On the Difficulty of Correct Description of Books/Notes
NOTES.
[5] (1) The reader will find some account of the details of this persecution in 'Bentley's Miscellany' for July, 1852, and in the 'Athenæum' for May 27, 1848, and May 12, 1849. How completely the charges are to be attributed, in the first instance, to political and private malice, is now sufficiently known. "He was condemned." says the 'Times,' "for stealing books, many of which are now to be found in the very places from which he was said to have taken them; he was condemned for stealing books which he was proved to have bought of Messrs. Payne and Foss in London; he was condemned for stealing books which it was beyond the power of the French courts to identify, or even to describe correctly." All this we know to be true, with the exception of what is implied in the word even: correct description is no such every day matter.
[6] (2) The examiners of M. Libri's books found the Aldine Catullus of 1515, Venice, with what they read as "Bibliothecæ S. 10 in Casalibus Placentiæ" either stamped in old type, or in manuscript, (they could not tell which!) on the front leaf. The "S. 10." had they known how to read, would have been "S. Jo." and the whole would have shown that the book once belonged to the Library of the Convent of St. John of the Canals at Piacenza. They impute to M. Libri that he stamped these letters, first, to hide the marks of another stamp which they assert to have been erased, next, to pass off the work as printed at Piacenza. The terms in which they crow over their unanswerable proof, as they take it to be, that the book has been stolen, will perhaps be cited in bibliographical treatises for centuries to come: ". . . le titre annonçait une édition de Plaisance, et la bibliothèque [de Montpellier] avait perdu une édition de Venise . . . . Pour dissimuler les traces du grattage dont il a été parlé, on avait mis à la place de l'estampille ces mots, . . . . Bibbiothecæ S. io. in Casalibus Placentiæ. Manuscrits ou appliqués avec de l'ancienne fonte, ces caractères jouent l'impression. Mais la fraude ne pense pas à tout: tandis que le titre falsifie annonçait une èdition de Plaisance, la dernière page révélait une èdition de Venise . . . . . De tels faits ne se discutent pas, ils s'exposent." The supposition that a practiced bibliographer, desiring to falsify the place of printing, would forget that it is almost always at the end in very old books, is more amusing to those who are looking at the last pages of such books every day, than those who do not look into them can easily imagine. Their proverb ought to have been, la fraude ne pense à rien.
(3) We are not indebted, throughout this paper, to any one instance which was introduced in evidence before the Commissioners, either by ourselves or others.
[8] (4) If Granger had only looked into the 'Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors' by Horace Walpole, to whom his own work is dedicated, he would have seen an accurate title page of this work.
[9] (5) The best chance any reader will have of seeing this remarkable precursor of Copernicus, will be by looking for the second edition (Basle, 1566, folio) of Copernicus himself, to which it is attached. We have never seen either of the two separate and previous editions of the tract of Rheticus; but a letter from Gassarius of Lindau, prefixed to that of 1566, mentions the receipt of the first edition from Dantzig, and is dated 1540. So that neither Lalande nor Weidler is wrong on this point.
(6) There is reason to suppose that foreign books of second-rate name, travelled from one country to another, during the earlier years of printing, in larger numbers than now; that is, immediately after publication. At the present time, in the case of a book of no great note, published in France or Germany, hardly more than two or three straggling copies will forth with find their way to England. But in 1670-80, the bookseller always imported immediately: and the mathematical bookseller complained that he could not sell more that twenty or thirty, until the book had gained reputation, in a manner which implied that even this state of things was a falling off.
(7) The reader should be aware that both Rheticus and Copernicus propounded the theory of the earth's motion only as an hypothesis, to save appearances: using this phrase in the old sense, though most historians suppose that they also intended the thing signified by its more modern meaning. The phrase to save appearances is a cast off phrase of physics; we now say to explain phenomena. Thus the supposition that the earth turns on its axis preserves the diurnal appearances of the heavens, and makes them follow: and the old explanation does the same. Copernicus contends for the supposition of the earth's motion as the most simple mode of deducting and calculating the celestial phenomena: leaving the question of its actual truth or falsehood open. The utmost extent to which he commits himself on this point is (lib. 1. cap. 8) the affirmation, that on the balance of à priori reasons, the motion of the earth, especially the diurnal motion, is more probable than its stability.
(8) Castiglione, who published Newton's Opuscula, knew that the Optics were published in 1704, and had a copy of 1706. He took for granted (pref. p. vii.) that there could not be two editions so near in time, and therefore announced that by the printer's negligence the edition of 1704 had 1706 on the title page. The fact is that there was an English edition in 1704, and a Latin one in 1706.
[10] (9) Maurolycus, in 1553, recieved a pension expressly to enable him to publish his works: which makes it likely that some of those previous published had been delayed, and the more so as there was remarkable delay even after the receipt of the pension.
(10) The Cardinal's argument was founded on the non-existence of a centre, deduced from the non-existence of a circumference, to the universe. A book might be written on the manner in which purely subjective notions of the centre and its necessary properties influenced the arguments on this subject, from those of Cusa to those of the Sieur de Beaulieu (1676), who says that the presumption of Copernicus lead him to "advance in geometry a proposition as absurd as it is against faith and reason, by making the circumference of a circle fixed and immoveable, and the centre moveable, on which geometrical principle he maintained the stability of the sun, and the motion of the earth."
(11) Weidler, in the History, gives a correct account of the work: in the Bibliography, which refers to the History (p. 337), he makes the mass of its contents to belong to the subsequent edition of 1561, and retains only the last three treatises in that of 1551. Lalande copies him, together with the reference "p. 337," and thus again seems to mistake the matter of his own reference.
[11] (12) A difficulty of this kind is far from uncommon. An editor leaves us in doubt as to whether the numbering of the edition refers to impressions, or to the impressions which that particular editor had superintended. It would be well if the word impression were used in the general sense and edition in the particular. Thus, if A publish four editions of his own work, and if the commentator B then publish three more, there will be seven impressions in editions of four and three; and the sixth impression of A's work will be B's second edition.
(13) An English auctioneer was brought to give evidence upon the catalogue of the British Museum, who declared that cataloguing was not only easy, but very simple indeed, with the assistance of the librarians of the Museum, or of his own clerks. This gentleman was in no way to blame, but those who imagined that a sale catalogue would serve the purposes of literature: if the Museum library were to be sold off, his evidence would be valuable; but the librarians of the Museum must not be employed, as he proposed. For these gentlemen have no idea, with a volume of six tracts before them, of entering the title of the first, followed by "and five others:" moreover, they waste time in writing down names of authors in their nominative case, when the books before them give genitives; and in other ways.
[12] (14) The Anti-bibliographers contend that any one could make a catalogue who could write a titlepage: for they did not appear to be aware of the necessity of examining the book. In one book we have before us three treatises of Ozanam, on conic sections, loci, and equations, all Paris, 1687, 4to., all from one publisher, whose residence is described in one way in the first and second, and in another way in the third. Unless they are three separate works, or all one work, either of which is very possible, the presumption furnished by the title-pages is that 1 and 2 were published together, and 3 separately. But an examination of the prefaces shows that 1 was published separately, and afterwards 2 and 3 together.
(15) The recto and verso of a leaf are the two pages in the order in which they come. We must use the technical term here, because, if we had only said that on turning over the title the table of contents was seen, it might have been on the recto of the next leaf, and no reprint of the title could have been inferred.
[14] (16) This work must be considered as the accredited contemporary corporate early history of the Academy of Sciences; and Brunet (in his earliest edition at least) makes it head an article on this Academy.
[15] (17) We have heard of a case in which a publisher contracted to pay a certain sum to an author, on the appearance of a second edition. Forgetting this contract, and finding the book sell but slowly, he tried to help it forward by the bait of a new title-page, with the words second edition. The author immediately claimed his due, which the publisher was obliged to pay. O si sic omnia!
[17] (18) The author of this article showed, in his 'Arithmetical Books,' that there are two commencements of this edition. Prince Boncompagni, to whose researches the early scientific bibliography of Italy is much indebted, and will be more, has since found a third.
(19) Particularly (No. 12, p. 378) a letter addressed by Mr. Panizzi to Lord Ellesmere, the chairman, at the commencement of the proceedings: this letter ought to be republished in a separate form.