RICH, Jeremiah.
The Whole Book of Psalms in Meter. According to the Art of Short-Writing …
London Printed and are sold by Samuel Botley Teacher of the said Art … and nowhere els. [1660?].
64mo, pp. [4], 8, 215, [1], engraved throughout by T. Cross, comprising a frontispiece portrait, an engraved title-page (verso blank), a dedication (pp. 8, the last page blank except for the border), the psalms in shorthand (pp. 215), and a final page listing the scholars that were his ‘first incouragers’; a fine copy, in contemporary panelled black morocco, gilt; with an eighteenth-century gift inscription on a loose paper (formerly a wrapper).
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The Whole Book of Psalms in Meter. According to the Art of Short-Writing …
First edition, the issue with Samuel Botley in the imprint – an extremely attractive miniature Psalms in shorthand by a ‘skilled and celebrated’ practitioner whose work was known to Pepys (though Pepys himself employed a rival system).
‘Amongst the most extraordinary volumes [among seventeenth-century miniature books] are the all-engraved editions of the Whole Book of Psalms in Meter and the New Testament in the shorthand of Jeremiah Rich, a leading stenography specialist of the period (circa 1660) who perfected the system invented by his uncle, William Cartwright, but without giving him credit, claiming it to be his own invention… All the copies we have seen are extremely well engraved, showing hardly any signs of wear and must have taken years to produce. Their manufacture did evidently require a very steady hand and infinite patience. Most copies are beautifully bound in contemporary black morocco and are finely gilt-tooled. They were obviously prized possessions and have remained most desirable collector's items to this date’ (Bondy).
Rich’s first publication was his Semography in 1642, presenting an updated version of the system of shorthand invented by his uncle William Cartwright – the work reappeared several times under different titles. ‘Rich was himself a skilled and celebrated shorthand writer, claiming to have recorded the trial at the Old Bailey of John Lilburne in August 1653 (no copy has survived). A tiny volume only 5/8 inch square in the Bodleian Library (MS Eng. misc. g.2) contains his own shorthand notes of a contemporary sermon. Rich may at one time have been employed as a writing-master at the free school in the Old Jewry, London. However, he was also active in other fields. By 1648, if not earlier, he was a cavalry trooper in Colonel Nathaniel Rich's regiment of the New Model Army’, and a then served on a frigate during the First Anglo-Dutch War. (Oxford DNB). As well as his works on and in shorthand, Rich published a number of other original works including poetry.
On 16 April 1661, Pepys recorded: ‘So soon as word was brought me that Mr. [William] Coventry was come with the barge to the Tower, I went to him, and found him reading of the Psalms in short hand (which he is now busy about), and had good sport about the long marks that are made there for sentences in divinity, which he is never like to make use of’ – these were probably the present psalms as the ones produced according to Shelton’s system were not published until later.
There are three issues, all undated, the others bearing the imprint ‘London Printed for the author …’ and ‘Sould by ye author … John Clarke … and Dan:l White’; of the present issue, ESTC records seven locations: British Library, Cambridge, Bodley, Senate House; Harvard and NYPL. Samuel Botley later published his own version of Rich’s guide to shorthand as Maximum in Minimo (1674), adding signs for law terms.
Wing B2805; Bondy pp. 17–20 (mistakenly illustrating a New Testament as the Psalms), as does Pistner, A Matter of Size, 44; Westby-Gibson, Bibliography of Shorthand p. 190 (version b).
