Used Books by Sherman William H.;

Author:Sherman, William H.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Published: 2008-01-14T16:00:00+00:00

As with the “Polyanthea Caesaris” and the “Enchiridion” mentioned in the will, these missing notebooks make it clear that Caesar’s Foxe was part of a larger note-taking project of which the Pandectae locorum communium is, literally and figuratively, only an index.

Few contemporary figures could have carried out such a comprehensive program of collecting and ordering the world of texts. And nowhere was Caesar’s lifelong commitment to preserving, processing, and mobilizing information represented more beautifully than in lot 120, “A portable library; containing the Roman poets and historians, & c. in 44 pocket volumes, etc.”34 This was one of four very similar traveling libraries, apparently commissioned by the legal antiquary William Hakewill around 1615 and presented to members of Caesar’s circle—including Thomas Egerton (Baron Ellesmere) and one of the sons of Sir Nicholas Bacon (possibly but not necessarily Francis). Each collection was housed in what looked, from the outside, like a leather-bound folio volume, roughly the same shape and size as the Pandectae: only the word “Bibliotheca” (Library), painted in gold on the “fore edge,” hinted at the treasures within its covers. Opening the “book” revealed a wooden box with three shelves full of small-format classics, uniformly bound in gold-tooled vellum and closed with colored ties; and on the front cover’s “pastedown” was painted an elaborate architectural frontispiece containing the owners’ coats of arms and the list of authors under the headings “Theology,” “History,” and “Poetry.”35

Also in the Paterson sale were countless volumes of what would now be classified as State Papers, along with many records of a more personal nature. Each of these volumes has been digested and described in tables of contents of various sorts—with a consistency and clarity that are unusual in this method-obsessed (but not always systematic) age. British Library Manuscript Lansdowne 124 is Caesar’s catalogue of his entire manuscript archive, and its organization is very similar to that of his commonplace book: there are clusters of headings running along the tops of pages with short descriptions and folio numbers for items that fall into that category lined up below. On folio 2v, for instance, the headings are “Admiralty,” “Sea,” “Piracies,” “Ambassages,” “Treatises” [i.e., Treaties], and the contents include “Fol. 22. Touch[ing] Ireland & Scotland. . . . Fol. 41. Treatises. Hanse Townes etc. et 51. et 57. . . . Fol. 105. Th’Admirall Circuite & Admirall Charters, as of Boston, Weymouth, Lin, Yarmouth, Bristoll. . . . Fol. 110. The Kings Prerogative in Seashores. Landing places & safeconducts. . . . Fol. 201. A synopsis of the States, with whom England vseth commerce. Treatises betw[een] England etc.” The following page (3r) is headed “Seales. Priuate Counsell. Court of Requests. Starchamber.” Given Caesar’s position as master of the Court of Requests and member of the Privy Council, he had a personal interest in these institutions and was characteristically thorough in his search for records that could shed light on the history (as well as the present practices) of these institutions. As Alain Wijffels has explained, he was

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