Annotating a 1643 English-Latin Phrase Book

Traveling has kept me away from the blog for a little while, but today’s post will be the first in a series of uninterrupted weekly entries as we continue into August and finish up the summer. The book I am highlighting today is a copiously annotated dictionary used by an English book owner in the Restoration and early eighteenth century. The Center owns several books with manuscript-enhanced dictionaries, indices, and reference guides, but this is the first one to make it onto the web.

note the faint pen trials

Johann Amos Comenius (Jon Amos Komenský), Janua linguarum reserata (The Gates of Languages Unlocked: or a Seed-Plot of all Arts and Tongues; containing a ready way to learn the Latin and English Tongue). Sixth Edition. London: Printed by James Young, and are sold by Thomas Slater, 1643.
[376] p. ;  18 cm. (8vo); Wing C5512 
Renaissance Center copy is in later half calf and marbled boards (covers largely detached) 

Appearing in over fifteen editions between 1631 and 1672, this portable English-Latin phrase book belongs to one of several different groups of books published in seventeenth-century England under the title Janua linguarum, or "the gates of languages" (literally "gates of tongues"). While this particular book presents a bilingual guide, others might have been trilingual (Comenius' own Janua linguarum trilinguis and Porta linguarum trilinguis with English, Latin, and Greek), quadrilingual (William Bathe's Janua linguarum, first pub. 1617 in English, Latin, French, and Spanish), or even "silingual" (the 1629 and 1630 editions of Bathe add German and Italian). For English publication disputes over Janua linguarum and a table of English editions, see Adrian Johns, The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), pp. 223-6.

Comenius (1592-1670) was an early proponent of universal education and his published works (especially Janua linguarum) were heavily used in European schools (the book also appeared in Continental editions). The popularity of Janua linguarum even prompted authors to compose companion volumes. Jean de Grave wrote a "path-way to the gate of tongues" in 1633, intended as an introduction to Comenius' book for "little children" (STC 12198, often bound with the 1633 edition of Porta linguarum trilinguis). Wye Saltonstall's Clavis ad portam, or a key fitted to open the gate of tongues appeared in 1634, and it too is often found bound with Porta linguarum (ESTC).

The Center's copy is from the 1643 sixth edition of the bilingual Janua, which was "carefully reviewed, and exactly compared with all former editions, foreign and others, and much enlarged both in the Latin and English" by John Robotham (who had also corrected and amended the text in an earlier edition). Our particular copy bears several marks of provenance, recording the association of the book with four different English readers/owners.

eighteenth- or nineteenth-century inscription of "Geo[rge] Jepson"

The second image contains several seventeenth-century inscriptions. They read (in three separate hands):

John Widdowes His Booke
anno dom: 1667 [all struckthrough]

George Yardley His Booke
              1670

George Yardley Liber Eius
Testis Antonius Meeke 1672

From these notes we know that around 1670 the book passed from John Widdowes to George Yardley (who struck out the earlier inscription). The third inscription appears to be in the hand of Anthony Meeke, who has "witnessed" Yardley's ownerships of the book ("testis" means "witness"); it also plays on the common ownership formula "hic liber est meus, Testis est Deus." I have been unable to identify the Greek note at the bottom of the page, which I believe is in Yardley's hand. 

Two other pages contain Greek and Latin notes in the same hand:

unidentified Greek note

"Foemineum servile genus, crudele, superbum" ("womankind is servile, cruel, [and] proud"). From the fourth eclogue of Baptista Mantuanus' Bucolica (first pub. 1503)

An additional (much later) ownership inscription provides more information about our annotator, George Yardley.

Written fifty years after the first inscription (which seems to have been penned by a youth), Yardley's later note is the product of an Anglican clergyman: "A[ssembly].M[inister]. & R[ector] de Notgrove" and "V[icar] de Mickleton." According to British History online, George Yardley attained the post of rector at Notgrove in 1687. To be found in the Mickleton Parish Records (Gloucestershire Archives) is a collection of "[p]rinted almanacs interleaved with manuscript notes, which belonged to Rev George Yardley, Rector of Notgrove and Vicar of Mickleton 1707-1746." (Yardley died in 1746, and his printed almanacs range from 1718-1745.) This note is dated July 20, 1730.

As I mentioned in this entry's headnote, one of the book's former owners (probably Yardley) copiously annotated the two indices that conclude this copy of Janua linguarum. While I don't think paleographical evidence presents a conclusive case for any of the former owners, considering Yardley's known practice of adding manuscript notes to printed books (as in his interleaved almanacs surviving among the Mickleton Parish Records), it seems likely he is the annotator of the indices. The book's first index, the Latin "index vocabulorum," is prefaced by an interesting note about John Robotham's editing of its content:

"The former Index, even in the Dutch copy, was very faulty in the cyphers, and defective in many words; which put me to a needlesse trouble, in striving to insert in the text, such words as I found not in the Index (and therefore thought them lacking) which afterward I met with in the book. This Index is very exact; and may serve as a Dictionary to the learner, and a ready helpe to him that would adde any further supply to the booke it selfe."

The passage is interesting for a few reasons. We know these indices (one of Latin words, the other of English) were "very faulty" in earlier editions, forcing the Janua's English editor to augment the lists with additional entries. The editor also claims the lists "may serve as a Dictionary to the learner," and may even be "a ready helpe to him that would adde any further supply to the booke it selfe." In other words, these printed lists form a complete and "exact" English-Latin dictionary, which a reader may nonetheless supplement with a "further supply" of words in manuscript. 

The book's manuscript annotations respond directly to Robotham's invitation to "adde" such "a further supply" by inserting missing words (according to alphabetical order) into the body of the printed text. Here are three examples from the (less copiously) annotated Latin index:

Added words include abnormis, abramis, absis, adolesere, adultum, arteres, and culsium (with the added note "being compounded it wants the supine").

The "Index Anglicus" is much more heavily annotated and includes words in both English and Latin. Since nearly every page contains manuscript annotation, I have decided not to upload all thirty (or so) images, but instead post a range of images with representative annotation. In each image's caption I have listed some of the words added in manuscript (in modernized English).

acorn, adamant

back, balsam, baron, bay tree

bemoan, bosom, beaver

bastard, camel, cane, capon, carbuncle, carp, carpet, carter, cates

cedar, cellar, center, ceremony, chariot, cherish, crystal, cheekbone, chickpeas, choler, chough

christ, circumference, circumstance, client, cocksure, colander, collar, colt

comfort, comedy, complete, compose, conical, constellation, conscience, consume, contempt, content, contest

The rest of the volume continues in the same way. With further archival research into books annotated by George Yardley and manuscript-enhanced copies of Janua linguarum, one could ask a number of interesting research questions about material reading practices, early modern education, and the development of the English language: how common was dictionary-annotation in early modern England? how did readers customize such books with manuscript notes? what sort of relationships existed among printed dictionaries, manuscript-enhanced printed dictionaries, and manuscript word-lists? what can such annotations tell scholars about the history of our language?

Two Centuries in the Life of a Biblical Commonplace Book

John Merbecke, A booke of notes and common places: with their expositions, collected and gathered out of the workes of diuers singular writers, and brought alphabetically into order: a worke both profitable and also necessarie, to those that desire the true vnderstanding & meaning of the holy Scripture.
Imprinted at London: By Thomas East, 1581
[44], 688, 699-1194 p. ; 19cm. (4to). Plain sheep binding

Our collection's only example of a printed commonplace book in English, this copy of Merbecke's Scriptural handbook is in fairly poor condition, as it clearly has been well used over time. Fortunately a dense layering of ownership inscriptions has survived on the book's opening leaves, documenting two centuries of male and female owners in the British Isles. 

The first inscription (in pencil), reads "W. Blacks Book Kelsocleugh [???] 9 1805 [?]" (Kelsocleugh or Kelso is in the Scottish Borders, Scotland.) In the next couple of leaves W. Black inscribes a prayer taken from Edward Young's verse "Paraphrase on part of the Book of Job," from The complaint: or, night-thoughts on life, death, and immortality. To which is added, a paraphrase on part of the Book of Job (first pub with the paraphrase in 1750; reprinted numerous times throughout second half of eighteenth century). Black has excerpted the paraphrase of Job 42, the book's final chapter.

It reads: 


William Black his Book
Kelsocleugh may the 7 180[*]
William Black Kelsocleug[h]

thou Canst accomplish all things lord of might
and evry thought is naked to thy Sight
But oh thy ways are wonderful and lie
Beyound the deepest reach of mortal eye
oft have I heard of thine almighty power
But never saw thee till this dreadful hou[r]
Oerwhelmed with shame the lord of life I see
abhor myself and give my soul to thee
Nor shall my weakness tempt thine anger mo[re?]
man was not made to question but adore
                        Job 42    1--7
on lifes fair tree fast by ^the^throne of god
what golden joys ambrosial Clustring glow

[second section]

O thou who dost permit these ills to fall
for gracious ends and would that man should mourn
O thou whose hands this goodly fabric framd
who knowst it best and wouldst that man should know
what is this sublunary world a vapour
a vapour all it holds itself a vapour
earths days are numberd or remote her doom
as mortall tho less transient than her sons
yet they doat on her as the world and they
were both eternal      Solid thou [a dream]
                                                    young


[in pencil] O thou [???? this penciled note is difficult to read]


E. Simpson Alnmouth
Jany 5th 1850


William Black transcribed the first part (before "Job 42 1--7") from the concluding lines of Young's "Paraphrase." He extracted the two lines at the bottom of the first page from "Night the First" of Night Thoughts. On the second leaf he wrote down a passage from the eighth night of the same poem. From this passage he omitted three lines between the last "vapour" and "earths days"; they read:


From the damp bed of Chaos, as they beam 
Exhaled, ordained to swim its destined hour
In ambient air, then melt and disappear.


Black attributes the poem to "young" in the final line. The penciled inscription  is in the same hand as William Black's 1805 [?] pencil signature (see above). An additional inscription in ink—"E. Simpson Alnmouth Jany 5th 1850"—documents the book's latest nineteenth-century owner. And as you probably noticed, the verso of the leaf with Black's transcription of Young's "Paraphrase" bears the inscription "W. Leydon."


The next two openings offer rich provenance information, recording numerous owners and dates while also preserving a notice of an early rebinding.

These two pages contain the following items in manuscript:

1) sums in an eighteenth century hand 
2) inscriptions of a Robert Jobson, one dated 1763
3) inscriptions of William Black, dated 1797
4) inscriptions of Thomas Leydon, dated 1794, Denholm [also in Scottish Borders]. Probably  related to the "W. Leydon" mentioned above.
5) pen trials in numerous hands
6) this note: "this Book was printed in the year 1581 Binded 1802 at verry great age"


Here is a similar list for the next opening (see below):

 

1) several inscriptions of Robert Jobson, one dated 1772
2) inscription of Mary Dent, Gateshead June 31th [sic] 1704
3) inscription of John Thomson, dated 1707
4) inscription of William Black, dated 1798

Most of these inscriptions, with the exception of Mary Dent's, have Scottish provenance. The note about the binding in 1802 (on the first leaf) is very interesting, capturing an owner's care for a treasured book "at verry great age." Here is a picture of the plainly bound sheepskin binding:

Sheepskin is softer but less durable than calf or goatskin, and for this reason few sheepskin bindings from the early modern period survive without a few tears or imperfections. Sheepskin was the cheap alternative to calf; the finest bindings were made from goat. 


None of the book's five former owners annotated the printed text of Merbecke's A booke of notes and common places, although the work remains interesting in its own right. Here are several sample images of the text which amply demonstrate the book's content and style:

One leaf bears a final ownership inscription, belonging to Thomas Leydon:

I haven't attempted to track down the identities of the book's former owners, although I am sure the answers lie in Google Books searching nineteenth-century English genealogical works. All in all a book with great manuscript content. This is one of two books we own with extensive Scottish provenance; the other is a copy of Sidney's Arcadia that I plan to write about at some point this summer.

Doodling in a Copy of Guarini's "Il Pastor Fido"

frontispiece and title page

Battista Guarini, Il Pastor Fido=The Faithful Shepherd: a pastorall / written in Italian by Baptista Gvarini, a knight of Italie ; and now newly translated out of the originall. 

London : Printed by R. Raworth, M DC XLVII [1647].

[12], 223 p. : ill., port. ; 20 cm.

Translated by Richard Fanshawe.

Renaissance Center copy is in later (18th-century?; a signature dated 1660 is partially trimmed) calf (rebacked; inner hinges cracked; all before B2 and 2F2-4 detached; some worm damage to outer margins, which occurred before the current binding); extensive scribblings on several leaves at front and at back, including drawings and names, presumably of owners: John Penrose (title page; dated both 1647 and 1660); Bernard Penrose (2F4v; dated 1704; and on V3v and X4v, undated); Thomas Penrose (front free endpaper; and V1v, dated 1701; and 2F4v, dated 1708); Francis Penrose ((a)2v, undated; and as "Frank Penrose" on M2r, undated); Edward Penrose (F3r and 2F4v; undated); Margarett Penrose, James Lake, and Robert Olivier (all 2F4v, undated); John James Sampson (2E4v; undated). 

 

Although a number of my posts on early modern manuscript annotation characterize the practice as a serious affair, practiced by diligent scholars or readers deeply invested in their reading material, one can't ignore the frivolous act of doodling as one of the most common forms of book annotation. Children and bored students (both in the early modern and modern periods) frequently doodled in the blank leaves of their books, both as a form of writing practice ("pen trials") and no doubt to alleviate the boredom of tedious classroom lessons.

The subject of this post is the most copiously doodled book in our collection, a 1647 English translation of Guarini's Il Pastor Fido. The play is well known as one of the first tragicomedies ever written and its author's writings on the genre influenced a number of early seventeenth-century English playwrights. Beaumont and Fletcher's plays Philaster and The Faithful Shepherdess are both indebted to Guarini's experimentation with tragicomedy.

But this post isn't about tragicomedy, it's about doodling, copious doodling. This particular copy's title page and frontispiece (in addition to the blank recto of the frontispiece leaf) bear a complex layering of pen trials, drawings, tracings, signatures, and sums, stemming from the ownership of nine different people in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (many of them from the Penrose family).

 Let's begin with the frontispiece leaf:

recto of frontispiece leaf

Perhaps the most obvious items of note on this page are the amateurish drawings, one of which is clearly a tracing of the frontispiece on the other side of the leaf. Probably in imitation of the fairly decent tracing job, a second would-be artist (undoubtedly a child) has added a second rendition of Guarini's face, upon which a third illustrated figure leans. A number of pen trials and other forms of handwriting practice litter the page, including the strange, owl-like forms in the bottom left-hand corner, clearly intended to train writing students in the formation of specific pen strokes. The page also contains (in no particular order) sums, transcriptions of the book's title, an armorial drawing, the initials of Baptista Guarini, and a line from an unidentified text.

frontispiece

Of course the frontispiece itself supplied the image for the tracing, and in its margin another annotator has drawn a couple fairly accurate human heads.

detail of margin on frontispiece leaf: drawings of heads

The title page contains a number of different sorts of doodles, including many items seen on the reverse page (a transcription of the book's title and another armorial drawing, for instance). The amateur drawing also continues with several images of birds and wings, apparently drawn by the same person responsible for the human figure on the reverse side of the leaf. One of the title page annotators has copied "London" from the book's imprint, writing it in both English and Latin. Another has written a number of early capital "block" letters (several "B"s, and "E," and an "H").

title page

There are also plenty of signatures on the title page and elsewhere in the book, identifying a total of nine different owners or readers from various time periods. One of the most interesting ownership marks elects not to use the typical signature for self-identification, but instead the rebus, that strange admixture of words, letters, and images we usually associate with children's literature.

detail of ownership rebus

As part of the witty, playful, and sometimes secretive literary culture of the day, writers could adopt the rebus as a way not only to mask their identities, but also to playfully incorporate text and image into the presentation of their names. If you haven't already figured it out, this rebus reads "T [Pen] [Rose]," or Thomas Penrose, one of the many owners identified elsewhere in the book. The rebus incorporates the Tudor Rose into an interesting amalgam of local (the Penrose family) and national identity, and I suspect its form was passed down through the family for some time. The illustration of the pen drawing the rose, albeit clearly appropriate for someone named "Penrose," is also interesting in light of the many drawings and pen marks displayed in this book, since it depicts the very material processes responsible for the doodling. Along with my earlier post on children's annotation, this example clearly demonstrates a relationship between the book and reader based less on serious intellectual engagement than on casual and playful interaction with a material object.