‘RICHARD LINCHE IS AN ASSE’
SALLUST.
C. Crispi Sallustii de conjuratione Catilinae historia. Eiusdem de bello Iugurthino ...
Paris, Robert Estienne, 1544.
8vo, pp. 208, [32]; woodcut printer’s device on title; title-page thumbed, some light marginal staining to the last quire, pinhole in the upper margin of the last two quire, but a very good copy in late seventeenth- or early eighteenth-century panelled calf, joints cracked but holding, extremities rubbed; title-page with early ownership inscription ‘Jo: Hare’ with other pen trials and doodles, further doodles on the verso along with a quotation from Sallust and a paragraph summarising Cicero’s works in a sixteenth-century English hand (possibly that of Richard Lynche, see below), some early underlining and marginal markings to the Coniuratio Catilinae, later pencilled patterns to margins in pp. 198–99; dozens of seventeenth-century marginalia to the Bellum Iugurthinum, last few text leaves and final blank with doodles and sixteenth-century inscriptions including ‘Richardus Lincheus hunc librum possedit’ (in an Italic hand), ‘Richard Lynche oweth this booke’ (in a secretary hand), and then ‘Richard Linche is an Asse’ (in a different secretary hand).
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C. Crispi Sallustii de conjuratione Catilinae historia. Eiusdem de bello Iugurthino ...
Estienne’s edition of the works of Sallust, annotated by an early English reader.
The Conspiracy of Catiline and the Jugurthine War had been, since the early Renaissance, a stable part of the humanistic curriculum, and had continued to exert great influence, as a source both of historical information and of philosophical wisdom. In late-sixteenth-century England, their political message too had a wide resonance for a power structure that was determined to show the evil nature and ultimately doomed destiny of rebellion. These texts, in Latin and in English, were so well-known that, in the aftermath of the 1605 Gunpowder Plot, the King himself uttered explicit and very public references to Sallust’s Catilina.
Our copy, copiously annotated by an English hand and marked by at least two early English owners, affords us an insight into the insular reception of these texts. There is evidence to suggest the identification of one of the two early owners, Richard Linche/Lynche, with the poet of that name (fl. 1596–1601) who in 1601 published An historical treatise of the travels of Noah into Europe, the translation of a treatise by Giovanni Nanni. This work included a lengthy investigation of ancient chronology, for which Nanni had relied, quite explicitly, on a number of ancient authors including Sallust. If Lynche availed himself of the opportunity for independent checks on Nanni’s sources, this annotated copy may be witness to his preparatory study.
Renouard, Estienne, 61:14; Pettegree 85575.
