Noting the mind: Commonplace books and the pursuit of the self in eighteenth-century Britain

Journal of the History of Ideas

Volumn 65, Issue 4, 2004, Pages 603-625

  Dacome, Lucia ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON   (United Kingdom)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 22944487601     PISSN: 00225037     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/jhi.2005.0013     Document Type: Review

References (151)

1. John Locke, A New Method of a Common-Place-Book. Translated out of French from the Second Volume of the Bibliotheque Universelle, in John Locke, Posthumous Works of Mr. John Locke (London, 1706), 311-36;
2. and Ephraim Chambers, Cyclopaedia: or, an Universal Dictionary of the Arts and Sciences (London, 1728), I, entry on "Common-places" (in the second edition of the Cyclopaedia [1738], changed to "Common-place-book").
3. John Covel, master of Christ College, Cambridge (1638-1722), for example, collected in his commonplace book botanical drawings and seals, see British Library, Add. 57.495.
4. See Ann Blair, "Annotating and Indexing Natural Philosophy," in Marina Frasca-Spada and Nick Jardine (eds.), Books and the Sciences in History (Cambridge, 2000), 69-70;
5. "Reading Strategies for Coping with Information Overload ca. 1550-1700," JHI, 64 (2003), 11-28;
6. and Richard Yeo, "A Solution to the Multitude of Books: Ephraim Chambers's Cyclopaedia (1728) as 'the Best Book in the Universe,'" ibid., 61-72.
7. See Joan Marie Lechner, Renaissance Concepts of the Commonplaces (New York, 1962);
8. Ruth Mohl, John Milton and his Commonplace Book (New York, 1969);
9. Ann Blair, "Humanist Methods in Natural Philosophy: The Commonplace Book," JHI, 53 (1992), 541-51;
10. Peter Beal, "Notions in Garrison: The Seventeenth-Century Commonplace Book," ed. W. Speed Hill, New Ways of Looking at Old Texts: Papers of the Renaissance English Text Society, 1985-1991 (Binghamton, N.Y., 1993), 133-47;
11. Francis Goyet, Le sublime du "lieu commun" L'invention rhétorique dans l'Antiquité et à la Renaissance (Paris, 1996);
12. Ann Moss, Printed Commonplace-Books and the Structuring of Renaissance Thought (Oxford, 1996);
13. Richard Yeo, "Ephraim Chambers's Cyclopaedia (1728) and the Tradition of Commonplaces," JHI, 57 (1996), 157-75;
14. Ann Blair, The Theatre of Nature: Jean Bodin and Renaissance Science (Princeton, 1997);
15. Ann Moss, "The Politica of Justus Lipsius and the Commonplace Book," JHI, 59 (1998), 421-36;
16. Earle Havens, Commonplace Books: A History of Manuscripts and Printed Books from Antiquuity to the Twentieth Century (New Haven, Conn., 2001);
17. Richard Yeo, Encyclopaedic Visions: Scientific Dictionaries and Enlightenment Culture (Cambridge, 2001), esp. Chapter 4;
18. Helmut Zedelmaier, "Lesetechniken. Die Praktiken der Lectüre in Neuzeit," in Helmut Zedelmaier and Martin Mulsow (eds.), Die Praktiken der Gelehrsamkeit in der Frühen Neuzeit (Tübingen, 2001), 11-30, esp. 21-25;
19. and Florian Neumann, "Jeremias Drexels Aurifodina und die Ars excerpendi bei den Jesuiten," ibid., 51-61.
20. See Kenneth A. Lockridge, On the Sources of Patriarchal Rage: The Commonplace Books of William Byrd and Thomas Jefferson, and the Gendering of Power in the Eighteenth Century (New York, 1992)
21. and Kevin Berland, Jan Kirsten Gilliam, and Kenneth A. Lockridge (eds.), The Commonplace Book of William Byrd II of Westover (Chapel Hill, 2001);
22. also see Stephen Colclough, "Recovering the Reader: Commonplace Books and Diaries as Sources of Reading Experience," Publishing History, 44 (1998), 5-37, esp. 7-9.
23. See G. G. Meynell, "John Locke's Method of Common-Placing, as seen in his Drafts and his Medical Notebooks, Bodleian MSS Locke d. 9, f. 21, and f. 23," The Seventeenth Century, 8 (1993), 245-67;
24. Moss, Printed Commonplace-Books, 278-80;
25. Yeo, "Ephraim Chambers's Cyclopaedia";
26. Blair, "Annotating," 87-88;
27. Richard Yeo, Encyclopaedic Visions, 110-15;
28. and Lorraine Daston, "Perché i fatti sono brevi?" Quaderni storici, 108 (2001), 745-70.
29. John Locke, An Essay concerning Human Understanding (Oxford, 1975), 328-48.
30. See for instance Udo Thiel, Lockes Theorie der personalen Identität (Bonn, 1983);
31. Christopher Fox, Locke and the Scriblerians: Identity and Consciousness in Early Eighteenth-Century Britain (Berkeley, 1988);
32. and Raymond Martin and John Barresi, Naturalization of the Soul: Self and Personal Identity in the Eighteenth Century (London, 2000). A main protagonist in the debate on the nature of the self in the eighteenth century was, of course, the Scottish philosopher David Hume;
33. see David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature (Oxford, 1978), 251-63.
34. See "Epistle Dedicatory," in John Locke, A New Method of Making Common-Place-Books;
35. written by the late Learned Mr. John Lock, Author of the Essay concerning Human Understanding (London, 1706);
36. William Lupton, The Resurrection of the Same Body (Oxford, 1711), 17;
37. and Chambers, Cyclopaedia, entry on "Common-places."
38. See Meynell, "John Locke's Method," 245.
39. See G. G. Meynell, "A Database for John Locke's Medical Notebooks and Medical Reading," Medical History, 42 (1997), 473-86.
40. Meynell, "John Locke's Method," 245.
41. The Correspondence of John Locke (VIII, Oxford, 1976-89), ed. De Beer, I, 579.
42. See Henry Ollion (ed.), Lettres inédites de John Locke (The Hague, 1912), 42-43
43. and The Correspondence, ed. De Beer, II, 79, 119-20, 659-60, 691-93, 695, 701, and 710-11.
44. Maurice Cranston, John Locke: A Biography (London, 1957), 227-30.
45. The Correspondence, ed. De Beer, II, 691-93. The English text sent to Toinard is now in British Library, Add 28.728 ff. 54-63.
46. The Correspondence, ed. De Beer, II, 695 and 701. British Library, Add 28.728 ff. 46-53 contains a Latin version of the English text Locke sent to Toinard.
47. John Locke, "Methode nouvelle de dresser des Recueils. Communiquée par l'Auteur," Bibliothèque Universelle et Historique (Amsterdam, 1686), II, 315-40.
48. See Rosalie L. Colie, "John Locke in the Republic of Letters," ed. Jean S. Yolton, A Locke Miscellany: Locke Biography and Criticism for All (Bristol, 1990), 55-74.
49. Epistle Dedicatory, in Locke, A New Method of Making.
50. Jean Le Clerc, "Eloge du feu Mr Locke," Bibliothèque Choisie (Amsterdam, 1705), VI, 375-76, published in English in 1706.
51. "Epistle Dedicatory," in Locke, A New Method of Making Common-Place-Books.
52. See Meynell, "John Locke's Method."
53. See for instance Bodleian Library, Lovelace Collection: MS.Locke.b.4; MS.Locke.c.31; MS.Locke.c.33; MS. Locke.c.42; MS.Locke.c.43; MS.Locke.c.44; MS.Locke.d.1; MS.Locke.d.9; MS.Locke.d.10; MS.Locke.d.11; MS. Locke.e.17; MS.Locke.f.14; MS.Locke.f.15; MS.Locke.f.21; MS.Locke.f.23; MS.Locke.f.24; MS.Locke.f.25; MS.Locke.f.27; MS.Locke.f.28; MS. Locke.f.29. MS.Locke.f.33; and British Library, Add. 32.554.
54. Bodleian Library, Lovelace Collection, MS Locke.c.33, f. 9.
55. Bodleian Library, Lovelace Collection, MS Locke.c.33, f. 33.
56. Locke, A New Method of a Common-Place-Book, 317-18.
57. For an analysis of Locke's method, see Meynell, "John Locke's Method."
58. Locke, A New Method of a Common-Place-Book, 314-15.
59. Blair, "Annotating," 69-89.
60. Locke, A New Method of a Common-Place-Book, 323-24.
61. See Lechner, Renaissance Concepts;
62. Blair, "Humanist Methods";
63. Beal, "Notions in Garrison," 135;
64. and Moss, Printed Commonplace-Books.
65. Desiderius Erasmus, On Copia of Words and Ideas, tr. Donald B. King and H. David Rix (Milwaukee, 1963), esp. 67-68 and 87-97.
66. Lechner, Renaissance Concepts, 166-69, and
67. Mary Thomas Crane, Framing Authority: Sayings, Self, and Society in Sixteenth-Century England (Princeton, 1993).
68. Le Clerc, "Monsieur Le Clerc's Character of Mr. Lock's Method, with his Advice about the Use of Common-Places," in Locke, A New Method of Making Common-Place-Books, ii.
69. Ibid., iii.
70. John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education (Oxford, 1989), 231-32;
71. on Locke's attitude towards contemporary practices of learning, see Richard Yeo, "John Locke's 'Of Study' (1677): Interpreting an Unpublished Essay," Locke Studies, 3 (2003), 147-65.
72. John Locke, Of the Conduct of the Understanding (New York, 1966), 67-69
73. published in his Posthumous Works in 1706.
74. The Polite Student (London, 1748), 32-33.
75. See Frances A. Yates, The Art of Memory (London, 1966)
76. Mary J. Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge, 1990)
77. , Paolo Rossi, Logic and the Art of Memory: The Quest for a Universal Language, tr. Stephen Clucas (Chicago, 2000), esp. Chapter 1.
78. Yeo, Encyclopaedic Visions, 80.
79. See Rossi, Logic, Chapter 5.
80. See René Descartes, Rules for the Direction of the Mind, in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, tr. John Cottingham et al. (Cambridge, 1985), I, 67.
81. v.
82. Le Clerc, "Monsieur Le Clerc's Character," ii.
83. TNA, PRO 30/24/27/25. See Lawrence E. Klein, Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness: Moral Discourse and Cultural Politics in Early Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge, 1994), 41-47.
84. Locke, Some Thoughts, 232.
85. Moss, Printed Commonplace-Books, 279.
86. Isaac Watts, Logick: Or, The Right Use of Reason in the Enquiry after Truth (London, 1725), 117.
87. Bell's Common Place Book, Form'd generally upon the Principles Recommended and Practiced by Mr. Locke (London, 1770).
88. Locke, A New Method of a Common-Place-Book, 322.
89. Chambers, Cyclopaedia, I, i;
90. and see Yeo, Encyclopaedic Visions, 114-19.
91. Chambers, Cyclopaedia, I, xxix.
92. See Le Clerc, "Monsieur Le Clerc's Character," iv-v.
93. On the relationship between double entry book keeping, collecting practices, and commonplacing see Anke Te Heesen, "Die doppelte Verzeichnung. Schriftliche und räumliche Aneignungsweisen von Natur im 18. Jahrhundert," Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Preprint 204 (Berlin, 2002).
94. Emma Spary, "The 'Nature' of Enlightenment," in William Clark, Jan Golinski, and Simon Schaffer (eds.), The Sciences in Enlightened Europe (Chicago, 1999), 295.
95. Locke, Of the Conduct of the Understanding, 94-95.
96. Ibid., 124.
97. Ibid., 95.
98. Isaac Watts, The Improvement of the Mind: Or, a Supplement to the Art of Logick (London, 1741), 1-2.
99. Ibid., 240-41.
100. Ibid., 241.
101. John Mason, Self-Knowledge. A Treatise, shewing the Nature and Benefit of that Important Science, and the Way to Attain it (London, 1745), 131-33.
102. Cf. "The Rules of Dr. Doddridge's Academy at Northampton," in T. Gasquoine et al., A History of Northampton Castle Hill Church (Northampton, 1896), 63-71.
103. Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 2nd Series (Boston, 1895), IX, 341.
104. Watts, Improvement, xii-xiii. On women's responses to eighteenth-century calls for self-improvement
105. see John Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century (New York, 1997), 57-59, 197, and 606.
106. 2), 25.
107. Samuel Johnson, Lives of the English Poets (Oxford, 1905), III, 310.
108. British Library, Add. 24.879. Thanks to Stephen Colclough for making this information available.
109. "Title-page," in Locke, A New Method of Making Common-Place-Books
110. and Chambers, Cyclopaedia, entry on "Common-places."
111. Bodleian Library, MS.Engl.misc.f.20.
112. "Poetic commonplace books and manuscripts of Thomas Gray, 1716-1771," Cambridge University Library, MS.Microfilm.9990.
113. Frederick A. Pottle (ed.), Boswell in Holland, 1763-64 (New York, 1952), 38.
114. Cambridge University Library, Add. 6664.
115. Bell's Common Place Book, Form'd generally upon the Principles Recommended and Practiced by Mr. Locke (London, 1770).
116. A New Commonplace Book, in which the Plan Recommended and Practised by J. Locke is Enlarged and Improved (Cambridge, 1777), 1.
117. Stenography Compedized; or, an Improvement of Mr. Weston's Art of Short-Hand: [...] To which is prefixed, A Specimen of Mr. Locke's Index to a Common-place book (Glasgow, 1782).
118. A New Commonplace Book; being an Improvement of that Recommended by Mr. Locke (London, 17992), 1.
119. Ibid., "Title-page."
120. A New Commonplace Book, in which the Plan Recommended and Practised by J. Locke is Enlarged and Improved, 1.
121. Richard Blackmore, A Treatise of the Spleen and Vapours (London, 1725), 25, 26, and 242.
122. See for instance G. J. Barker-Benfield, The Culture of Sensibility: Sex and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Chicago, 1992), esp. Chapter 4
123. and Colin Jones, "Pulling Teeth in Eighteenth-Century Paris," Past and Present, 166 (2000), 100-145, esp. 138.
124. On "mental tools," see Lucien Febvre, The Problem of Unbelief in the Sixteenth Century: The Religion of Rabelais, tr. Beatrice Gottlieb (Cambridge, Mass., 1982), 150.
125. On Locke's tutoring of Shaftesbury, see Robert Voitle, The Third Earl of Shaftesbury, 1671-1713 (Baton Rouge, La., 1984), 7-12.
126. See Klein, Shaftesbury, 28 and 40.
127. See also Voitle, The Third Earl, 118-26 and 320-21
128. and Barker-Benfield, The Culture of Sensibility, 106-7.
129. Quoted in Voitle, The Third Earl, 66.
130. See Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of, Miscellaneous Reflections (IV, 1) in Complete Works (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, 1989), I:2, 232, and 234.
131. On Shaftesbury's pursuit of the self, see Klein, Shaftesbury, 70-80.
132. TNA, PRO 30/24/27/10, f. 200.
133. Shaftesbury, Miscellaneous Reflections (IV, 1), 232.
134. Klein, Shaftesbury, 83.
135. See Klein, Shaftesbury
136. and David H. Solkin, Painting for Money: The Visual Arts and the Public Sphere in Eighteenth-Century England (New Haven, Conn., 1993), 11-13 and 20-26.
137. See Klein, Shaftesbury, 72-80.
138. On Shaftesbury's exercises of self-knowledge, see Klein, Shaftesbury, 81 ff.
139. For Shaftesbury's "artificial self," see TNA, PRO 30/24/27/10, f. 153 ff. For Shaftesbury's "natural self," see TNA, PRO 30/24/27/10, f. 170 ff.
140. Shaftesbury, Miscellaneous Reflections (III, 1), 196 and 198.
141. On Shaftesbury's project, see Klein, Shaftesbury.
142. Klein, Shaftesbury, 41-47.
143. Joseph Addison, The Spectator (Oxford, 1965), I, 44.
144. The Young Gentleman and Lady Instructed in such Principles of Politeness, Prudence and Virtue (London, 1747), I, 213.
145. Bodleian Library, MS.Engl.misc.d.310.
146. Pottle, Boswell, 3, 4, 38, 47, 249 et passim.
147. See Susan Manning, "Boswell's Pleasures, the Pleasures of Boswell," British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 20 (1997), 17-31.
148. See Berland et al. (eds.), The Commonplace Book, 33, and Chapter 10.
149. Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub and Other Works (Oxford, 1986), 71-72.
150. Mason, Self-Knowledge, 131.
151. On eighteenth-century autobiographical writing, see for instance Patricia Meyer Spacks, Imagining a Self: Autobiography and Novel in Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge, Mass., 1976).