is Curator of Manuscripts at the Folger. She loves convincing people that they can read English secretary hand and sharing quirky and unexpected collection finds and stories. — View all posts by Heather Wolfe
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The mixture of hands is interesting: secretary in the detail from the letter from Francis Kinnersley to Edmund Waring, March 21, ca. 1618; italic (or close) in the detail from letter from Francis Kinnersley to Walter Bagot, 1621(?). Folger MS L.a.589 (or is this Lettice writing–since, as a woman, she likely learned italic ). Did Walter deliberately use different hands? Does the variation suggest that Walter wrote the comments at different periods of his life? Or could multiple people have read and commented on the family’s letters at once?I’ve been dealing with this mixing of hands in another context–the hands of French immigrants and their English-educated children and grandchildren in the 1640s and 50s.
Thanks for your observation, Katie. Walter seems to have used mostly italic for his endorsements and aphorisms on the address leaves, and exclusively secretary for the texts of his letters. Perhaps the few times he annotates the address leaves in secretary, it is because he is in letter-writing mode, rather than letter-organizing mode?
I believe the difficult word read as “searse(?)” is in fact “fearse” i.e. fierce.
These two lines come from Barnaby Googe’s 1561 translation of Book 1 (Aries) of the “Zodiacus Vitae” by Italian poet Marcellus Palingenius Stellatus:
My mind with fury fierce inflam’d
Of late, I know not how,
Doth burn Parnassus’ hills to see
Adorn’d with laurel bough.
etc
Apparently this poem was placed on the first list of banned books produced by the Catholic Church!
See http://books.google.co.nz/books?id=6fOmKxxfGo4C&pg=PA133&lpg=PA133&source=bl&ots=giNtJUKH9J&sig=F1VUQwXWcLygIvFYsrpREpZvMAs&hl=en&sa=X&ei=MLAsU6T9OMnZigfisIDwBw&ved=0CCgQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false for the poem, and https://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathCulture/Zodiac.html for the poet.
Dear Philip,
Thank you so much for locating the source of this poem for us! That makes total sense–I don’t have my notes to hand, but I remember an aphorism from another letter, not mentioned above, coming from this same source.
Comments
The mixture of hands is interesting: secretary in the detail from the letter from Francis Kinnersley to Edmund Waring, March 21, ca. 1618; italic (or close) in the detail from letter from Francis Kinnersley to Walter Bagot, 1621(?). Folger MS L.a.589 (or is this Lettice writing–since, as a woman, she likely learned italic ). Did Walter deliberately use different hands? Does the variation suggest that Walter wrote the comments at different periods of his life? Or could multiple people have read and commented on the family’s letters at once?I’ve been dealing with this mixing of hands in another context–the hands of French immigrants and their English-educated children and grandchildren in the 1640s and 50s.
Katie Gucer — March 21, 2014
Thanks for your observation, Katie. Walter seems to have used mostly italic for his endorsements and aphorisms on the address leaves, and exclusively secretary for the texts of his letters. Perhaps the few times he annotates the address leaves in secretary, it is because he is in letter-writing mode, rather than letter-organizing mode?
Heather Wolfe — April 2, 2014
I believe the difficult word read as “searse(?)” is in fact “fearse” i.e. fierce.
These two lines come from Barnaby Googe’s 1561 translation of Book 1 (Aries) of the “Zodiacus Vitae” by Italian poet Marcellus Palingenius Stellatus:
My mind with fury fierce inflam’d
Of late, I know not how,
Doth burn Parnassus’ hills to see
Adorn’d with laurel bough.
etc
Apparently this poem was placed on the first list of banned books produced by the Catholic Church!
See http://books.google.co.nz/books?id=6fOmKxxfGo4C&pg=PA133&lpg=PA133&source=bl&ots=giNtJUKH9J&sig=F1VUQwXWcLygIvFYsrpREpZvMAs&hl=en&sa=X&ei=MLAsU6T9OMnZigfisIDwBw&ved=0CCgQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false for the poem, and https://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathCulture/Zodiac.html for the poet.
Philip Allfrey — March 21, 2014
Dear Philip,
Thank you so much for locating the source of this poem for us! That makes total sense–I don’t have my notes to hand, but I remember an aphorism from another letter, not mentioned above, coming from this same source.
Heather Wolfe — April 2, 2014