273J William Lawson (1553/4–1635)
A nevv orchard and garden or The best way for planting, grafting, and to make any ground good, for a rich orchard: particularly in the north, and generally for the whole kingdome of England, as in nature, reason, situation, and all probabilitie, may and doth appeare. Wit the country housewifes garden for hearbes of common vse their vertues, seasons, profits, ornaments, varietie of knots, models for trees, and plots for the best ordering of grounds and walkes. As also the husbandry of bees, with their seuerall vses and annoyances all being the experience of 48. yeares labour, and now the second time corrected and much enlarged, by William Lawson. Whereunto is newly added the art of propagating plants, with the true ordering of all manner of fruits, in their gathering, carring home & preseruation.
London: Printed by Nicholas Okes, for Iohn Harison, at the golden Vnicorne in Pater-noster-row, 1631. $1,900
Quarto.A⁴ B-I⁸ K⁴ (last leaf blank).
This copy is disbound in a folding cloth binder There are a few woodcut illustrations. Minor wear, one leaf cropped close with slight loss; a very nice copy.
This is an early issue of this horticultural classic, first published in 1618, and notable for the inclusion of Lawson’s Country House-Wife’s Garden, the first book on the subject specifically written for women, and one of the most delightful gardening books in the language, illustrated with the oft-reproduced cuts of knot designs.
William Lawson was a writer on gardening and Church of England clergyman, was probably a member of the extensive northern English gentry family of Lawson, but his parents’ names are not known. He was ordained deacon in 1580, and became vicar of Ormesby, near Teesmouth, in the North Riding of Yorkshire, in 1583. He spent the rest of his life there. His first wife, Sibille, with whom he had two children, was buried at Ormesby in 1618; on 28 April 1619 he married Emme Tailer, who survived him. Lawson was a long-lived Yorkshire parson and a real ‘hands on’ gardener: he declares his book to be written from ‘my meer and sole experience, without respect to any former-written Treatise’. His two passions were orchards and bees and he covers all aspects of his subjects, soil management, planting and pruning, the construction of beehives, the control of various ‘nuisances’ (including birds, deer and moles) and the harvesting of fruits and honey.
Lawson refers several times to the difficulties of the local environment and warns his fellow northern gardeners to ‘meddle not with Apricockes nor Peaches, nor scarcely with Quinces, which will not like our cold parts’. He also stresses how important it is to keep bees in weatherproof accommodation using a good northern term to explain that the ‘nesh Bee can neither abide cold or wet’! However, he writes lyrically of the pleasures of an orchard: ‘your trees standing in comely order which way soever you look … your borders on every side hanging and drooping with Feberries, Raspberries, Barberries, Currents and the roots of your trees powdred with Strawberries, red,white and green, what pleasure is this?Interestingly, in his advice to the country housewife, Lawson advises that every household should maintain two gardens, a kitchen garden and a flower garden. He suggests that the reason for this is that ‘your garden flowers shall suffer some disgrace if among them you intermingle onions, parsnips etc’.
The woodcuts which illustrate the book are delightful (Lawson tell us that he instructed the publisher to expend ‘much cost and care … in having the Knots and Models by the best Artizan cut’) They include patterns for knot gardens (the little prancing horse and the man with a sword represent topiary designs) and images of gardeners, sporting some very jaunty headwear, digging and planting.
Lawson’s summary of the satisfaction to be gained from gardening remains as true today as it was for his seventeenth century readers: ‘whereas every other pleasure commonly fills some one of or senses, and that only, with delight, this makes all our senses swim in pleasure’.
This is Lawson’s only book, A new orchard and garden, has a dedication to a connection of one branch of the Lawsons, Sir Henry Belasyse. It was the first published work on gardening in the north of England, and its second section, 
The Countrie Housewifes Garden, was the first horticultural work written specifically for women (there would not be another in English for a century). The ‘sound, clear, natural wit’ manifested in it was praised by John Beale forty years later (Beale, 14), Illustrated with cuts of tools, a garden plan, and knot designs.
ESTC S4739; STC 15331.3; Henrey 228n, p. 160; Rohde, p. 54; British Bee Books 20; Poynter, p. 176.
Three libraries hold copies in the US!, Berkeley :University of Illinois :Yale
and now I will copy from GLASGOW UNIVERSITY LIBRARY SPECIAL COLLECTIONS DEPARTMENT
Book of the Month
July 2006
William Lawson
A New Orchard and Garden with The Country-Housewifes Garden for Herbs
London: 1648. Sp Coll Ferguson Ah-a.2
Our July choice is a popular Renaissance work on gardening, A new orchard and garden by William Lawson. It was printed together with the first horticultural book written solely for women, The country housewife’s garden. Both are full of sensible and practical advice, imbued with Lawson’s charming philosophy. For Lawson, working in the orchard and garden was the ideal kind of rest and relaxation: ‘For whereas every other pleasure commonly fills some one of our senses, and that only, with delight, this makes all our senses swim in pleasure, and that with infinite variety joyned with no lesse commodity’. |
William Lawson (1553/4-1635) was the vicar of Ormesby, a country parish in Yorkshire. First and foremost a religious man who carried out his clerical duties most diligently, he was obviously also a keen gardener with considerable land. A man of some learning, he evidently read widely on agriculture and gardening, and his two works are also scattered with references to the classics. When he died he willed ‘all my latine books & mie English books of contraversie’ to his son William, which suggests that he may well have owned a relatively substantial library of books for the period. |
A New Orchard and Garden and The Country Housewife’s Garden were Lawson’s only published works. They were first printed together in 1618* and proved popular enough to warrant further reprints in quick succession. The copy featured here is a later, enlarged edition from 1648, part of A Way to Get Wealth, a compilation of treatises on husbandry and other household matters by Gervase Markham.Lawson dedicated his work to Sir Henry Belloses (Belasyse), a prominent Yorkshire baronet who was also an orchard enthusiast. In his dedication, Lawson thanks him for the profit he received from his ‘learned Discourse of Fruit trees’. However, in the preface following he is at pains to point out that his book is in fact a product of ‘my meer and sole experience, without respect to any former-written Treatise’. It is a result of forty eight years experience in working a northern garden. Occasionally in the text he refers to the difficulties of this environment. He advises his fellow northerners, for instance, to ‘meddle not with Apricockes nor Peaches, nor scarcely with Quinces, which will not like our cold parts’. This book can therefore be credited with being the first to deal with the northern garden. |
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The heading preceding the first chapter sums up the aim of Lawson’s New Orchard: ‘the best, sure and readiest way to make a good orchard and garden’. He begins with the traits to be sought in a good gardener should the reader be in the position to employ one: he should be honest, and certainly not ‘an idle, or lazie lubber’. If lucky enough to have the services of such a paragon, ‘God shall crowne the labours of his hands with joyfulnesse, and make the clouds drop fatnesse upon your trees’. For those who have to roll up their own sleeves, however, Lawson has written this book and ‘gathered these rules’ together. |
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The work goes on to deal comprehensively with all aspects of orchard management, covering: the kind of soil required (‘blacke, fat, mellow, cleane and well tempered’) and how to improve it; the best kind of site and how to protect it with fencing, or even better, ‘quickwood, and moates or ditches of water’; how to deal with ‘annoyances’ such as animals, birds, thieves, disease and the weather (not to mention the evils of a ‘carelesse master’); how to plant, space and prune your trees; the different types of fruit trees and bushes and their qualities; and how to gather, store and preserve the fruits of your labours. As Lawson sums up, ‘skill and pains, bring fruitful gains’. |
Lawson’s advice is eminently sensible. His instructions are clear and obviously draw on the considerable personal skills he accrued over his lifetime. However, it is the underlying philosophy of the author and his frequent lyricism and rhetorical eloquence that still makes this book such a pleasure to read today. This is apparent even in the most technical of chapters, where Lawson deals with topics such as raising sets, planting and grafting. A typical example is found in the section on pruning where he emphasises the need for man’s intervention by drawing a comparison with an uncultivated wood full of neglected, rotten, and dying trees, as he rails: ‘What rottennesse? what hollownes? what dead armes? withered tops? curtalled trunks? what loads of mosses? drouping boughes? & dying branches shall you see everywhere?’ |
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But Lawson’s sentiments rarely override his practicality. For instance, he devotes a considerable section to the measures required to counteract the ‘whole Army of mischiefs’ that plague the gardener. He ruefully acknowledges that ‘Good things have most enemies’ and catalogues a whole host of enemies ranging from deer to moles (they will ‘anger you’). He even advises that sparrowhawks are useful against plundering garden birds: although he acknowledges the delight of hearing blackbirds and thrushes singing on a May morning, ‘I had rather want their company than my fruit’.Despite his problem with flying cherry thieves, the overall impression gained from reading the book is that Lawson’s ideal garden would be a delight. As well as abundant fruit trees, there would be sweet scented flowers, humming bees (whom, he assures us, do not sting their friends), beautiful ornaments, silver sounding music, broad and long walkways, a maze, and even a bowling alley for exercise. |
The satisfied gardener should ‘view now with delight the works of your owne hands, your fruit trees of all sorts, loaden with sweet blossomes, and fruit of all tasts, operations and colours: your trees standing in comely order which way soever you look … Your borders on every side hanging and drooping with Feberries, Raspberries, Barberries, Currents, and the roots of your trees powdred with Strawberries, red, white and green, what a pleasure is this?’Having gathered in the harvest, Lawson recommends a period of reflection: ‘Now pause with your selfe, and view the end of all your labours in an Orchard: unspeakable pleasure, and infinite commodity’. But although the yield will hopefully be profitable, the means is not all about the end: ‘For what is greedy gaine, without delight, but moyling, and turmoyling in slavery? But comfortable delight, with content, is the good of every thing, and the patterne of heaven … And who can deny but the principall end of an orchard, is the honest delight of one wearied with the works of his lawfull calling?’ |
The book is also loved for its woodcut illustrations. In the preface, Lawson explains that no expense was spared in producing these for the ‘common good’: much ‘cost and care’ was bestowed by the publisher in having them produced by ‘the best Artizan’.The illustration depicting the ‘overall plan for the form of a garden’ is a simplified view of a typical late Elizabethan garden. The overall rectangular shape is split into six square sections set over three levels or terraces, negotiated via flights of stairs and intercrossing walkways. Its design demonstrates the Tudors love for symmetry and patterns. A mount (‘M’) at each corner overlooks the garden and the countryside beyond it, and a fountain plays at one of the walkway crossings. There are two still houses in the top corners (‘N’). The individual gardens within gardens are variously landscaped with trees, kitchen gardens, flowerbeds, knots, and topiary (signified by the horse and sword wielding man). A river runs at the top and bottom of the garden. The presence of water nearby is lauded as being both practical (in providing moisture for thirsty trees and in acting as a barrier) and pleasant for sport, for ‘you might sit in your mount and angle a peckled trout, sleighty eel or some other daintie fish’. According to Malcolm Thick, this garden would have been considered old-fashioned by the most fashion-conscious gentlemen of the early Seventeenth Century who were more interested in Italian influenced grand ‘Renaissance’ gardens, preferably laid out by a Continental gardeners. But is should be remembered that Lawson was hearkening back to the 1570s when writing his work, and the gardens he favoured ‘had an intimacy never regained once the impact of the high Italian Renaissance and the French grand manner reached England’ (Miles Hadfield, quoted by Thick). |
The second work in Lawson’s book, The Country Housewife’s Companion, lacks the philosophical discourses of its companion volume. This is perhaps because it was written specifically for women (‘my country housewife, not skillful artists’), and its simple tone is therefore pitched at a less learned readership. Nonetheless, it frequently refers to the text of The New Orchard and it seems that the two books were intended to be read and used together.The book is split into a series of short chapters that offer advice on a number of topics, including the soil and layout of the ideal garden, the properties of various herbs and plants, general rules for gardening, and the husbandry of bees. |
Lawson suggests that each household should have two gardens: a kitchen garden and a flower garden. He explains that the distinction between the two does not have to be perfect but that ‘your garden flowers shall suffer some disgrace if among them you intermingle onions, parsnips,etc.’ The division is for both practical and aesthetic reasons: that ‘for your kitchen’s use must yield daily roots or other herbs and suffer deformity’ while ‘the herbs of both will not be both alike ready at one time either for gathering or removing’.The flower (or ‘summer’) garden could be set out in in squares and knots. Lawson recommends using a mix of flowers and herbs, mentioning roses, rosemary, lavendar, hyssop, sage, thyme, cowslips, peonies, daisies, clove-gilliflowers, pinks, and lilies. Several illustrations of patterns for knot gardens are provided, but Lawson concedes that for these ‘speciall formes in squares’ there are as many devices as ‘gardeners braines’ and prefers to ‘leave every house-wife to herself.’ |
plans for knots (pages 80-82 [ie 81]) |
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This work also provides detailed information about bee-keeping, covering everything from constructing a hive to extracting honey. This again was based on personal experience, Lawson telling us that he was a ‘Bee-master’ for many years. He goes against conventional wisdom in preferring a straw hive for his bees over a wooden one, but says that he recommends them for ‘nimblenesse, closenesse, warmnesse and drynesse.’ He emphasises the tenderness of bees on several occasions, saying, for example, that the ‘nesh Bee can neither abide cold or wet’.Two short pamphlets are appended to the end of Lawson’s work: A most profitable new treatise, from approved experience of the art of propagating plants by Simon Harward (pages 109-123) and The husbandmans fruitfull orchard (pages 125-134). Harward’s work is an in-depth explanation of the methodology for layering and grafting trees. The last work is a common sense guide to picking, packing, transporting and preserving fruit. |
We do not know who originally owned this copy of the book, but the volume does bear intriguing glimpses of its past life. An annotation in an Italic hand at the foot of the main title-page indicates that the book was in Durham and purchased for six shillings at some unspecified point in its history. This inscription is followed by a more obscure annotation – possibly the initials ‘J.G.’, the initials ‘I.G. also being blind stamped on the front board of the binding. |
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Glasgow University Library acquired the book as part of the collection of John Ferguson, purchased in 1920. Ferguson (1838-1916) was a Professor of Chemistry at Glasgow University from 1874 to 1915. Although his library is justly renowned for its strengths in Alchemy and Chemistry, it also contains many interesting books and manuals on practical topics such as gardening, husbandry and cookery. According to a note in the front pastedown, Ferguson bought this book on 16 February, 1906.This book will be on display in the Special Collections foyer (on level 12 of Glasgow University Library), along with a small selection of other gardening books, until the end of September 2006.‘To conclude, what joy may you have, that you living to such an age, shall see the blessings of God on your labours while you live, and leave behind you to heirs or successors (for God will make heires) such a work, that many ages after your death, shall record your love to their Country? And the rather, when you consider to what length of time your worke is like to last’. |
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Octavo 137 x 88 mm A-D8, A-Y8, Aa-Ee8 (Lacking Ee7 and 8, undoubtedly blank.) First editions, each of the two works is one of three or four undated variants, attributed to the year 1549. This copy is bound in nineteenth century calfskin, the hinges starting to crack but holding strong.
The Encyclopedia Britannica calls Hugh Latimer’s sermons, “classics of their kind. Vivid, racy, terse in expression; profound in religious feeling, sagacious in their advice on human conduct. To the historical student they are of great value as a mirror of the social and political life of the period.”
(Colophon (leaf cc3v): … Imp[re]ssa Colonie impensis Henrici Quentell. Anno salutis .M.ccccc. Die .xviij. mensis Iulij)
San Raimundo de Peñafort; compiled the Decretals of Gregory IX, which remained a major part of Church law until 1917. 
This is a wonderful copy which is well preserved. Bound in contemporary Flemish blind stamped calf over wooden boards, rebacked with old spine, endpapers renewed, manuscript author’s name on fore-edge. Fine blind-stamped panelled calf over beveled wooden boards with pineapple stamps in lattice pattern, within a border of double eagle and round rose stamps. Clasps and catches missing the boards have metal strips .
first theologians to be influenced by Aristotle. Preceding as he did the Aristotelian revival, William was largely influenced by St. Augustine, St. Anselm of Canterbury, Richard and Hugh of Saint–Victor, and Avicenna. He is considered the first medieval theologian to develop a systematic treatise on free will, the virtues, and the natural law. His Summa Aurea shows an intellectual awareness and insistence on the physical which had not been seen in earlier philosophers. Both in method and in content it shows a considerable amount of originality, although, like all the Summæ of the early thirteenth century, it is influenced by the manner and method of the Lombard. William was probably a student of the Parisian canon and humanist Richard of St. Victor but the teacher whom William was most profoundly influenced was Praepositinus, or Prevostin, of Cremona, Chancellor of the University of Paris from 1206 to 1209. William was, in turn, the teacher of the Dominican, John of Treviso, one of the first theologians of the Order of Preachers. The importance of the “Summa Aurea” is enhanced by the fact that it was one of the first Summæ composed after the introduction of the metaphysical and physical treatises of Aristotle.
Gassendi’s “Institutio Astronomica,” has been called the first modern astronomy textbook. It is divided into three sections: the first details the so-called theory of the spheres, the second describes astronomical theory, and the third discusses the conflicting ideas of Brahe and Copernicus. The present edition is important for the inclusion of two seminal works of telescopic astronomy: Galileo’s “Sidereus Nuncius” (first ed. Venice, 1610), in which announces his discovery of Jupiter’s moons, and Kepler’s “Dioptrice” (first ed. Augsburg, 1611), Kepler’s brilliant explanation of how the telescope works.Galileo’s Discoveries with the Telescope:”Galileo’s ‘Starry Messenger’ contains some of the most important discoveries in scientific literature. Learning in the summer of 1609 that a device for making distant objects seem close and magnified had been brought to Venice from Holland, Galileo soon constructed a spy-glass of his own which he demonstrated to the notables of the Venetian Republic, thus earning a large increase in his salary as professor of mathematics at Padua. Within a few months he had a good telescope, magnifying to 30 diameters, and was in full flood of astronomical observation.”Through his telescope Galileo saw the moon as a spherical, solid, mountainous body very like the earth- quite different from the crystalline sphere of conventional philosophy. He saw numberless stars hidden from the naked eye in the constellations and the Milky Way.
Galileo that he shared his Copernican ideas. But he never had to suffer the anxieties of the great Florentine. His choice of Epicurean atomism as a framework for the exposition of his ideas appears to have been more a revolt against Scholasticism than the expression of any profound conviction. Moreover, his erudition embraced all doctrines, including those of the church fathers, whereas he rejected such important elements of Epicureanism as the vertical fall and swerving of atoms.“Gassendi’s eclecticism was that of a skeptic assured that no one doctrine penetrates to the essence of things–indeed, this is a constant aspect of his thought. Yet he proceeded as would a historian for whom the human mind had exhausted all possibilities, in contrast to Descartes, who wrote as if unaware that anyone had ever done philosophy before him. Gassendi’s first published letter reveals an extreme diversity in what he chose to adopt and a great deal of personal assurance; he rejected only dogmatism, even when Epicurean. Bound by no fixed viewpoint, he could more easily go along with the traditions of his peasant milieu. If his morality preached happiness, his method for attaining it was conformist. A worldly type like Saint-Evermond thought him timid. A fanatic like J.-B. Morin consigned him to the flames. Descartes accused him of nothing less that materialism–thereby contributing more than slightly to the suspicion in which he was held. Gassendi, in turn, treated Descartes as a dogmatist.” (DSB)
though some of them did it very unwillingly. Among these was Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655) who in his numerous writings often praises the Copernican system, and says that he would have preferred it if it had not been pronounced contrary to Scripture, for which reason he was obliged to adopt the Tychonic system.” (Dreyer)“[Gassendi] was one of the most eminent philosophers and savants of France, and one who added lustre to almost every branch of learning, being at the same time historian, naturalist, mathematician, astronomer, logician, Hellenist, metaphysician, and critic; and all this at a period when the sciences had scarcely emerged from their infancy. He is regarded as the most universal genius of that age. The first disciple of Bacon in France, he was also the correspondent and friend of Galileo and Kepler.“The mind of Gassendi was penetrating and refined, his style elegant and clear, his manners simple and full of amenity. In his efforts to subvert the inveterate prejudices of the Schoolmen with respect to Aristotle and Epicurus, he has displayed a union of vast erudition, sound criticism, and mental independence.” (Thomas)
telescopic optics using a telescope borrowed from Duke Ernest of Cologne. The resulting manuscript was completed in September 1610 and published as Dioptrice in 1611. In it, Kepler set out the theoretical basis of double-convex converging lenses and double-concave diverging lenses—and how they are combined to produce a Galilean telescope—as well as the concepts of real vs. virtual images, upright vs. inverted images, and the effects of focal length on magnification and reduction. He also described an improved telescope—now known as the astronomical or Keplerian telescope—in which two convex lenses can produce higher magnification than Galileo’s combination of convex and concave lenses.
thick boards. Clasps missing, catchplates present. Foxing throughout, with some red and green ink dots along edges. Front pastedown shows slight signs of water damage. Occasional small red stains on text block (e.g. E3v and Q5), likely from the books’ rubricator, but otherwise a clean text block. “Summa de veritate celeberrimi doctoris sancti Thome Aquinatis…”First written around 1256, Thomas Aquinas’ “Disputed Questions on Truth” defends “the view that truth consists of an adequation between the intellect and a thing… Most importantly, he develops a notion of truth of being (what might be called “ontological truth”) along with truth of the intellect (what might be called “logical truth”)” (Wippel, 295)
Sections include: Truth; God’s Knowledge; Ideas; The Divine Word; Providence; Predestination; The Book of Life; The Knowledge of Angels; The Communication of Angelic Knowledge; The Mind; The Teacher; Prophecy; Rapture; Faith; Higher and Lower Reason; Synderesis; Conscience; The Knowledge of the First Man in the State of Innocence; Knowledge of the Soul After Death; The Knowledge of Christ; Good; The Tendency to Good and the Will; God’s Will; Free Choice; Sensuality; The Passions of the Soul; Grace; The Justification of Sinners; and The Grace of Christ.
Notes, Annotations more notes translations …
261J Marcus Tullius Cicero edited by Jacques-Louis Strébée( 1480-1550)
M. Tullii Ciceronis ad M. Brutum oratorJacobi Lodoici Strebaei commentariis ab authore ipso recognitis illustratus.
Parisiis : ex officina Michaëlis. Vascosani, 1540 $4,200
Small Folio 8 X 6 1/2 inches . *6, A-08, P4, Q6 complete ([12], 224, [20]) .
Bound in modern carta rustic ,recently resewin on three leather cords It is bound in the
This copy has Extensive sixteenth-century MS marginal and interlineal annotations, underlinings etc., throughout; in Latin. There is inter linear notes on every section of Cicero’s text but very few notes on Strébée’s commentary.
Of the 224 pages, about 150 have notes in a small and sometimes very faint sixteenth century hand.
On the Printed title there is quite a bit of pen-starts and doodles as well as faint ownership signatures . ( There is a copy in the University of Manchester Library UML copy at R229539, whisk is catalogued as having extensive notes as well.)
Before the Printed text the annotator has written an “Argumentum”
Quoted from Tore Janson (see below for citation)
Orator
We have now to deal with another important preface by Cicero, that to Orator. It begins thus:
(Orat. 1.1) Vtrum difficilius aut maius esset negare tibi saepius idem roganti an efficere id quod rogares diu multumque, Brute, dubitaui. Nam et negare ei quem unice diligerem cuique me carissimum esse sentirem, praesertim et iusta petenti et praeclara cupienti, durum admodum mihi uidebatur, et suscipere tantam rem, quantam non modo facultate consequi difficile esset sed etiam cogitatione complecti, uix arbitrabar esse eius qui uereretur reprehensionem doctorum atque prudentium.
23 P. 196: “Ainsi donc, les trois prooemia semblent bien subordonnés à une unité supérieure, grâce à un ensemble de thèmes repris sur différents plans.”
Again we have a personal preface with a dedication. There is also a request from the dedicatee, here of even greater importance than in the prefaces to Rhetorica ad Herennium and De Oratore. The entire preface is about Cicero’s reaction to Brutus’ request for a work on the accom plished orator. Cicero pretends that he has been put in a dilemma by being asked for this. For while he feels himself obliged by his friendship with Brutus to comply with his request, he also finds the task so great that he does not believe himself capable of performing it in a satis factory way.
Here the theme of a request is for the first time exploited in the way that later became so enormously popular. With this theme, the author can emphasize as much as he wants both the difficulty of the task and his dependence on the dedicatee. It is worth while considering Cicero’s reasons for giving this form to the preface of Orator.
(Orat. 1.2) Quid enim est maius quam, cum tanta sit inter oratores bonos dissimilitudo, iudicare quae sit optima species et quasi figura dicendi?
But Cicero is also considering the direct relation between himself and his work. The greater the task is made to seem, the more natural it is that Cicero should hesitate before undertaking it:
24 See for instance Clarke pp. 80ff.
{ibid.) Quod quoniam me saepius rogas, aggrediar non tam perficiendi spe quam experiendi uoluntate.
The author is here being modest about his own capacity, yet it is hardly likely that Cicero entertained such a fear of his subject as he pretends. As Curtius has pointed out {Eur. Lit. p. 93) we have here an evident instance of affected modesty.25 This is the first time we meet with this phenomenon, to which a great deal of attention will be paid in the following.
What, then, do these statements of Cicero really amount to? First he emphasizes as strongly as possible the importance and the difficulty of his subject. Then he expresses a modest doubt as to whether he is capable of complying with the request. This doubt must not be interpreted to mean that the author is not sure of his own importance as a writer. Cicero never questions his greatness in that respect, least of all in Orator. The real import of these sentences, therefore, is approximately this: The great Cicero has set about an unusually difficult task: Behold! According to the rules of rhetoric, the reader’s attention may be excited by laying stress on the importance of the subject. So Cicero’s pretended diffidence aims in reality at pointing out to the reader how well the author has succeeded.
The two themes of the preface hitherto dealt with, elevation of the subject and doubts about the author’s ability to treat it, are intimately connected with each other. But for logical reasons they cannot form a closed unit. For if the subject is so difficult that the author does not believe that he will accomplish it, why should he grapple with it? Even if the modesty is affected and not real, it will seem ridiculous unless the author adds something to make his action seem reasonable. Consequently these two themes have to be modified by a statement to the effect that the author is compelled to write the work. This compulsion, for Cicero as for his innumerable successors, is embodied in the request from the dedicatee. The preface ends as follows:
{Orat. 1.2) Malo enim, cum studio tuo sim obsecutus, desiderari a te pruden- tiam meam quam, si id non fecerim, beneuolentiam.
This solves the dilemma we talked about in connexion with the first words of the preface. The author declares himself willing to be guided by the wish of his friend and not by his own doubts as to the possibility of performing the task.
25 Curtius* and Norden’s term is “affektierte Bescheidenheit”.
So Cicero, like the author of Rhetorica ad Herennium, makes his friendship a reason for writing. To appreciate this theme one has to consider the importance of friendship in Roman society by this time. Over the past fifty years there has been a great deal of research into the unique social and political structure of late republican Rome. The starting point was the fundamental book by Geizer, Die Nobilität der römischen Republik (1912), especially the second part (pp.43-116), where he treated “die sozialen Voraussetzungen der Nobilitätsherr- schaft”. Later research into friendship is surveyed in a recent book by Lossman, where the friendship between Cicero and Caesar is studied in the light of research into friendship in general. Another survey, from a different point of view, is made by Neuhauser (especially pp. 9-11), who has studied the pertinent concept of patronus. Wistrand (Chapter 2) has made a most interesting exposition of the subject, unfortunately available in Swedish only. I refer to these works and their biblio graphies for detailed information. Here I can only give a short account of the Roman concept of friendship according to modern research.
Roman society, Gelzer says, was interwoven with manifold bilateral connexions between the citizens, “Nah- und Treuverhältnisse”. These connexions were of paramount importance in the life of society. Among other things, their number and their strength decided the success of every politician; for every Roman citizen was bound to one or more of the important men of the state. In the elections he voted for the men he was bound to, and also supported them in other ways as required. So the politician who had tied to him the greatest number of citizens had the greatest chance of being elected to the offices he wanted. The groups of interconnected persons tended to be very large, and their heads were the very great men, like Pompeius, Crassus and Caesar. The political battles of the late Republic were fought between such politicians backed by vast numbers of people connected to them by ties of friend ship and fidelity. Of course the great politicians might also become connected to each other by ties of the same sort, whereupon their large bands of supporters co-operated. Such an agreement, on the highest level, was the first triumvirate.
We see that these
can be established both between an inferior and a superior and between equals. In the first case the parties may be called cliens and patronus, respectively, or they case. In both cases the fundamental mechanism is the same. One of the may be styled amici, which, of course, is the normal word in the second parties receives a service or a gift from the other and thereby becomes
bound to repay this by performing such services as may be demanded from him. The prerequisite for the origination and function of this system is that there was in society a deeply rooted conception of every man’s duty to repay the services he had received, or in other words to show his gratitude through action.
So Cicero appeals to one of the fundamental moral concepts of the Romans, the duty of showing gratia to and doing officia for an amicus. At the same time, however, his relationship to Brutus, his dedicatee, was in fact a friendship also in the more emotional sense. Cicero was very capable of making real friends, and his friendship with Brutus was no doubt the most profound one of his later years.27 The ties between them were such that Brutus might well have had enough influence on Cicero to induce him to write a book, especially as he was writing all the time anyhow. So there was in this case not only the general reasons for talking about a friend’s demand, but also really sincere friendship between author and dedicatee.
Finally the subject matter of the book is such that it was natural that Brutus should be interested in getting Cicero to treat it. For the friends had quite different opinions about what constituted the accomplished speaker. Unlike Cicero, Brutus stood for a severe atticism, and there was a great dispute on this matter between, primarily, Brutus and Calvus on one side and Cicero on the other. Orator was a contribution to this discussion. In spite of these controversies it is mainly the friend Brutus who is addressed in the book, whereas the opponent Brutus is attacked
26 Beneuolentia was the word used by Cicero to denote the affection for an amicus. Cf. Lossman p. 102 n. 1, and p. 106.
27 On this see, apart from the extant letters, the still very readable chapter on Brutus in Boissier, Ciceron et ses amis.
only cautiously and indirectly; for by this time Cicero had the strongest reasons, both political and emotional, for keeping Brutus as a friend.
The preface to Orator enables the author to stress how great and difficult his subject is, how he has hesitated to tackle it, and how amicably disposed and ready to render service he is. Cicero, as we have seen, had special reasons for emphasizing all this. On the other hand, practically every author presenting himself in a personal preface wishes to lay stress upon the same things. Consequently it is not astonishing that the line of thought in this preface has been repeated, with small changes, in so many later works.
Several important elements in the preface to Orator are the same as in the prefaces studied above, to Rhetorica ad Herennium and De Ora tore, namely the request from a dedicatee, the praise of the subject, and the emphasis on friendship with the dedicatee. In Orator, Cicero has on the whole used the same skeleton of content as in De Oratore, though with changes to suit his aims and his situation. On the one hand there is nothing about predecessors, and the value of his own work is not emphasized in the same way as before. On the other, he clearly expresses his unwillingness to treat the subject, and in this connexion mentions the dilemma in which he is put through the request. These modifications result in the preface of Orator being more logically coherent than the introductions of the earlier works. Even if this preface is adapted to the actual situation of the author, it also seems to me to have more of a fixed scheme in it than have its predecessors.
Tore Janson ACTAUNIVERSITATIS STOCKHOLMIENSIS Studia Latina Stockholmiensia
XIII LATIN PROSE PREFACES Studies in Literary Conventions By TORE JANSON ALMQVIST &WIKSELL STOCKHOLM GÖTEBORG UPPSALA (INAUGURALDISSERTATION by due permission of the Faculty of Arts and Letters of the University of Stockholm to be publicly discussed in lecture room С on Friday, May 22, 1964, at 10 a.m. for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy)
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