Part II. 2. Manuscript inserts

Some of the surviving books contain manuscript folios, sometimes bound with the book, other times loosely inserted. There are three main types: folios replicating missing sections, quotations inserted from other books, and notes on loose sheets.

i. Manuscript pages completing imperfect copies of books

Manuscript folios found inserted in some of the extant books point to what appears to have been an endemic problem at the time: that of imperfect copies in circulation. One such book in Hooke’s library was Joannes Ciermans’s Disciplinae mathematicae (Louvain, 1640), the imperfection of which Hooke himself acknowledged with an inscription on the back leaf ‘I conceive this booke wants ye title Leaf of ye Hebdomas prima of January’. Inserted between pages 126 and 127, we find a manuscript copy of the missing title-page in Hooke’s hand, with parts of the corresponding illustration faintly sketched out.1 Even more pages were missing in his copy of Johannes Kepler’s De cometis libelli tres (Augsburg, 1619), for which Hooke had to provide 4 manuscript folios copying the missing pages 49-56 (figs. 13 and 14).2 And while his copy of Kepler’s Harmonices mundi (Linz, 1619) has not yet been found and therefore its state of completeness remains unknown, the manuscript drawings of the illustrations in Book 2 now among Hooke’s papers in the Archives of the Royal Society, might have been replacements for similarly missing pages (figs. 15 and 16).3 His copy of Communes et familiares Hebraicae linguae idiotismi (Antwerp, 1572), volume seven of Benedictus Arias Montanus’s polyglot bible Biblia sacra, contains inserts of manuscript folios providing missing title-pages, indices and other text; as these do not appear to be from Hooke’s hand, he may already purchased the volume in that state.4

Corroborating evidence of the troubles caused by such flaws in the books in circulation may be found in the correspondence between Richard Lapthorne and Richard Coffin (1622–1699).5 The former acted as an agent in London purchasing books from auctions or book dealers for the latter who was assembling his library at Portledge Manor near Bideford, Devon.6 In a letter dated 25 August 1688, having purchased a copy of Ranulf Higden’s Polychronicon for Coffin, Lapthorne remarked of the book ‘I think its perfect which is very rare’.7 It was possibly the incunabulum printed by William Caxton (1415×24–1492) in Westminster in 1482, already rare in the 17th century, or one of the later editions from 1495 or 1527, and Lapthorne had purchased it at the bargain price of 8s from a seller seemingly ignorant of the value of the book.8 However, the copy was discovered to be less than perfect, and on 2 November 1689, Lapthorne offered to have the missing sections transcribed from the copy that was on auction at the Maitland sale at the time.9 Further complications ensued; two weeks later, Lapthorne reported that the copy on offer was not only of another edition with smaller leaf sizes but was also itself imperfect and filled with manuscript pages, admitting ‘indeed its very rare to meet wth one perfect’. Moreover, the auction house had asked for the unreasonable price of 20s for providing the transcripts; Lapthorne hoped instead to borrow a copy from an acquaintance and have it transcribed at a cheaper rate. By 20 December, he was suggesting buying another imperfect copy to replace the missing pages.10

Although it does not include any manuscript inserts, one last book to consider in the ‘imperfect’ category is a copy of Johann Bayer’s Uranometria which has been identified as possibly of Hooke provenance based on the handwriting of the annotations on the maps.11 Now at the British Library, though missing its title-page and printed without the explanatory tables, it has been dated to 1603; and indeed the BH lists a 1603 edition of the book although the title-page is not noted as missing.12 Uranometria was an atlas of fifty-one engraved star maps including the forty-eight constellations from Ptolemy’s Almagest, a map of the twelve newly discovered ones in the southern skies, and two planispheres.13 Using trapezoidal projection, Bayer incorporated Tycho Brahe’s catalogue of 1,005 stars for the northern skies and the observations of the Dutch navigators Pieter Dircksz Keyser and Frederik de Houtman for the southern hemisphere, while inventing his famed stellar nomenclature of using Greek and Roman alphabets.14 Hooke made frequent use of these maps; he referred to locating a star he had spotted during his observations of the 1675 eclipse of the moon on Bayer’s map of the constellation of Cancer.15 Five years later, he was tracking a comet whose tail had ‘ended between the two Starrs in Perseus marked in Bayer wth γ & η’ as he would note on 29 December 1680.16 And we may remember Waller’s note about Hooke’s drawings of the comet being discovered in his copy of Uranometria.17

In the 1603 first edition of the book, useful tables describing the stars depicted on the maps were printed on the verso, making them at best awkward to use, perhaps one of the reasons why in subsequent editions the tables were printed separately.18 When the fact that this British Library copy without the title-page is also missing the tables is considered along with Waller’s note that Hooke’s copy was purchased by John Woodward (i.e. not by Hans Sloane), several possibilities arise. Assuming that the British Library copy is indeed of Hooke provenance, it is possible that rather than the 1603 edition listed in the BH, it is an imperfect copy from one of the later editions printed without the tables. Hooke may have later replaced it with a proper first edition intact with its title-page, while his older copy somehow ended up in Sloane’s collection via another route. Or indeed it may have been an imperfect copy of the 1603 edition itself, missing both its title-page and the tables, and entered the British Library via Woodward. In either case, the fact that Hooke also owned the 1654 quarto edition from Augsburg including only the tables could be taken to confirm these two possibilities.19 Nonetheless it is still not impossible that the British Library copy from Sloane’s collection was never owned by Hooke and that the latter had purchased the 1654 quarto edition simply to make the 1603 folio maps easier to use.

ii. Inserts from other books

At times Hooke inserted quotations from other books. A small leaf of manuscript text attached to Dasypodius’s Latin translation Heron mechanicus: seu de mechanicis artibus (Strasbourg, 1580) is almost certainly in Hooke’s hand. It is a quotation from De republica, vita, moribus, gestis, fama, religione, sanctitate . . . Quinti, Caroli (Ghent, 1559) by Charles V’s librarian Willem Snouckaert van Schauburg (Gulielmo Zenocaro), containing the first five paragraphs of the section ‘Horologium Caroli Maximi’ (‘Eivs’ to ‘possit’, on page 203).20 It describes the celebrated astronomical clock built by the court horologist and engineer, Juanelo Turriano (c. 1500–1585).21 Charles V’s interest in mechanical devices, especially clocks, was well known and this particular one integrating the motions of the sun and the moon, and planetary trajectories must have been especially of interest to Hooke.22

In Hooke’s Posthumous Works, we find his transcription of a section on John Dee from Elias Ashmole’s Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum (London, 1652). It is included alongside Hooke’s lecture ‘of Dr. Dee’s Book of Spirits’ which, according to Waller’s editorial notes, was discovered in Meric Casaubon’s A True & Faithful Relation of What Passed for Many Years between Dr. John Dee . . . and Some Spirits (London, 1659) by the ‘gentleman’ who had purchased this book from Hooke’s auction.23

As neither Snouckaert van Schauburg’s nor Ashmole’s books are listed in the BH, it is possible Hooke borrowed these from his acquaintances to make these copies.

iii. Notes on loose sheets, inserted/bound into the books or in archival collections

From the annotations in the extant books and the manuscript papers that have survived in the archives, Hooke’s preference for taking notes on loose sheets come to the fore.

The leaves attached to Hooke’s copy of Robert Boyle’s Experiments, Notes, &c. about the Mechanical Origine or Production of Divers Particular Qualities (Oxford, 1675) contain simple notes resembling an index or list of contents (figs. 17, 18 and 19); through them, for instance, we know to look for ‘Sal Armoniack dissolved in clere water . . .’ on page 4 of the section on the ‘Mechanical Origine of Heat and Cold’.24

Several folios of manuscript notes in Hooke’s hand are bound with the British Library copy of Nicolaas Witsen’s substantial tome on naval architecture, Aeloude en hedendaegsche Scheeps-Bouw en Bestier (Amsterdam, 1671).25 While the volume, which has been rebound, does not bear an acquisition note, Hooke noted purchasing his copy from Francis Lodwick on 12 July 1676.26 Unfortunately the notes are difficult to read as most of them have faded but from the more legible sections we may surmise that they contain references to ancient modes of shipbuilding, including Noah’s Ark, and comparisons between contemporary English and Dutch ships. Furthermore, expressions such as ‘the text saith’ indicate that at least some of the notes are from a book, indeed perhaps from Witsen’s. And lest we are tempted to think Hooke may have borrowed a copy to write the 1671 anonymous review of the book printed in the Philosophical Transactions, it is worthwhile to note that he only ‘Began to learn Dutch with Mr. Blackburne’ in December 1672 and that the review does not bear any obvious relationship to the manuscript notes.27

A copy of Pierre de Fermat’s Varia opera mathematica (Toulouse, 1679) Hooke purchased in 1681 contains loosely inserted manuscript calculations in his hand (figs. 20 and 20a).28 While there is suggestion there may have been more folios, the four surviving ones show Hooke carefully studying Fermat’s method of minima and maxima, and his theory of refraction.29 In a 1690 Royal Society lecture on Huygens’s Traité de la lumière (Lyon, 1690), Hooke mentioned showing a demonstration of Fermat’s theory of refraction in another lecture some years before, and it is possible he was referring to one of these folios where we find such a geometric illustration, carefully drawn and laid out (figs. 21 and 21a).30

In another book on mathematics, John Pell’s Tabula numerorum quadratorum decies millium . . . (1672), we find two manuscript sheets inserted between pages 30 and 31 containing Hooke’s helpful examples on how ‘In this Table to find the . . . Square of any whole number less than Ten Thousand’ or ‘To find the side of any square number less than 100 Million’ (fol. 1r).31

It is not clear whether they were separated from their sources accidentally but Hooke’s notes from several books now reside among his papers in different archives. To give but a few examples, British Library, MS Sloane 1039, fols. 118r-119r contain his notes on John Wallis’s edition of Claudii Ptolemaei Harmonicorum libri tres (Oxford, 1682), and on fols. 135r-v we find his notes on Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli’s Osservazioni intorno al Bosforo Tracio overo canale di Constantinopoli (Rome, 1681), which he had borrowed from William Croone (1633–1684), the professor of rhetoric at Gresham College, presumably before he proceeded to purchase his own copy.32 Further examples may be found among the Robert Hooke Papers at Trinity College, Cambridge, where 0.11a.110 contains his notes from Linschoten’s Itinerarium, ofte Voyage ende Schip. Vaert (Amsterdam, 1644), and at the Archives of the Royal Society, where Cl.P/20/87 (figs. 22, 23, and 24) has his detailed notes on Guillaume de l’Hôpital’s L’Analyse des infiniment petits, pour l’intelligence des lignes courbes (Paris, 1696), and Cl.P/20/88 his notes on Edward Bernard’s De mensuris et ponderibus antiquis libri tres (Oxford, 1688).33

Part II, section 1 ❮ back || next ❯ Part II, section 3

  1. Ciermans’s book is BH, lot 244 in ‘Libri Latini, &c. in Folio’ on p. 6; see auct_BH_264. On his Disciplinae mathematicae, see Patricia Radelet-de Grave, ‘Guarini et la structure de l’Univers’, Nexus Network Journal 11 (2009), pp. 394-404. []
  2. Kepler’s De cometis libelli tres is BH, lot 489 in ‘Libri Latini, &c. in Quarto’ on p. 19; see auct_BH_847. We would like to thank Susan Halpert at the Houghton Library, Harvard University, for her help in identifying the book and for providing us with copies of the manuscript pages. []
  3. Kepler’s Harmonices mundi is BH, lot 215 in ‘Libri Latini, &c. in Folio’ on p. 6; see auct_BH_234. For the manuscript drawings, see Royal Society MS Cl.P/24/89. []
  4. Biblia sacra is BH, lot 6 in ‘Libri Latini, &c. in Folio’ on p. 1; see auct_BH_6. []
  5. For previous references to Lapthorne, see notes 7 and 15 in Part II, section 1. Most of the surviving letters from the Lapthorne-Coffin correspondence have been published in Russell J. Kerr and Ida Coffin Duncan, eds., The Portledge Papers: being Extracts from the Letters of Richard Lapthorne, Gent., of Hatton Garden London, to Richard Coffin Esq. of Portledge, Bideford, Devon (London: Jonathan Cape, 1928). While the editors have indicated that they excluded only one or two of the earlier letters ‘on account of their lack of interest’, Michael Treadwell identified at least eleven that were omitted from the volume; see the introduction to ibid., 11; and Treadwell, ‘Richard Lapthorne’, p. 218n5. Extracts relating to the book trade from the correspondence have been re-transcribed from the original manuscripts and are available online; see ‘Book Trade References in the Lapthorne-Coffin Correspondence 1683-1697‘. []
  6. Secondary sources on Lapthorne’s book purchasing activities include Treadwell, ‘Richard Lapthorne’; and D. R. Woolf, Reading History in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 164-7, 346-7. Buying books for friends or patrons appears to have been fairly common during the period. In a letter dated 1 March 1680/1, Hooke sent a list of books to Edmond Halley, asking him to procure them from the continent on his behalf; see Royal Society MS EL/H3/62 (figs. 10 and 10a). And Hooke himself purchased books for James Long who lived in Draycot Cerne, Wiltshire; in a letter dated 21 July 1688, Hooke complained of having ‘been delayed and disappointed by the People at the Auction house from week to week that I almost dispaired of procuring these ^Mercurys, I had bought for you . . . A new history of China [by Gabriel de Magalhaes, the English translation of which was published in 1688]. . . .’; see the Waller Manuscript Collection, Waller Ms gb-00944, fol. 1r. []
  7. Letter quoted in Treadwell, ‘Richard Lapthorne’, pp. 212-213; see also Woolf, Reading History, pp. 166-7. Relevant extracts of the letters mentioned in this paragraph may also be consulted online; see ‘Book Trade References in the Lapthorne-Coffin Correspondence 1683-1697‘. []
  8. On the Polychronicon and its early print editions, see Woolf, Reading History, pp. 13-16. []
  9. Treadwell, ‘Richard Lapthorne’, p. 213. Although there is no record of such a translation in the ESTC, the catalogue of the Maitland sale lists an undated English folio edition of ‘Polychronicon. By Ranulph Monke of Chester, Translated by Grafton’ as lot 3 on p. 91; see Benjamin Walford, Catalogus librorum instructissimae bibliothecae . . . quorum auctio habebitur . . . vicesimo octavo die octobris, 1689 (ESTC citation no. R179357), available online via EEBO. []
  10. Ibid. With the correspondence missing between 20 December 1689 and 8 March 1690, it is not known how the problem was eventually resolved. The 1801 auction catalogue of the Portledge Library lists a ‘Polychronicon of Ranulph, Monk of Chester, englished by Treveisa, and continued by Caxton to 1460, a perfect copy, with wood cuts, 2l 2s Southwerke Treveris 1527’, however it is not clear whether this was the same eventually-perfected copy or another one purchased at a later date; see ‘The Portledge Sale Catalogue of 1801’ in ‘Book Trade References in the Lapthorne-Coffin Correspondence 1683-1697‘. []
  11. Mandelbrote, ‘Sloane’s Purchases’, p. 129. Most of the annotations identify the names of the depicted stars. []
  12. Bayer’s book is BH, lot 222 in ‘Libri Latini, &c. in Folio’ on p. 6; see auct_BH_241. []
  13. For an historiographical overview of Renaissance and early 17th-century star charts, see the extensive notes in Anna Friedman Herlihy, ‘Renaissance Star Charts’, in The History of Cartography, ed. David Woodward (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2007), pp. 99-122. Sources on Bayer and Uranometria include Deborah J. Warner, The Sky Explored: Celestial Cartography, 1500-1800 (Amsterdam: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, B.V., 1979), pp. 18-20; Herlihy, ‘Renaissance Star Charts’, pp. 115-8; Nick Kanas, Star Maps: History, Artistry, and Cartography (New York: Springer, 2009), pp. 153-6; Edward Rosen, ‘Bayer, Johnann’, in Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography (Detroit: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2008), pp. 530-1; and Rochelle Susan Rosenfeld, ‘Celestial Maps and Globes and Star Catalogues of the Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries’ (unpub. PhD diss., New York University, 1980), pp. 189-99. []
  14. While Tycho Brahe’s expanded list would be published in tabular form only later in Kepler’s Tabulae Rudolphinae (1627), it had been in circulation in manuscript since 1598; see Warner, Sky Explored, p. 18. Bayer’s nomenclature identified the stars in each constellation by letters according to their level of brightness, Greek alpha being the brightest; once the Greek alphabet was exhausted, it continued with Roman letters. []
  15. ‘I might a week after, when the Moon was gone farther off, inquire what that Star was . . . which I found to be that in Bayer, touching the Ecliptick, in about 21o. 40’. of Cancer’, in Robert Hooke, A Description of Helioscopes and Some Other Instruments (London: Printed by T. R. for John Martyn Printer to the Royal Society, 1676), p. 25. []
  16. The quote is from Royal Society MS Cl.P/24/88, fol. 283r however references to Bayer and drawings using his nomenclature span the entire Cl.P/24/88. These notes, without the accompanying sketches, were reproduced in Robert Hooke, ‘A Discourse of Comets’, in The Posthumous Works, ed. Richard Waller (London: Printed by Sam. Smith and Benj. Walford, 1705). For Hooke’s use of Bayer’s maps, see also Matthew C. Hunter, Wicked Intelligence: Visual Art and the Science of Experiment in Restoration London (London: The University of Chicago Press, 2013), pp. 59-61. []
  17. See note 17 in Part I, section 3. []
  18. Warner lists the subsequent editions: the plates were reissued without the text in Augsburg in 1624 and in Ulm in 1639, 1641, 1648, 1655, 1661, 1666, and 1689, while the tables were printed without the maps in Strasbourg in 1624, Augsburg in 1654, and Ulm in 1640, 1697, 1723; see Warner, Sky Explored, p. 19. It should be noted that another copy of the atlas at the British Library is also missing its tables, although it does have the 1603 title-page. It too may have been an imperfect volume completed with a title-page from another copy, or the possibility exists that some of the 1603 editions were indeed printed without these tables. []
  19. The 1654 edition is BH, lot 479 in ‘Libri Latini, &c. in Quarto’ on p. 18; see auct_BH_836. It is also possible that Sloane acquired this copy from Woodward. []
  20. Dasypodius’s book is BH, lot 526 in ‘Libri Latini, &c. in Quarto’ on p. 19, see auct_BH_885; Snouckaert van Schauburg’s book is not listed in the BH. For identification of Snouckaert as Charles V’s librarian, see Richard L. Kagan, Clio and the Crown: the Politics of History in Medieval and Early Modern Spain (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), p. 59. []
  21. Sources on Juanelo Turriano include Silvio A. Bedini and Francis R. Maddison, ‘Mechanical Universe: The Astrarium of Giovanni de’ Dondi’, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, New Series 56 (1966), pp. 39-40, 56-8; Ladislao Reti, ‘The Codex of Juanelo Turriano (1500-1585)’, Technology and Culture 8 (1967), pp. 53-66; José A. García-Diego, Juanelo Turriano Charles V’s Clockmaker: the Man and His Legend, trans. Charles David Ley (Sussex: Antiquarian Horological Society, 1986). []
  22. Sources on Charles V’s patronage of the arts include William Lawrence Eisler, ‘The Impact of the Emperor Charles V upon the Visual Arts’ (unpub. PhD diss., The Pennsylvania State University, 1983); and Glenn Richardson, ‘Patrons: Royal Artistic Patronage’, in Renaissance Monarchy: the Reigns of Henry VIII, Francis I and Charles V (Arnold, 2002), pp. 172-94. []
  23. Casaubon’s book is BH, lot 130 in ‘English Books in Folio’ on p. 41; see auct_BH_1914. In his opening sentence, Hooke describes Casaubon’s book as having been published more than 30 years ago, which dates the lecture to sometime after 1689; see Hooke, ‘Of Dr. Dee’s Book of Spirits’, p. 203. Note that the 1692 date given for Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum by Waller is an error as the book was published in 1652. []
  24. Boyle’s book is BH, lot 220 in ‘English Books in Octavo’ on p. 49; see auct_BH_2324. Hooke’s copy, now at the Dibner Library of the Smithsonian Institution, has been digitized and made available via the Biodiversity Heritage Library. []
  25. Witsen’s book is BH, lot 295 in ‘ Libri Latini, &c. in Folio’ on p. 7; see auct_BH_316. On Witsen’s use of Isaac Vossius’s library when writing this book, see Marion Peters, ‘From the Study of Nicholaes Witsen (1641-1717). His Life with Books and Manuscripts’, LIAS 21 (1994), pp. 1-47, esp. 46. On his interactions with Hans Sloane, see Eric Jorink, ‘Sloane and the Dutch Connection’, in From Books to Bezoars, pp. 57-70. []
  26. Robinson and Adams, eds., Diary, p. 242. On book-related transactions between Lodwick and Hooke, see Poole, ‘Francis Lodwick, Hans Sloane, and the Bodleian Library’, p. 378n5. []
  27. See ‘An Account of Books: 1. Sheeps-Bouw en Bestier, that is, Naval Architecture and Conduct; by N. Witsen’, Philosophical Transactions 6 (1671), pp. 3006-12; and Robinson and Adams, eds., Diary, p. 16, 17. Hooke was most likely referring to Richard Blackburne (1651/2–1716), and it is possible the latter was teaching him ‘High Dutch’ or German instead. See also note 22 in Part I, section 2. []
  28. Fermat’s book is BH, lot 256 in ‘Libri Latini, &c. in Folio’ on p. 6; see auct_BH_277. We are grateful to Anna Jones of the Whipple Library, University of Cambridge, for her help in locating these manuscript inserts and for providing us with copies. []
  29. The book is described as ‘Robert Hooke’s copy inscribed, with 7 pp. of MS. calculations in his hand’ in Book Auction Records 25.2 (1927-1928), p. 70, however only five pages of calculations on four folios have been found inserted in the book. It is possible that one or two folios went missing sometime between the book’s auction by Hodgon & Co on 25 November 1927 and Robert Whipple’s purchase of it from the bookseller Thomas H. Court later in the same year. The particular sections where these surviving folios are inserted are Proportionis geometricae in quadrandis infinitis parabolis & hyperbolis usus; subsections of Methodus ad disquirendam maximam et minimam, namely De tangentibus linearum curvarum and Centrum gravitatis, parabolici conoidis, ex eadem methodo; and ‘Demonstration dont il est parlé dans la lettre precedente’ following ‘Lettre de Monsieur de Fermat à Monsieur de ****’ where Fermat summarizes his theory of refraction; see Varia Opera Mathematica (Toulouse: Apud Joannem Pech, 1679), pp. 44-5, 63-6, 156-60. Sources on Fermat’s mathematical work include Michael Sean Mahoney, The Mathematical Career of Pierre de Fermat, 1601–1665 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994). []
  30. When contrasted with Hooke’s other similar notes, e.g. figs. 20a, 23, or 24, the care with which he has drawn this illustration stands out. Hooke’s lecture, dated 19 February 1690, is now 0.11a.114A-B among the Robert Hooke Papers at Trinity College, Cambridge. Hooke mentions his demonstration of Fermat’s theory of refraction on the verso of 0.11a.114A (p. 2). Huygens’s book is lot 567 in ‘Libri Latini, &c. in Quarto’ on p. 20; see auct_BH_926. On Hooke’s influence on Huygens’s theory of light, see Michael Barth, ‘Huygens at Work: Annotations in His Rediscovered Personal Copy of Hooke’s Micrographia’, Annals of Science 52 (1995). []
  31. Pell’s book is BH, lot 269 in ‘Libri Latini, &c. in Folio’ on p. 7; see auct_BH_290. While Hooke’s annotated copy is available online via EEBO, unfortunately due to the mode of digitization the manuscript notes are barely legible. []
  32. Wallis’s book is BH, lot 19 and Hooke’s own copy of Marsigli’s book is lot 20, both in ‘Libri in Albiis, in Quarto’ on p. 54; see auct_BH_2576 and auct_BH_2577. On Croone, see Ward, The Lives of the Professors of Gresham College, pp. 320-7. []
  33. Linschoten’s book is BH, lot 68 in ‘Libri Latini, &c. in Folio’ on p. 2, L’Hôpital’s book is BH, lot 385 in ‘Libri Latini, &c. in Quarto’ on p. 16, and Bernard’s book is BH, lot. 404 in ‘Libri Latini, &c. in Octavo’ on p. 30; see auct_BH_76, auct_BH_732, and auct_BH_1393. []