Of Wisdome. Three Books.
CHARRON, (Pierre).; LENNARD (Samson, translator)
Written in French by Peter Charro[n], Doct. of Law in Paris. Translated by Samson Lennard.
Engraved allegorical title-page by William Hole.
Second Edition in English. Small 4to. [34], 588, [1] pp. Fine copy in original limp vellum, ink title on the spine (with one original leather tie surviving; text block detached along the back joint where the leather slips have broken, otherwise fine and undisturbed).
London: [Eliot's Court Press] for Edward Blount and Will: Aspley, [1615?]
STC 5052, with the dedication to Samson Lennard and the reading "necessarie" on p. 588. With the final errata leaf. An exceptionally fine, clean and crisp copy.
This edition is undated, but the dedicatory epistle to the translator's cousin and namesake, of Chevening, Kent, states that the book had originally been dedicated to Prince Henry and now "instantly upon his death, comming to a new impression, with some additions, seemes to seeke for new helps", so it must post-date Henry's death in November 1612. STC dates it [1615?]. but without giving any explanation. The first three English editions (tentatively dated 1608, 1615 and 1620) are all undated - was this an attempt to forestall censorship?
Pierre Charron was a French Catholic priest and moral philosopher, whose two major works, Les Trois veritez and De la Sagesse, together comprise "one of the most important bodies of political and moral theory to appear in the late sixteenth or early seventeenth centuries" (Tuck). De la Sagesse, first published in 1601 and reprinted in a revised edition in 1604, was an instant sensation: the papal nuncio in France described it as a "scandalous book which adopts the teaching of Machiavelli and is extremely dangerous to religion", and in 1605 it was placed on the Index of prohibited books. It was widely reprinted all over Europe, and went through eight English editions between 1608 and 1670, of which this is the second, described by the translator, Samson Lennard, as "a new impression, with some additions".
Charron's thought was astonishingly far ahead of his time, particularly in its sceptical and relativistic approach to the truth-claims of Christianity. For example, Of Wisdome argues that our religious beliefs are determined not by our acceptance of divinely-revealed truths but merely by our place of birth: "Religion is not of our choyce or election, but man without his knowledge is made a Jew or a Christian, because he is borne in Judaisme or Christianitie; and if he had beene borne elsewhere among the Gentiles, or Mahumetans, he had been likewise a Gentile or a Mahumetan". Even more daringly, Charron suggets that it is possible to live a moral life without being religious, and seeks to justify moral behaviour on non-religious grounds, urging the reader to "be an honest man, not because thou wouldest go to paradise, but ... because the law, and the generall policy of the world whereof thou art a part, requireth it."
Charron was a close friend of Montaigne, and Of Wisdome incorporates many passages from Montaigne's writings almost verbatim: Richard Tuck describes it as an attempt to put Montaigne's ideas "into a more philosophically systematic framework".
As one of the great neo-Stoic texts of the early seventeenth century, like Thomas Lodge's Seneca, Of Wisdome is one of the books that Lady Anne Clifford, daughter of the Earl of Cumberland and successively Countess of Dorset and Pembroke, chose to be depicted with her famous Great Picture. This triple portrait, which hangs in the great hall of her ancestral home, Appleby Castle in Westmoreland, was painted in 1647 by Jan van Belcamp and shows her in childhood, aldulthood and late middle-age surrounded by those books which were of most importance to her at each stage of her life. She is shown with her hand resting on a copy of Charron in the right-hand wing.
The engraved frontispiece by William Hole, based on Charron's own design for the French edition, depicts Wisdom as a naked woman, "her countenance cheereful, merry and manly", with four other women - Passion ("with a changed and hideous countenance"), Opinion ("with wandering eyes, inconstant, giddy, borne upon the heads of the other"), Superstition ("astonished and in a trance, and her hands fastened the one to the other") and Pedantry ("with a sullen visage, her eye-lids elevated reading in a Book") - chained as slaves under feet. Instead of looking up to God in heaven, Wisdom gazes serenely at her own reflection in a mirror (usually an emblem for Vanity).
Provenance: Sir Lionell Tollemache, 2nd. Baronet. (1591-1640), of Helmingham Hall, Suffolk, with ink signature on the flyleaf "Sr Lionell Tollemache"; signature of another "Lyonell Tollemache" on the title, perhaps the 3rd. Baronet (d. 1669); several ink pen-trials "Huntingtower" on the flyleaf of Lionel, styled Lord Huntingtower (1648-1727), who succeeded his father as 4th. Baronet and became 3rd. Earl of Dysart on his mother's death in 1698. Helmingham shelfmark "L.H.V.14". The Tollemache family library at Helmingham Hall, built up by six generations from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-eighteenth century, was dispersed at auction in a celebrated series of sales between 1961 and 1969, this being Sotheby, 17/2/1969, lot 32, £110 to Hollings.
Literature: Tuck (Richard), Philosophy and Government 1572-1651 (Cambridge, 1993); Gregory (Tullio), "Pierre Charron's "Scandalous Book"', Hunter (M.) & Wootton (D.), eds., Atheisim from the Reformation to the Enlightenment, (Oxford 1992). On the Tollemache library, see Wilson (Edward), "The Book-Stamps of the Tollemache Family of Helmingham and Ham", in The Book Collector, 16 (1967), pp. 178-85, and Freeman (Janet Ing), The Post Master of Ipswich: William Stevenson Fitch, Antiquary and Thief, (London, 1997), pp. 12-14.
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