Varia bibliographica

GILBERTUSJACCHAEUS, PRIMAE PHILOSOPHL4E, SIVEINSTITUTTOJYUM METAPHYSICARUM IJBRISEX. ED. POSTREMAPRIORE CORRECTIOR. LUGDUNI BATAVORUM, PROSTANT APUD ELSEVIRIOS, I640.

At first sight this new acquisition of Leiden University Library can hardly be said to appear spectacular, but when opened it soon transpires that the little book occupies its own if modest place in a great tradition, that of the collection and description of Elze- vier editions. The text of Jacchaeus's manual is no longer as useful nowadays as it was at the time of its publication. Instead, what lends the copy special interest is its provenance. It can be reconstructed from about 1830. To judge from the style, the book must then have been rebound, whereby both upper and lower cover received the arms of B. Comte de Nedonchel de Tournay as supralibros. It next came into the possession of Charles Pieters of Ghent (1782-1863), an avid Elzevier collector and - rather uncritical - bibliographer. He proudly pasted his exlibris into it and described it in his Annales de l'imprimerieelse- virienne ...,' adding a footnote leaning heavily on Brunet,2 containing the observation that it could not have been printed by the Elzeviers and that 'le titre porte une mar- que etrangere.' He stated besides that there is an edition of 1621. At the end of 1864 Pieters's collection was sold at auction in Ghent and the book, number 138 in the cat- alogue, was bought by the Lille firm of Leleu for one and a half francs. It was no doubt they who sold the book on to Lucien Jannin of Dunkirk who also stuck in his exlibris and moreover put his name stamp into it. There are no further ownership marks in the booklet except that of the Library which bought it in the spring of 1996 from the Parisian antiquarian bookseller Rene Cluzel. Brunet and Pieters's observations led the first truly scholarly Elzevier bibliographer Alphonse Willems3 to write a footnote in his turn in his description (number 501). In it he wrote that on the authority of Pieters he had to assume that there must be two 'edi- tions' of this publication: one, as described by him, with the usual 'non solus' device, and one with Pieters's 'marque etrangere.' He had obviously been unable to find the copy once owned by Pieters, or he would have seen straightaway (as we can do now) that what we have got here is a label superimposed on the usual device.4 So now at least we are rid of that bibliographical ghost. I am not altogether convinced that the arguments Willems adduces for rejecting Brunet's statement that there had already been an Elzevier edition of Jacchaeus's text- book in 1621, are correct. 72

Argument i: he had never before seen an Elzevier reading 'apud Elsevirios' for this period. (This still applies, but there were in fact two Elzeviers at the time: Bonaventura and Abraham; nor, for instance, had Willems ever before seen a device with the motto 'Lilium inter spinas' in an Elzevier edition.) Argument 2: the title reads: 'priore correctior', which according to him must refer to the only genuine first edition, the one by Jan Paets of 1616. (In my opinion the inter- pretation 'more correct than the earlier [Elzevier] edition' is equally justified.) Argument 3: the title does not occur in the publisher's lists of 1628 and 1638, nor in the 1621Frankfurt and Leipzig Fair catalogues. (I think that the same can be said of other publications. Let me mention for example the editions of 1618 of N. Clenardus, Absolutissimaeinstitutiones inGraecam linguam, typis 1. Elzevir, sumptibus H. Laurentii; and Isocrates, sumptibus Henrici Laurentii, typis Isaaci Elzevirii; of 1626 of Cl. Galenus, De tumoribus... ab Horatio Limano conversus,typis B. & A. Elzevir, and of 1638 of Pharmacopoea,et hortus, ad usumpauperum ReipublicaeLeydensis, ex officina Elseviriana, also unknown to Willems (and other bibliographers).) In short, it would not really surprise me if a 1621Jacchaeus edition were not one day still to turn up. Finally something can still be said about Brunet's remark that the booklet has not been printed by the Elzeviers. I think that he is right here and my bet would be on Fran?ois Heger of Leiden as the probable printer.

R. BREUGELMANS

BAUDINSPEAKS

Like its author, Fernand Baudin's book Leffet Gutenberg(Edition du Cercle de la Librairie) is highly individual. The book is not a historical study, even though it does discuss in an admirable way many historical texts dealing with letters, from Pacioli and (the well-known dialogue) via Moxon, Fournier and to Morison and Tschichold. This book, however, uses these and other texts in reflections which aim at another goal than a historical one, namely a plea for attention to writing, letters and layout. The effect of Gutenberg's invention was a division between those who designed letters and those who made use of them, and Baudin wishes to restore this lost unity by arguing for a positive attitude towards writing and letters. He even goes as far as to attribute an important function to the cultivation of writing in our age in particular: education and upbringing must make writing serviceable to humanity, to the battle against envi- ronmental pollution, nihilism and warfare. Baudin's reflections - the result of a lifelong commitment to the written and the printed word - touch the core of typography and are essential reading for everyone active in the field. He considers the art of printing to be a form of mechanical writing; the writing pen looms behind the printing types of Fournier, and Bodoni. In this in any case he finds his colleague Gerrit Noordzij on his side. The essence of this book lies in the opposition to a strict division between the written word and typogra- phy, and this criticism deserves wide circulation. Of major didactical importance - the book is primarily intended for teachers at art academies and typographical schools - are