Add MS 78327-78333

Commonplace Collections

78327-78333. EVELYN PAPERS. Vols CLX-CLXVI. Commonplace books or adversaria of John Evelyn; [1649-1703?]. Mostly autograph, but begun by Richard Hoare, the professional scribe whom Evelyn brought from England to Paris with him in 1649 to help `reduce my studies into a method’ (to Sir Richard Browne, 14 June 1649; Add. MS 78221), and continued by Evelyn himself after Hoare had left his service. Evelyn in Memoires for my Grandson, p. 44, recommends the making of commonplaces from reading: `From such a Magazine one is inabled to speake or write upon any occasion, & it would not be amisse to pitch upon some usefull subject to exercise your style in & to publish some Fruits of your studys, which cannot be don without Collections, no man being able to build anything whatever without the help of others which may stand or last longer than the Cobwebs spun out of the bowels of an Insect'.

Keeping up the commonplace books or `adversaria’ according to the original scheme of universal knowledge used in Add. MS 78330 below gave way to a more informal, pragmatic arrangement as he grew older. To his grandson he described the `packets & Bundles of Excerpts of all Subjects intended to have ben transcrib'd into Books and Adversaria, but growing too numerous . . . I left off that thought'. A wrapper once used for these loose commonplace notes, dating after 1697 (Add. MS 15950, f. 80), suggests that in the end Evelyn organized many of these according to the projects he had in hand: `In this Bundle or Roll marked [double circle with line] is Containd the Excerpts and Collections, casualy gatherd out of several authors &c and intended to have been transcribed into Adversaria as applicable to several subjects'; the list that follows indicates the notes for his History of Religion were marked `R'; notes for future editions of Sylva, `S'; notes for the `Elysium Britannicum', `HE'; notes for his `discourse of Manuscripts', `MSS', and so on. Some notes with these markings still survive; for example in Add. MS 78344. Several of the volumes below are discussed in Michael Hunter, `John Evelyn in the 1650s', Science and the Shape of Orthodoxy (Woodbridge, 1995), pp. 67-97; particular references are given below. One other commonplace book, containing a collection of anecdotes and maxims, is now in the Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Eng. 992.7.

Seven volumes.