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Politics and Men of Learning in England, 1540–16401
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2009
Extract
The antiquary, professed collector of the manuscripts and records of the past, is popularly ranked with the harmless butterfly-collector. Lytton Strachey characterized him as an “amiable muddler,” and Alexander Pope pilloried his dreary obscurantism.
But who is he in closet close y-pent
Of sober face, with learned dust besprent?
Right well mine eyes arede the myster wight
On parchment scraps y-fed and Wormius hight.
To future ages may thy dulness last
As thou preservst the dulness of the past.
There dim in clouds, the poring scholiasts mark,
Wits who, like owls, see only in the dark,
A lumber-house of books in every head,
For ever reading, never to be read.
These opinions are peculiarly shortsighted, for antiquarianism, the collection and study of old records, has been neither obscure nor harmless in its consequences. Hans Kohn and Carlton Hayes have made clear the considerable part played by antiquaries in stimulating a consciousness of nationalism, the most powerful public emotion of modern times.
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References
2 Dunciad, III, lines 185–194. Pope probably had no grievance against Olsus Wormius, the Danish antiquary, but found his name irresistible.
3 Kohn, Hans, The Idea of Nationalism (New York, 1944), Ch. VIIGoogle Scholar. Hayes, Carlton, Essays on Nationalism (New York, 1926), pp. 52–55Google Scholar.
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6 This manifests itself in the Brute legend, and in translations or editions of the parts of classical authors pertaining to Britain.
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8 MissSmith's, L. T. “Introduction” to her edition of The Itinerary of John Leland (London, 1907), I, p. ixGoogle Scholar. The commission itself has not been found, although there are references to it. Leland signed himself Antiquarius, but this does not mean that he claimed an official position.
9 “Leland's New-Years Gift,” a letter to Henry VIII, in MissSmith, L. T., op. cit., I, p. xxxviiiGoogle Scholar. Bale called the journey “laborious' in his printing of the letter in 1549.
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24 “Op. cit.,” Archacologta, I, p. iv.
25 The petition, signed by Sir John Dodderidge, Sir Robert Cotton and Sir James Lee, is printed in Ibid., pp. iv–v. The criticism of the narrow university curriculum, implied in the petition, was made by several others, among them, SirGilbert, Humphrey in “Queen Elizabethes Achademy,” Early English Text Society, Extra Series no. VIII, Furnivail, ed. (London, 1869), pp. 1–12Google Scholar. Camden implied a similar criticism in founding the first history professorship at Oxford in 1622. Moreover, the grand tour of the continent which in Stuart times was an almost mandatory part of a noble youth's education, was often justified on the ground that it gave the youth a knowledge of other countries and their history, and an experience of men and politics not obtainable in the universities.
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40 William Somner (1598–1669), the historian of Gavelkind, and of Canterbury, and commentator on the laws of Henry I, translated (but he did not publish) Lambarde's Archaionomia into English so “That such Gentlemen who understood only their mother tongue might not be ignorant of these fundamental constitutions.” Kennet, Life of Somner, quoted in Adams, E. N., op. cit., p. 61, note 3Google Scholar.
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57 Ibid., p. 198.
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59 Ibid., p. 158.
60 Ibid., p. 155.
61 Sir Simonds D'Ewes professed that he had planned to fit himself for the highest offices of state open to the common lawyer. But perceiving the impending ruin of “the Church of God and the Gospel” “I laid by all these lofty and aspiring hopes; and considering that advice of Jeremiah to Baruch (Jer. XLV. 5), that these were not times for God's children to seek great things in, I resolved to moderate my desires, and to prepare my way to a better life with the greater serenity of mind and reposedness of spirit, by avoiding those two dangerous rocks of avarice and ambition.” The Autobiography of Sir Simonds D'Ewes, Halliwell, J. O. ed. (London, 1845), I, pp. 306–307Google Scholar.
62 Palmer, W. M., John Layer (1586–1640) of Shepreth, Cambridgeshire, A Seventeenth-century Local Historian (Cambridge, 1935Google Scholar), gives an account of his work.
63 Carew, Richard, The Survey of Cornwall (London, 1723), pp. xviii–xixGoogle Scholar.
64 Ibid., p. 2.
65 Parks, George B., Richard Hakluyt and The English Voyages, ed. Williamson, J. A., Publication of the American Geographical Society, no. 10 (New York, 1928), pp. 126, 175Google Scholar. Taylor, E. G. R., Late Tudor and Early Stuart Ceorgraphy, 1583–1650 (London, 1934Google Scholar), and Tudor Ceography, 1485–1583 (London, 1930)Google Scholar, have valuable bibliographies and contain some interesting information about the contents of the libraries of such geographical and antiquarian collectors as John Dee, the Earl of Arundel and his son-in-law. Lord Lumley, Sir Thomas Smith and Samuel Purchas. The Hakluyt Society, following their patron's interests, has published many of the valuable sources in the history of English and European expansion.
66 The quotations from Halcluyl are in Robinson, C. N. and Leyland, John “The Literature of the Sea” in Cambridge History of English Literature (Cambridge, 1932), IV, pp. 83–4Google Scholar.
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75 Jordan, W. K., The Development of Religious Toleration in England (1603–1640) (Cambridge, 1936), pp. 479–80Google Scholar. The Selden Society has published many volumes of source material on English Legal History.
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80 John Selden, Hislorp of Tithes, Dedication.
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