Great Collector Research Articles

The Problem of the Genesis of Aristotle's Text

W A rE are informed by Strabo XIII, I, g4 and by Plutarch (Sulla 26.) that the works of Aristotle disappeared for at least i so years and were, for the first time, edited in Rome by Andronicus of Rhodes, a peripatetic philosopher, of the second half of the first century B.C., i.e. approx. 27g years after the death of Aristotle. Strabo's and Plutarch's accounts are essentially identical and there is no doubt that Plutarch drew on Strabo; however, it is Plutarch who gives us the name of Andronicus, whereas Strabo only mentions Andronicus' predecessor, the grammarian Tyrannion of Amisus in Pontus, as an editor of Aristotle's manuscripts. Strabo's and Plutarch's accounts of the disappearance and re-discovery of the works of Aristotle have been variously interpreted believed and disbelieved in parts and it will be necessary for us to look at some of the details, especially in Strabo's account. Strabo reports that Theophrastus bequeathed his library which included Aristotle's 1 to Neleus, son of Coriscus, who took the books to his native Scepsis in the Troad. There, in the hands of Neleus' heirs, the books were neglected and later, to escape discovery by the kings of Pergamon, were buried in the ground where they lay hidden for i So years or more, suffering greatly through moisture and moths. About I 00 B.C. or shortly afterwards, the books were taken to Athens by Apellicon of Teos and from there, after the fall of Athens in 86 B.C., to Rome by Sulla. In Rome, the grammarian Tyrannion of Pontus, a friend of Cicero's and a great collector of books, obtained possession of the manuscripts and published them. But, Strabo says, Tyrannion's edition was full of grave errors, because Tyrannion himself filled the lacunae in the severely damaged texts, and also because he employed inferior copyists. Besides, the booksellers got hold of them and produced faulty editions. All the same, Strabo says, the publication of the manuscripts made possible a great advance over previous Aristotelian studies; for until then the works of Aristotle had not been known and, especially, the earlier peripatetics possessed the exoteric writings only, and hence could not philosophise soundly (7xpxy[toclr.xC-a) but were spinning empty hypotheses. Finally and this is Plutarch's additional information Andronicus of Rhodes, an Aristotelian, and presumably disciple of Tyrannion,

Sir Hans Sloane: The Great Collector and His Circle

Sir Hans Sloane: The Great Collector and His Circle

Edward Simpson, alias ‘Flint Jack’. A Victorian Craftsman

The Victorians were great collectors. They fortified themselves by collecting other men's land and its products ; glorified themselves with collections of children, relations and pompous civic buildings ; and justified it all with a series of facts collected from the Family Bible, and from accounts of primitive men and Evolution. Their attitude to everything was captative ; and only in moments of extreme distraction were they oblative. Those who had recently ‘ arrived ’ loaded glass-fronted cabinets with sets of china—never used, for fear that they would be broken. They could fill their drawing-rooms with hideous statuettes, and cover their mantelpieces with stupid bric-àbrac and an occasional palaeolith—because there was at least one parlourmaid to dust them. Even more intelligent men, less anxious to impress their families and friends, were afflicted with the same disease : their motives were acquisitive rather than artistic or truly scientific; and if there was any philosophy other than that of mere gain, underlying their systematic collection of curios, it was the philosophy of Evolution, and with it the complacent belief in progress from Palaeolithic Man with his pathetic flint scrapers, to the Victorian Superman, with his eighty-bladed Sportsman's knife.

Forord

PrefaceThis photograph shows Dr. Therkel Mathiassen as we Danish archeologists best know him: out in the field, observant, critical, deeply interested, with wrinkles innumerable telling their tale of good humour and intelligence. Mathiassen the omnipresent, the untiring toiler, never sparing himself but always expecting a little more of himself than of others, the quiet, balanced, unhurried worker who nevertheless works at such a phenomenal speed; this is the Mathiassen we know, as we are accustomed to seeing him. What archeological research and the preservation of ancient monuments in Denmark in actual fact owe to him we shall not forget. Let me stress the following two points:In the sphere of research into Denmark's Stone Age Therkel Mathiassen will long be remembered as the great collector and systematizer of new and primary material. Our knowledge of the millenia of Denmark's Mesolithic Period is based to a considerable extent upon the numerous settlement sites and "stations" discovered by Mathiassen in the field and published by him in the literature of the subject. Think only of his work in Aamose or with the Gudenaa siles - not to mention his contributions in the sphere of the New Stone Age or of systematic research into the history of ancient settlement.The other main point is that of preservation of ancient monuments. Since the law protecting these monuments was passed in 1937 no one has laboured remotely comparably with Mathiassen to explain, practise and adapt the provisions of the statute, and in no less degree to fight for actual literal preservation, lest posterity should see the preservation statutes confined to the obscurity of paper, an imaginary life ignored in practice. This battle is still going on, and if a solution is ever found to the problem of an effective watch and ward over Denmark's ancient monuments a large share of the praise for this will be owed to Mathiassen.In the field of Eskimo research Dr. Mathiassen is, as is well known, a figure of international repute, by reason of the work of his youth and early manhood. But the past twenty years of his everactive life he has devoted to a preponderant degree to the excavation of his native soil and to the shrewd and accurate assessment of its fruits. In his department of the National Museum, the former "Oldnordisk Museum", Dr. Mathiassen is a highly respected and beloved chief. Nor could one expect it to be otherwise.Gentle reader, let these lines and the photograph which accompanies them illuminate for you the background and the reason why.Johannes Brøndsted

The Library of the American Philosophical Society

The Library of the American Philosophical Society was born in colonial days. It grew and flourished in the early national period down through the forties. Following that, it was overshadowed and temporarily eclipsed by the extraordinary growth of public and university libraries till the early twentieth century, when it emerged from a more or less dormant state in response to the impact of the extraordinary interest in specialized libraries. As the library of the oldest scientific and learned society of the country, it has shared, better or worse, the fortunes and vicissitudes of that society over a period of nearly two hundred years. It is the product therefore, not of a great collector or Maecenas, but of the interest and devotion of the officers and members-scientists and scholars-of a great society, united, so says the charter, for promoting useful Not till the thirties of the present century did the Library attain some degree of the financial strength so marvelously utilized in the promotion of scholarship, by the great libraries like the Henry E. Huntingdon, the John Carter Brown, William L. Clements and others discussed in this series of articles. But if large private endowments were not the fashion in the Age of Enlightenment, an intense interest in science and learning was paramount, and the beginning of the Library of the American Philosophical Society, like the Society itself, is a living memorial to the spirit of inquiry and search knowledge so characteristic of the eighteenth century. In the spirit of the Renaissance and the tradition of Copernicus and Galileo, men eagerly espoused the Newtonian approach to the physical world. They turned to the study of nature and of man. Science and experimental philosophy became the vogue among the intellectuals of every country, even though they did lip service to Bacon's House of Soloman and all branches of knowledge. In their enthusiasm they

Oscar Wilde on his Subdividing Himself

The following letter by Oscar Wilde, generously sent to me by Professor Waldo H. Dunn of Scripps College, may be of interest to the readers of my article, “Oscar Wilde and the Devil's Advocate,” published in the September 1944 number of PMLA, for it seems to be a pretty direct confirmation by Wilde himself of some of the speculations which I made concerning Wilde's splitting himself into different and often antithetical persons in his published works. So far as Mr. Dunn and I can discover, this letter seems never to have been printed. Mr. Dunn tells me that he found it in the Alexander Turnbull Library (now the National Library) in Wellington, New Zealand, when he was working there in 1932–33; and the holograph is presumably still there. The founder of the library, he says, “was a really great collector, and purchased letters, rare books, and proof sheets with discrimination.”

Oscar Wilde on His Subdividing Himself

THE following letter by Oscar Wilde, generously sent to me by Professor Waldo H. Dunn of Scripps College, may be of interest to the readers of my article, "Oscar Wilde and the Devil's Advocate," published in the September 1944 number of PMLA, for it seems to be a pretty direct confirmation by Wilde himself of some of the speculations which I made concerning Wilde's splitting himself into different and often antithetical persons in his published works. So far as Mr. Dunn and I can discover, this letter seems never to have been printed. Mr. Dunn tells me that he found it in the Alexander Turnbull Library (now the National Library) in Wellington, New Zealand, when he was working there in 1932-33; and the holograph is presumably still there. The founder of the library, he says, "was a really great collector, and purchased letters, rare books, and proof sheets with discrimination." eundloser Krieg, h nziehend lang rch Jahr und Tag endlos und weit, i ilder, waffenreiche Drang icken, Front und auf d r Seit'.

Mr. G. Eumorfopoulos

WE regret to record the death at the age of seventy-six of Mr. George Eumorfopoulos, which took place on December 19. Eumorfopoulos had long been known as a great collector and skilled connoisseur of objects of Oriental art and more especially of the art of the Chinese.

An Illustrated History of the Moslem World Written for the "Great Mogul"

THE Mughal Emperors of India were great connoisseurs and collectors of illuminated manuscripts and their Imperial Library at Delhi contained a priceless collection of these works of art. On the decay of the dynasty, portions of this library were appropriated by the Mahrattas and also by the Persian invader. Nadir Shah, in the XVIIIth century: it was finally broken up during the Mutiny of 1857. Great were the vicissitudes of some of these valuable manuscripts and miniature paintings before they again found safety in museums or in the hands of modern collectors. Several were acquired as loot by rebel sepoys and were found folded up in their bedding or crammed into their haversacks in a badly mutilated condition. Many of those which were not actually destroyed during these disturbances have been preserved, and recently a group of miniature paintings from the library of the “Great Moguls” came to light, having been discovered by Mr. Ajit Ghose of Calcutta, a connoisseur of Indian and Persian art. These pictur...

Logan-Story Correspondence

Logan-Story Correspondence INTRODUCTION With Biographical Sketches of James Logan and Thomas Story The original letters forming the "Logan-Story Correspondence ," printed in the following pages, are preserved at the headquarters of the Society of Friends, Euston Road, London, N. W. 1, within the covers of a wide-margined copy of The Journal of Thomas Story, published 1747. This volume, with others, was presented to Friends' Reference Library (D), in 1903, by the executors of George Stacey Gibson (1818-1883), who obtained them by purchase for £150 from Silvanus Thompson, of York, son of Thomas Thompson of Liverpool (1775-1861), the great collector of Quaker books and manuscripts. The Story volume is grangerised with numerous original documents of great interest. The Letters were copied for the printer at the expense of Charles F. Jenkins, of Philadelphia. They were all in proof and one copy at Devonshire House, when, in 1906, a fire took place at the printers, and the type was melted. This proof is now being used for copy. See Journal of the Friends Historical Society (London), II. III. Wilson Armistead included most of the Letters (with omissions and alterations) in his Memoirs of James Logan, London , 1851. There is a résumé of the Correspondence in Ferguson's Early Cumberland and Westmorland Friends, 1871, pp. 130 ff. The Friend (Phila.), vol. 45 (1872), printed extracts provided by "Alpha," with much comment on their subjectmatter . This Correspondence between the two scientists must have been a great source of pleasure to both. Logan lamented the lack of "any. acquaintance here, or any correspondents there, who could or would be of use" (Letter XV) ; and we think of Story also lacking congenial scientific comradeship. A standard biography of both men is still to be written. (1) 2 LOGAN-STORY CORRESPONDENCE. JAMES LOGAN James Logan (1674-1751) was the elder of the two surviving children of Patrick and Isabel (Hume) Logan, of Ireland and Scotland and England. There is an account of his descent given in Memoirs of James Logan, by Wilson Armistead; Recollections of John Jay Smith, Phila. 1892, p. 338; JnI. F. H. S. VII. 47, 86. His brother was Dr. William Logan (1686-1757) referred to in a note to Letter VII. James received a liberal education, and was with a linen draper in Dublin till his parents and their family removed to Bristol, Eng. The father took charge, for a time, of the Friends' school in that City; about 1694 it was in the hands of James, and later in the charge of Alexander Arscott (Knight, Hist, of Sidcol School, 1808-1908, pp. 5 ff.). In 1698, there was a prospect for our schoolmaster to become engaged in trade between Bristol and Dublin, but early the next year he was urged by William Penn to become his secretary and go with him to his new possessions beyond the sea. This offer he accepted despite the objections of his friends, and he sailed with Penn in the Canterbury, VII. 1699. In this choice Penn was more successful than in some others; Logan's abilities were soon recognised and at the age of twenty-five he was appointed Secretary to the Province. On leaving again for Europe in 1701, Penn wrote to Logan: " ...... My dependence is on thy care and honesty. Serve me faithfully, as thou expects a blessing from God, or my favour, and I shall support thee to the uttermost" {Penn and Logan Correspondence, copied from the originals by Deborah Logan (1761-1839), being vols. IX and X of the Memoirs of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Phila. 1870, I. 61). In IV. 1702, Penn wrote to Logan: "Thou hast heard of the death of thy father and marriage of thy mother to one not a Friend ; an exercise." Logan replied : "My mother's misfortune is my affliction, and not my crime; what most troubles me in it is my ingenious little brother, who I fear is ruined." William was then sixteen. Deborah Logan INTRODUCTION.3 added a note: "This was an unfortunate second marriage. She afterwards came over to this country and was affectionately received and provided for by her son : he also procured the education of...

Address of the President, Sir J. J. Thomson, O. M., at the anniversary meeting, November 30, 1918

Dr. Downing had been Superintendent of the Nautical Almanac from 1892 to 1910, and had done good service in Observational Astronomy. By the death at the great age of 98 of the Rev. William Greenwell, we lose a Fellow of forty years’ standing, a great collector and a prominent archæologist. Like Canon Norman, whose name also appears in this list, he was a Member of the Chapter of Durham Cathedral, which has thus lost in one year two Fellows of this Society.

Anton Dohrn

THE whole biological world will feel a pang of grief at the news of the death of Anton Dohrn, the founder and director of the Zoological Station of Naples. It is true that he had accomplished the great work which he set himself forty years ago, and had seen the projects and dreams of his youth fully realised- and more than realised. I met Dohrn first in 1870 at Liverpool, when Huxley was president of the British Association, and in May and June of the next year went, after a winter spent in Leipzig, to join him at Jena, where he was a “privat-docent” in zoology. He was then thirty years of age, and had done some excellent embryological work on the Crustacea, in furtherance of which he had passed some months at Naples and Messina. His father, with whom I later spent some weeks at Naples, was a very remarkable man, one of the iron-willed, somewhat grim type of North Germans, a handsome old gentleman, known throughout Europe as a great collector of Coleoptera, a hobby which brought him into close personal friendship with similar enthusiasts in Italy, Spain, England, and -France, whom he visited from time to time. He enjoyed an ample income from a sugar-refining business in Stettin, where he resided, and was anxious that Anton should accept the post of director of the Hamburg Zoological Garden, marry, and settle down there. But when I knew him at Jena, Anton had already made up his mind to do something really large and important for the progress of zoological science. Like others who had visited the Mediterranean in order to study its rich marine life, he had felt the difficulty of carrying on such work in lodgings, without apparatus, without library, and at the mercy of the fishermen whom it was necessary to employ and to conciliate. The French naturalist Coste had, when employed by the Government of the Second Empire to study economic questions connected with the national fisheries, established a laboratory, with aquaria, tanks, and fishing-boats, at Concarneau, on the Brittany coast. Henri de Lacaze-Duthiers had also arranged a permanent marine biological laboratory for himself and his pupils. The plan took shape in Anton Dohrn's mind of establishing a larger and more completely equipped laboratory than these on the Mediterranean coast, and, but for the war between France and Germany, he would probably have carried out his first intention and placed his laboratory on the coast near Marseilles. When I knew him he had already thought out the scheme which he realised, and had determined to try to secure a site at Naples in the Villa Reale, which stretches along the shore. He had succeeded with no little difficulty in securing a certain sum of money from his father-his heritage, in fact- and he intended deliberately to risk this in his enterprise. His plan was to secure the cooperation of all European universities in building and maintaining the Naples laboratory, or “station,” as he proposed to call it. This meant, in all cases but that of England, the cooperation of the State Governments. But in order to obtain this support and cooperation he realised that it was necessary, at whatever effort and risk, to make a plunge-to start the “stazione,” to erect a fine and imposing building, to demonstrate the convenience and excellence of its organisation, and thus to secure approval and unhesitating financial assistance. His plan was to sink his own fortune in that first step, and he did so. He obtained help from friends both at home and in this country as the building grew, and by tactful appeal and untiring effort-involving years of work given up to persuading statesmen, politicians, associations, professors, millionaires, and emperors of the value and importance of the great Naples “Stazione Zoologica” he achieved for it a splendid and permanent position.

The Ballad of The Bitter Withy

It is so unusual a circumstance at this late day for an entirely new English ballad to come to light that we are justified in hailing its appearance as an event of general interest to the world of English scholarship. From the completion of Professor Child's magnificent work up to the present no ballad has been discovered, which would merit insertion under a new title in that corpus. Variants of ballads already known continue to be unearthed with gratifying frequency, but so well did the great collector glean the field that it can seldom fall to the lot of any follower to bring to light a new specimen. The honor due for such a discovery belongs, however, to Mr. Frank Sidgwick, who printed in 1905 a ballad called The Withies, or The Bitter Withy in Notes and Queries.

III. Microscopical observations on the seeds of several East-India plants

Honourable gentlemen , I now take the Liberty of communicating to you these my following Observations - a certain ancient Surgeon, that is a great Collector of Foreign Curiosities, had entreated another Surgeon, for whom he had an esteem, that when he was in the East Indies , and discover'd in the Plants or Seeds of those Parts any particular operation or effect, that he would impart some of 'em to him, with an account of their said operation; Whereupon he had received from the East Indies the Seed of a Tree called Euwane , of which the Description and Operation is as follows. operation or effect, that he would impart some of 'em to him, with an account of their said operation