Add MS 78630

EVELYN PAPERS. Vol. CCCCLXIII. Volume of blank paper, originally intended by John Evelyn for his library catalogue; 1653-19th cent. The pages have been ruled with margins in red ink on the left and right, but all that has been entered of the catalogue is the title-page (f. 7), `Bibliothecae JEvelyni Catalogus Index Titulorum et Materiarum’, calligraphically written and decorated by his amanuensis, Richard Hoare, 1653. On the verso is `Syllabus Titulorum’, a list in Latin of 15 subject categories with a decorative border. This leaf is not an integral part of the volume; it has been mounted on one of the blank leaves with the marginal rulings extended over it to make the two appear uniform. Five decorated section headings by Hoare, also relating to this catalogue, are in Add. MS 78639, with some titles and press-marks on the versos. Evelyn presumably kept these fragments, perhaps intending to re-use them, when the original catalogue became superseded by the later expansion of his library; see also Michael Hunter, `John Evelyn in the 1650s’, in Science and Shape of Orthodoxy (Woodbridge, 1995), p. 73. The volume was used by later generations of the family for accounts; ff. 1-5 and 8v-46 have been used to enter estate receipts and payments, 1771-1775, and William John Evelyn has made intermittent notes in the remainder of the volume of his studies of the Greek language and of Greek and European history, 19^th cent. Formerly Evelyn MS 185.

Original binding of mottled calf, gilt-ruled and stamped, probably made for Evelyn in Paris circa 1650, incorporating devices designed for him by Thomas Simon, of which there are smoke impressions in Add. MS 78639 (2) below: a central oval block with the Evelyn griffin passant surmounted by a griffin head and underneath the motto `Omnia explorate Meliora retinete’, all surrounded by a wreath; his monogram is stamped at each corner of the ruled border and in each panel of the spine; repaired and rebacked. 303 x 220mm.