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Landon’s book seems to have been a recreation. He notes towards the end ‘The Drawing in this Book was began by James Landon the 30 May as may be seen by the Title Page 1790 and Finished the 13 of May 1791 being near 1 years from beginning to Ending.’
The sequence of comic figures include Dancing Dolly, Down Looking Dicky, Betsy Blossom, A Man in a Maze, The Duke of Limbs, Simon Swig Bottle, Oliver Upright and Frank Flower Finder. They resemble chap-book illustrations, but with a few exceptions (Mother Bunch and Darby & Joan) they seem to have sprung from Landon’s imagination or sense of humour. A sequence of natural curiosities includes ‘A large Golden Fish’, a ‘Lion like sea Monster’, ‘Barnet a Sea Fish’, ‘A Sea Fish with a head like a Bare’, ‘The Sea Feather’, ‘A Monster Sea Hogg’, ‘The Rhinocerous’ and ‘A Man with a head growing out of his belly’.
The two images of native Americans entitled ‘A Woman of the Ottigaumies’ and ‘An Ottigaumie Soldier’ are derived from a plate in Jonathan Carver’s Travels through the interior parts of North-America (1778, with several reprints before 1790) which shows the man and woman (with child) in reversed positions. The tribes of the Outagamie were members of the Meskwaki tribes of modern-day Wisconsin.
Landon’s book also includes a coloured octogram, personifications of Flora (‘flowers’), Pomona (‘fruit’) and Ceres (‘corn’), a sequence of flowers, a fine depiction of a British Man-o’-War, a sequence the arms of British towns, an illustrated table of Precedency, and concludes with several verses and conundrums. see full details...
Though anonymous, this is perhaps a transcript of legal lectures given at the University of Caen. Of paramount interest here are laws relating to land and inheritance, by which, according to Norman custom, property passed strictly through the male line to the almost total exclusion of women. The text is divided into five parts: 1. De l’origine et de la definition des fiefes; 2. Des droites féodaux; 3. Des droits naturels; 4. Des droits accidentels; 5. Des moïens de reversion ou consolidation aux fiefs. Within these broad sections is also much of incidental interest to the social historian, including several articles on the laws of hunting, fishing and game; on the customary rights of salvage (‘Varech’) of goods washed up on the Channel coasts and on water law, concerning rivers and ditches.
The work is generally theoretical in tone, but it contains very numerous references to external sources, usually giving page references. Le Grant Coustumier du pays & duché de Normandie by Guillaume Le Rouillé is cited many times (it was first published in 1534 but frequently reprinted and here referred to as ‘la nouvelle Rouillé’) as is La coustume réformée du pays et duché de Normandie by Josias Bérault. Alongside these treatises, many chapters include precise references to royal ‘arrêts’ governing the operation of customary law which had been issued in the preceding centuries.
The author or copyist may have inscribed his name at the foot of the title page, but this has been carefully obscured at an early date see full details...
Though a little younger than the University of Bologna, the university at Pisa is one of the oldest in Europe, with origins in the city’s eleventh-century law school. Its importance to the early history of European law lay in part in its custody of the oldest surviving manuscript of Justinian’s Pandects, which it kept until it was taken by the Florentines at the beginning of the fifteenth century. Pisa attracted many lawyers in the eleventh century (prominent among them were Opitone and Sigerdo) while no less than four professors of the Bologna law school (Bulgarus, Burgundio, Uguccione, and Bandino) were educated there.
Borgo, who published a separate work on the Pandects manuscript the previous year (Dissertazione sopra l’istoria dei Codici pisani delle Pandette di Giustiniano imperatore, Lucca 1764), here traces the origins of the university as a law school long before Papal recognition was granted in the fourteenth century.
Borgo was born and educated at Pisa, graduating in law in 1726 and teaching Civil Law there from 1731. His life was devoted to the study of law and the early records of the city and university. see full details...
The backbone of the British war policy, these 1793 agreements were designed to create an allied coalition against the French, of which the axis would be Britain and the German powers, with further support from subsidiary powers in the Baltic, Mediterranean and Atlantic. However, the speed and efficiency with which these agreements were signed belies the complex and conflicting aims of each nation and the subsequent rapid disintegration of the policy.
Britain's initial admiration for the evolving Revolution in France quickly changed to alarm with the execution of Louis XVI in January 1793, followed by the French declarations of war on Britain and the Dutch Republic on February 1 and Spain on March 7. French war-mongering had already led to the annexation of Savoy, Belgium and the Rhineland in 1792 and French ambitions were spelt out by Danton in the National Convention: "The frontiers of France have been mapped by nature, and we shall reach them at the four corners of the horizon, on the banks of the Rhine, by the side of the ocean and at the Alps. It is there that we shall reach the limits of our Republic."
Notably, the first two agreements were conventions signed with Russia, one uniting the two countries as allies against the aggressions of France and securing Russia's cooperation in the naval war, the other being a trade agreement, which finally settled a longstanding commercial dispute between Britain and Russia. Signed on the same day in March 1793, a contemporary commentator wryly noted that it seemed the two powers were competing as to "who shall be most fond and shall kiss the first". However, despite the apparent goodwill on both sides, the conventions never led to full and binding treaties.
Similarly, the terms of the convention signed with Prussia unravelled almost as soon as the ink was dry and within two months Frederick William II was demanding significant additional terms. Lord Grenville, Britain's Foreign Secretary, took a dim view of such demands and having first shored up his own position by negotiating a separate agreement with Austria, he initially refused to comply with Prussian requests. However, under pressure from Pitt and Dundas, Grenville was forced to negotiate further with the Prussians, with the result that the Austrians were in turn estranged.
Like Russia, the Spanish had their own motives for joining the war and despite the successful signing of the convention of Aranjuez, which committed both parties to explore the prospects of an alliance, a further agreement was never reached. Alliances with Portugal, Sardinia and Sicily proved equally problematic in the following months. see full details...
![[L’ESTOILE, Pierre de].](/photos/200/main/200.jpg "[L’ESTOILE, Pierre de].")
The second part (1589-1611) is printed here for the first time; the first part originally having been published in 1621 as Journal des choses memorables advenues durant tout le regne de Henry III (Cioranesco 13602).
The imprint is certainly false, and Brussels is the more likely origin, though the woodcut device on the first title is that of Antoine Vincent of Lyon. The frontispiece is notable and is a violent allegory of this turbulent century, the female personification of France is beset by a crowd of petitioners in the form of vagrants, a monk, nobles and merchants while in the background several brutal excutions are enacted, with the city of Paris and the towers of Notre Dame in the distance. It is the work of Richard van Orley (1663-1732), a Brussels painter and engraver, and engraved by François Harrewijn (1700-1764), also a Brussels engraver, pupil of Romeyn de Hooghe, known primarily for his portraits of historical figures. Harrewijn also supplied the excellent suite of 33 portraits of kings and queens (including Mary Stuart) and leading members of church and state. see full details...
The notes have the character of being source material for an unpublished scholarly work on the subject of the office of Magistrate (chief priest, lawgiver, judge, and commander of the army) in ancient Rome. Compiled in the immediate aftermath of the Napoleonic experiment, Gibelin's exmination of Diocletian's termination of republicanism in favour of autocracy for is surely significant.
The author, Jacques Gibelin (1744-1828), in whose hand the volumes are written, was, at the time of composition, the librarian of the town of Aix and secretary of the town's Société Académique. He was already a prominent literary figure and had lived in Paris and England, being responsible for introducing many English scientific ideas to a French audience, having translated and published large portions of the Abridgements of the Transactions of the British Royal Society and important Enlightenment treatises by Joseph Priestley and Richard Kirwan. He also published the French translation Adam Ferguson's History of the Progress and Termination of the Roman Republic and oversaw the first publication of the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, which appeared, in Gibelin's French translation (before the original English version) in 1791 as Mémoires de la vie privée de Benjamin Franklin écrits par lui-méme.
The extracts in this manuscript are drawn from Herodian, Dion, Suetonius, Tacitus, Eutropius, Justinian, Plutarch, Apuleius, Orosius, Zosimus and modern commentators such as Isaac Casaubon. The compilation is made with a librarian's thoroughness, with precise references given to the editions consulted (usually giving the editor, and the place and year of publication). Loosely inserted is a printed and manuscript slip, with Gibelin's printed subscription, from the Aix Société Académique, requesting the presence of a member at a meeting on the 4th July 1827 at 6 o'clock. see full details...
407-430 of volume 4 of The Pamphleteer (1813). This is an important speech advocating the inclusion of stipulations in the peace treaty with Napoleon that the French should abandon the slave trade. Romilly, a lawyer of French extraction, maintained a broadly Whig outlook throughout his career, and had been a vocal opponent of slavery since 1787, when he joined the committee against slavery, making friends with Wilberforce and Bentham. A major argument levelled against abolition by the British in 1807 was that other nations would continue the trade regardless. Romilly, whose interests were whole-heartedly European was one of the most important forces in British politics for a wider movement towards abolition, recognising that slavery would only be abolished with European concensus. His contention in this speech was that the treaty was far to weak on the subject of slavery, stipulating as it did that the French abandon slavery in its colonies within 5 years. For Romilly, this was 5 years too many, especially since France showed every intention of breaking that deadline. see full details...
Mayer’s massive collection contains the work of over 40 authors and a valuable bibliographical survey of at least 100 others. It includes tales by Madame d’Aulnoy, Pierre-François Godard de Beauchamps, Charles Duclos, Antoine Hamilton, Antoine Galland, Mademoiselle de La Force, Mademoiselle Leprince de Beaumont, Madame Levesque, Mademoiselle Lheritier, Madame de Lintot, Mademoiselle de Lubert, le chevalier de Mailly, Madame de Murat, Charles Perrault and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. As Marina Warner has pointed out, within this corpus of tales of magic and enchantment, female authors outnumber male authors two-to-one (From the Beast to the Blonde, 1994).
Mayer established this canon of wonder tales at the very moment when they were most threatened as a literary form. By 1789, the aristocratic salons which had given birth to this genre, were no longer to be taken for granted and tales of this type almost ceased to be published in France. Le cabinet des fées was Mayer’s attempt to preserve for posterity this remarkable corpus of popular literature.
This is also an important illustrated book, with its 120 plates engraved by Pierre-Clément Marillier (1740-1808). These plates are especially interesting for their representation of oriental themes and characters, reflecting the very strong bias within the collection (and within this genre of French literature as a whole) for texts like Galland’s translation of Mille et une nuits set in the Near- and Far East. Marillier’s illustrations certainly reinforce the tendency to depict eastern culture as both alluring but dangerous and, incidentally, furnish the first properly illustrated version of Mille et une nuits (Hensher, ‘Engraving Difference: the representation of the Oriental Other in Marillier’s illustrations to the Mille et une nuits and other contes orientaux in Le Cabinet des fées (1785-89)’, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 31, September 2008). see full details...
Henry’s reign marked the rehabilitation of France’s fortunes after the near-disintegration of the country during the Wars of Religion. Sully’s collection represents a very immediate account of the period between 1570 and 1628, including episodes such as Henry’s conversion to Catholicism (arguably a political expediency urged by Sully himself, who remained Protestant); the Edict of Nantes (which promised religious toleration for the Huguenots); negotiations with the English crown (both Elizabeth and James I); and war with Spain (in alliance with England). Sully’s own contrubution to the state is amply recorded - he is remembered for his reorganisation of the country’s finances and system of office-holding as well as for his engineering projects (the Place Royale and the Briare Canal linking Seine and Loire being the best known). The Mémoires are historiographically advanced and include both critical narrative and a large number of transcribed diplomatic material. They have, however, been criticized for partiality and for containing “many fictions, such as a mission undertaken by Sully to Queen Elizabeth in 1601, and the famous ‘Grand Design,’ a plan for a Christian republic [or a United States of Europe], which some historians have taken seriously” (Ency. Brit, 1911).
The work was completed posthumously by a second volume (present here) under the editorship of J. Le Laboureur. The bibliography of this work has been contentious. For a long time, our edition with the coloured frontispieces was accepted as the first, published with a false imprint at the Chateau de Sully itself. It is now clear that there were actually as many as 3 issues bearing versions of these title pages: the exceptionally rare true first edition printed under Sully’s eye (with a different collation to ours); our swiftly-produced contrefaçon of the same year, and one other pirate edition. Complete sets of any edition are rare. see full details...
![BLONDEL, [Lieutenant Colonel d’artillerie.]](/photos/474/main/474.jpg "BLONDEL, [Lieutenant Colonel d’artillerie.]")
It was repared by a prominent artillery captain, largely from material gathered first-hand from visits to military academies (notably West Point), arms factories, arsenals and from observations aboard the US warships Tennessee and Kearsarge.
The year 1881 saw a special diplomatic visit to the United States by representatives of the French armed forces, partly in celebration of the the centenary of the combined French-American victory at Yorktown. Descendants of the victorious Comte de Rochambeau and an array of military top-brass were lavishly entertained in New York, with a sequence of visits, dinners and balls. Among the guests were General Boulanger and Lieutenant Colonel Blondel. On November 9th The New-York Tribune reported the imminent departure of Boulanger for France and that ‘Lieutenant-Colonel Blondel will spend the next few weeks visiting West Point, the Frankfort and Springfield arsenals, and the firearms manufacturies at New-Haven and Bridgeport, in order to prepare a report on the subjects of arms and defence.’
This manuscript is an overview of the American armies and a description of the military curriculum of West Point, which is followed by the illustrated description of American weaponry, including a variety of artillery (large guns by Hotchkiss, Parrott, Dean, Sutcliffe, Lyman and Woodbridge are illustrated); small arms (the Springfield rifle is described and compared with the Martini-Henry model and the Colt, Schofield Smith and Wesson revolvers are illustrated). There is an extensive section on the specification of artillery shells and small arms cartridges and on the American preparation of gunpowder. Blondel adds several observations on artillery exercises aboard American ships, which include an early description of the use of telegraphy for range-finding. He notes at the opening that some of the information (comprising three sections) is derived from the [printed] reports of General S.V. Benet but that remainder was gathered from his own observations at the installations noted above.
The report is remarkable for the detailed access the French were given to American military establishments, which is perhaps to be explained by the diplomatic context. The 1870s and 80s saw a rapprochement in French-American relations, and several celebrations of the natural connection between the two great republics: from the celebration of the Yorktown victory to the gift of the Statue of Liberty by the French nation.
The manuscript is from the personal collections of General Boulanger. Boulanger continued his rise to prominence throughout the 1880s, firstly with popular army reforms and later with real political influence, to the extent that his popular right-wing Royalist stance while running for deputy of Paris threatened to topple the Third Republic in 1888-9. He was charged with treason and conspiracy and exiled by the government; a disgrace from which he never recovered. He committed suicide in a Brussels cemetery in 1891. see full details...
Joseph Edmondson was an artist of humble origins who had begun his career as a coach-painter, and became coach-painter to Queen Charlotte in 1763. “On 21 January 1764, thanks to the support of the new deputy earl marshal, Lord Suffolk, Edmondson was created Mowbray herald of arms extraordinary, although he continued his successful coach-painting business until his death. His brother officers, especially Stephen Martin Leake, Garter, regarded him as an ignorant and low ‘mechanic’, and only reluctantly did they now allow him, as an extraordinary herald and not a member of the college, access to their records and collections” (Ailes in Oxford DNB).
Precedency gives tables of precedency of British men and women and provides a list of “collar days” on which those entitled may wear their official “collars” indicating precedency. The book was reprinted in a second edition c. 1785. see full details...
![[BOEMUS, Johannes.] WATERMAN, William, translator.](/photos/446/main/446.jpg "[BOEMUS, Johannes.] WATERMAN, William, translator.")
The book is important as a summary of anthropological knowlege of races, traits and customs of Africa and Asia from the early years of the age of discovery.
A translation of Book 1 only by William Prat had appeared in 1554 (STC 3196.5, BL only) and text was reprinted in the 1812 edition of Hakluyt’s voyages. The dedication to Henry Fitzalan, 12th Earl of Arundel promises a translation of Book 3 (on Europe) but this never appeared.
Very little is known of the author. ‘Born in Aub in Franconia and writing between 1515 and 1520, Boemus was a contemporary of Copernicus and of Sir Thomas More; he was an elder member of the generation of Jean Bodin and Giovanni Botero; and if still living in the sixth decade of the sixteenth century, an old man when Bacon and Shakespeare were born’ (Hodgen). His work was evidently well-read in Europe to judge from the various early editions and translations. His descriptions of Africa, include Ethiopia, Egypt and Carthaginia and are based largely on ancient sources while the Asian sections are devoted to the Middle East and India.
At the end is printed a ‘treatise of Josephus conteyning the ordres, and Lawes of the Jewes commune wealthe’ a translation of book 4, chapter 8 of Antiquitates Judicae, the first appearance of part of thisJosephus’s text in English.
Provenance: foliation in an early hand. Several short quotations in Latin from Horace, Ovid and elsewhere in a neat late 16th-century hand, vertically down outer margins, presumably by the Francis Smith who signs one of them, including on:
(O6v) “I fire, i freese, I burne, i broyle. I starve i frett i fume / I live and die. i die and live, in langor I consume.” A direct quote from A Most lamentable and tragicall historie, containing the outrageous and horrible tyranny which a Spanish gentlewoman named Violenta executed upon her lover Didaco, beacuse he espouthed another being first betrothed to her (London, 1576, leaf D2r): adapted into verse by Thomas Achelley from William Painter’s translation of one of Bandello’s Novelles in The Palace of Pleasure. Achelley’s poem recorded in one copy only (STC 1256.4, Bodley, lacking leaf A4). Violenta became, probably via Painter, a speechless character (entering only once) in Shakespeare’s ‘All’s Well that ends Well.’
(T6v): “Dives dives non omni tempore Vives / Da tua, dum tua sunt, post mortem tunc tua sunt. ffranciscus Smyth.”
Later provenance: Henry Cunliffe, bookplate and his notes on first flyleaf; probably the Lancashire dialect lexicographer who collected Shakespearean sources and early books on the English language; bought from Boone of New Bond Street for £4 in 1859 [a letter from Boone concerning the incorrect catchword on T7v tipped in at end]; by descent to Rolf, 2nd Baron Cunliffe, sale, Sotheby’s 13 May 1946, lot 46, £38 to Maggs, Catalogue 817/334 (1953) £52/10. see full details...
Among the several songs is a salute to Napoleon himself:
‘Chargeons, allignons nos canons,
Tirons au F[rère] Bouneparte;
C’est en lui que nous admirons
Les vertus de Rome d’esparte.
Libérateur de son pays,
Il se rend du monde l’arbitre
La France n’a plus d’ennemis
Qui lui conteste un si beau titre.’
The song is known from at least one other source (a version is published in Chroniques d’Histoire Maçonnique Lorraine, 9, January, 2000), and is notable for the reference to Napoleon as ‘Frère’. His membership of the Freemasons has long been a source of debate (though is now commonly dismissed) and his relationship to masonry is an important aspect of the Order’s history. The Freemasons were widely accused of Revolutionary activity and were vigorously suppressed during the Terror only to be re-established under Napoleon who sought to capitalise on their loyalty and patriotism. He installed his brother, Joseph Bonaparte, as Grand Master of the Grand Orient de France and ensured that administration of French Freemasonry was directly overseen by legislator Jean-Jacques-Régis de Cambacérès.
The ritualised dinner described here has elaborate table settings, with utensils and food given ceremonial names. Bread becomes ‘Pierre prutte’; wine, ‘poudre forte, b[lan]che ou rouge’; salt, ‘sable blanc’ and pepper, ‘sable gris’. The table is referred to as the ‘Tribune’; the candles, ‘étoiles’ and spoons, ‘truelles’.
Each of the toasts is given in full and the seven songs are usually supplied with the name of the popular tune to which they are sung, including, ‘L’air vive Henry quatre’ and ‘Femmes, voulez-vous éprouver?’ see full details...
Reymes saw active service in the Royalist armies, and was appointed to various lucrative offices on the Restoration. He was also a noted diarist and was nominated a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1667 by his friend John Evelyn.
‘Reymes seems to have been built for friendship: among those in this category he numbered Pepys, Evelyn, Thomas, Lord Clifford, Sir Charles Cotterell, and Sir William Coventry. Despite a passionate temper, he seems to have earned the respect of nearly all who came into contact with him. Contemporaries valued him for his loyalty, honesty, probity, and wry good humour. He was tolerant of the full spectrum of Restoration belief, but died a staunch Anglican. He was also highly cultivated, skilled in music as a youth, an avid theatre-goer and gardener’ (Bucholz, ODNB).
The text ofUtopia here is a reprint of the 1629 Amsterdam edition, edited by Pierre Gillis. see full details...
A later bibliographical note to the endpaper asserts that this must “sans aucune doute” be Giard’s manuscript for his edition. This is perhaps unlikely: early manuscript copies of hard-to-come-by imprints are an important (if under-appreciated) aspect of the contemporary circulation of new books.
Chastelet’s treatise (dedicated to the King) covers all aspects of war: types of troops, garrisons, ranks, invasion, battle, morale, treatment of casualties, defence, sieges, sea warfare, civil wars, discipline, military law, espionage and treaties. see full details...
![[GLEIM, Johann Wilhelm Ludwig.]](/photos/769/main/769.jpg "[GLEIM, Johann Wilhelm Ludwig.]")
1759, pp. 52.
Two works bound together, 16mo (130 × 82 mm). Ownership inscription to title, dated 1759, manuscript translation of a Greek verse at end of Preface to the first work, a complete song in the same hand added to final blank. Very lightly browned. Contemporary half vellum, marbled boards, spine lettered in manuscript, red edges. Rubbed, but an attractive copy.
Gleim’s ‘Prussian War-Songs’ issued anonymously as the work of a Grenadier in the Prussian army were a popular success, being quite in tune with the patriotism surrounding Frederick the Great’s campaigns of the Seven Years’ War. Some appeared in small collections in 1757 and earlier in 1758 but the Preussische Kriegslieder includes engraved music and, most importantly, and for the first time, a 12-page Preface anonymously contributed by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. The Kriegslieder mark important departure in German lyric poetry with their emphasis on traditional Germanic models at the expense of classical affectation. They were frequently reprinted.
This is a delightful typographical production, with the text presented within borders and with lots of typographical ornaments. The finely engraved music is presented (staves running bottom-to-top) on pages facing the text, and there is an elegant etched frontispiece. The second work, De Grenadier an die Kriegesmuse has no separate imprint and is apparently found with the Preussische Kriegslieder in some other copies, so they are quite likely to have been issued together. An early owner has added (probably in 1772) an additional martial song, the song of a Russian officer addressed to his Ottoman foe: ‘Heraus vernegner Muselmann / Heraus ins ofne Feld.’ see full details...
![LOVEDAY, R[obert].](/photos/187/main/187.jpg "LOVEDAY, R[obert].")
The letters and poems of Robert Loveday were published posthumously by his brother Anthony in 1659 and subsequently reprinted several times. Loveday’s education at Peterhouse, Cambridge, was interrupted by the Civil War and he became a secretary to the Clinton family; in this capacity he travelled extensively throughout England, spending time at the Clintons' seat, Tattershall Castle, Lincolnshire, and at the Clares' residence, Thurland House, Nottinghamshire.
Loveday was an accomplished translator whose most notable work was a three-volume translation of La Calprenède's Cléopâtre but he is remembered mainly for his letters. By all accounts an unusually charming and attractive personality (even the running title here reads 'Loveday's Letters. The Perswasive Secretary'), Loveday's agreeable style may be illustrated by a touching display of fraternal love which he pays his brother: ‘am deep in your debt for abundance of loving expressions, and want words to tell you how tenderly I entertained them; the task is too big to let you know how dear you are to me; do me but the Courtesie to fancy an affection, pure, unbiassed, unreserved, that scorns limits, loaths change, and is onely less excellent than that which makes Angels clap their wings’.
Loveday died of tuberculosis in his mid thirties and several of the letters describe its undiagnosed progress. He had apparently been a patient of Sir Thomas Browne and it has been argued that Browne’s Letter to a Friend (published posthumously, 1690) was addressed to Loveday (‘The Occasion and Date of Sir Thomas Browne's "A Letter to a Friend"’, Frank Livingstone Huntley, Modern Philology, 48, No. 3, Feb., 1951.) see full details...
The most influential and characteristic works by the renaissance physician and humanist, Symphorien Champier, colleague of Michael Servetus and François Rabelais at the Schools of Medicine at Lyon.
An ardent Galenist and a neo-Platonist Champier sought to reform the French pharmacopoeia and materia medica, insisting that France had all the medical resources it needed in the form of herbs and medicinal plants without recourse to the exotic remedies espoused by the Arabic medical tradition. In doing this, Champier linked politics, culture, medicine and horticulture in praising the new cultural fertility of France (the Hortus Gallicus is dedicated to Francis I). He cites various drugs known to be ‘pernicious and venomous’ to Europeans, albeit perfectly suited to the inhabitants of other regions and other times (cf. Cooper, Inventing the Indigenous: local knowledge and natural history in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge, 2007). Champier’s thesis derives from his deep antipathy to Arab medicine: several of his many earlier works sought to purify Galenic and Hippocratic medicine of Arabic influence partly in the belief that by stripping away later Arabic influence the physician was drawing closer to the pure Classical origins of western medicine. It also expresses his persistent critique of the occultist tradition, so deeply ingrained in medical theory and practice at the opening of the Renaissance.
Champier’s Renaissance attitudes to medicine were certainly influential. Lyon was one of the most important centres of the Renaissance in France (witness his prominent colleagues) and he was very prolific, writing or editing at least 45 individual books. Many of his works are hard to classify and their very diversity is typical of the spirit of the age. He has been criticised for attempting to uncover the truth by simply piling authority upon authority, drawing from history, poetry, philosophy, magic and medicine without distinction. This approach may be alien to the modern mind, but Champier wrote at the very beginning of the scientific Renaissance and his works are highly characteristic of the humanist cast of mind. ‘He shared with many humanists the capacity for oratorical exuberance. So that when Scaliger called him “insolens, tumens, turgens,” perhaps this spirit should be interpreted as an indication that he was full of the “spirit of the Renaissance,” that rare gas which the historical laboratory has never yet succeeded in holding in solution’ (Thorndike).
The three works here have separate titles but were almost certainly issued together. The Campus Elysius contains several additional tracts: De sanguinis missione; Epistola J. Champerii avunculo suo Symphoriano (dated 25 June 1532); Speculum medici Christiani (dedicated to Champier's son Antoine) and De Theriacâ gallicâ. The Periarcha is dedicated to Charles de l'Estang, protonotaire of Saint-Siège. Each work is notable for the careful typography characteristic of Champier's printed works: he worked closely with his printers (Dumaitre, Histoire de la médécine et du livre medical, p. 195).
Symphorien Champier was born into a bourgeois family at Saint-Symphorien-sur-Croise, near Lyon and studied at the University of Paris before 1495, when he matriculated at the medical school of Montpellier, which granted him his doctorate in 1504. He taught liberal arts in Grenoble and took a doctorate in theology in 1502. In 1509 he was appointed physician to Antoine Duke of Lorraine, who brought him to Nancy. Champier followed the duke several time to Italy, where he was involved in the battles of Agnadello (1509) and Marignano (1515). During his stays in Italy he won recognition as an academic teacher from the University of Pavia. In 1519 he became an alderman in Lyon, and for the last twenty years of his life he was at the centre of the cultural Renaissance of that city, while simultaneously promoting the study of medicine by helping to found the College of the Holy Trinity and sponsoring translations of, and writing commentaries on, the works of Hippocrates and Galen. see full details...
Intended as the first of a projected series of works with the general title Idées singulières, Le Pornographe is an important early manifesto for the regulation of prostitution. It also holds a significant place in the historical etymology of pornography: meaning literally ‘one who writes about prostitutes’, being the first modern coinage of a word used by the ancient Greeks.
Restif issued the work anonymously, presenting it with a preface claiming that the idea was not a French invention at all but one found in the manuscript of an Englishman by the name of Lewis Moore. In a series of letters, the work presents an anatomy of prostitution, noting its inevitability in cities such as Paris and its dangers to public health and morality. Most interestingly, it then outlines a system of regulations, with well-managed maisons publiques, in which prostitutes are required to stay, where they are protected and cared for and where customers are strictly controlled. A major pre-occupation is the contemporary anxiety over the (wrongly) perceived decline in population, a decline to which prostitution was seen to have contributed. Restif proposes that pregnant prostitutes be required to fulfil their pregnancies and that their children should be brought up and educated within the maisons publiques and to take up alternative professions when of age.
This early work by Restif encapsulates both his social realism his utopian aspirations, both of which became major aspects of his later novels.
The imprint is false and the work was published in Paris by Delalain, who sold the author’s works, but who deleted his own name from the imprint after the first impression. The two issues are identical save for the title-page. see full details...
![FLEURY, [Claude, Abbé.]](/photos/351/main/351.jpg "FLEURY, [Claude, Abbé.]")
The part considering servants is divided into categories: butlers, valets, chambermaids, coachmen and so on and is a valuable source for understanding private lives in the age of Louis XIV, giving detailed opinions on the conduct expected in a well-ordered household. To take one example, the instructions to the valets de chambre include remarks on discretion, on moral rectitude and on the effective use of spare time. Reading is recommended as a suitable recreation for servants, provided the subject matter is edifying: works of religion, history and morality are suggested, but also some science and perhaps mathematics. The art of fine writing is encouraged, since it is helpful to the master and also perhaps the learning of a musical instrument or a little painting. Overfamiliarity with the female servants is expressly discouraged, in recognition of the frequent opportunities for female company a valet may find. At the end is an Abregé de l’histoire sainte, a kind of catechism for servants.
There are 11 pages of advertisements for other works sold by Aubouin, Emery and Clouzier. see full details...
A collection of treatises on the Quakers, each with separate title page and pagination; the first is signed separately, the second and third continuously. “The three treatises are sometimes found in separate issues. When collected, a list of books to be sold by Benjamin Ferriss, in Wilmington, pp. [4], is generally found added.”(Evans). The publication of works defining and defending the Quaker faith, while distancing it from more extreme elements at its fringes, was central to seventeenth-century efforts to bring Quakerism into the mainstream of religious life. Penn and Barclay both played pivotal roles, publishing numerous important works, in addition to their notable diplomatic efforts. Barclay’s The Anarchy of the Ranters was first published in 1676, Penn’s Brief Account followed in 1694 and Pike’s Epistle appeared in 1726. All three titles were republished a number of times over the following century, including an edition of Barclay's The Anarchy of the Ranters with Pike’s Epistle, published in Philadelphia by B. Franklin and D. Hall in 1757. see full details...
In this encyclopaedic work, Vergil addresses questions of origins, from the origin of the gods, man and languages to the origin of wine and liqueurs, marriage, magic, medicine, poetry, drama, geography and law. First published (in Latin) in Venice in 1499, it was first printed in France in 1528 (also in Latin). A French translation (probably by Jacques Regnault) appeared in 1544, followed by a new translation by François de Belleforest printed at Paris in 1576. Our small format Lyon edition of the same year is of de Belleforest’s text, without the preliminary material.
An Italian by birth, Vergil spent much of his life in Britain, principally working as a Papal envoy at the court of Henry VIII. François de Belleforest (1530-1583) was a prolific translator and author, perhaps best known in the anglophone world as a source of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, through his French translation of the medieval Gesta Danorum found in his Histoires Tragiques published in 1570.
The book contains the bookplate of Justin Godart, lawyer and mayor of Lyon, who was a leading figure in the French Resistance (heading the Comité du Front National clandestin de libération de la France Zone Sud) during the Second World War. see full details...
Keynes suggests that the work was first published in 1647, since although it is undated, it first appears in the Stationers' Register in the autumn of 1646. The second issue uses the unsold sheets of that first issue with a cancel title.
Donne frankly admits his fascination for the act of suicide in his Preface “...whensoever any affliction assailes me, mee thinks I have the keyes of my prison in mine owne hand, and no remedy presentes it selfe so soone to my heart, as mine own sword." He chose not to publish his meditations on the subject and only circulated the Biathanatos among friends in manuscript. He sent a copy to Sir Edward Herbert, and, in 1619, another to Sir Robert Karre, writing: "It was written by me many years since; and because it is upon a misinterpretable subject, I have always gone so near suppressing it, nor many eyes to read it: onely to some particular friends in both Universities, then when I writ it, I did communicate it: And I remember, I had this answer, That certainly, there was a false thread in it, but not easily found: Keep it, I pray, with the same jealousie; let any that your discretion admits to the sight of it, know the date of it; and that it is a Book written by Jack Donne, and not by D. Donne: Reserve it for me, if I live, and if I die, I only forbid it the Presse, and the Fire: publish it not, but burn it not; and between those, do what you will with it'”(cited by Keynes). It was published posthumously by John Donne the younger, and dedicated by Lord Herbert's sone Phillip. see full details...
![[CAREW, Bampfylde-Moore.]](/photos/342/main/342.jpg "[CAREW, Bampfylde-Moore.]")
This is one of two editions printed for Buckland, Bathurst and Davies in 1793. The final 5 pages contain a notable cant dictionary.
Carew fell in with a band of gypsies as a wayward young boy. “After a year and a half Carew returned home for a time, but soon after resumed a career of swindling and imposture, which saw him deceive people to whom he had previously been well known. Eventually he embarked for Newfoundland, but stayed only a short time. On his return to England he passed as the mate of a vessel, and eloped with the daughter of a respectable apothecary from Newcastle upon Tyne, whom he later married.
Carew soon returned to the nomadic life, and when Clause Patch, a Gypsy king or chief, died Carew was elected his successor. He was convicted of being an idle vagrant, and sentenced to be transported to Maryland. On his arrival he attempted to escape, but was captured and made to wear a heavy iron collar; he escaped again, and encountered some Native Americans, who removed his shackles. On departure he travelled to Pennsylvania. He was then said to have swum the Delaware River, after which he adopted the guise of a Quaker, and made his way to Philadelphia, then to New York, and finally to Boston, where he embarked for England. He escaped impressment on board a man-of-war by pricking his hands and face, and rubbing in bay salt and gunpowder, so as to simulate smallpox” (John Ashton, rev. Heather Shore in Oxford DNB).
This biography is variously attributed to Bampfylde Moore Carew himself, to Robert Goadby and also to his wife, Mrs. Goadby. see full details...
The sermon takes as its text Revelation XVII, 5 “And upon her forehead was a name written, Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots, and Abominations of the Earth” and gives a detailed consideration of the supposed ceremonies of the masons. Three other editions/issues dated 1768 are known, one with a Robinson and Roberts imprint paginating [iv], 39, [1] (NY Historical Society only) and a stated “Second edition” with the same imprint and pagination (BL and Clark Library, UCLA only), together with a Dublin reprint. All three are recorded by ESTC in single copies only. The Sermon provoked a response from John Thompson, freemason, entitled Remarks on a sermon lately published; entitled, Masonry the way to hell. Being a defence of that antient and honourable order, against the Jesuitical sophistry and false calumny of the author (1768, BL only). see full details...
![WOODWARD, [George Murgatroyd].](/photos/596/main/596.jpg "WOODWARD, [George Murgatroyd].")
Like his drinking-partner Thomas Rowlandson, Woodward absorbed high and low culture omnivorously and paid keen attention to contemporary politics.
A Political Fair is ‘a fantastic survey of the international situation’ in 1807 and is considered one of Woodward’s finest images, the print catalogue of the British Museum devoting two full pages to its complex allegories. At the heart of the fair is a large booth (‘The Best-Booth in the Fair’) representing Great Britain holding aloft on its platform images of Britannia, John Bull, together with an Irishman, Scotsman and Welsh harpist gathered convivially around a punchbowl, while a waiter sweeps into the chamber below with a vast joint of roast beef on his platter. All this was typical of Woodward’s patriotism and was intended to portray the essential unity of the nation amidst the host of clamouring figures in the neighbouring booths representing the other nations. Napoleon, in tricorn and feathers, rebuffs a disgruntled Dutchman complaining about his King with the words ‘I never change Mynheer after the goods are taken out of the Shop’. High up on the right, the American booth displays a placard advertising ‘Much ado about Nothing with the Deserter’, a reference to the friction between Britain and the United States over recent defections from British to American ships and the ban on armed British ships in American ports. The Danish booth on the left advertises ‘The English Fleet and The Devil to Pay’ in reference to the hideous bombardment of Copenhagen by the British fleet in September that year.
Musical and theatrical references abound, with many of the placards punning on the titles of plays and musical performances then showing in London: Much ado about nothing, All’s well that ends well (Shakespeare), The Padlock (Bickerstaffe), The Deserter (Dibdin), The Double Dealer (on the Russian booth, by Congreve) and The English Fleet (Dibdin again). see full details...
It deals with the raw materials, their preparation, manufacturing process and the dyes as well as the styles of hats. The plates, re-engraved for this Spanish edition are detailed depictions of the hatter’s craft with excellent workshop scenes.
Like his French counterpart Nollet, Suárez y Nuñez was an enlightened polymath dedicated to the scientific exposition of crafts and industry. His magnum opus was the multi-volume Memorias instructivas, y curiosas: sobre agricultura, comercio, industria, economia, chyimica, botanica, historia natural, &c (1778-1791) translated from pioneering works published across Europe. see full details...
Divided into three major sections: General, Classical and Juvenile, the library was evidently that of an educated and ordered household and comprises works from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries covering a wide variety of subjects, including travel, literature, biography, law, mathematics and algebra, bookkeeping, natural history, geography and religion. Among the several serial and collected works represented are The Family Library, Lardner’s Cabinet Cyclopaedia, Scott’s Novels, The Family Classical Library and Pinnock’s Catechisms. The juvenile section is especially interesting as a record of educational titles of the Regency period and comprises over 200 titles.
The catalogue is anonymous, but has been studiously prepared, giving sizes and (sometimes) dates for each work. There are a few additional notes recording purchases, gifts and (in one case) sale of books. see full details...
![[CHEVRIER, François Antoine.]](/photos/335/main/335.jpg "[CHEVRIER, François Antoine.]")
![[SCHMID, Christoph von].](/photos/797/main/797.jpg "[SCHMID, Christoph von].")
![[DAMOURS, Louis.]](/photos/434/main/434.jpg "[DAMOURS, Louis.]")
![[DALRYMPLE, David, Sir.]](/photos/111/main/111.jpg "[DALRYMPLE, David, Sir.]")
![[BECCARIA,Cesare, marchese di.]](/photos/327/main/327.jpg "[BECCARIA,Cesare, marchese di.]")
![[SMITH, Horatio.]](/photos/318/main/318.jpg "[SMITH, Horatio.]")
![[TUFNELL, Edward Carlton.]](/photos/70/main/70.jpg "[TUFNELL, Edward Carlton.]")
![[FOUQUET, Charles Louis Auguste de,] Duc de Belle-Isle [and Louis-Georges-Erasme CONTADES, marquis de].](/photos/296/main/296.jpg "[FOUQUET, Charles Louis Auguste de,] Duc de Belle-Isle [and Louis-Georges-Erasme CONTADES, marquis de].")
![[ALI ABENCUSIAN, pseudonym of Miguel de LUNA]. VIEUX-MAISONS, [Gilles de Rainssant, Sieur de], translator.](/photos/322/main/322.jpg "[ALI ABENCUSIAN, pseudonym of Miguel de LUNA]. VIEUX-MAISONS, [Gilles de Rainssant, Sieur de], translator.")
![[HOTMAN, François.]](/photos/11/main/11.jpg "[HOTMAN, François.]")
![[BURNET, Sir Thomas.]](/photos/406/main/406.jpg "[BURNET, Sir Thomas.]")
![(SCOTLAND.) [CROKER, John].](/photos/132/main/132.jpg "(SCOTLAND.) [CROKER, John].")
![[DAVENANT, Charles.]](/photos/62/main/62.jpg "[DAVENANT, Charles.]")
![[SAAS, Jean.]](/photos/772/main/772.jpg "[SAAS, Jean.]")
![PRICE, Jorge W[ilson].](/photos/363/main/363.jpg "PRICE, Jorge W[ilson].")
![(SADE, Donatien Alphonse François, marquis de). [BRUNET, Pierre Gustave.]](/photos/549/main/549.jpg "(SADE, Donatien Alphonse François, marquis de). [BRUNET, Pierre Gustave.]")
![(MILITARY MANUSCRIPT). C[HASTELET, Paul Hay, Marquis de.]](/photos/205/main/205.jpg "(MILITARY MANUSCRIPT). C[HASTELET, Paul Hay, Marquis de.]")
![‘STELLI, L.’ [pseudonym of Hippolyte MAGEN.]](/photos/559/main/559.jpg "‘STELLI, L.’ [pseudonym of Hippolyte MAGEN.]")
![[DECOURTIS, Charles-Melchior.]](/photos/715/main/715.jpg "[DECOURTIS, Charles-Melchior.]")
![(MALTHUS.) [WHATELY, Richard, later Archbishop of Dublin.]](/photos/54/main/54.jpg "(MALTHUS.) [WHATELY, Richard, later Archbishop of Dublin.]")
![[ERARD, Claude.]](/photos/328/main/328.jpg "[ERARD, Claude.]")
![MANDER, Samuel S[mall].](/photos/395/main/395.jpg "MANDER, Samuel S[mall].")
![[DRAKE, James.]](/photos/403/main/403.jpg "[DRAKE, James.]")
![(LONDON). MOGG, E[dward].](/photos/166/main/166.jpg "(LONDON). MOGG, E[dward].")
![[AUBIGNÉ, Théodore Agrippa d’.]](/photos/290/main/290.jpg "[AUBIGNÉ, Théodore Agrippa d’.]")
![MARIN, [François Louis Claude.]](/photos/255/main/255.jpg "MARIN, [François Louis Claude.]")
![NECKER, M. [Jacques].](/photos/288/main/288.jpg "NECKER, M. [Jacques].")
![FREYDIER, M[onsieur].](/photos/382/main/382.jpg "FREYDIER, M[onsieur].")
