This paper was delivered at the ‘Sitting on the Cat’ symposium on Renaissance Readers and Archives at the AHRC Centre for Editing Lives and Letters in June 2006

‘...Sometimes, as I work at a series of patent and close rolls, I have a queer sensation; the dead entries begin to be alive. It is rather like the experience of sitting down in one’s chair and finding that one has sat on the cat...’ Ways of Medieval Life and Thought

Cut-throat Lines and Scholarly Signs: Marking up the Interpretatio

The cat that I’ve discovered I’m sitting on and have chosen to talk about today is an annotated book which has spent the last 300 years in the Wren Library, at Trinity College, Cambridge. Having been used to a microfilm version of the material I’m researching, I found the Wren Library itself a striking place in which to re-approach the original, to discover the unexpected, with its limewood carvings on the ends of the book cases, the marble busts, black and white tiled floor, and the rotating book rest designed by Wren.

I was immediately struck by the smallness of the book. It’s easy to get used to the enlarged photocopied pages, taken from the micro-film, that are so helpful for close examination of the marginalia and to rather forget that, although I know it’s an octavo volume, it is really small. Inside the volume, the many underlinings and hand-written notes contribute to the impression of a book very closely read and very carefully written in.

[LANDSCAPE 1] The excitement offered by these close encounters sometimes comes from small unexpected discoveries, (not even considering the content yet) for example, where ink from notes made on a left hand page has been blotted on the facing page, particularly where a descender has retained a little more ink than usual. There’s a hint, perhaps, that the page was turned before the ink was dry,..that the next marginal note couldn’t wait! While these are small and somewhat speculative details, they suggest an immediacy, a presence, and an enjoyment not offered by some reproduced versions, and certainly not available from the microfilm. [here’s a challenge perhaps for some ‘scratch and sniff’ technology to take its place in our online editorial projects? Or perhaps it’s just my pipedream that Heston Blumenthal joins CELL].

This specific book was brought to my attention after I took part in the 2003 CELL masterclass led by Anthony Grafton, in which we examined some of Gabriel Harvey’s marginalia, and responses to the seminal work by Profs Grafton and Jardine, which has inspired so much scholarly focus on the last quarter of the sixteenth century.

The site of my interest in Gabriel Harvey’s annotations is the Interpretatio linguarum, its full title translating as the (admittedly less than snappy) Interpretation of Languages, Or, On the Method of Translating and Explicating Sacred and Profane Authors, in Three Books. It is a unique work. A Latin treatise on the theory and practice of translation, the closest we have to an ‘encyclopedia of doctrine on translation’ in the sixteenth century. 1 Its author, Laurence Humphrey, marvels that his age had not produced such a work before, a striking claim for originality even within conventional prefatory rhetoric. 2 Humphrey was a protestant academic, a fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, who, in exile during the reign of the catholic queen Mary, found scholarly sympathy and a livelihood as a copy editor for printers in Zurich and Basle. His Interpretatio was issued in 1559 from Froben’s press in Basle.

Whilst setting out his methodology for achieving proficiency in translation, Humphrey participates in some of the major discourses of his day. He employs the tradition of humanist classical learning in a rallying call for the development of vernacular literary translation. He expresses his views on the educational programme required in England, revealing his definition of the perfect (and implicitly protestant) translator as a development of classical and humanist concepts of the orator and vir bonus.

We might today consider his apparently theoretical work the product of a somewhat arcane linguistic pursuit. It is a text book on translation theory. And yet, in the mid-sixteenth century, developing the theory and the practice of translation were fundamental activities. The deployment of Latin and Greek texts within vernacular culture performed a crucial role in the fierce contentions of religious doctrine. Acts of interpretation wielded immense power. Edmond Cary suggests ‘wasn’t the Reformation, after all, primarily a dispute between translators? Translation became an affair of State and a matter of Religion’. 3

Reflecting the pragmatics of printing at this time as well as the protestant inclination against the embellished form in the 1550s, Humphrey’s Interpretatio contains no printed marginal glosses, chapter headings or typographical emphasis to highlight its contents (other than a schematic, almost Ramist, Index at the end of the first volume). As a result, Gabriel Harvey’s handwritten notes, his customary underlinings and diagrammatic signs, have a strong visual impact on the uniformly printed page of this modest volume. Perhaps these signs of scholarly attention, as well as serving their original scribe, afford emphasis to the printed work itself.

Whilst the volume is small, Gabriel Harvey’s marginalia are even more remarkably tiny, often extremely neat and precise. The neatness of the letters is usually matched by an evenness in the spacing and alignment of the annotations.

[landscape 2 pages 208, 209]

Different strands of the same hand can be identified and, in some cases, for example from Harvey’s use of space and symmetry, they can be sequenced. (here I’ve designated two versions of his script Hand A and Hand B)

[ landscape 3, annotated pages 208, 209]

Hand B is really tiny, not more than half a millimetre in height. and very precise. Often, the overall stylistic impression is of Harvey’s measured, even meticulous scholarly recording of thought.

And an overview of the volume allows specific clusters of notes to be identified, which (possibly over a series of reading occasions) respond to a specific passage in the printed text [and where Harvey has had to turn fifty pages, say, before he finds sufficent space for his notes, he provides a page reference back to the Humphrey text]. These clusters suggest an iterative process of purposeful reading and note-making. We can consider the places in this book that most attracted Harvey’s annotative attention.

[landscape 4]

Gabriel Harvey’s autographs and elaborate monogram, the inscribed date of 1570, and his multiple annotations suggest scholarly readings of Humphrey’s work during a critical period in Harvey’s university career. In 1570 twenty-year old Harvey graduated B.A. from Christ’s College, Cambridge, was thwarted in his ambition to become fellow here, but then, in November, was appointed fellow at Pembroke Hall. Here he would take his MA, (again against some strong internal opposition), and, in 1573, be installed as Greek lecturer. From 1573 to 1575 he would hold the post of University Praelector or Professor of Rhetoric, which (very much with hindsight) represented the peak of his career. Harvey’s copy of the Interpretatio contains four relatively distinct strands of his handwriting. Collectively, they contribute to an impression of the young scholar developing his reading (and annotative) practices as he revisited Humphrey’s treatise over this time. He highlights and critiques passages of relevance and interest, purposefully transforming his own copy of the Interpretatio into a repository of material to be accessed for personal use in the ensuing years, for example in the preparation of his own lectures on rhetoric.

Throughout the Interpretatio, Harvey’s marginal notes juggle between the two languages of his trade, Latin and Greek, actually rehearsing the easy transition between synonyms or comparable phrases; a form of short hand, as it were, for the proficiency in reciprocal translation between the classical languages and vernacular that was so valued in humanist pedagogical practice. In a passage underlined by Harvey, Humphrey makes explicit the co-dependent relationship between a proficiency in languages and a thorough knowledge in the liberal arts, figuring them as jointly productive of the fruit of a humanist education.

‘Liberal arts render [the translator] knowledgeable, languages render him eloquent. The former will fill the heart with manifold learning, like a storehouse, with things that have been harvested: the latter will polish speech: the former will bear fruit so that nothing imprudent, trivial, unskilled is spoken: the latter so that nothing dried up, parched or fruitless is used in speech: from which things every crop and abundance for eloquence is to be drawn.’ 4

The majority of Harvey’s annotations are grouped within six or seven distinct (what I’ve termed) clusters of notes, cumulatively contributing to a sense of how this text book was used. In the time available I’m going to consider just a couple of these clusters.

The first of these points to Harvey’s engagement with the near-contemporary works of Ramus, Sturm, Perion and Lambin.

[landscape 5, p701 ]

Annotations of this kind have been shown to increase our understanding of how sixteenth century pedagogic works were used ‘in practice (in private study, and as preparation for university teaching)’, affording insight into ‘the way an ambitious arts student (and subsequently teacher) approached his education’ 5 . In her case-study of Elizabethan Ramist practice, Lisa Jardine demonstrates Harvey’s commitment to the pragmatic methodology developed by Peter Ramus and Omer Talaeus. Harvey’s reading of the studia humanitatis takes place by way of these near-contemporary practitioners and he ‘absorbs Quintilian and Cicero as they agree with, or differ from Ramist dialectic’, a meticulous practice made evident in his marginal notes in these sixteenth century commentaries. 6

As the highlighted passages in the Interpretatio relate to the practice of the exemplary translator, Harvey’s own notes demonstrate his own practice of reading classical authors via contemporary scholarship, where, for example, he references particular pages in Ramus’ 1557 lectures on Cicero’s De Optimo Genere Oratorum, 7 Ramus elucidates Cicero’s methodology for translating the two most eloquent Attic orators, Aeschines and Demosthenes,

‘And I did not translate them as an interpreter, but as an orator, keeping the same ideas and the forms, or as one might say, the ‘figures’ of thought, but in language which conforms to our usage.’ 8

[this is the Cicero, I need the Ramus]

Harvey examines Humphrey’s definition of the perfect translator, his identification with Cicero’s vir bonus and the humanist orator, by way of these sixteenth century commentators. This practice is directly correspondent with the enriched, intensive study of dialectic described by Jardine, in which Harvey is seen to be developing his characterisation of the pragmatic orator, as ‘a successful public figure and ‘man of action’’ as distinct from the virtuous vir bonus. 9

[LANDSCAPE 6]

References to Sturm, in a later Hand C, and then Perion and Lambin, in Hand D, are made directly below this. 10 These sequenced sets of notes evidence the accumulation of copia on the same topic.

I would suggest that Harvey’s annotations in the Humphrey volume belong to one of these ‘packages’ of reading, demonstrating this pragmatic scholar at work early in his career, accessing classical authors via mid-sixteenth century currents of intellectual thought. The pragmatic application of Ramism in Harvey’s early reading practice foreshadows the ‘active reading’ strategies employed by Harvey later in his career, the identification and analysis of which has inspired so much recent research (for example, in Nick Popper’s recent paper on Harvey and Late Tudor London.)

The script I’ve designated Hand D, as you can see, is the most expansive in style. Larger and messier than its earlier versions, although recognisably the same hand, it suggests a more rapid writing technique, which is also in keeping with the nature of these annotations. This hand includes the ‘cut-throat lines and scholarly signs’ of my title.

In the third book of the Interpretatio (which is devoted to practice), Humphrey highlights the contribution of some leading translators into the English vernacular, discussing specific works recently published. Harvey’s ‘habitual practice of list-making’ as a rehearsal in humanist copia has been noted and it is obvious that his own underlining of the names in Humphrey’s ‘roll-call’ of influential translators would have enabled him quickly to retrieve a list without re-reading the detail given by Humphrey. 11

[ portrait 1, p.520]

In Humphrey’s printed text, the uniformity of type, the infrequency of spacing for new paragraphs and the splitting of names from line to line in fact have the effect of embedding these individuals within the surrounding text. Rather than promoting these translators, these printed pages have, perhaps, rather kept them hidden in the uniformity of their appearance.

But the effect of Harvey’s underlining is to extract these individuals one by one, so that they can be considered against the backdrop of the entire work. So John Cheke, Henry Howard, and Thomas Wyatt, stand alongside the exemplars Edmund Sheffield, Thomas Chaloner, Richard Cavendish, Richard (John) Eden, and so on.

In commending exemplary grammatical practice, Humphrey eulogises his late grammar school master, John Harley, citing among other qualities his proficiency in languages, as he describes the notational practices of this acclaimed tutor;

[portrait 2]

‘Accordingly he loved and took good heed of the idioms, emblemata (little mosaics) and little flowers (proper forms of speech), of the ornaments of style and rhetoric of his language, as when he marked out with asterisks and various marks, and thrust small lines through the middle of more elegant words as if he were cutting their throat. When these things had been observed by those scholars who often used to assemble together, he would indicate, making a note with a finger as it were, and he would set these things out quite evenly (making no distinction) either in Latin or Greek and putting one in place of another.’ 12

[landscape 7]

In what could be called a reflexive and (thank you, Professor Sherman) mimetic annotation Harvey has drawn his own ‘cut-throat line’ through the middle of the phrase describing this notational practice. It’s perhaps worth noting that, to a modern reader, a line through the middle of a word might suggest a mark of erasure rather than of emphasis. But perhaps this is part of a system of graphic intervention that would have been recognisable to mid-16^th C readers. There’s a passage in Quintilian on the notion of emendatio, the ‘careful process of retouching and of finishing, representing the final stage in the production of an oration’, which alludes to this paradox of erasure. 13 Quintilian maintains that his writing instrument, his stilus, is as active as it ever is when it scratches something out’. 14 It can become creative no less through deletion than through writing

According to classical tradition, perfection resides in the centre (virtus in media), the centre being the point where two extremes meet, a concept of ternery sub-division which is also an important structural feature of Humphrey’s treatise. Does John Harley’s exemplary cut-throat line ‘per medium’ allude to more than an annotative habit? It was with some interest, then, that when I looked at Gabriel Harvey’s copy of Quintilian, in the British Library, I found he had underlined this very passage. 15 Perhaps Harvey is condensing the complexity of his process of emendatio, by literally drawing the via media through these words, in turn a rehearsal or play of his own rhetorical practice. (If anyone has seen examples of this I’d be interested.) Whilst offering evidence of Humphrey (and other scholars) learning notational techniques from Harley, this mark also suggests that Harvey was developing his own modus operandi for recording his reading experiences. 16

Gabriel Harvey’s handwritten annotations serve not only to further our insight into the reading practices of a rising Cambridge graduate in the process of becoming the ‘arch-humanist of the Elizabethan age’. 17 They also suggest contemporary regard for and scrutiny of Humphrey’s Interpretatio. In 1559, Humphrey’s textbook was a pragmatic means for him to present himself, on Elizabeth’s accession, as a heavyweight protestant intellectual with much to offer England under reformation. In 1560 he was rewarded with the position of president of Magdalen College, Oxford. Humphrey’s own exemplary practice of rhetoric was explicitly acknowledged in the 1570s by Gabriel Harvey, who, in one of his own published speeches, ranks Humphrey alongside the outstanding rhetoricians of antiquity and modernity:

‘Lycurgus of Sparta; Demosthenes of Athens; Cicero of Rome; Manutius of Venice; Ramus of Paris; Sturmius of Strasbourg; Smith of Cambridge; Humphrey of Oxford’. ¹⁸

In tracing the development of a rhetoric of English nationhood through the sixteenth century, Cathy Shrank has described the ‘scholarly neglect’ of pre-Elizabethan literary writing and its impact, a neglect perpetuated by residual ‘aesthetic paradigms epitomized by [C.S.] Lewis’ in his description of this period as a ‘drab age’. 19 The retrieval of the Interpretatio, a work which addresses the crisis in mid-Tudor English writing, seems timely. For, despite being written and seen through the press by an English writer, dedicated to English noblemen, and here annotated by an English Elizabethan scholar, the Interpretatio remains even beyond the reach of the Short Title Catalogue. Harvey’s marginalia help to afford the Interpretatio a place in the history of English writing.