Add MS 78347

EVELYN PAPERS. Vol. CLXXX. Quarto volume with a title-page and a few lines of preface, entitled `The Dignity of Mankind, in a problematical Exercitation or Essay ... Writen at the Request of Samuel Pepys Esq'; 1676. This is apparently the work listed by Evelyn in Add. MS 15950, f. 80, as `Concerning the Sagacity of Brute Animals, begun but imperfect', for which he used the symbol `Br' in his commonplace notes. It is also included in his list of `Things I would write out faire and reforme if I had Leasure' (Add. MS 78404 below). The further reference in Memoires for my Grand-son, p. 66, `The Dignity of Man, & how neere some Bruits approch'd to the Rationale, but the main, & best, Additions wanted Insertion and much of the rest, especialy concerning the soule, to be shorten'd and reform'd', suggests that the present manuscript is the beginning of a fair copy of a more extensive draft which no longer survives. In a letter to Pepys of 10 July 1682 on the use of dogs in war Evelyn made what is apparently a reference to this as a work he was revising; see Particular Friends, ed. Guy de la Bedoyère (Boydell, 1997), p. 132. For the importance of the subject at this period, see Keith Thomas, Man and the Natural World (Penguin, 1984), pp. 34-35. The remainder of the volume (ff. 3-219) is taken up with an abstract by Sir John Evelyn, 1^st Bart. of the court rolls, 16^th-18^th cent., of all his Surrey manors, made circa 1717-1719. Beal EvJ 131. Formerly Evelyn MS 137.

iii + 224. Original vellum binding. 215 x 175mm.