Strong early 18th century commonplace book compiled by an educated adult reader of contemporary and near-contemporary English language writers who include John Wilkins, Thomas Browne, John Locke, Pascal (a French exception), Dryden and Congreve, but most strikingly of all, Shakespeare. The manuscript writer quotes from Hamlet's greatest soliloquy, ‘To be or Not to Be...’ beginning at ‘Who would fardles bear’ continuing via ‘The undiscovered Country from whose bourn/ No traveler returns’ giving the source of the extract as ‘Shakspeare Ham[le]t’. He (almost certainly) has placed these lines under the heading, ‘Life’, following a passage on the disappointment of hope - germane to Hamlet’s despairing sentiments, and following it with ‘Action’ - the very thing that Hamlet seems unable to achieve. Strikingly our commonplacer chooses to adapt Shakespeare’s text to ‘groan and sweat’ in place of ‘grunt and sweat’ (as in the 1st 4 folios and Tonson 1709 edition), anticipating by at least a decade Theobald’s 1733 identically sanitised version of Shakespeare’s lines, subsequently endorsed by Samuel Johnson - ‘All the old copies have, to grunt and sweat. It is undoubtedly the true reading, but can scarcely be born by modern ears.’ Equally striking is our writer’s response to the plague scare of 1720, prompting him to include his only medical text in the commonplace book, nervously quoting 3 pages from Richard Mead’s 1720 ‘Dis[course] Concerning pestilential Contagion 1720’ - ‘Contagion is propogated [sic] by 3 causes, the air; diseased persons; and goods transported from foreign places yt are infected...’ A fascinating collection of mixed sacred and secular texts which offers significant insights into the intellectual habits of an early 18th century English reader.
DESCRIPTION: Small format commonplace book (9.5x15.5cm) bound in early 18th century panelled sheep; rubbing and wear to corners but binding remains sound. Manuscript title page on first flyleaf: ‘P.T.[?] Observations on Reading Vol 2d July 17 1720 ---- Vol 2nd’; a small hole just below this statement. Paginated throughout to page 154 with two terminal index pages, cc22,000 words.
Our writer commonplaces from William Wollaston’s The Religion of Nature Delineated on ‘Promises’ in the year of its publication, 1722, following on with Aristotle’s Poetics, ‘Poetry its curses’, ‘Comedy’, ‘Riddles’ and a passage interpolated from the French commentator on ‘Tragedy’, Rene Rapin (first published in English in 1674) as well as Congreve on Humour (from Familiar and Courtly Letters, 1700). Shaftesbury’s Characteristics of Men (1711) and ‘Old Age’ from ‘Brown’s Relig: Medici’ - Thomas Browne’s Religio Medici of 1642/3. Other sources include Plutarch and Horace, Black’s Essays and Jeremy Collier’s Essays; Edward Pelling and a note on ‘Printing... found out betwixt ye year 1440 & 1450; the oldest print we have is Ciceros officers no Oxford library bearing ye date of 1460. It is uncertain who was the author or Inventor of it’ - unusually without citation (p73). ‘Mortification’ comes from John Wilkins’ Of the Principles and Duties of Natural Religion, which is commonplaced extensively on ‘Evidence’ as well as extracts from Pierre Boher’s Art of Knowing Oneself, Locke on Education accounting for ‘Virtue’ and Pope on ‘Learning’, Dryden, Evelyn, Pascal on ‘Reason’ and ‘Happiness’.
Constructed on broadly Lockean principles, the writer begins the manuscript with the topic of ‘Regularity’, taking his text from the Spectator but cross-referencing to his other headings beginning with ‘R’ - Repentance, Reason, Religion and Resurrection. Hamlet is cited at page 17 and cross-referenced to three other excerpts on the same subject and one on Liberty. These are taken from Seneca, Cowley and Liberty from Lucas’s Enquiries.
