Michael R.G. Spiller
Published: 1980
Total Pages: 0
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The copy of A Letter to Peter du Moulin from which this facsimile is taken is in the National Library of Scot1and,pressmark NG. 1341. c. l (8). The fIrst and on1y issue, it runs to 36 pages with a tit1e page and blank preliminary 1eaf, and cost sixpence; it is coarse1y and probab1y hurried1y printed, with an error on the tit1e page: to make sense of 'Prebendarie of the same Church,' the &c. after Casaubon 's name shou1d have been expanded to read 'and Prebendarie of Christ-Church, Canterbury. ' An obliging contemporary has annotated the copy with the names ofthose whom Casaubon alludes to indirect1y. There is no date in the pamphlet other than on the title page, and the on1y evidence for a more precise dating, in the absence of any ms. or notes for it, is in a letter written by Casaubon to J. G. Graevius on July 19th, 1668, from Cambridge. Casaubon and Graevius (1632-1703), Professor of Politics, History and Eloquence in the University of Utrecht, were accustomed to bewail the contemporary state of the republic of letters in their correspondence, and on this occasion Casaubon wrote: Prima mall labes a Philosophia Cartesiana, quae stultae iuventuti et novitatis avidae bonos libros excussit e manibus. Inde ad Experimenta ventum est, in quibus nunc omnis eruditio, omnis sapientia collocatur.