PRESENTED BY CHARLES BURNEY, OWNED BY JOHN SPARROW
BENTLEY, Richard, et al.; [Charles BURNEY, editor].
Richardi Bentleii et doctorum virorum epistolae, partim mutuae. Accedit Richardi Dawesii ad Joannem Taylorum epistola singularis.
London, William Bulmer, 1807.
Large 4to, pp. [4], 330, [1], [3, blank]; 4 engraved plates (portraits of Bentley and Graevius and facsimiles of one letter from each to the other); occasional very light foxing (heavier to plates), a few minor stains, title-leaf partly detached; otherwise an excellent copy in contemporary straight-grained purple morocco, covers elaborately panelled in gilt and blind with three concentric frames and an arabesque centrepiece, spine gilt in five compartments between flat bands with title and imprint lettered direct, turn-ins broad and elaborately gilt, morocco joints, pink endpapers, edges gilt; a handful of minor scuffs, joints a little creased, front hinge partly broken; editor’s letterpress presentation slip tipped in between front flyleaves, editor’s engraved presentation slip with presentee in manuscript (‘For The Rev.d Rob. Nares. British Museum’) pasted to front flyleaf (see below), early reader’s notes in ink and later booksellers’ notes in pencil to front flyleaf, a few notes and corrections in pencil to margins, booklabel of John Sparrow to front pastedown.
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Richardi Bentleii et doctorum virorum epistolae, partim mutuae. Accedit Richardi Dawesii ad Joannem Taylorum epistola singularis.
First edition of the correspondence of Richard Bentley, a large paper copy splendidly bound and presented by Charles Burney to the British Museum’s Keeper of Manuscripts, with attractive later provenance.
Called by Housman ‘the greatest scholar that England or perhaps that Europe ever bred’ (p. 25), Bentley (1662–1742) made extensive contributions to textual criticism and classical philology, compiling many editions and discovering inter alia the Homeric digamma. Much of his work was expressed in correspondence both private and public, e.g. his Letter to Mill (1691) on John Malalas and his Dissertation upon the Epistles of Phalaris (1697) addressed to William Wotton. The present edition was the first to collect his letters and includes correspondence between Bentley and men such as Pieter Burmann, Samuel Clarke, J.G. Graevius, Jean Le Clerc, and Sir Hans Sloane.
Edited by the musician and music historian Charles Burney, the collection was published for private distribution in a run of 100 or 150 copies on large paper (cf. Bartholomew and Lowndes with Brunet) and 50 on small paper. Our copy was presented by Burney – with two presentation slips, one with a handwritten address and both now tipped in – to Robert Nares (1753–1829), Keeper of Manuscripts at the British Museum and son of the composer James Nares.
Clergyman and philologist, the younger Nares was appointed Keeper in 1799 and edited the third volume of the Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts. ‘Of Nares’s numerous publications two have retained the significance which his contemporaries attributed to them. … His Glossary (1822) is a vade-mecum for readers of Elizabethan literature, the aim being to provide explanations of particular “words, phrases, names and allusions to customs, proverbs, etc” that might be encountered, especially in the writings of Shakespeare …
‘His Elements of Orthoepy, the origins of which may owe something to his father’s interest in the teaching of singing (about 1780 his father published A Treatise on Singing), was published in 1784’ (ODNB). It may have been through this musical connection that Burney was acquainted with the younger Nares; indeed he had described the latter’s father in his General History of Music (1776–89) as ‘a studious and sound musician’ whose compositions and teaching at the Chapel Royal ‘acquired him great respect’ (vol. III, p. 622).
One of the slips alludes to certain ‘negotiis familiaribus’ that had prevented Burney from finishing the work, promising that ‘notae cum indicibus’ would follow shortly. This likely refers to the stroke suffered by Burney (now in his eighty-second year) in 1807 that paralysed his left arm. Though he survived (in poor health) another seven years, no notes or indices seem to have been published for this edition – an index (but no notes) appears in the second (Leipzig, 1825) – and the leaf titled ‘notae’ is here followed only by blanks, as in all copies known to Bartholomew.
Later provenance: John Sparrow (1906–1992), lawyer, bibliophile, and Warden of All Souls College, Oxford. Famous as a collector (particularly of association copies) and patron of the Oxford Society of Bibliophiles, Sparrow was also something of a Latinist, publishing the eight-volume Lapidaria (1943–75) on Latin inscriptions and an anthology, Renaissance Latin Verse (1979). His only bibliography (co-authored with John Carter) was of Housman (1940, rev. 1952), whose academic hero had been Bentley.
Bartholomew 279; Brunet I, col. 778 (‘très-bien exécuté’); Lowndes I, p. 158. See Burney, A general History of Music (1776–89); Housman, Introductory Lecture delivered before the Faculties of Arts and Laws and of Science in University College London, October 3, 1892 (1937).
