, with their attempts to imitate printed books, reflected the pretensions of a young man creating his idea of a ‘great author’, but once he acquired an indisputable greatness, he had no need for youthful affectations.

If our annotator is indeed Pope, then it is most certainly a later example. The book itself tells us that much: it was printed in 1721, so the annotations are obviously after that date. But how long after? Hone is again helpful, noting that by the 1730s, Pope’s handwriting had deteriorated considerably. There are no dates in the annotations, but an array of books are cited and none date from after Pope’s death, so we can be reasonably confident that, even if our annotator is not Pope, it is nonetheless one of his contemporaries.

We used three examples of Pope’s hand as our comparators: British Library Add MS 4807, f. 87v and Add MS 4808; and Beinecke GEN MSS 270 (an album formally owned by John Murray, which includes “original proof of two pages from Pope’s Epistles, pages 69 and 70, with the author’s corrections”).

To avoid excessive ‘cherry-picking’, we present examples from only the last of these (GEN MSS 270) and compare them with our annotated Aubrey.

On the right are two sample annotations in GEN MSS 270 (upper and lower sections of margin):

…and these are examples of pages from our book:

When we look at individual words, there are as many matches as there are misses.

For example, the words Hear, years, tears from GEN MSS 270:

… and from our annotated Aubrey: Years, year, years:

The word Dead in GEN MSS 270:

... and Dead in our annotated Aubrey:

GEN MSS 270: fortune

Annotated Aubrey: unfortunate

GEN MSS 270: husband

Annotated Aubrey: Husbands

Given the differences as well as the similarities, this exercise illustrates how palaeographic evidence, at least when comparing Pope’s hand, is an uncertain business, and that any argument that hangs on it alone is insufficient.

LANGUAGE AND MARKS One aspect of the annotations which is consistent with known examples of Pope’s style lies in the numerous little crosses throughout the book. However, this was not unique to Pope, and can be found in other annotated books of the period, so taken alone it is insufficient evidence – but taken together with surrounding evidence, it becomes more compelling.

A counterweight to this arises from the same restraint that characterises his use of little crosses: Pope did not usually indulge in annotating as profusely as the hand here has done, and Aubrey’s Miscellanies (notwithstanding that the miscellany was a form Pope himself favoured) seems a strange choice upon which to lavish his intellectual gifts.

A further argument against the attribution of Pope as scribe needs to be addressed: is his Catholicism consonant with notes such as the one to the upper margin of I5r that reads: “see ye [P]opish Tale of S Teresias Knocking after he[r] Death at ye Cells of her Votaries”; and, on K7r. against an “x”, the annotation “see ye Superstition of Heathens & Papists”; and in the index: “Prejudices of ye Wild Irish Papists agt it 45” (Q6v)? (If we follow the reference to page 45 there is an “x” against the section of printed text referring to “the Popish Irish”). Would a Catholic use a pejorative term like “Papists”? In fact, Pope used the word frequently in his correspondence and often in a hostile manner: “I resolve to take any opportunity of declaring (even upon Oath) how different I am from what a reputed Papist is. I could almost wish, I were askd if I am not a Papist? Would it be proper, in such case, to reply, That I dont perfectly know the Import of the word, & would not answer any thing that might for ought I know, be prejudicial to me, during the Bill against such, which is depending. But that if to be a Papist be to profess & hold many such Tenets of faith as are ascribd to Papists, I am not a Papist. And if to be a Papist, be to hold any that are averse to, or destructive of, the present Government, King, or Constitution; I am no Papist” (Pope to Harcourt, 6 May 1723, in Corr., ii. 171-2). 5

CONTENT The evidence for Pope as scribe, then, although certainly not to be dismissed, is inconclusive. What seems certain is that the annotator was at least a contemporary of Pope’s, if not the man himself; and Aubrey’s Miscellanies is itself a work of great interest. ODNB describes it as “an investigation into a variety of psychic and supernatural phenomena such as omens and prophecies, dreams and apparitions, day fatality and second sight, all of which he was concerned to explore and explain, verify or discredit”.

Our annotator follows Aubrey’s lead by taking a mostly detached approach to the subject matter; and while they are not afraid of giving an opinion, they mainly cite other books and authors. Among the most popular are “Mr Wood” i.e. Anthony à Wood (1632-1695), whose great Athenae Oxonienses (“Athenae Ath. Oxon”, “A. O.”) (1691-2) and “Poems” are referenced; also well represented are “Increase Mathers Essay for ye recording of Illustrious Providence. 12o 1684”, and “Mr Baxter’s Certainty of the World of Spirits”, with single references to the likes of “Tho: Widdowes ad ann. 1655 & from thence by Dr Plot in his Natural Hist. of Oxfordshire”, “Camden in his Hist. of Qu. Eliz. Sub. An. 1570”, “Bovets Pandæmonium”, and “Stows Survey of London”. Such sources are drawn upon to furnish additional information pertinent to the tales cited by Aubrey, so that the annotator is in effect ‘conversing’ with the printed text and its author.

To take a few examples among many: our scribe augments Aubrey’s accounts of superstition, omens and so on with an abundance of further incidents gleaned from their reading. Thus, we read: “N.B. Mr Str. In his Eccl. Mem. Vol 3 p286. modestly seems to ascribe […] ye great Death that happened in 1555 or 1556 to the appearance of the Blazing star there mention’d” (D1v); and on occasion, they hitch a couple of links to the chain of association, for example describing how “Deacon Eachard has in his Hist. of Eng. Vol 3 observ’d Kings of Eng. Nam’d Seconds [h]ave been unfortunate as Edw ii Rich ii & James ii”, then recounting that “Eachard” was “wittily censur’d” for this “by Mr Salmon in his Examinat. Of Bp. Burnets Hist. of his own Times.

P.1065” (C7v).

The scribe often adds a ‘run-on’ clause to continue Aubrey’s printed text: the line “The Romans counted Febr. 13. an Unlucky Day” has acquired a note that extends this thought: “as also the month of May an unlucky month to marry in according to Ovid in his Fasti” (B2r); and Aubrey’s anecdote “The picture of Arch-Bishop Laud in his Closet fell down (the String brake) the Day of the sitting of that Parliament” has the manuscript addendum: “so did ye D. of Bucks on June 13. 1688 at Lambeth wch was look[ed] on also as ominous as it sa[ys] in ye Compl. Hist of Eng. Vol.3. p48” (D4r).

In keeping with Aubrey’s even-handedness, the annotator acknowledges different sides of the debate on witchcraft, mentioning the sceptical “Scots Discovery of Witchcraft” four times, while the rational “Websters Display of Witchcraft” and its spiritually motivated response “Glanvil’s Sadd. Triumph” receive equal billing with five mentions each. At the same time, one might choose to detect a certain credulousness in notes

such as this one on the ominous quirks of the calendar: “N.B. In bp. Burnets Hist Ref pt.11. p.316. tis said yt at ye beginning of Qu. Marys Reign twas observ’d as a wonderful thing y t K. Edw. VI. shd die on ye same day of ye year yt Sr Tho: More was beheaded”. Furthermore, “it was said that the great Duke of Florence lay sick as many days as had reigned years” (B1v).

This mention of “bp. Burnet”, incidentally, is one of several, and lest it be seized upon as the clincher that Pope is not our scribe – since he would be unlikely to include an approbatory reference to Thomas Burnet (1694-1753), with whom he had a vicious and public rivalry – “bp Burnet” is, of course, Gilbert Burnet (1643-1715), whose History of the Reformation (referred to in the annotations) was a standard work on the subject for a century.

CONCLUSION Our book’s journey and strong provenance convey an absorbing mixture of hopes, desires and disappointments of dealers, auctions, and collectors. It has a letter and Alexander Pope signature bound in for comparison. But as to Pope’s ascription as annotator, the consensus seems to have developed in relation to distance, so that the further it has travelled from its original source, the fainter the claim to Pope has become. The palaeographic evidence, though bringing us to a resounding “maybe”, is helpful in reminding us that time and context are essential features of any assessment, especially when those factors are brought to bear upon a character as complex as Pope. As to the content of the annotations themselves, we can at least be confident that, whether or not the ‘great author’ created them, they provide an engrossing window into the world of Pope’s contemporary readers.

Conversations abound in this profusely annotated book, and if we remain uncertain as to the identity of one of its chief interlocutors, the sheer quantity of discursive threads, references and additions makes it a hugely appealing showcase for the high levels of engagement and the emerging concerns with objective verification (albeit of the occult and superstition in this case) that characterised the period.

£11,500 Ref: 8203

1. Evans, Robert Harding (1778-1857). Catalogue of the splendid, curious, and extensive library of the late Sir Mark Masterman Sykes, Bart., parts 1-3: ... which will be sold by auction, by Mr. Evans, at His House, No. 93, Pall-Mall. (London: Printed by W. Nicol 1824).

2. Heber, Richard (1773-1833). Bibliotheca Heberiana. Catalogue of the library of ... R. Heber ... which will be sold by ... Messrs. Sotheby and Son [R.H. Evans and B. Wheatley] ... 1834[-1837]. [London]: [1834-1837], part 6, 23 March 1835.

3. Hone, Joseph. Alexander Pope in the Making (2023).

4. In The Library, 7th series, vol. 24, no. 3 (September 2023). p.352 5. We are extremely grateful to Joseph Hone for pointing this out to us and for numerous other valuable insights.

2. SOCIAL DRAMA [PARKER, Elizabeth (1786-1869)] Early 19th-century manuscript play, entitled ‘The Regal Garland. A pastoral. By El. P.’

[Circa 1805]. Quarto (245 x 197 mm). 32 text pages. The opening page lists seven female characters with the initials of proposed actors besides each one. Below these, the scene: “a pleasant village at the foot of a hill”.

Watermark: Fleur-de-lis. Provenance: This play was separated by another bookseller from some other works relating to Elizabeth Shelly (née Parker). While this is unfortunate, we are at least allow us to confidently attribute authorship.

¶ This play is striking for its debate over female “beauty”, written by a woman, for women performers in the late Georgian era. Parker’s seven “nymphs of pastoral fame”, whose names echo Latinate flora (“Rosetta”; Pastorella”; “Narcissa”; “Lavinia”; “Florella”; “Silvia”; and “Violetta”), seek to crown “The Season’s lovely queen”. In scenes between exultations of “rural bliss”, typical of the pastoral form, the divinities discuss the various qualities reflecting which “happy nymph deserves the prize”: she who has a “sweet blooming” form, or she who holds “unfading beauties in her head”. Halfway through the play, two of the nymphs cast off their duties to save an ivy-ensnared lamb – and so overjoyed are they to set it free, that they exclaim: “Who would exchange these pastoral joys / For all the world’s false glittering toys?” Might the aim of putting a name on female beauty have lost its sheen for them?

The final scene offers an unexpected twist to the plot, when the crown, finally bestowed after much debate, is rejected: “I venture to decline / the honour you would round me twine” – not for Rosetta are the “painful duties” of “pastoral fame”.

Elizabeth Parker was a keen and skilled artist who wrote at least one other verse play, a drama in two acts, entitled The Sister Wanderers, or The Cottage in the Wood. According to a later relative, John Shelly, “she kept up the habit of writing verse all her life” 1. This play was probably written before 1806 when she married John Shelly (1781-1835) and changed her surname.

Parker adopts the pastoral tradition for her play, using it for social debate and critique, more in tune with mockpastoral than in its traditional praise of nature, the genteel, bounty and innocence. With roots in ancient and medieval Roman eclogues, the pastoral reached its peak in Renaissance England, when it was adopted by Shakespeare (As You Like It), Edmund Spenser (The Shepheardes Calender) and Philip Sidney (Arcadia). It was revived later in the 18th century in a mock-pastoral form associated with the works of Alexander Pope and John Gay. It is

this later satirical form that ripples outwards from these eminent authors that Parker uses to create a dramatic dialogue that critiques the role of women in the Georgian era.

This social discourse about what truly defines female beauty – and whether crowning one set of qualities above all others is even necessary – makes Parker’s play a thought-provoking and unusual mock-pastoral examination of social mores. Parker deploys the allocated space of the domestic play to explore ideas of who and what defines and sets the limits on the role of women in society in Georgian England.

1. Shelly, John, ‘Memorials of the family of Shelly of Great Yarmouth’ (1909).

£1,600 Ref: 8214

3. SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY [OWEN, Isabella (née Campbell); OWEN, Thomas (1641-1678); OWEN, Letitia (1696-1755)]. 17th-18th-century manuscript memorandum book containing accounts and sermon notes.

[Borton and Condover Hall, Shropshire. Circa 1670-1750]. Original contemporary sheep stationer’s binding, rubbed and worn, covers detaching.

Approximately 138 pages of text and accounts on 94 leaves. Arranged tête-bêche: 71 pages at one end; 67 at the opposite end.

INTRODUCTION ¶ The sense of a busy community interacting among themselves is palpable in this manuscript. The relations between social strata are largely financial, often mediated, and clearly presided over by the local ‘elite’.

The busyness carries over into the form and content of the manuscript: many names appear that can also be found in local records; but there’s nothing ‘cut and dried’ about the arrangement or the sequence of material. Incongruities abound: sermons are sandwiched between accounts; the dates of some sections of accounts overlap; and some fairly clear clues to the location of the manuscript seem to be contradicted by a handful of references to another nearby location.

If the book poses several mysteries, its relation to surviving records in the Shropshire archives raises the strong likelihood that further research will prove fruitful. Indeed, initial exploration helps to address – if not always conclusively – questions of provenance and attribution.

PLACES AND PEOPLE Several references within the accounts tie the manuscript to the Shropshire parish of Condover (“to him to goe to Condouer – 0—2”, “pd to Mary Wood of Condouer for making him 7 bands”), and to nearby places such as Little Lyth, Lyth Hill and Withington (“to him when he went to ye great Lyth to dwell} –2—6”, “to him on ye first Sunday that hee came to Burton after he was gone to ye Leyth} –2—6”, “to him to goe to withington –2—6”). The geography seems clear; the chronology, as we shall see, rather less so.

Names of people, too, find corroboration in the records, though sometimes partial. A note from 1679 reads: “Memord what my brother in law James Bowyer hath had on mee of his stock July y e 23d 79”, and the first entry on this page records a payment “to his brother Thomas Bowyer”; another entry, for “Novemr 19. 74”, reads “all ye Interest that was due in Octr last was past for 40l which was left to James Bowyer by his Sister Deborah Bowyer”. The Shropshire Parish Registers record a James Bowyer who was baptised in 1643 and a Dorothy Bowyer in 1645, and ancestry.com gives Dorothy’s exact location as Condover. However, we have been unable to connect Thomas or Deborah with Dorothy and James, despite the shared surname and proximity within the parish of Condover.

As to attribution, the volume comprises three main sections: •

Accounts written circa 1674-80 which we tentatively ascribe to Isabella Owen;

•

Sermon notes circa 1674-78 which we tentatively ascribe to Thomas Owen (1641-1678);

•

Financial receipts 1730-40 which we confidently ascribe to Thomas Kilvert.

The strongest evidence we have for these concerns the last of them. Several pages in the centre of the volume contain copies of financial receipts from Thomas Kilvert (“Thos: Kilvert”) and others on behalf of Lady Letitia Barnston (“Dec: 21: 1740 recd

of Richd Wood, one Pound fifteen shillings for his Tythe due to Me (now) Letitia Barnston”). Kilvert (great-grandfather of the famous diarist, Francis Kilvert (1840-1879)) was steward of Condover Hall; Lady Letitia (1696-1755) inherited the Condover estate from her father, Roger Owen after the death of her brothers, Thomas and Edward (having taken the title of Lady Barnston after her second marriage, to Trafford Barnston of Churton). NLS and Shropshire Archives hold a large collection of correspondence between Letitia and her steward, which arose from “her estrangement from her daughter”, who eloped and moved to nearby Shrewsbury, after which Letitia “lived in Bath, refusing to visit Condover”. Thomas Kilvert “took care of the estate, and his wife Mary, was responsible for housekeeping at Condover Hall” 1.

Letitia’s father, Roger Owen of Condover and Sheriff of Salop (1674-1717), would have been too young to have written the 1674-80 entries, but his parents, Isabella and Thomas Owen (1641-1678), are possible candidates. The sermons were written between 1674 and 1678, so could plausibly have been written by Thomas. Unfortunately, we do not have Isabella’s dates, but if her birth date was similar to that of her husband and he predeceased her, she would be a likely candidate for the accounts.

It seems a reasonable assumption that these earlier notes were written by Letitia’s ancestors – except that several references confound this tidy narrative. Besides the “hee came to Burton” entry mentioned above, there’s the even more unambiguous “James Bowyer came from ye Lyth to Burton to dwell; March ye 6th”. Burton (or Borton) is now known as Boreton, a farmhouse (possibly a hamlet, but early maps of the area lack detail for Burton) located five miles from Condover. This leaves us with something of a mystery: why did this little volume gravitate from Boreton to Condover Hall and who originally kept it?

One possibility is that it was not the Owens themselves who kept the notebook, but their stewards. This might explain why the location is given as nearby Burton rather than Condover Hall itself, and would connect to the later Kilvert ownership and the evident division of labour (see below) between Thomas Kilvert and his wife (the sermons might also provide a link with their famous grandson becoming a clergyman).

FORM AND CONTENT The manuscript was commenced circa 1673, but any organisation of the contents seems to have been done ‘on the fly’ by whichever scribe was adding material at the time: the entries cover some 80 years, but with a gap from the 1690s to the 1730s, suggesting that it was rediscovered by a younger generation and pressed into service again as a receptacle for details of important transactions.

The téte-beche arrangement places 17th-century accounts at each end, and the sermons are sandwiched between a few pages of accounts at one end; while the 18th-century financial receipts occupy the centre pages of the volume and are written vertically, clearly to make it easier to find them and to distinguish them from the earlier material.

Several of the 17th-century entries were recorded years after the event, adding a further chronological puzzle: for example, at one end of the volume a brief memo states simply “June ye 24th 59 / Septemr ye 45 : 67”, but without reference or explanation.

This raises an expectation that the timespan to be covered in what follows begins in 1659, but that seems not to be the case: immediately beneath, separated by a single line, are some accounts apparently written at the same time but dated 1674: “Memorand for ye smyth work} Octo 74 e for shoeing y black Mare} with my own iron —0—4 plow of irons of my own iron —0—6 e a frame for y posnet —0—6 hooks plates & staples } —1—2 for ye tumdrell } pd to Edward” The ink fades at this point: the entry is left unfinished, and this is the last we read of “Edward”. The presence of a pen trial upside-down on the same page (the single word “My”) reinforces the sense of unplanned arrangements.

THE ELITE …

As members of the social elite, both men and women were often literate and numerate. The manuscript provides two possible instances of the division of labour between the sexes. Managing the accounts was often a task handled by a woman, who would run the household as a business. We can confidently ascribe oversight of the 1730-40 receipts in the centre of the book to Letitia Barnston (née Owen), since she twice gives her name (although the hand is that of Kilvert, her steward). Although our attribution of the earlier accounts to Isabella Owen is tentative, it is likely that her education would have equipped her to manage the complex business of the household estate (although, as discussed above, the hand may be that of her steward’s wife).

The two long sermons sandwiched between these earlier accounts may represent Thomas Owen’s attempt, in the spirit of noblesse oblige, to compose homilies to preach to the locals. These 50 pages of notes (22 and 28 pages respectively), which follow a short set of accounts recording payments made in 1674 by “Ann Campion”, are headed “Math: ye 13:25 But while men slept his Enemie came & sowed teares among ye wheat & went his way;” and “My text is: Mat: ye 18: last Verse: Soe likewise shall my heavenly ffather doe alsoe unto you; if yee from yo r hearts forgive not every one his brother ther trespasses”.

There are very few amendments, giving an impression of the texts being fair copies. However, some corrections are clearly rewrites, so we assume they were amending while copying. For example, in the sentence “As ye human soule oweth ye p[er] fection & excelence of its knowledg to ye inferior yt of” the scribe crosses out “ye body”, immediately replaces it with “its senses”, and continues “its in telligible & abstract notion being in sume sorte deriued from y e eye”. Some other examples merely amend the syntax, while in the sentence “Why then such severitie amongst us Xtians towards one an other; what noe bouells of compassion; noe remembrance at all of our Misticall noe thought of religion; no sence of devotion”, the crossed out section is entered further down, so it was probably an ‘eye skip’.

Piety then makes way for the return of the pecuniary, with a half-page of crossed-out accounts for the year 1679, again featuring “James Bowyer”, this time as a recipient of funding for the nine-mile trip to Berwick at Christmas (“to him in ye Christmas by mee. 00:1:0”). ... AND THE REST Despite having travelled only a very short geographical distance in almost a century of (intermittent) use, the manuscript bears witness to a lively series of interactions with, and between, numerous identifiable people of the so-called ‘lower ranks’ who make up a vibrant community of lenders and borrowers, traders, makers, and menders. Somewhere between these and the ‘elite’ are a handful of figures who seem to be intermediaries – the stewards, for example, and others whose precise roles are less defined.

Perhaps chief among these is the aforementioned “Ann Campion”, who seems to have occupied a position of responsibility and trust. She handles straightforward payments like that made “to Elizabeth Green” for “one sticke of barley”, and other expenses (to unnamed receipients) for “three els of flaxen cloath” and “a paire of boddys”; one Christmas, she receives a disbursement “to give ye poore 5—0”, and “At Easter 76:”, her evident integrity merits a further “1s—6d” for her “to giue

where she pleased”. Another payment is recorded with a note that it occurred “one Sunday when shee came to Burton on foote & Tho: Boyer fetcht her home” and she was rewarded with “3—4” for her exertions. It’s possible that Ann was the wife of a steward of Condover, hence the confidence placed in her independent judgement, but at any rate, the Condover Parish records list an Anne Campion who was buried at “Wheatall”, aka Wheat Hall, less than two miles from Condover.

A similar lack of definition characterises the references to the Bowyers. Payments recorded to James Bowyer include amounts for “holland cloth” and “two yards of lace”, and apparent gifts “to him on ye faire day”, “to him to put in his purse”, and “to him on Candlemas day”. Then, an entry dated “ffebrewary ye 3. 1677” summarises “the totalls of ye disbursmts upon Thomas Bowyers Accont” which “proofe” to “145:03:8” and an even more substantial “207:08:05”. The frequency with which members of the Bowyer family appear in these pages, sometimes involving significant amounts of money, indicates a high degree of involvement in affairs at Condover, but the details of this have yet to be teased out.

Sitting below these intermediary characters are a wealth of artisans and tradespeople whose names are echoed in the parish records. We read that on “Sept ye 15th 74”, one “Mary Grinley” was paid “1—2” for “spinning one pound of flax --}” (Mary Grinley of Condover was buried in February 1684); that on “Octr ye 11th 79 Tho: Betchcott” was paid “10—0” for “2 paire of new shooes & mending 2 paire & for a paire of spurs” (Thomas, son of Andrew Betchcott, was baptised in August 1652); that “Mary Wood of Condouer for making him 7 bands” was paid “1—0” (at least six baptisms are recorded from the 1660s to the 1690s for the children of “Thos. & Mary Woode”); and that on “Octr ye 11th 79”, “Elizabeth Kenrick” received “for kniting a paire of stockings : 1:6” (Elizabeth Kenricke was baptised in October 1644).

Where the corroboration is incomplete, one can at least make suppositions to test against more detailed research. “James Crosse”, who could well have been one of the many children recorded as born in the 1630s and 1640s to Dorothy and Henry Crosse, is the subject of expenditure beginning on “August ye 18 77”, with “7­—5” paid “to line his coat wth buttons”, and continuing with some form of treatment “when he went to Judeth Reynolds when his head was cutt”. A Judith Reynolds is recorded as having been buried in November 1691; and Crosse may have been a farmworker or other employee to whom the Owens felt they had a duty of care. Similarly, there are several entries for “Thomas Gwyn” (or “Gwin”), such as a record of two shillings paid “for making him a coate & briches”; the Kilverts were cousins to a family named Gwyn 2, but it would likely have been a common surname in an area so close to Wales.

OVERSIGHT Deeper investigation may illuminate these and other possibilities. In the meantime, the cast of characters mentioned by name in this manuscript bring a corner of early modern Shropshire vividly to life through their interactions.

Whether the book was kept by the Owens or their stewards, it’s clearly the former who control and oversee things; and these accounts give us a window onto that local economy and the people involved. £5,000 Ref: 8209 1. The Kilvert Society Newsletter. 22 November 1971.

2. www.shropshirearchives.org.uk/collections/getrecord/ CCA_XPAL_1_4_1_10-11

4. SOCIAL FABRIC [HARRISON, Susanna (d.1773) et al]. Small family archive of notebooks and related manuscripts.

[Circa 1770-1810]. All items in original (some homemade) bindings and good original condition.

¶ The most well-defined figure in this archive is Susanna Harrison, whose notebook [1] is the chief draw.

Her entries, as we shall see, represent the attempts of an intelligent woman from a clearly well-todo family to find an outlet for her energies – especially creative – in an existence constrained by the social conventions of her age.

The Harrisons seem to have lived in Lincolnshire in the north-east of England, to judge by the placenames sprinkled throughout the archive: “Owersby”, “Atterby”, “Snitterby”, “Heapham”, and others. We can glean from these materials the names and dates of a few family members: Susanna Harrison (d.1775), subject of a note in item [1] (“my Sister Susannah departed this life in July 1775”); Thomas Harrison (1748-1804?), whose name appears on the back of a business card (“Tho Harrison of Rowlston Aged 54 the 15th April 1802 Old Stile”); Rachel Harrison (1748-?), also referenced on the business card (“Rachel Harrison Born the 15th of April 1748”); and Bridgit Harrison (d.1733) and Bridgit Harrison the younger (d.1737), mentioned in item [2] (“Bridgit Harrison dyed ye 8 day of June buried ye day 1733 dyed Bridgit Harrison ye younger The 24th of july She dyed 1737”).

At some point, the Harrisons appear to have become closely linked with members of a family named Storey, through either marriage or friendship.

CONTENTS [1]. 18th-century notebook. Octavo (152 x 92 x 15mm). Approximately 22 text pages and 20 pages of designs (three pencil; 17 in ink), on 103 leaves with four embroidery samples loosely inserted and piece of folded paper containing red pigment stashed into the pocket of the binding. Original vellum wallet-style stationer’s book. Slightly soiled but very good original condition with functioning clasp.

There are two ownership inscriptions, which together invite a gendered comparison: “Robert Harrison” is written vertically in a calligraphic hand that dominates the paste-down; and opposite, in a smaller, unassuming hand, “Susannah Harrison Book / October the 29 – 1772”. Given this latter inscription, together with some of the notes in the text, we take the book – most of it, at least – to have been written by Susanna.

The topics covered are, indeed, largely consonant with what were considered ‘female pursuits’. The first section, comprising nine pages, gives a series of instructions for 25 dances ranging from the well-known (“Buttered Peas”, “The Hay Makers”, “Flowers of Edenborough”, “Hunting the Squeril”) to the more obscure and apparently hitherto lost (“Rolling on the Grass”, “The Ladies Setifficat Rant”, and “Wainfleet Boys” – probably a local dance, since Wainfleet is a Lincolnshire town).

Another is entitled “Black Moll”, remembered now, if at all, as a character in John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera (1728) and Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones (1749), but here a dance with instructions to “Set Cross partners and turn that a gain Cross over & Couple Lead up foot it Cast of setting proper Lead out of Sides and turn”.

After about seven blank leaves, there are some eight pages of religious verse, one of which is written in code, beginning: “Wh28 459 siv459C172 t4 th2 C94ss h3s B4dt sh4k2 18d th2 J2ws 1sk’d H37 3f h2 h1d G1t 18 1952 18dh2 18sw2g2d...”. The code is a simple one, suggesting that Susanna is indulging in a private game to entertain herself.

Immediately after the last page of morally improving poetry, another, messier hand has recorded several family deaths, including that of “my Sister Susannah” – our main scribe, we assume, for this volume.

At the rear of the volume, there are 20 pages of designs. Three are sketched in pencil and 17 are carefully drawn in ink. These bear extremely close resemblance to the original samples contained in the volume, so they are almost certainly designs for the lace.

Adding to the tactility of the volume and its contents is a sample of powdered red pigment, folded inside a scrap of paper tucked into the rear pocket – another art form represented, and a neat expression of how the book’s principal scribe has felt obliged to store away her true artistic colours.

[2]. 18th-century receipt book. Octavo (153 x 95 x 2mm). Approximately 7 text pages on 5 leaves. Homemade notebook made from a few folded sheets of paper stitched into a crudely cut piece of vellum.

Receipts for land rentals e.g. “Nouember ye 20th 1735 ye 22 shillings Receiued of Richard Smith ye Sum of Ten Pounds of a House In attaerbe dew may Day Last”.

[3]. 18th-century manuscript terrier. Octavo (165 x 90 x 5mm). Approximately 35 text pages on 43 leaves. Some leaves excised, one cut with loss of upper half. Crudely made notebook of several quires stitched into vellum-covered paste-board.

The first page is entitled: “A Terrier of the Carr meadows belonging to wadington Snitterby and atterby”. The text, which is mostly to the rectos, comprises names, quantities measured in “gads” and some notes to the versos most of which concern the sales by one “Mr Thomson”. The calculation for the “north Carr” is annotated “This meadows was set out by the Jury 23 october 1728 Mr Wright was foreman Richardson beginin to big stons septmber 30”. The terrier concludes “wartlets half belonging to wadington the other half to Snitterby and atterby Finis nov: the 1: 1728”.

[4]. Hellaby’s Town and Country Lady’s Repository; or, Memorandum Book for the Year 1807. Boston. Printed by and for J[ames].

Hellaby and sold by Lackington, Allen and Co. and Champante and Whitrow, London. [1807]. Octavo (165 x 90 x 5mm).

Pagination 132 (lacking 90-91) with an engraved title page and folded frontispiece. Green wallet-style binding.

No copies are recorded in library collections. Pennsylvania State University Libraries have a similar publication under the slightly different title of Hellaby's pocket repository [1806] which is included in a sammelband of five Georgian women’s pocketbooks.

The title page says the book includes “Select Poetry, Enigmas, &c. New Songs. Country Dances”, but despite our scribe’s ancestors showing a distinct interest in these activities there is only a short list in manuscript to the front endpaper, including items such as “4 New Night Gowns”, “4 pr new drawers”, “4 Vests” and very brief pencilled notes to the printed diary pages. These record such things as “Eggs 1s 6d”, on 9 January, an opaque reference to “White face” in a diary entry for 2 July, then almost nothing until “brewed this day” on 31 July, listed under “Engagements”.

[5]. Advertisement for ‘Joseph Goodyger Weaver, Wheatley. Single sheet (205 x 170 mm). Folded, upper left corner torn.

The advertisement continues: “Return his sincere thanks to his friends and the public, for the favors he has receoved from them, and respectfully informs them that he weaves damask table cloths and napkins, of any size, [...] Those persons who please to send their thread to him, may depend upon their orders being obeyed with the strictest attention”. Manuscript notes to upper margin (some loss from tear) “[S]toarey to Joseph Goodger Dr to 4 Napkings weaving [--torn 5d per Napking ... 0— 6—0” with three more items and totalled at the end. Docketed on the reverse “Mr Storey of heapam Lincoln[shire].

[6]. Sundry items including a business card for “Clulow & Unett, Manufacturers of Eartheware”, printed (circa 1810) by “H. Mozley, Market-Place, Gainsbro’” and with sections left blank in printing that have been completed in manuscript. A note on the reverse records the names and dates of two members of the Harrison family. Among the other items are a bill (“1745 Tho maws bill”), a remedy dated 1808, a letter dated 1792 referring to their land at Atterby (recorded in the terrier), and a few letters from later in the 19th century. All items relate either to the Harrisons or the Storeys.

The supporting documents [2] to [6], with their comparatively pedestrian concerns, set Sarah Harrison’s notebook usefully in a context that allows her creative pursuits to stand out against their background. These sections, nevertheless, are unified by their prescriptiveness: they establish patterns – terpsichorial, moral or lacy – that must be followed, echoing the confinement of expression so adroitly explored by the likes of Fanny Burney and Jane Austen many that Georgian women had to contend with.

£3,750 Ref: 8211

5. GIFTED POET HOMER; CHAPMAN, George (1559?-1634, trans.) The whole works of Homer; prince of poetts in his Iliads, and Odysses. Translated according to the Greeke, by Geo: Chapman.

At London : printed [by Richard Field and William Jaggard] for Nathaniell Butter, [1616?]. FIRST EDITION. Pagination [28], 341, [9]; [10], 193, [3], 195-349, 352-376, [4] p. [STC, 13624; Pforzheimer 169; 170].

Fine red morocco bindings, gilt tooled spines in panels, gilt dentelles, marbled endpapers, gilt binder’s stamp to front pastedown, “Bound y Ramage London”.

John Ramage was born in London in 1836. When he came out of his apprenticeship in 1856, he took the unusual step for an English binder of going to Paris and working under Lortic, one of the leading French binders of the day. In 1860 Ramage returned to Britain and purchased the Edinburgh business of Alexander Banks Jnr, stating in the 1861 census returns that he employed eight men, three boys, six women and one girl. Three years later he moved his business to London, where there was more work. He moved to larger premises in Warwick Lane in 1870, and from there he went to Warwick Square and in 1891 to Creed Lane. 1 The Whole Works of Homer comprises the first complete edition of the Iliads and the Odysses. For clarity, we include collations of the separate titles: The Iliads of Homer Prince of Poets. Neuer before in any languag truly traanslated. With a Com[m]ent uppon some of his chiefe places; Donne according to the Greeke By Geo: Chapman.

At London: printed [by Richard Field and William Jaggard] for Nathaniell Butter. [c. 1611/2?]. FIRST EDITION, FIRST ISSUE. Pagination [28], 341, [9], p. In this state, teco running titles of the Iliad have “HOMERS” (roman). Signatures: pi² *⁶(-*1), A2F⁶ 2G8; (initial blank leaf present and genuine, lacks blank leaf 2G 8). 190 leaves present. [STC, 13634; Pforzheimer 169].

Homer’s Odysses Translated according to ye Greeke By Geo: Chapman. Imprinted at London by Rich: Field, [and William Jaggard] for Nathaniell Butter. [1614/5?]. FIRST EDITION. Pagination ; [10], 193, [3], 195-349, 352-376, [4], p. Signatures: A⁶, B-Q⁶ R⁸ S-2H⁶ 2I⁸. Leaves A1, R8, blank, (lacking final blank 2I8). Leaf A6 bears errata. The engraved title has been slightly trimmed and mounted on the original initial blank (A1). [STC, 13637; Pforzheimer 170].

This copy of The Whole Works of Homer retains the original engraved titles to the Iliads and Odysses, and includes the memorial engraving to Prince Henry, and the portrait of Chapman which is only found in some copies. 1

POETIC ECHOES ¶ “It is a poet’s echo of a poet - loud and bold”, wrote one commentator of Chapman’s Iliads: “an Elizabethan Englishman calling across the centuries to ancient Greece”.2 This set continues these resonances, so that they reach from Homer’s ancient original to this fêted Elizabethan translation of his works, to an 18th-century Shakespeare scholar and his classicist contemporary, to Alexander Pope whose translation of Homer he edits.

Chapman’s Homer occupies a unique place in the history of English literature and of literary translation. In the words of the critic George Saintsbury, “For more than two centuries they were the resort of all who, unable to read Greek, wished to know what Greek was. Chapman is far nearer Homer than any modern translator in any modern language.” He was certainly “no straightforward translator”; Mark Thornton Burnett describes how “he personalized the epic, appropriating his source and making Homer a writer of the early modern moment”.3 George Chapman (1559/60-1634) achieved some renown as a poet and playwright, becoming one of the main dramatists for the Admiral’s Men, as well as for other companies including the Children of the Queen’s Revels. His dramatic output included Sir Giles Goosecap, The Gentleman Usher, and Bussy D’Ambois, becoming more politically charged over time, and reaction to this, along with a perennial lack of funds, led Chapman to withdraw from London life around 1612. In 1598, Chapman published Seaven Bookes of the Jliades which contained the “first, the second, and the seventh to eleventh books inclusive”.4 It was reprinted circa 1609 in Homer Prince of Poets. For the 1611/2 edition of the Iliads, Chapman made fresh translations of the first and second books and “the last twelve books appear for the first time”.5

Around the year 1616 The Whole Works of Homer appeared. It comprised unsold copies of the Iliads [c. 1611/2] with the recently published Odysses [c. 1614/5], a general title page, an engraved memorial to Prince Henry, and in some copies, a portrait of Chapman. As noted above, this copy includes the Chapman portrait and retains both original engraved titles.

GIFTED POET This is a rare first collected edition Chapman’s Homer, with several points of interest that make it still more compelling. Perhaps the most immediately obvious is the presence of the original title pages to the Iliads and Odysses, which are often cancelled in favour of the general title page for the whole set (pagination above reflects this arrangement and includes the preliminary blank to the “Odyssey”). Also gracing this copy is an inscription to the front endpaper: “The Gift of George Steevens Esq. to Gilbert Wakefield June 28th. 1794” (the hand is Wakefield’s).

Both Steevens and Wakefield were key, if controversial, cultural figures in the late 18th century.

The scholar George Steevens (1736-1800) was the first of the “three great eighteenth-century editors of Shakespeare” (ODNB), preceding Edmond Malone and Isaac Reed, and was a friend and collaborator of Samuel Johnson. He contributed notes to some of Johnson’s editions of the works of Shakespeare, and published his own edition (1766), but was inclined to antagonise his peers and, worse still, perpetrated a series of literary hoaxes that damaged his reputation.

Gilbert Wakefield (1756-1801), although known chiefly as a biblical scholar (his translation of the New Testament (1792) went through several editions), was a prodigious – if not rigorous – writer and commentator on classical authors such as Horace, Virgil, the Greek tragedians, Lucretius, and Homer, the last of whom he treated in a 12volume, annotated edition of Alexander Pope’s translation (1796). Wakefield, too, was highly ranked as a British scholar, but “always worked in great haste, and rarely took time for revision”,

so that his output was “riddled with errors” and earned him a posthumous dismissal from the pantheon, despite the “considerable brilliance and an unusual awareness of continental advances in scholarship” evident in much of his work (ODNB).

Steevens and Wakefield are known to have corresponded frequently, and although we can only speculate as to Steevens’ motivations, it may well be that the former, knowing of the latter’s intention to edit Pope’s Homer, considered it a supportive gesture to send Wakefield the Chapman translation as a kind of benchmark for superior ‘doing into English’.

A note to the verso of the endpaper (also in Wakefield’s hand) widens the cultural circle still further: “See a copy of verses to Chapman in Fitz-geffrys’s Affaniæ. L. 2.” – a reference to the Cornish clergyman and poet Charles Fitz-Geffry (or Fitzgeoffrey) (1575?-1638), whose collection of light-hearted Latin epigrams, Caroli Fitzgeofridi affaniae: sive epigrammatum libri tres: ejusdem cenotaphia, was published in 1601. Fitzgeoffrey’s epigrams in “Affaniae” largely expressed friendship and esteem: besides

acquaintances and neighbours in Cornwall and Oxford, he addresses or namechecks contemporary writers whose work he admired, among them Thomas Nashe, Ben Jonson, Edmund Spenser, Sir Philip Sidney, George Chapman, William Camden, John Marston, Mary Sidney and Thomas Campion. Wakefield’s note thus extends not only the network of references, but the theme of friendship that one infers from Steevens’ gift of these volumes to Wakefield.

Shortly after his death, Wakefield’s books were sold at auction; a perusal of the catalogue (A Catalogue of the Very Elegant Classical and Critical Library of the late Rev. Gilbert Wakefield) yields few details, but this book was probably lot number 648, “Homer, translated by Chapman”6 (no date of publication is given, perhaps because its complex publication history makes anything more than approximate dating a matter of conjecture). After that, the set seems to have continued its odyssey in private hands.

During this period in “hiding”, the volumes were rebound by Ramage in fine red morocco with gilt tooling. In the intervening period, John Keats had further enshrined Chapman in the Romantic canon with his much-quoted poem “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” (1816).

ECHOING

Chapman’s Homer exerted considerable influence on English literature. The rarity of this edition is only the beginning of its appeal: it traces the journey of a foundational text of European literature travelling through time and through the creative processes of later poets and scholars to find its place in another foundational text: Pope’s Homer and its inscription serves as a testament to a friendship between two major 18th-century literary figures. This is an exceptional copy of the first edition of Chapman’s Homer – a cornerstone work of the English Renaissance which calls back to ancient Greece, only to find further echoes in the closing decades of the early modern period.

£25,000 Ref: 8190

1. https://www.flickr.com/photos/nationallibrarynz_commons/5352564383.

2. Whibley, Charles, in The Cambridge History of English Literature. Volume IV. (1909).

3. ODNB. 4. The Carl H. Pforzheimer Library of English Literature 1475-1700. (1997).

5. ibid.

6. A Catalogue of the Very Elegant Classical and Critical Library of the late Rev. Gilbert Wakefield ... Which will be sold by auction, by Leigh, Sotheby, & Son ... March 25, 1802, and six following days, Sunday excepted. [London]: Printed by T. Burton [1802].

6. SHAKESPEARE & COMPANY TERENCE, Publius Terentius Afer (c.195/185-c.159? BCE); SHAKESPERE, Thomas (annotator). [Comoediae. With commentaries of Donatus and Guido Juvenalis, edited by Jodocus Badius Ascensius].

[Lyon: Johann Trechsel, 29 August 1493]. Collation: [lacking a-b1], b2-i7 [lacking i8], k8-P8, Q1-Q5 [lacking Q6-8]. 157 of 159 half-page woodcuts of scenes, lacking full page woodcut frontispiece and title page. Manuscript initials in red and blue throughout.

[BMC VIII, 295; HC*15424; Polain 3666; Fairfax Murray French 528; Goff T-91].

Manuscript annotations circa 1570-1590.

Bound in English 17th-century panelled calf with blind roll and floral stamps on both sides, heavily worn, loss to the spine, remains of the spine label, rubbed and joints cracked.

Provenance: Inscription to front free endpaper in an 18th-century hand: “Lord Spencer Gave £10 for a Copy very little superior to this”, and the beginning of the first play Andriæ in substitute for the missing leaf bi to the verso in the same hand. Bookplate of Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex (1773-1843), the 6th son of George III, but not included in the sale of his library at Evans auction house. With the stamp of John Brymer (1805-1870), ‘Heirloom’ no. 925 to lower margin of b2, and with his armorial bookplate to rear paste-down. This book was not in the Duke of Sussex’s posthumous sale, so we assume that it was given or lent during his lifetime, later ending up in the collection of John Brymer. The Brymer family owned Ilsington House in Puddletown from 1861 until 1946. Numerous inscriptions by “Thomas Shaxsper” and numerous annotations in one or more 16th-century hands (see below).

SHAKESPEARE STUDIES ¶ William Shakespeare and “Thomas Shaxsper”, the prolific annotator of this Terence incunable who seems highly likely to have been a relative, had much in common. Stratford-upon-Avon and Rowington (which “Shaxsper” identifies as his home) are within 10 miles of each other, and the Shakespeare families in these towns are thought to be related. Thomas and William would have attended grammar school at around the same time, and possibly at the same institution, since young scholars from Rowington would probably have attended grammar school at either Warwick (seven miles away) or Stratford.

Either way, the early annotator of this Terence incunable offers remarkable evidence of the kind of learning that a contemporary of Shakespeare would have received at school. And if the level of study in this book is anything to go by, the Bard would have developed an advanced understanding of Latin and been imbued with the dramatic structures of Terentian drama, which are widely recognised as a significant influence on Shakespeare’s plays. There may be those who reason that the level of comprehension required implies a university rather than a school setting, but as we shall argue, this contention rests on a series of assumptions that are, at the very least, unsound.

Terence’s ‘Comedies’, besides strongly influencing Chaucer, Dante and Shakespeare, were deployed as classroom material (see below). A great many young scholars thus learned the structure and style of Latin through getting to grips with extracts from the works of Terence; and this annotated copy of a rare incunable provides us with a striking illustration of English scholarly engagement.

DRAMA IN RENAISSANCE ENGLAND

The works of the African Roman playwright Publius Terentius Afer, or Terence, had an enormous and many-faceted influence on early modern English drama: his use of the five-act structure, for example, was adopted by Shakespeare and many others; and George Chapman’s All Fools (1605) is an adaptation of Terence’s romantic farce Heauton Timoroumenos (which receives annotative attention here). But he also influenced writing in general, as Martine van Elk argues, owing to “its pervasive use in the school curriculum, making his work important not only as a model of playwriting but also as a way of looking at the world that had been inculcated into grammar school boys from a relatively early age” 1.

Terence’s drama was, says van Elk, “fairly frequently put on in grammar schools, at universities, and at Inns of Court” 2; indeed, she cites the earliest surviving record of an ancient drama being staged in England (in King’s Hall, Cambridge around 1510), which features a play by Terence. It seems highly probable, therefore, that the future Bard of Avon would have had his first grounding in dramatic performance – and composition – in a manner similar to this.

Most of Terence’s plays, however, remained unpublished in English translation until the late 16 th century, and readers in England, including the young Shakespeare, “had to rely on imported books in order to gain access to many important classical works” 3. Our copy of Comoediae is a case in point.

The Terence Comoediae printed by Trechsel in 1493 has been described by Arthur Hind as representing “[t]he high-water mark of book illustration at Lyon in the xv century”. The text is “illustrated with a variety of oblong cuts, in which the actors are shown on the stage, disposed with a fine sense of design, and drawn with a vivid and humorous touch”. Hind considers it more than probable that the designer was German or Netherlandish and compares the style to Erhard Reuwich’s illustrations for the original Peregrinatio in Terram Sanctam or Sanctae Peregrinationes of 1486 by Bernhard von Breydenbach. Whoever it was, Hind declares that “the series of woodcuts to Treschel’s Terence is his masterpiece” 4.

THE ANNOTATIONS There appear at first glance to be three scribes at work in the margins; the two earliest have profusely annotated the first three plays, Andriæ, Eunuchi and Heauton, to some 200 pages – and we suggest that these two hands are very likely by the same person, writing circa 1570-1590, in two styles (Hand I being secretary and Hand II italic). There is compelling evidence for this on leaf m2v: some printed text is underlined, then transcribed and translated in the lower margin: “Si illam digito. If he touche hir but with one finger his eies shalbe pulled out of his head immediately. Magnifica verba. High & loftye wordes full of ostentation”. But the final word does not quite fit on the line, so having begun “osten” in secretary hand (as with the whole annotation thus far), the scribe completes the word with “^tation” in superscript italic. This one scribe, then, is adapting their hand to the restrictions of the space available. Indeed italic predominates in the narrower fore margins throughout and secretary in the lower margins.

Nevertheless, we have separated out these two hands in order to address them more clearly.

HAND I is a circa 1570-1590 secretary hand. Interlinear notes, underlining and annotations are mostly to the lower margins, but some notes appear in the upper and side margins. There are also intermittent Latin notes in the margins, usually picking out single words (“Obiit”, “dolor”, “porro”) from the commentaries.

Annotations in Hand I include the following.

In the lower margin of b3r there is a line of Latin with its translation into English: “In illis una aderat frequens. He was often ther to gither with them.”

In the lower margin of f1v (dark ink) there are several notes : “Repudio. I renounce, for sake or leave of the connsaile, purpose, or devyse wch I first pretended or purposed”; “Hinc a dextra. I will make as though I came this other waie on the right hande”; “See that you uphold of helpe forwarde my tale wth wordes as nede shall requyre.

I perceive not wherabout you goe”; and “But yf ther be any thinge that my helpe be required n, or that my helpe may stande you in any stedd”.

Leaf m8r is representative of many of the pages. The upper margin has been shaved, so the sentence begins “[am]biguously. Or now one feigne or [--] another: to use doubtfull wo[rds] that one can not tell [--] to take”. A few marks and short notes appear in the fore margin (“vide si-”, “weepeth speake[-] nothing for sha-”, “I am undooen”). There is underlining to the play text, including “Quid ais uenesica”, with translations in the lower margin: “Quid ais Venesica. What saiest thou poysonfull queane . / Quid ais sacrilega/ What saiest thou naughtye filth ~ Istuccine interminata sum hinc abiens tibi. / Did not I chardge the upon a great payne when I went from hence that this should not be doen./”.

On the verso (m8v) there are several instances of underlining to Terence and annotations in the lower margins. These phrases have been transcribed and translated: “Dispudet sic mihi data esse verba. / I am ashamed that I should be in such wise beguiled.”; “Quid illic hominis est. What feloe is that”; “Os impudens. A Shamlesse face, an impudent loke”; “Quæ eius confidentia est. See what foolehardinesse is in him. or see how bold he is.”

On m3r, the printed text is underlined and transcribed and translated in the lower margin: “Verba ad rem conferre. To doe in deede yt he speaketh in wordes. […] Hæc atq. huiusmodi sum multa passa. I have su [ffered] these thinges and many other like.”

On b3v in the lower margin is the note (light ink, secretary): “Quia forma erat honestra et liberali. she was of a face worthy an honest wooman & well borne”; then in darker ink in the same hand: “Hinc illiæ lachre ooq(?) This is ye cause, or yt whas ye matter that he wept so muche”.

Hand II is a circa 1570-1590 italic hand. Interlinear notes, underlining and longer annotations are mostly to fore margins. Annotations in this hand include the following.

On b2v, several lines of Terence are underlined with interlinear notes (dark ink): “Symbolum dedit” and a marginal note begins by testing a

translation: “he payed his parte or shotte”, but it then becomes a précis: “they yt keepeth [c]ompany, or hath to doe with men [o]f such natures [--?]olate the governance of his owne [l]ife”. Compressing the text like this indicates an advanced level of understanding. However, on the same page, they underline a simple word like “nihil” and translate “nothing at all”. Another simple translation occurs on b3r: “o factum bene” is translated “o happy chaunche” (we will return to this apparent simplicity later). Another on b3r: “humani ingenii mansuetique” is underlined and translated “of a curteous nature And of a tender heart” but followed by a remark in English “Why doe I holde you with my long communications. why doe I make all these many wordes”, which is not a translation of the text.

On b3v, several lines of Terence are underlined with interlinear notes in Hand II (dark ink, italic): for example, “nil suspicans etia mali” is underlined and translated as “mistrusting or missedeeminge no ille”. Similarly, the text “percussit illico animu” is translated as “it went even to the verye harte of me”; and “timeo quorsum euadas” is rendered “how greatly doe I feare to what end thy falte will come”.

A marginal note on b2v , also Hand II, attempts two versions of the same section of text: “A yonge thinge of beautie & co[u]ntenannce so demure & so fayre or well fauor had withall yt nothinge -nan(?) excede or passe, or be more excellent. A yonge thinge of beautie more co[m]ely or goodlye then they others, or then moste parte be”.

After a gap of at least half a century, Hand III adds a précis of Ecryæ to the lower margins of approximately 13 pages (L3r to M3r, eliding L8). Their account, though fluid, is laced with misogyny: “Pamphilus took Philumena to wife whom he has before deflour’d not knowing who she was; and he gave her ring which he had pluck’d off by force, to his Mistress Bacchis, a very whore. Afterwards he went a journey to Imbrus: he lay not with her after he was married”. They have made only a few very short notes to some earlier pages and then confidently written their précis, so we assume they were already quite proficient when they first picked up this copy of Terence.

OUT OF THE MARGINS The name “Thomas Shaxsper” has been inscribed in secretary hand in the margins at least 40 times (of these around 25 are simply “Thomas” or “Thom”). Another inscription (O6r) reads “Shaxsper of Rowington”, and slightly further down the margin, “Thomas”.

Shaxsper’s hand here probably dates from the second half of the 16th century. Unfortunately, the margins were shaved when the book was rebound in the 17th century, resulting in the loss of some vital clues. One such is the inadvertent removal of part of Shaxsper’s address on C5r. However, by piecing together the letters, we find confirmation of his “Rowington” inscription above:

Tho[mas] Shax[pere] of R[owen] tone [in] Comi[tatu] War[wic] kes[chire] 5 There is also a single occurrence of “Richard Nasone” – the Nasons being a prominent Stratford family who, among other things, seem to have been co-defendants with a member of the Hathaway family in a court case in the late 16th century. One tantalising inscription has what appears to say “Wyllyam” followed by “pudand” (ashamed), but the combination of English and Latin is confusing – and made the more so because the line has been crossed out, making our transcription somewhat uncertain.

Another surviving clue concerns the way the book was used: the names all appear in the margins, often with accompanying squiggles, so these are not the ownership inscriptions of a possessive bibliophile; they are pen trials. But

was the Shaxsper who trialled his pen also the annotator of the book? Most of Shaxsper’s inscriptions are written in pages that have not been annotated.

Examples of this kind of inscription may be found in books with and without annotations, but in either case, a scribe trialling a quill was likely doing ‘pen-in-hand-reading’, whether in the margins of the printed book or making notes in a commonplace book. In this instance, it is easy to imagine Shaxsper refilling his quill or starting a new one, and rather than obscure his work, turning to a page he was unlikely to use, and writing his name (along with a few pen-testing squiggles), hence their location away from the area of work. This leads us to the conclusion that Thomas Shaxsper was a schoolboy, and that the now-valuable incunable was merely a useful copy of Terence’s Comoediae for his Latin studies.

SHAXSPER’S SCHOOLBOOK? It is tempting to assume that, because our annotator is studying Latin at an advanced level, he might be a university student, or at least a member of ‘elite’ society. But David Pearson cautions against lazy assumptions and confirmation biases that serve to reinforce notions of social order and hierarchies of the past. He gives examples of “people who were not members of the educated, professional classes associated with the capital or other centres of civilised activity, or of the upper strata of society,” but those with a “humbler background who are not the kind which come most immediately to mind when we talk about book ownership in the seventeenth century” 6.

But where do we find evidence of reading and literacy? David Cressy’s valuable Literacy and the Social Order drew strict parameters on what could be considered literate 7. His evidence-based approach looked to signed documents, notably largescale censuses, to demonstrate levels of literacy across the population. But while this has enormous merit, did it draw the parameters too tightly? In contrast, Margaret Spufford’s no less evidentially based Small Books and Pleasant Histories examined a wider scope of material to uncover a greater level of literacy in the early modern period 8.

Building on the work of Spufford and others, Pearson asks: “how far beyond those professional and educated circles can we go and still find people owning and reading books, and what kinds of books would they be?” (my italics). He cites people such as Matthew Hall of Leventhorpe, of whom there is “no record of his being university-educated, but he was clearly competent in Latin” 9.

Our annotator does not appear in the university records, but he too was “clearly competent in Latin.” So, was our Shaxsper a grammar school boy, just as the celebrated William is supposed to have been? The evidence is heavily weighted towards that assumption.

SHAXSPER’S GRAMMAR SCHOOL TEXTBOOK

The phrases of Terence were not slavishly copied; learning was an active process: “the teacher may briefly but perspicuously unravel the substance of the plot” 10 and scholars were expected to “make analyses and expositions and psychological and ethical observations on the subject to turn into Latin, and so make a true use of the author” 11. We find examples of such précising in this book: just as one may learn through condensing ideas into shortened notes to gain a more complete understanding of the original meaning. For example, on leaf b2v Hand II has underlined sections of Terence and added interlinear notes in “Symbolum dedit” and a marginal note begins by testing a translation: “he payed his parte or shotte” , which then becomes a précis: “they yt keepeth [c]ompany, or hath to doe with men [o]f such natures [--?]olate the governance of his owne [l]ife”. Compressing the text like this indicates an advanced level of understanding. On the same page, they underline the word “nihil” and translate “nothing at all”, which suggests that they probably underlined the word and then came back to clarify its translation only when they had understood the meaning into which a potentially ambiguous word should fit.

Another deceptively simple example occurs on B3r: “o factum bene” is translated “o happy channche”, and on the same page, the phrase “humani ingenii mansuetique” is underlined and translated “of a curteous nature And of a tender heart”, but followed by a remark in English “Why doe I holde you with my long communications. why doe I make all these many wordes”, which does not appear to be a translation of the text. Is it instead a complaint about the pitfalls and ambiguities of Latin words?

Some Latin words are picked out, but otherwise without any obvious referent other than their occurrence in the main text.

One explanation for the attention paid to them might be that an important aspect of learning Terence was to “call out the most significant words and phrases and write them in a pocket-book” 12.

There was even a performative aspect recommended by grammar school pedagogues when using Terence which can be traced in such lines as “perii I am lost – I am cast away – I die. / Interii. Alas I am but deade / Et quid tu – also what you feare. you dull me, & yet I understand you well enough – you werye me. Thou fearest this, lest thu shouldest marye her” (c6r); “Nullus sum. I am undone – I were as good be deade. / Bene mones. you advise me well – you give me good counsalle ye put me well in minde & remembraunce” (c7v); and “O facinns audax. oh bolde act, oh hardy enterprise. Oh presumptuous deed” (d1).

Hoole suggests that “When you meet with an act or scene that is full of affection and action, you may cause some of your scholars—after they have learned it—to act it first in private amongst themselves, and afterwards in the open school before their fellows”.

Did William Shakespeare himself learn to “to act it first in private” from Terence before his move to London and the world of the stage?

THE SHAKESPEARES OF ROWINGTON The village of Rowington is situated 10 miles from Stratford, in the county of Warwickshire. William Shakespeare’s connection to Rowington is undisputed; it is specifically mentioned in his will: “Item I give and bequeath unto my daughter Judith one hundred and fifty pounds of lawful English money ... one Copyhold tenement with the appertenances lying and being in Stratford upon Avon aforesaid in the said county of Warwick, being parcel or holden of the manor of Rowington unto my daughter Susanna Hall and her heirs forever” 13. An affluent branch of the Bard’s family owned a substantial home there (once called Wood Hall, it was later changed to Shakespeare Hall), where legend has it that he wrote As You Like It 14.

The inscriptions by “Thomas Shaxsper” of “Rowington” help narrow our search down to a small pool of candidates for our scribe, but exact identification is still an uncertain business owing to the paucity of records, the inexact science of palaeography, and the inconvenient habit some families had of naming their first-born son after their father.

The earliest reference to the Shakespeares of Rowington dates from circa 1457 (“Ricardi Shakspere et Alicie”) 15; the forename with which we are concerned, however, first appears in a 1537 muster-roll, which lists “Thomas and Richard Shakspere, archers of Rowington” 16. But this bowman probably misses the mark, being slightly too early for our scribe.

Two other candidates seem more promising. The first is Thomas Shakespeare (1533-1610), who was born in Rowington to Thomas Shakespeare and Margaret (surname unknown) and married Susannah (again, surname unknown). They had five children and moved to the hamlet of Little Packington, Warwickshire, some 23 miles from Rowington. 17 The second is Thomas Shakespeare (1580-1627), born in Rowington to Thomas Shakespeare and Anne Gibbons (Gibbins). He married Elizabeth Leatherburrow, had 15 children, and died in Rowington 18.

These two Thomases, although tantalisingly close, seem to fall chronologically either side of our “Thomas Shaxsper”: given that he is working at an advanced level in his grammar school studies, we assume he would have been in his mid-teens when annotating this book, so Thomas Shakespeare (1533-1610) would have annotated this book circa 1550, which seems too early; but Thomas Shakespeare (1580-1627) would have been annotating circa 1595, which is a little too late.

Where does all this leave us? One possibility is that Thomas Shakespeare (1533-1610) inscribed his name somewhere between 1550 and 1570, and one of his sons or a namesake used it as his schoolbook a decade or so later. An examination of Parish records for the village of Rowington yields one more candidate, as we shall see.

These records, documented in Ryland (1896), contain many references to Thomas Shakespeare of Rowington. There are several leases: for example, a 1547 lease “to John Eves, p’yshe clerke, of Rowynton” of land called “Lyannce” in Hatton, “now in occupation of Joan Shakesspere, widow, and her son Thomas Shakesspere” (F. MS. 48); and another, dated 1576 from John Reve and William Ley, church-wardens of Rowyngton, in which “Thomas Shakespere” is named as one of the “feoffees” (i.e. trustees of a property who administer it for charitable purposes) (F. MS. 66). In 1589, we again find the name “Thomas Shakspere” in a “Lease of feoffees” (F. MS. 69).

A “Thomas Shakysspere” is also named in a 1561 rental document as holding “one messuage and one virgate of land in Lowston ende lately belonging to Thomas Cryar, therefor he pays by the year ... 10s. 10d.” (translated from Latin) (A. MS. 54); and “Tho: Shaxpere” appears in the 1580 “boke of the names and dwellinge places of y e Gentlemen and freeholders in ye countye of Warwicke” (A. MS. 57). All of the above, and many further mentions, though leaving the identity of our annotator

unconfirmed, gives persuasive evidence that, although not members of the ‘social elite’, they were a relatively prosperous family.

The documents mentioned above probably refer to Thomas senior, but a record in “Chancery Bills and Answers” from 1595 (A. MS. 61) appears to unearth our most likely Thomas. The plaintiffs, addressing “the right Honorable S r John Puckerungem Knight, Lorde Keep of the Great Seale of Englande”, introduce themselves as “yo r Orators Thomas Shackespere of Rowington in the Countie of Warwick yeoman and Marie his wieffe daughter and heire of Willia[m] Mathewe Deceased”. According to Stopes, their bill concerned “various tenements in Hatton, Shrawley, Rowington, Pinley and Clendon” 19. A wife named Marie is not mentioned in the entries for either of the Thomas Shakespeares listed on ancestry.com, leading us to posit that this is another Thomas Shakespeare, whose dates may well align better with our scribe – but a deeper excavation of existing records is needed if this third Thomas is to be properly fleshed out.

Once this is accomplished, a number of other pieces may begin to fall into place. For instance, there is the detail, given by Ryland, that “Thomas Shakespeare’s son John was apprenticed to William Jaggard the Stationer of London 1609. I take it that people did not apprentice boys a hundred miles away in those days without a strong reason. May we not assume that it was at the instigation of their relative(?), William Shakespeare, the Poet, with whom Jaggard was intimately associated in the publication of his plays and poems?” 20. While we do not agree that people were not apprenticed a hundred miles away (there is strong evidence that people were apprenticed from even further afield than that), we do agree that Jaggard might have apprenticed a relative of an intimate associate. Indeed, the evidence is weighted in favour of something like a network of masters who took apprentices, connected by families and associates 21. Is this our Thomas Shakespeare, and was there a family connection involved in his son’s being apprenticed to Jaggard, whose personal association with William Shakespeare involved the publication of many of his plays and poems?

CONCLUSION The evidence presented here strongly indicates that our annotator was a schoolboy and a contemporary of William Shakespeare, and – given the close proximity in time, place and family connections – may even have been his school fellow.

His annotations show how a grammar school boy in Elizabethan England, from a ‘middling’ family in the provinces, would have received advanced learning in Latin. Interestingly, it also shows how this learning was undertaken using an important and rare Terence incunable as a classroom textbook. The way our young scholar had the patterns of Terentian drama instilled into him through his studies mirrors the influence that the Latin playwright is thought to have had on Shakespeare himself, earning him the epithet “our English Terence, Mr. Will. Shake-speare” 22. £75,000 Ref: 8215

References 1. ELK, Martine van ‘“Thou shalt present me as an eunuch to him”: Terence in early modern England’ in A Companion to Terence. Edited by Antony Augoustakis and Ariana Traill. (2013). p.410.

2. ibid. p.416 3. https://shakespeare.lib.uiowa.edu/exhibit 4. HIND, Arthur M. An Introduction to a History of Woodcut. (1963). p.609.

5. With thanks to Christopher Whittick for solving this and other palaeographic puzzlers.

6. PEARSON, David. Book ownership in Stuart England. (2021). p.71.

7. CRESSY, David. Literature and the Social Order: Reading and Writing in Tudor and Stuart England. (1980).

8. SPUFFORD, Margaret. Small Books and Pleasant Histories: Popular Fiction and its Readership in seventeenth-century England. (1981).

9. PEARSON, David. Book ownership in Stuart England. (2021). p.71.

10. WATSON, Foster. The English Grammar Schools to 1660: their Curriculum and Practice. (1908). p.315.

11. ibid. p.371.

12. ibid p.315.

13. https://shakespearedocumented.folger.edu/resource/document/william-shakespeares-last-will-and-testament-originalcopy-including-three 14. https://timetrail.warwickshire.gov.uk/detail.aspx?monuid=WA7606 15. RYLAND, John William. Records of Rowington, being extracts from the deeds in possession of the feoffees of the Rowington charities, with notes from the parish chest ... and appendix of MSS from the British Museum. (1896). [A. MS. 100].

16. YEATMAN, John Pym. The Gentle Shakespeare. (1896). p.136.

17. Ancestry https://www.ancestry.co.uk/genealogy/records/thomas-shakespeare-24-19622p8 18. https://www.ancestry.co.uk/genealogy/records/thomas-shakespeare-24-1g82mjr 19. Stopes, C. C. Shakespeare’s Family. (1901) .

20. RYLAND, John William. Records of Rowington. (1896). p.xxvi.

21. SCOTT, Michael. The Merchant Taylors Company of London: apprentices 1583-1800. (2019), which lists numerous examples of apprentices hired from the provinces, who in turn hire others from outside the capital, including relations and acquaintances from their hometown. See also: WEBB, Cliff. Haberdasher’s Company Membership Records 1500-1800. (2020).

22. DAVIES, John, 1565?-1618. The Scourge of Folly. (c. 1611). https://shakespearedocumented.folger.edu/resource/document/ scourge-folly-john-davies-hereford-praises-william-shakespeare

7. SOCIAL STRATA [HOLLAND, John (d.1760)]. Heraldic manuscript compilation of the arms of Cheshire.

[Circa 1574-1760]. Folio (350 x 225 x 13 mm). Foliation ff. [22, blanks], 1-12, 20-22, 36-39, 50-55, [18, printed shields (16 per page)], [3 (four-page index)], [18, blanks].

Watermarks: leaves at beginning and end (including title, index, and blanks): fleur-de-lis, above letters WR and AJ (in italics); countermark: IV (Haewood 1786, circa 1690). Watermark visible to some manuscript leaves: Crown without arches, pearls within two lines (not in Haewood or Briquet).

Provenance: John Holland’s bookplate to paste-down, inscribed underneath: “John Holland No 44”.

INTRODUCTION ¶ At first glance this volume might appear to be an incomplete 16th-century armorial. But through an examination of its long history by multiple users, it becomes clear that the volume is exactly the way it was intended by its latest recorded user.

The earliest sections of the manuscript may be dated circa 1574. These have been augmented in a different hand in the 17 th century, before John Holland shaped the volume into a very specific workbook, which remains its current form.

The central section of the volume comprises late 16th- and early 17th-century coats of arms. Most of the pages have been divided by rubricated vertical lines. The arrangements – some of which are unusual – vary from six or eight to a page, arranged in a central column (following the edges of the red lines) with pairs of shields conjoined along one side by a central vertical line to indicate their relatedness. Other pages contain six or 12 shields, often loosely arranged and drawn freehand. Many of the arms are enhanced by their crests, either drawn atop the shield or in the margins. The arms and crests are tricked throughout. At the end of the manuscript section, there are 37 pages of printed blank arms and an 18th-century index. These are sandwiched between about a dozen blank sheets at each end.

SCRIBES Over a period of two centuries, at least four scribes have, in different and sometimes unusual ways, contributed to the creation of an artefact of singular form. But for all that their practices may have differed, they seem to have all shared one thing in common: their treatment of this volume as a working document shaped and radically adapted according to its utility.

Hand I. The earliest contributor probably commenced this volume in the 1570s. The evidence for this is a note to one of the shields: “Roger Bridde of Clopton nowe liuing Ao do 1574” (f.5r). The scribe has arranged their information in a most unusual but entirely logical way. A good example of this occurs in the three opening pages: each page

delineates six shields arranged as three contiguous pairs. The first shield depicts the Andrew family’s arms in trick on the dexter side, quartered with “tokett”. Thereafter, the dexter side is left blank (as this would not itself change) and quarterings entered for various families to the sinister side (“tomson”, “whitney”, “swinborne”). The shields on the first page are also bordered with small illustrations of additional shields.

As the volume progresses, more details are added to the pages in the form of family names, biographical notes, and often elaborate crests. Among their annotations is the sidenote “this Creast wth the armes to be mad[e] in the Tabell xs R[eceived] in prest 30 more to be payd” (f.8r). The reference to “Tabell” is intriguing. We are uncertain whether this refers to a writing tablet, for example a wax tablet that would be discarded afterwards, or to a table in a book. Either way, they are clearly receiving payment for their work, which suggests they were a trusted arms painter who was drafting pedigree rolls. This is evidenced by the quartered arms of the abovementioned Andrew family and, on ff3-5, of the Bridd family (whose canting arms feature birds; brid being Old English for a young bird) whose arms are shown quartered and annotated with details such as the dated reference on f.5r mentioned earlier, “Anne maryed to John Aldersey of sporstow” and “Robert Bridde son maried Dtr of John Donne of Flaxyard first wife”. In this light, the most likely status of our arms painter is that he was working for, or with the permission of, one of the heralds at the College of Arms.

Around the turn of the 17th century, this first scribe is joined by Hand II, whose work overlaps with that of the first scribe.

Hand II has added further shields and annotations to the earlier pages and finished some of those not completed by Hand I. We suggest that Hand II, like their predecessor, was also an arms painter, who again seems to be in close contact with or working for the College of Arms. For example, on f.12r. they have annotated the shield of “Thomas Ewes of Cornwall” with the note that “Mr Strelye of wodborowe in notinghamshire a lowed to be borne thus as his funerall by Mr Claretiusxe Lea 1595 desember. 12”. The name “Claretiusxe Lea” refers to the English officer of arms, Richard Leigh (c. 1531-1597). He was created Portcullis Pursuivant in 1571 and in this role conducted visitations of Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Shropshire on behalf of the Clarenceux King of Arms. He was promoted to Richmond Herald in 1592, in which role he conducted the visitation of Lincolnshire; and then promoted to Clarenceux in 1594, after which he undertook visitations of Berkshire and Northamptonshire. The reference to Strelley’s being “a lowed to be borne thus as his funerall” indicates the scribe’s interest: an arms painter would have received payment for their artistic work at the funeral.

There is ample further evidence that the scribe was marshalling funerals for heralds at the College of Arms (probably William Camden (1551-1623) or Sir Richard St George (c.1550-1635)). In the year 1611, they record a flurry of funerals over two pages: [1]. “Sr Roger Aston wth the Kings Augmentation For regard of his good Servis to his Ma tie 16ii confirmed vnder the gearet seale of England”; [2]. “Mr Hale & his wife Gefford. She ^Her^ ^funerall^ was buried on Twesday the 17 of September at St Dunstane in the Easte of London 16ii”; [3]. “Mr Bashawe of Lond his funerall was on thrusday the 19 of Septembe An n 16ii at St Marynis Church om London at the Brigefoot”; [4]. “Mrs Isabell dawgter of Mr Tho Conyers & wife of Mr Wm Peart Sonn & Heyre of Mr Wm Peart of Mountnessing in Essex her funerall Solemnised on Wedensday the 20th of September at St Botolpfes at aldersgat London i6ii for Mr Norroy” (f.21v); and, on the following leaf, [1]. “Mr Henshaw maried the dawhter of Goldesboroughe He died the [left blank] & was buried The 30th of Januarij Ano i6ii at the p[ar]ish Church in Melkstret” (f.22r).

On this same leaf the shield for “Morall & woodward” is annotated “Mr Somersettts tome 26 Marche 1618”. This tells us that scribe had access to the “tome” of Robert Treswell (1566-1630 or 1631), who held the position of Somerset Herald from 1597 until 1624 – again pointing to a close working relationship with the College of Arms.

These two scribes are later joined by Hand III, who annotates some shields and adds an account “1639. The manor of the funerall of Thomas Lo: Couentrye Lo: keep[er] of the great Seale of England”. The text, which covers about a third of a page of f.36r, appears to be untraced in any printed sources. It is written upside down, presumably to distinguish it from the rest of the work, which continues from f.36v with arms and crests executed by Hand II. The volume shows no further signs of use until the middle of the 18th century, when it comes into the possession of Hand IV who, in continuing to treat the volume in purely utilitarian terms, has added their ownership inscription and distinctive Hogarth bookplate, and radically altered its arrangement.

HOGARTH’S BOOKPLATE

Upon opening the volume, the first thing one registers is the striking bookplate by William Hogarth (1697-1764) which measures 117 x 103 mm to the edges of the image. It was one of only two bookplates designed by Hogarth (the other being for George Lambert circa 1730). In Holland’s bookplate Minerva is depicted seated at the right, holding a spear and looking up at a shield with the arms of the herald painter John Holland, depicting a lion surrounded by seven fleurs-de-lis, held up by a putto, three other putti nearby, one by a window at left, holding up a crown with a lion inside. The bookplate is catalogued by the British Museum (Cc,1.211), circa 1759-1760. Holland died in 1760, so if that date is correct, he must have hastily pasted it into this volume. All four manuscripts in the list below, held at the Society of Antiquaries (SAL/MS/:393/396/397/405) are numbered (“no 10”, “1”, “17”, and “ 79” respectively), and bear the Hogarth bookplate, suggesting that in the last year of his life, he went through his collection pasting in his newly acquired bookplate to as many volumes as possible.

Holland has inscribed his name (“John Holland No 44”) under the bookplate and added the title, “This Vol. contains Various Arms of Cheshire with a Description of the Funeral of Tho s Lord Coventry.

Anno 1639. Pag: 30”. There is no page 30 in this volume, but the funeral report appears on f.36 of this volume, and the six could easily be taken for a zero, so it may simply be Holland’s misreading. He has annotated above the title “Cheshire /Index at the end of the Book”, which indeed, he has himself supplied.

His four-page index is especially useful to us because none of the absent leaves noted above are listed in the index, which clearly confirms that the arrangement of pages dates to Holland’s period of ownership and indicates that the volume in its current form was probably intentionally created as a useful resource for Holland’s heraldic work.

JOHN HOLLAND But what do we know about John Holland, who gave this volume its unusual composition? He served an apprenticeship in London with William Commins, a painter-stainer, in 1706; the apprentice register describes his father as “John Holland, Gentleman” but gives no clue as to his origin. He died in 1760, and in his will he leaves the majority of his estate to his grandson John Durant, so presumably he had no male heir. He lived at Golden Head, Craven St, The Strand, London.

Clues to John Holland’s ancestry lie in the arms depicted in Hogarth’s bookplate. These arms were borne by Philip Holland, Portcullis Pursuivant in the early 17th century. They were also borne by the Holland family in Devon, Gloucester and Worcester, and notably, the antiquary, Joseph Holland (1576-1625), Weare, Devon, … the eldest son of Joseph Holland, servant of William Camden, Clarenceux, and one of the original members of the Society of Antiquaries. He was buried 6 December 1625 at St Giles’, Cripplegate.

Holland added the title page and the index and removed certain sections of the original to create a volume with a particular concentration on Cheshire families living in the county and elsewhere. Clues as to why he may have done this lie in an examination of his other known manuscript compilations, as we shall see.

HOLLAND’S COLLECTIONS John Holland seems to have amassed a vast collection, items from which have since found their way into various larger collections and libraries: the Society of Antiquaries has four interesting manuscripts, all of which also have this same bookplate; of particular interest for our manuscript is the first of these listed below.

SAL/MS/397: “Extracts of arms, in trick, from visitations; The excerpts were transcribed from a number of sources; few are dated. Added information includes ‘Living 1620’ (fol. 44), and other dates, 1630 (fol. 81), 1634 (fol.

128v). Contents: Cambridge (part missing, cf. the contents list, fol. iii verso), fols. 8-11; Durham (1615, fol. 14), fols. 13-23v; Devon (1564, fol.

25), fols. 24-44v; Cornwall, fols. 45-62; Nottinghamshire, fols. 63-74v; Shropshire, fols. 77-85v; Somerset (1601, fol. 90), fols. 89-97; Surrey, fols. 99114; Sussex (including a copy of the patent for William Thomas of Lewes, 14 May 1608, fol. 116), fols. 115-31; Surrey (Visitation, 1625, cf. fols. 131v, 135v), fols. 131v-5v. Incomplete contents list, fol. iii verso. Indexes for each county added in a later hand, fols. 1-7v, 136-7. Date: after 1625. ff. iv + 142. After 1625. Folio. Reversed leather, blind-tooled. Original vellum bookmarks. Possibly incorporated from the papers of the Rev. John Brand, Sec. SA, see Council Minutes, 25 June 1812, p. 238, which refers to Brand’s manuscript collections relating to Newcastle (SAL/MS/448) and to ‘one or two heraldic manuscripts by Mr. Holland’”.

SAL/MS/396: “Part of an alphabet of English arms, AB-BL only (fols. 3-34) Blazons, with small ink drawings of charges. Date: late 17th century”.

SAL/MS/393: “Alphabet of English arms, Ab-Pa, with blazons; 17th century” SAL/MS/405: “Genealogical history of the families of Grandison, Tregoze and St John, with transcripts of deeds and other documents relating to these families, and numerous coats of arms in colour”. Date: 1621-1626. Possibly incorporated from the papers of the Rev. John Brand (see SAL/MS/397).

Furthermore, five manuscripts “from John Holland’s Collection” are recorded in the sale A Catalogue of the Very Valuable Library, ... of The Late Right Honorable William Lord Berwick (Sotheby, 1843): 103. Arms and Crests of the Gentry, in several counties, neatly tricked by Thomas Knight, Chester Herald, and Thomas Thompson, Lancaster Herald. Manuscript. fol. n.d.

2739. Wales – Arms of Archbishops, Bishops, and Gentry of Wales, collected in 1686, by Jos. Smyth, Emblazoned.

Manuscript. 4to. 1686.

2896. Yorkshire: Pedigrees Arms of Families of Yorkshire, with Drawings in Trick, bound in russia. fol. n.d.

2897. Yorkshire: Collection of Armorial Bearings in Trick, from John Holland’s Collection, probably by him, with Index, in russia. fol. n.d.

2898. Yorkshire: Armorial Bearings of Various Families, in Trick, with Index, russia, fol. n.d.

Summarising these last three lots, the cataloguer remarks that “It would be difficult to find three more important Collections to the County Collector or Genealogist”.

Two items from these records are worth circling back to. The physical makeup of manuscript SAL/MS/397 gives a clear indication that Holland’s arrangement of our volume was not an anomaly in his work: in both, and probably in others, he was extracting sections from earlier volumes and recombining them to create the forms he required for his work. If that is the case, then ff.23-35 which are not included in our volume (“No 44”) are likely to be (or have been) in one of his many other volumes.

Holland’s index at the end confirms that nothing, at least from his time onwards, has been extracted from the volume: all the names mentioned in his index are accounted for in the text.

Lot 2896 has an additional note that confirms our notion of how Holland preferred to work: “This valuable volume formerly belonged to John Holland, who appears to have added the Index [...] It appears to be a Collection from Glover’s Visitation of Yorkshire made in 1584 and 1585 […] I call it a Collection from that Visitation, but not a Copy, because it is not a Copy of the whole, but of certain Pedigrees only; and to those pedigrees the transcriber has made additions of a later date than that of Glover’s Visitation.”

CONCLUSION

The long history of our manuscript amounts to a record of its own genealogy as it evolved over centuries, yet for all that it changed hands many times, it retained its pedigree as a working document; and other surviving examples of Holland’s methodology show that any omissions or incongruities are by design, and that one’s initial impression of incompleteness is a reflection of his personal approach to working. The presence of a Hogarth bookplate, appealing in itself, also demonstrates his determination to establish his own pedigree, just as his work burnishes the pedigrees of others stretching back to the Elizabethan age. £4,500 Ref: 8210

8. SOCIAL CAPITAL ARBUTHNOT, John (c.1667-1725); SWIFT Jonathan Tables of the Grecian, Roman and Jewish Measures, Weights and Coins; Reduc’d to the English standard. Humbly dedicated to His Royal Highness the Prince: by His Royal Highnesses dutifull servant Jo. Arbuthnott MD. London: Published by Printed for Ralph Smith at ye Bible under ye Piaazzas (sic) of the Royall Exchange in Cornhill. [no date, circa 1705].

Oblong quarto, bound as octavo. [14] leaves of engraved plates. Contemporary panelled calf, rubbed. Gilt library stamp “D III 5” to lower spine panel, probably from the Perceval family’s cataloguing system. Some of the figures in the tables have been amended in manuscript. The copy on ECCO also has amendments in manuscript which match those in ours.

¶ John Arbuthnot and Jonathan Swift became fast friends in the burgeoning literary scene of early-18th century London. It was a relationship both personal and creative, the aspects and currents of which have yet to be properly explored; as one commentator has remarked, “it would take a monograph to describe the friendship between Swift and Arbuthnot in full detail”. 1 This rare copy of an early work of Arbuthnot’s, inscribed by Swift, would surely occupy a prominent position in any such account.

Though both were almost the same age, Arbuthnot had moved to London by the early 1690s, apparently working first as a mathematics tutor before gaining the qualifications to practice as a physician; Swift arrived in 1710, and “[b]y the autumn of 1711 Arbuthnot was an intimate friend of Swift’s.

He was the source of ‘hints’ but cared little for the ‘ownership’ of ideas or even writing. Pamphlets, poems, squibs are attributed to Swift or Arbuthnot, which often have a communal origin” (ODNB). Arbuthnot was also a member of the Scriblerus Club and well acquainted with the likes of Pope, Gay, and Johnson, the latter of whom called him “the most universal genius”.

Among Swift and Arbuthnot’s shared interests was numismatics – the study of coins and currency. Both composed works in this field: Swift published seven pamphlets under the pseudonym of “Drapier” between 1724 and 1725 (collected together in Drapier’s Letters (1735)), to campaign against a privately minted, and supposedly inferior, copper coinage being imposed in Ireland; the resulting public outcry and boycott led to the patent’s withdrawal, and to the Archbishop of Dublin, William King, dubbing Swift “Our Irish Copper-Farthen Dean”. Arbuthnot produced two works on the topic: Tables of the Grecian, Roman and Jewish Measures, Weights and Coins; Reduc’d to the English standard (of which ours is a copy), which appeared around 1705; and the posthumously published Tables of Ancient Coins, Weights, and Measures, explain’d and exemplify’d in several dissertations (1727). These

have been described as “the best work on metrology to appear in the English language during the 18 th century”, and “the source for most economic writers in their investigations into comparisons of the value of money and commodities between ancient and modern times”. 2 Arbuthnot evidently presented this copy of his circa 1705 Tables to Swift in the early years of their friendship: an inscription to the front endpaper reads: “J: Swift. Mar 31. 1713. The Gift of my most ingenious and learned Friend, the Author” (a second “J: Swift” inscription appears on the verso of the title page plate). Since Swift’s own published writing on coinage was still a decade away, it seems likely that Arbuthnot was a major influence on his own thinking around this topic.

Swift died in October 1745, and his library was sold at auction in February 1746. An inscription to the endpaper, to the left of Swift’s inscription, reads “Feb: 15th 1745-6 Thos: Lloyd pret: 1s. 6d–”. The book appeared in the sale catalogue as lot 397, where it was described as “Arbuthnott’s Tables of the Grecian, Roman, and Jewish Measures, &c”. No mention was made of Swift’s inscription, but we can be reasonably confident that they are one and the same, because the The Library And Reading Of Jonathan Swift: A Bio Bibliographic Handbook, edited by Dirk F Passmann and Heinz J. Vienken (Frankfurt, 2003), includes the marked-up prices, and lot 397 is annotated “01:6”, which matches our annotation mentioned above.

Thomas Lloyd died in 1758 and his books were sold the same year at an auction entitled “A catalogue of books. Being the library of doctor Thomas Lloyd, deceased: consisting of above three thousand volumes of scarce and valuable books, to be sold by auction at his late dwellinghouse in Steven-Street. By William Ross, on-Monday the 6th of March, 1758.” 3

Our book was listed in this catalogue as lot 610, with the even more laconic description “Arbuthnot’s Tables, cuts Lond.” The buyer has inscribed his name and the price he paid beneath Swift and Lloyd’s inscription: “pr: 2s Chars Perceval 1758”. He has also initialled the paste-down “C P” in large letters, which were later partially covered by the (probably 20 th-century) armorial bookplate of “William Perceval Esq”. Books from the library of the Maxwell-Perceval family, many of which carry both Charles and William Perceval inscriptions and bookplates, only came onto the market in circa 2015, so we can be confident that this book remained in Perceval family’s library since it was bought at the Lloyd sale in 1758.

This unbroken chain of ownership (Arbuthnot-Swift-Lloyd-Perceval) over three centuries adds still further to the qualities of this artefact: a superlative copy of a rare book, in its original binding, with Swift’s inscription and sincere acknowledgement of his “most ingenious and learned Friend”, Arbuthnot. This, and their clearly shared interest in coinage, shows friendship itself as a currency that can yield many different kinds of enrichment or ‘output’ – including, in the case of figures such as Arbuthnot and Swift, a strong influence on each other’s thought and writing.

£25,000 Ref: 8225

1. The Library And Reading Of Jonathan Swift: A Bio Bibliographic Handbook. Dirk F Passmann and Heinz J. Vienken (eds) (Frankfurt, 2003) p.77.

2. Ibid p.76.

3. A catalogue of books. Being the library of doctor Thomas Lloyd, deceased: consisting of above three thousand volumes of scarce and valuable books, to be sold by auction at his late dwelling-house in StevenStreet. By William Ross, on-Monday the 6th of March, 1758.

[Dublin: s.n., 1758].

With thanks to Carmel Keogh of Keogh’s Books.

9. SOCIAL ENHANCEMENT JEAMSON, Thomas (d.1674). Artificiall embellishments. Or Arts best directions how to preserve beauty or procure it.

Oxford: printed by William Hall, ann. D. 1665. ONLY EDITION. Octavo. Pagination [16], 192 p. Collated and complete. [Wing J503; Madan III, 2705]. Contemporary calf, rebacked, head of spine chipped, front hinge cracking, endpapers renewed, marginal worming (not affecting text), corner of L8 torn away, just touching edge of catchword, but without loss, paper flaw in L3 with loss of one letter.

Provenance: inscriptions “Archibaldi Spark” (dated “1666”), “John Lloyd” dated “1706” and “Catherine Lloyd”. (See notes below).

THE ORDER OF APPEARANCE ¶ Emulsions, emollients, creams, and other concoctions were often included among the various recipes in English printed and manuscript compilations. But around the middle of the 17th century, some writers began to collate and arrange preparations exclusively concerned with personal appearance, and in doing so, created a new genre: the beauty manual 1.

Outward appearance was thought to reflect one’s inner morality and balance of humours, so any attempt to hide the ‘true’ inner identity by face-painting – which had been in vogue during the previous century – was considered immoral and might be condemned from the pulpit or whispered about behind the backs of those who practiced such acts of deceit. In contrast to face-painting, cosmetics were considered by some more acceptable because, rather than completely covering the face, they merely enhanced a person’s natural attributes.

When Thomas Jeamson published Artificiall embellishments in 1665, there were very few antecedents for a book devoted solely to cosmetics, and all of them were nearcontemporary. Sir Hugh Plat’s Delights for ladies, to adorne their persons, tables, closets, and distillatories with beauties, banquets, perfumes, and waters first appeared in 1600, and included cosmetics alongside culinary and household recipes. John Gauden’s A discourse of auxiliary beauty. Or artificiall hansomenesse. In point of conscience between two ladies (1656) and Johann Jacob Wecker’s Arts master-piece: or, The beautifying part of physick (1660) only just predated Jeamson’s book; but taken together, these works signalled a shift in attitudes: layers of paint and paste were out; more subtle enhancements were in.

Jeamson’s book, according to more than one account, did nothing to enhance his reputation. As a physician, he was, according to William Munk, “much ridiculed”, presumably for writing something considered superficial and infra dig (Artificiall embellishments was published anonymously, but Munk blames “the indiscretion of his publisher” for the leaking of the author’s identity). How much damage this really inflicted is unclear: Jeamson published the book in the year after his graduation from Wadham College, Oxford (Bachelor of Medicine, 1664), and went on to become a Doctor of Medicine in 1668, before being admitted to the College of Physicians in 1671 – hardly a downward spiral (although he died only three years later, in 1674).

PROVENANCE This copy of Jeamson’s book was bought shortly after its publication. An inscription to the front endpaper reads “Archibaldi Spark”, beneath the date “1666”, and the purchase price of the book (pret-0-1s-4d”), followed by an inscription in the same hand in ancient Greek and lines of verse taken from Ovid (to which we shall return). There are two further inscriptions: one to the front free endpaper by “John Lloyd” dated “1706” and the other, that of “Catherine Lloyd” (with two further inscriptions of her forename) to the rear endpaper. Historical records offer up an Archibald Spark who was born in Scotland and attended Jesus College, Cambridge, where he earned an MA in 1634 and a BD in 1637. Among his posts as a clergyman were several in Merionethshire, Montgomeryshire and Flintshire, in the latter of which he was buried in 1669/70 2.

But why did a clergyman in rural Wales acquire a book on cosmetics almost immediately after its publication? The evolution, noted above, from artificial face-painting, with its moral connotations of “whited sepulchres”, to supposedly more complementary and healthier “Cosmeticks”, arguably made the practice more acceptable to many in the church: external beauty, subtly enhanced, could express inner virtue. More pointedly, Spark’s inscription of lines from Ovid’s Ex Ponto are quite endearingly suggestive of something deeply felt in him: “Iam mihi deterior canis aspergitur aetas Iamque meos vultus ruga senilis arat Confiteor facere hoc annos sed et altera causa est Anxietas animi continuusque labor” (“Now is the worse period of life upon me with its sprinkling of white hairs / now the wrinkles of age are furrowing my face […] I admit that this is the work of the years, but there is yet another cause—anguish and constant suffering.” 3)

Whether he pontificated from the pulpit or perhaps took subtle tips from Jeamson’s book on hiding the “sprinkling of white hairs” and the furrowed “wrinkles of age”, we cannot say for certain. He died three or four years after buying this book, but it appears to have stayed in Flintshire where it came into the possession of John and Catherine Lloyd. There were two couples in the area by those names: a John Lloyd who married Catherine Pierce on 30 November 1715 at Nannerch, Flintshire 4; and a John Lloyd who married Catherine Roberts on 3 September 1719 at Northope, Flintshire 5. Although we have not found any connection between the Spark and Lloyd families, this volume does seem to have remained in Flintshire for some time.

FORM AND CONTENTS In the introductory “Epistle”, Jeamson takes up the inner/outer theme that so concerned 17 th-century moralists. But although he fleetingly mentions the soul and evokes “a Hell of misery”, he largely elides the question of morality, and opts instead for a simple appeal to vanity (especially under the male gaze). He promises “to save you Ladies from the loathsome embraces of this hideous Hagge” with “these Cosmeticks”, and to improve their chances of marriageability (while also indulging in class snobbery): “none save Grooms or Oastlers think those worth their courtship, who are rusted over with ill-inticing looks”.

He sets out his scheme at the end of the “Proeme”: “it is regularly methodiz’d into a quaternion of parts. The first whereof treats of Embellishing the Body in generall; the Next of the Head, neck and breast; the Third of the Hands, Armes, Leggs and Feet; and the Last supplies you with Sents, Perfumes and Pouders”.

Jeamson begins this tour of the female body with a few words on pregnancy – that is, “How Women with Child are to order themselves that they may be delivered of fair and handsom Children”, so that the new arrival will be “not a misshapen or monstrous lump, but a sparkling luminary”. Some fairly sensible advice, such as taking “moderate and frequent exercise”, coexists with passages that hammer home the importance of “regulating the phantasie, or imagination of the Mother”; for this “phantasie”, or “Phancie”, has a life of its own: “finding the soft and plyant Fœtus pinion’d in a membranious mantle […] it freely without resistance makes impression as the Mother directs it. So that she by the help of this invisible Agent usually works & adorns the Infant with those features which her mind most runs upon”.

He dwells on this idea, laying it on thick by recounting a series of improbable tales: of a woman “big with Child” who witnessed a duel “twixt two Soldiers, one whereof lost his hand”, was “frighted with the sight” into labour and “was delivered of a Daughter with one hand”, the other having been “cut off at the same place with the maimed Soldier”; and of several cases of pregnant women who, “by often looking on a Black-a-moores picture, have been delivered of a Child clouded with Natures sooty mask”. One wonders whether Jeamson himself took the stories at face value or was simply employing them to embellish his argument for the more credulous of his readers.

After these preambles, he begins to supply the many recipes, which include methods to “alter the ill colour of the eyes and how to make them bigger or less”, “To make the Lip ruddie”, “To make Haire what colour you please”, “To whiten a tan’d visage and to keep the face from Sunburn”, “To Sweeten the Breath”, and “to keep the Breasts from growing too big, and to make them plumpe and round”, along with formulations to make “Pouders for the Hair”, “Sents and Perfumes”, and other nostrums.

These are the kinds of recipes that might have been found in any number of compilations of the period; but Jeamson’s book has the distinction of being one of the earliest to bring together so many recipes and so much contemporary thinking on cosmetics and appearance into a single volume. His book did not accord agency to early modern women, but it did wrest the subject from the clutches of the moralists and placed the materials of transformation into their hands. As such, it simultaneously reflected and shaped society’s shifting attitudes to outward appearance and contributed to modern ideas of beauty.

While this may be true of Jeamson’s publication in general, what makes this copy especially interesting is that the book travelled so quickly from the Oxford printer into the hands of a rural Flintshire clergyman, who eagerly inscribes his newly purchased book with lines from Ovid so expressive of the conflicting concerns of outward appearance and inner torment – just a few short years before he succumbed to the inevitable effects of “the work of the years”.

£5,000 Ref: 8181

1. Woods, Kathryn, Dismembering Appearance. (Doctoral thesis, 2014).

2. https://venn.lib.cam.ac.uk/cgi-bin/search-2018.pl? sur=spark&suro=w&fir=archibald&firo=c&cit=&cito=c&c=all&z=all&tex=&sye=&eye=&col=all&maxcount=50 3. https://www.loebclassics.com/view/ovid-ex_ponto/1924/pb_LCL151.287.xml.

4. https://www.ancestry.co.uk/discoveryui-content/view/301970:62104? tid=&pid=&queryId=b3d0ed1da1ede1c78b515b999789b737&_phsrc=KvK504&_phstart=successSource 5. https://www.ancestry.co.uk/discoveryui-content/view/415652:62104? tid=&pid=&queryId=b3d0ed1da1ede1c78b515b999789b737&_phsrc=KvK504&_phstart=successSource

10. SOCIAL GAMES [NIXON, John Colley (1755-1818)] Unusual Transformation Playing Cards Booklet entitled ‘Transformation of Cards. Metastasis’.

[Circa 1803]. Pamphlet. 165 x 131 mm. Title page to front cover and four pen and ink and watercolour transformation card designs (92 x 62 mm) tipped onto rectos of four leaves.

¶ Card-playing was a highly fashionable pastime of the elite and the ‘middling sort’ in Georgian Britain, so much so that it famously features in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813). The popularity of this parlour-room pursuit – which, for some, exuded a whiff of immorality due to its gambling connotations – gave rise to a striking craze: the creation of ‘transformation’ cards, in which the pips (suit signs) were incorporated into drawings as a kind of visual pun. The generally accepted theory is that individuals began to ‘customise’ plain sets by hand, using pen, ink, and watercolours, and that enterprising publishers picked up on the trend. The earliest published ‘set’, albeit not containing all 52 cards, was printed in Germany in 1801, with others quickly following in France, Poland, and England. Interestingly, the manuscript/print influence cuts both ways: one can see the elements from printed cards show up in manuscript examples that followed them, and vice versa.

The transformation cards in this pamphlet are nearcontemporary copies of cards from the earliest complete pack: John Colley Nixon’s Metastasis, which was published in sheet form (to avoid tax on playing cards) in England in 1803.

Early printed transformation cards are notoriously scarce, and manuscript versions are even rarer.

This pleasing, home-made artefact is even more compelling for its unusual presentation, which was almost certainly done around the same time as the cards. Playing cards of course are created to be handled and played with, but it seems unlikely many people played games with transformation cards; the pleasure was in the creative transformation itself.

Appropriately, our scribe has carefully mounted theirs like little artworks.

The four cards depicted (ace of hearts, two of spades, three of diamonds, and two of hearts) all include captions within the images, and all follow the printed versions except for the occasional small variation: for example, the printed card for two of spades (in which a daughter suffers her mother’s reminiscent brag about her admirers) has the wearylooking young woman exclaim “Lord, Mamma, I have heard that often” – here rendered as “Ah. Mama, I have heard that so often”; and the three of diamonds (depicting two English diners outraged at being served frogs by a Frenchman) opts for “why” rather than the printed ejaculation “Damme” and has acquired an additional ink inscription on the mount beneath, “A French Dinner”. A later scribe has annotated the names of pips in pencil (one incorrectly).

The presence of an early title piece makes this artefact rarer still. There are extant examples of a title design for the 1811 edition, but ours is much closer to the earliest known example identified in the Field collection, where it forms a crucial piece of evidence in dating the first set. Field

describes “what appears to be the design for a title piece for the pack”, dated 1803. Some of the cards featured in the title design here differ slightly – two are left blank and some have different pips – but it seems likely that ours was copied from that original and a few features omitted.

Curiously, the Field design is inscribed within the central motif “Inv[eni]t et Fecit 1803”, whereas ours is undated, but inscribed in the border “Designed by J Nixon Esqr”. This raises the question: which was copied from which? It seems probable that our cards were copied from the printed set, but the nature and differences in the inscriptions invite the possibility that ours preceded the published version. Either way, it is certainly a remarkable survival. £1,750 Ref: 8222

1. Field, Albert Transformation Playing Cards. (1998).

11. SOCIETY DINNERS [EDEN, Morton, first Baron Henley (1752–1830)]. Late 18th-century manuscript, entitled ‘Dinner Book’.

[Berlin and Vienna. Circa 1791-1797]. 12mo (164 x 100 x 15 mm). Approximately 173 unnumbered text pages on 90 leaves.

Ink on paper in black, brown and some red inks.

Contemporary half sheep, covers with grey paste paper, manuscript title label to the upper cover which reads “Dinner Book Berlin Novr 15th 1791”. Worn, lacking spine, stitching broken, text block loose. Preserved in a modern slipcase and chemise.

SOCIAL MATERIAL ¶ The chronological list of names in this little notebook may seem an unpromisingly opaque form in which to find signs of life. But the names evoke the confidential conversations at intimate dinners where key decisions in European history were made over port, or the lively gatherings and grand parties where small talk cemented social relations.

And often beneath, between, and beside the punctilious records of dinner companions, intimacies slip through; the silence of a blank page speaks clearly of emotional distress, and even the colour of ink can sometimes tell us more than the words it forms on the page.

THE COMPILER The compiler of this manuscript was the diplomat, Morton Eden. He was educated at Eton and matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford in 1770, but left without taking a degree. Nonetheless, he was considered sufficiently qualified for a career in the diplomatic service at the age of 24. From 1776 to 1779, he was Minister to Bavaria, then to Copenhagen 1779-1782, and to Dresden 1783-1791.

In 1783 he returned to England and married Lady Elizabeth Henley (1757-1821), whom he usually refers to as “Lady Eliz” in this volume. In 1791, Eden was appointed envoy-extraordinary and minister-plenipotentiary at the court of Berlin, which is where this manuscript begins (“1791 Novr 14th Arrived at Berlin”). He transferred to Vienna in 1793, taking this notebook with him.

According to the ODNB, “after reluctantly agreeing to be dispatched to Madrid as ambassador-extraordinary, he was reappointed envoy-extraordinary to Vienna to negotiate the war loan to the emperor. He remained in the Austrian capital for five years”.

LINKED IN

Eden records the people with whom they dined or supped on an almost daily basis. The occasions range from state balls and dinners to large events of 20 or more people to smaller, cosier suppers, and on occasion, the Edens appear to shed their company long enough to dine in alone (“We supped at Bellevue”, “I stayed at Bellevue”). He lists the names of all the attendees, including many prominent figures in Prussian and Austrian diplomacy, as well as representatives of Great Britain, Russia, Italy, Spain, Portugal and the United States. Emigré French nobles also complete many of the tables. In Berlin, the Edens were frequent guests at the court of Prussian King Frederick William II (1744-1797) and Queen Frederica Louisa of Hesse-Darmstadt (1751-1805). The couple seem to have shared duties quite effectively: Lady Elizabeth is frequently recorded as having “dined” or “supped” with either the king or queen separately, as well as with the “Queen Dowager”, while Eden was entertaining elsewhere.

British dining companions include “Sir Watkin Williams Wynne”, “Duke of Buccleuch”, “Lord Henry Spencer”, “Sir Rob t Cotton” and “Lord Dalkeith”. French guests include the emigré duc de Richelieu, Louis de la Trémouille, and Armand de Polignac; and on 12 November 1797 in Vienna, Eden notes a dinner with some 26 guests, annotated at the end in red ink “given to the Duke d’Enghien, who stayed here 3 days in his way to Russia”. As a member of the House of Bourbon, Enghien commanded a corps of emigrés established by the Prince de Condé, and he was executed seven years later by Napoleon for collaboration with the British (one hopes not simply for dining with them). Also among Eden’s acquaintances in Vienna was American statesman Gouverneur Morris, who was in Vienna in the autumn of 1796 as American minister-plenipotentary to France. He is noted in Eden’s book as “Mr Morris — American” and dined with him at least six times.

The dinners form the diplomatic and social background to the negotiations concerning the balance of power in Europe during the French Revolutionary Wars — on 4 May 1795, for example, Eden had signed a treaty with Austrian chancellor Thugut, guaranteeing a loan of £4,600,000 to Austria for fielding 170,000 troops in Germany against France. Thugut avoided society in his professional dealings, and despite their negotiations, he does not appear here as a dinner companion.

Eden, however, as this manuscript shows, was extremely sociable and knew how to work with other people of influence: “P. Stahremberg” (i.e. the Austrian diplomat, Prince Ludwig von Stahremberg) was another frequent dinner companion; usually alone, but sometimes with “Baron de Muhle” whom Eden also met alone on other occasions.

RED LETTER DAYS The manuscript is mostly written in brown ink within red-ruled columns for dates and with a line between each day. Important events, often of a more personal nature, are written in red ink. For instance, Eden records on 19 February 1793 that they “set out for Vienna where we arrived safely on the 27th at Noon”.

Eden’s aforementioned reluctance “to be dispatched to Madrid as ambassador-extraordinary” is conspicuous in his remark in red ink that on 11 April 1794 “We left Vienna & with great regret”; a sentiment that becomes palpable when, rather than record anything of his eight months in Madrid, he leaves a blank page to separate this sad day from that of his happier return “to Vienna Decr 13th 1794”. Things improve still more one week later when he reports (again in red ink) “Lady Eliz!! arrived”.

The volume continues with a further round of dinners, until the personal and the political again combine on “Janry 3d 1796”, when he writes vertically in red ink “Dinner given on Acc: of the Christening of my little Girl”, marking an event whose guests included the likes of the “Russian Amb. & Ambs”, “Earl Cowper”, “Marquis of Carmarthen”, “Mr. Le Mesurier” and over 40 others.

CONCLUSION This last example demonstrates how the personal is often employed in the service of the political – a crucial tactic in diplomacy. Such acts are planned (as were, surely, the sharing of duties between Eden and his wife), while others may have been inadvertent. But it must always be difficult for a diplomat to sit down to dinner with anyone outside their family and be perceived as an individual separate from their role as representative of a country and its interests – for a diplomat, surely the personal can hardly escape being the political.

Beyond its significant historical reach, this remarkable document illustrates how recording only the barest of details – in this case, the names of dinner companions – can still enable human expression to slip through the net, revealing unguarded moments and emotions in the process.

£5,500 Ref: 8199

12. LOST TRANSLATION [TRUMBULL, Sir William (1639-1716); POPE, Alexander (1688-1744)]. Late 17th-century manuscript miscellany by William Trumbull which includes work by Alexander Pope.

[Easthampstead Park? Circa 1690-1705]. Octavo (146 x 100 x 10 mm). Pagination [1], 1-114, [115-7], (pp70-100 blank), pages numbered in manuscript . Ink on paper.

Contemporary gilt tooled black panelled morocco, rubbed, all edges gilt.

Watermark: Arms of Amsterdam.

INTRODUCTION ¶ The key draw of this manuscript, once thought lost, is a translation of a passage by Boethius that represents an

exchange between two notable early modern figures – Alexander Pope and Sir William Trumbull. This is especially significant because, as Joseph Hone remarks “Pope’s poems appear in contemporaneous manuscript miscellanies surprisingly rarely, probably because of the strict controls he exerted over control of his holographs”. The inclusion of such an early example of Pope’s work in a manuscript miscellany, is perhaps explained by Hone’s point that scribal publications often helped to “crystallize [...] literary networks”.

WHO COMPILED IT?

At first glance, the prospects of determining the compiler of this anonymous notebook seem unpromising. But the presence of the Boethius translation, added at the end, enables us to establish our scribe’s identity by inference. The heading reads: “Mr Popes Transla[ti]on of Boetius in pag. Before: O qui perpetua &c” (the “Before” referring to the previous page, where “Boet. Lib. 3” is written out in the original Latin). Pope’s translation did not appear in print until the 20th century and only survives in two handwritten versions, of which this is one. Its presence here therefore suggests a social connection with Pope; and the figure who was known to have exchanged translations of this passage from Boethius’ De consolatione philosophiae with Pope was Sir William Trumbull (1639-1716). A comparison of the hand in our manuscript with those by Trumbull at the Beinecke (Osborn b176; b177) shows a very close match, leading us to state with confidence that this volume was compiled by him.

Sir William Trumbull, a civil lawyer, diplomat and politician, was born in 1639 at Easthampstead Park, Berkshire, to William Trumbull (1604/5-1678), a government official, and Elizabeth (1619/20-1652), daughter of Georg Rudolph Weckherlin (1584-1653), another government official and a poet who taught his grandson Latin and French. He matriculated at St John’s College, Oxford in 1655, was made a fellow of All Souls and joined the Middle Temple, both in 1657. He graduated in Civil Law in 1659, and after travelling in Europe in 1664-6, forsook academia to become a lawyer. In 1670, Trumbull married Katherine (d. 1704), daughter of Sir Charles Cotterell, who leveraged his position at the royal court to secure for his son-in-law the post of chancellor of the diocese of Rochester.

Trumbull’s reputation as a civil lawyer brought him into the orbits of the government and the court, but his subsequent career in government administration and diplomacy was not always a happy one: from 1683, when Lord Dartmouth appointed him to a key role in the evacuation of the British colony at Tangier, until 1697, when he retired from public life, he had a series of appointments including ambassador to France and Constantinople, treasury commissioner, secretary of state and MP for Oxford University. By his own account, Trumbull was unsuited to the machinations and intrigues of politics: besides a horror of public speaking, he confessed to an “insuperable bashfulness” which rendered him “very unfit to contend with men of sordid and corrupted tempers”. 1

He performed well enough, however, to be given a knighthood, and his introvert nature found expression in his avid book collecting and a number of select friendships with figures such as Henry St John (later Viscount Bolingbroke), John Dryden, and the young Alexander Pope, who lived nearby in Easthampstead and “idolized him in some of his early verse as a paragon of virtuous ‘retirement’” 2.

FRIENDSHIP WITH ALEXANDER POPE In the twilight of Trumbull’s career, and around the time that he composed this notebook, he struck up a friendship with a writer whose own ascent was just beginning (B.S. Donaghey dates this to “1703 or early 1704” 3).

Pope is said to have remarked that Trumbull “loved very much to read and talk of the classics in his retirement,” and that they “used to take a ride out together, three or four days in the week, and at last, almost every day” 4.

Trumbull appears to have introduced Pope to the literary world and many of its figures; and Donaghey recounts that Trumbull began “suggesting ideas for verses and examining Pope’s work critically”, and that “Pope dedicated “Spring” from his Pastorals to Sir William” 5, although he subsequently turned away from Trumbull’s influence as his own reputation increased.

CONTENTS The bulk of the material in this manuscript consists of prayers and meditations. Some appear to be original compositions, while others are extracts from printed texts: for example, “Prayer for Wisedom out of Dr Barrow” (Isaac Barrow (1630-77), theologian and mathematician); “Some Practicall Notes of ye H. Sacramt: out o[f] Taylr. H. Living” (Jeremy Taylor (1613-1677), cleric and author of liturgical works including The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living); “Oratio pro Beneplacito Dei Perficiendo. [Prayer for God’s favour] Tho: A Kemp” (Thomas à Kempis (c. 1380-1471), priest and author of The Imitation of Christ); and a prayer copied “Out o[f] Hales Good Steward. P. 437” (Sir Matthew Hale (1607-1676), author of The Great Audit with the Account of the Good Steward).

Some of Trumbull’s selections and compositions invite one to speculate: did his bruising experiences in politics lead him to write “Seuerall Prayrs for Content Trust in God for all Outward concerns, Resigna[ti]on & Low Opinion of ye World &c”? Did he have frequent need to recite “A short Ejacula[ti]on, when any Losse or Disgrace &c is apprehended”? His retirement certainly brought with it opportunities for introspection and taking stock: another prayer, to be recited “euery Qr, att ye receiuing my Salarie, & no other Increases”, is an earnest entreaty to his “Blessid Ld” to “make me a faithfull stewd of wt thou hast comitted to my Trust”, forswearing thoughts of “ye time appointed for ye receiving o my Salary”, and instead thinking “wth Fear & Trembling […] how much nearer I am to my Latter End, & how I shall be able to make up my great Acct with thee in ye Last Day”. His piety seems to have intensified in retirement, judging by the inclusion of “Prayrs euery Morning att ye Begin[n]ing of Studdie” – indeed, the regular insertion of prayers for specific times seems almost monastic.

BOETHIUS-POPE-TRUMBULL Donaghey remarks that the friendship between Trumbull and Pope “remains shadowy and undefined, owing to the paucity of documentation beyond a few letters passed between them, and some references by Pope and others” 6.

Some of that scant documentation concerns a passage from Boethius’s De Consolatione Philosophiae which became an item of exchange between the two men.

The ninth poem in the third book, beginning “O qui perpetua mundum ratione gubernas”, is a key section of the Consolatio. It sits at “the very midpoint” of the work, when Philosophia has “succeeded in raising Boethius’s contemplation away from his own narrow circumstances and the vagaries of Fortune to the cosmos as a whole and its creator”. It was “frequently used as a school text and was often the subject of commentary” 7, and its appearance in early modern manuscripts, detached from the longer work, is not unusual.

The poem clearly had significance for both Trumbull and Pope. The Brotherton Library holds a copy, in Pope’s hand, of his translation of these lines, accompanied by a letter, dated 19 February 1704, on which Trumbull has used space to make his own attempt at rendering the passage. Joseph Hone speculates that Trumbull intended “to share this effort with his young neighbour”, and calls it “a closed, private act of scribal transmission” – certainly a plausible interpretation of this exchange between the introverted Trumbull and the young Pope who, as Hone adds, “did not circulate rough drafts” 8.

Our manuscript provides a rare addition to the small crop of surviving documents that bear witness to this two-person network of exchange. On page 114, under the heading “Boet. Lib. 3”, Trumbull copies out the first and final lines of the 28-line poem, which begins: “O qui p[er]petua mundu[m] ra[ti]one gubernas Terrani Caliq Sator, Qui tempus ab a’vo Ire jubes, stabiliq manens das cuncta moveru, &c”.

The “&c” stands in for 18 lines, after which Trumbull ends with the final seven lines (“Da Pater, augustam Menti conscendere Sedem” to “Principium, Vector, Dux, Semita, Terminus idem.”). One assumes that he knew the work well enough only to require a prompt rather than a complete transcription. Puzzlingly, he then adds two further prayers (“Prayr euery Qr, att ye receiuing my Salarie, & no other Increases” and “Prayer for Wisedom out of Dr Barrow”) before he copies out “Mr Popes Transla[ti]on”. The reason for this separation is hard to guess at, but some time has probably elapsed between these two linked entries.

Our manuscript and the Brotherton copy are almost verbatim. However, there are a few minor variations in the use of commas for semi-colons, and they differ in one crucial respect: the use of the possessive adjective instead of the definite article. Line 9 of our translation reads “Oh teach my mind the Etherial Height to rise” but is rendered “Oh teach the Mind t’ Ætherial Height to rise”. And in line 14 our translation reads “Shine thro’ my Soul, & drive its Clouds away”, which is rendered “Shine thro’ the Soul; and drive its Clouds away;” in the Brotherton copy.

Given that Trumbull titles this “Mr Popes Transla[ti]on”, and we assume that Trumbull’s was a faithful rendering rather than his own “improvements”, these differences were by Pope, which may have been the result of the exchange of ideas between the two men.

LOST AND FOUND More recently, Trumbull’s miscellany spent some 60 years hidden from view: it was known to Norman Ault, the principal editor of Volume 6 of the Twickenham Pope edition, who shortly before his death in 1950 transcribed a “manuscript version” of Pope’s Boethius translation. He copied down precisely the same title as that given by Trumbull (“Mr Popes Translaōn of Boetius, in pag. before: Ô qui perpetua &c”), but left no indication of the original’s whereabouts. When Volume 6 was first published in 1954 (having been completed by the Twickenham general editor John Butt, using Ault’s papers), it included Ault’s note: “Exact transcript Callaghan’s MS”. We have been unable to determine the identity of “Callaghan”, but their “MS” and our manuscript are clearly one and the same.

Volume 6 was reprinted in 1964, but the pages concerning the Boethius translation underwent a revision after a fresh discovery: Pope’s holograph manuscript, now at the Brotherton, had surfaced. All references to our manuscript were removed in order to make room for the new material without forcing costly changes to the plates, and “Callaghan’s MS” fell into obscurity. Various subsequent sales dispersed Trumbull’s papers still more widely – to the Beinecke Library at Yale and the British Library, for instance – but this manuscript was not among them, raising the possibility that it was separated from the rest of Trumbull’s papers at a relatively early stage 9.

CONCLUSION The happy reappearance of Trumbull’s manuscript not only restores to visibility the second of only two known manuscript drafts of Pope’s unpublished translation of Boethius; it nestles it in the context of Trumbull’s work and helps us to tease out the currents of influence in Pope’s early career, and shows that these currents were two-way: Trumbull wasn’t simply the hander-down of wisdom, but was inspired by his promising young friend to make an attempt on the same passage, and the resulting exchange of ideas between Pope and his early mentor may well have driven his own development.

References: £12,500 Ref: 8182 1. Quoted in ODNB. 2. ODNB. 3. B.S. Donaghey, ‘Alexander Pope’s and Sir William Trumbull’s Translations of Boethius’, Leeds Studies in English, n.s.1 (1967), 71-82.

4. Quoted in Donaghey p72.

5. Donaghey p72.

6. Donaghey p71.

7. Robert M. Durling and Ronald L. Martinez, Time and the Crystal: Studies in Dante's Rime Petrose, University of California Press (1990).

8. Joseph Hone, Alexander Pope in the Making, Oxford University Press (2021) 9. We are indebted to Joseph Hone for his generosity in sharing his scholarship and to Stephen Karian for his insights into the Twickenham Pope edition.

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