The republic of letters: Learned correspondence, 1680-1720

Seventeenth Century

Volumn 2, Issue 1, 1987, Pages 95-112

  Ultee, Maarten ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84868520597     PISSN: 0268117X     EISSN: 20504616     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/0268117X.1987.10555263     Document Type: Article

References (72)

1. G.W. Leibniz, ‘Relation de l’état présent de la république des lettres’, Samtliche Schriften and Briefe (Akademie-Ausgabe), 4e Reihe, Politische Schriften, Band 1 (Darmstadt, 1931), pp. 569-71.
2. ‘Voulant le dédier au Roy, on pourroit commencer ainsi: Sire, je présente à Votre Majesté la relation d’un pays, ou elle vivra tousjours. Ce sont les champs Elisiens des Héros, et il faut passer par là pour avoir commerce avec la posterité’. Samtliche Schriften and Briefe., Konzept A, p. 569.
3. ‘Si j’estois jeune, j’irais en Muscovie et peutestre jusqu’à la Chine pour établir cette communication de lumières par le moyen de mon Arithmetique binaire…’ Leibniz to Mathias Johan v. d. Schulenburg, Hannover, 16 August 1705, Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kultursbesitz, Berlin, MS Savigny 38, f. 28 draft in Hannover quoted by E. Bodemann, Der Briefwechsel des G. W. Leibniz (Hannover, 1889 Hildesheim, 1966), p. 269.
4. Hanns-Albert Steger, ‘Die Europapolitik desjungen Leibniz’, Jahrbuchfur Fränkis-che Landesforschung, 41 (1981), 171-77.
5. ‘Jamais la correspondance entre les philosophes ne fut plus universelle Leibnitz servit à l’animer. On a vu une république littéraire établie insensiblement dans l’Europe, malgré les guerres el malgré les religions diflérentes. Toutes les sciences, tous les arts ont regu ainsi des secours mutuels. Les académies ont formé cette republique… Les veritables savants dans chaque genre ont reserre les liens de cette grande société des esprits, répandue partout, et partout indépendante’. Voltaire, Le Si'ècle de Louis XIV, Chapter 34, in Oeuvres historiques, edited by René (Paris, Bibliothèque de la Pleiade, 1957 1962), p. 1027.
6. Rudolf W. Meyer, Leibniz and die europäische Ordnungskrise (Hamburg, 1948), p. 164
7. English translation Leibniz and the Seventeeth-Century Revolution (Cambridge, 1952).
8. English translation Leibniz and the Seventeeth-Century Revolution (Cambridge, 1952) Meyer’s further assertion is not entirely convincing: ‘Secure in their self-conscious isolation, the uomini singulari were sending their elaborate epistles all over Europe, while at the same time avoiding personal contact as much as possible… what mattered was a man’s reputation as a letter-writer’.
9. Fritz Schalk, ‘Erasmus and die Res Publica Literaria’, Actes du Cotloque Erasme, edited by C. Reedijk (Amsterdam and London, 1971), pp. 14-28
10. also, ‘Von Erasmus’ Res Publica Literaria zur Gelehrtenrepublik der Aufklärung’, Studien zur Französischen Aufklärung (Frankfurt am Main, 1977), pp. 143-63.
11. A. Rupert Hall, Philosophers at War: the Quarrel between Newton and Leibniz (Cambridge, 1980).
12. J.A.H. Bots, ‘Die Respublica litteraria. Wunschbild der europäischen Gelehrten-welt’, Ueberwegs Grandriss der Geschichte der Philosophie (in press)
13. and his inaugural lecture, Republiek der Letteren, Ideaal en Werkelijkheid (Amsterdam, 1977).
14. The Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford, 1933 1961:1970), 8, 492.
15. Elisabeth Labrousse, ‘Les coulisses du journal de Bayle’, Pierre Bayle, le philosophe de Rotterdam, edited by Paul Dibon (Paris and Amsterdam, 1959), p. 117.
16. Daniel Roche, Le siecle des tumieres en province: Academies el academiciens provinciaux, 1680-1789, 2 vols (Paris and The Hague, 1978).
17. Michael Hunter, Science and Society in Restoration England (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 34-35.
18. Michael Hunter, Science and Society in Restoration England (Cambridge, 1981)., p. 49. During the later seventeenth century Leibniz, Magliabechi, and Ismael Boulliau were acting as intelligencers also.
19. See H.J.M. Nellen, Ismael Boulliau (1605-1694), Nieuwsiaeer en Correspondent, Proefschrift, K.U. Niimeeen (Nijmegen, 1980).
20. Adolf von, Harnack, Geschichte der Preussischer Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin, 1900), 1, 106.
21. ‘ on n’écrit pas aux gens tout ce que l’on pense… En un mot les lettres d’un homme nesont pas de bons témoins de ses pensées.’ [Pierre Bayle], review of Lettres choisies de feu M. Guy Patin, Nouvelles de la Republique des Lettres 1:2 (April, 1684), 108-09 (La Haye, 1715).
22. But Bayle went on to exempt Patin’s letters from this general rule. Is it surprising that a later editor of Bayle’s letters should have cited this passage in his own preface? [Prosper Marchand], Lettres choisies de M. Bayle, 3 vols (Rotterdam, 1714).
23. Peter Burgel, ‘Der Privatbrief. Entwurf eines heuristischen Modells’, Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft and Geistesgeschichte, 50 (1976), 281-97.
24. Monika Ammermann, ‘Gelehrten-Briefe des 17. and frühen 18. Jahrhanderts’, Wolfenbutteler Schriften zur Geschichte des Buchwesens, 9 (1983), 82-96.
25. ‘Per le viscere di Gjesu Cristo, e per tutte le Sante leggi dell’ amicizzia, prego V.S. Illma. a stracciar questa carta, subito che l’avra letta, scrivendolela io in estrema segretezza, e confidenza, ed in sigillo di Confession naturale, perche mai in tempo alcuno possa esser veduta da anima vivente.’ Antonio Magliabechi to Leibniz, Florence, 5 July 1692, in Leibniz, Sämtliche Schriften, le Reihe, Band 8 (Berlin, 1970), p. 322 and numerous times thereafter.
26. ‘P.S. Je n’aurois point écrit ce quej’ay mis a la fin de ma lettre, sije nejugeois, Monsieur, que l’occasion de vous ecrire est seure. Car il y a des mauvais interpretes… Cependant le plus seur sera quand vous me voudrés en marquer vostre sentiment, ou l’estat de la chosede la faire en paroles generalissimes et dont personne puisse rien tirer. En disant par example Quant à I’affaire de nostre ami, je le trouve faisable ou non, etc. en parlant comme d’un tiers…Vous m’entendés, Monsieur, àdemy mot, et je vous supplie de brûler ce billet’. Leibniz to Mathias Johann v. d. Schulenburg, 16 Aug. 1705, S.P.B.K., Berlin, MS Savigny 38, f. 29-29vo.
27. Dr Arthur Charlett to Thomas Hearne, 1 September 1715, University College, Oxford, Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Rwl. Lett. 14, f. 352. See also David C. Douglas, ‘Portrait of Hearne’, English Scholars 1660-1730 (Second edition, London, 1951), pp. 178-94.
28. ‘Let us suppose for a moment that we were able to analyze systematically all the parallel correspondences of a generation-and in this case my choice, because of the abandance of documentation, would fall on the years 1630-1650-and we were able to feed this mass of information into a computer. The potential results are mouthwatering to contemplate. Such a project, however, is hardly practicable. The insurmountable obstacle would be the analysis of the documents themselves, a task which could be carried out only by the most highly qualified persons. “Messis quidem multa, operarii autem pauci”.’ Paul Dibon, ‘Communication in the Respublica literaria of the seventeenth century’, Res Publica Lilterarum: Studies in the Classical Tradition (The University of Kansas, 1978), 1, 52
29. See also the question of Bruno Neveu: ‘Will the history of European learning in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries ever be written?’ His answer is more positive. ‘La vie érudite a Paris à la fin du XVIIe siècle’, Bibliothèque de I’Ecole des Chartes, 124 (1966), 432-511.
30. Peter Burke, Culture and Society in Renaissance Italy London, 1972
31. also published as Tradition and Innovation in Renaissance Italy, London, 1974, for a study of a creative elite of 600 painters, writers, musicians, scientists and humanists. Professor Michael Erbe of the Freie Universitat Berlin is engaged in a study of German humanists, and has kindly discussed his work with me.
32. Dr Victor Ferguson to Hans Sloane, Belfast, 14 July 1691, British Library, London, MS Sloane 4036, f. 106.
33. Lachland Campbell to Edward Lhuyd, Campbelltown, 16 April 1705, Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Ashmole 1814, f. 293.
34. See also his articles, ‘L’Université de Leyde et la République des Lettres au 17e siècle’ Quaerendo, 6 (Janury, 1975), 4-38
35. ‘Naples et l’Eruope Savante dans la seconde moitié du XVIIe siècle’, Nouvelles de la Republique des Lettres, (Naples, 1984), 27-45.
36. For example: Abbé Jean Gallois, secretary of the French Academy of Sciences, corresponded from end 1672 to July 1705 Pierre Daniel Huet, bishop ofSoissons and later Avranches, beginning of 1673 to February 1707 Antoine Arnauld, prominent Jansenist, November 1671 to March 1690 Christiaan Huygens Nicolas Malebranche, Oratorian priest and philosopher, met Leibniz in 1675, corresponded with him from January 1679 to 1711/12. These dates are taken from Kurt Müller and Gisela Krönert, Leben and Werk von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: eine Chronik (Frankfurt am Main, 1969).
37. These figures were taken from the lists of Eduard Bodemann, Der Briefwechsel des G.W. Leibniz, then revised in acord with Dr. Georg Garber, ‘Leibniz and seine Korrespondenz’, Leibniz: sein Leben-sein Wirken-seine Welt, edited by Wilhelm Totok and Carl Haase (Hannover, 1966), pp. 141-72. There can of course be discussions about the proper assignment of letter-writers to places, but I think the overall picture is accurate. For the non-German cities, the letters of Pierre Bayle, Pierre Desmaizeaux, John Locke, and Hans Sloane show similar concentration on Paris and the Dutch towns.
38. Robert Wodrow’s correspondence is now in the National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh. Several volumes have been published: for the period 1709-1731: The Correspondence of the Rev. Robert Wodrow…, edited by the Rev. Thomas M’Crie, 3 vols (Edinburgh, 1842-1843)
39. also, Early Letters of Robert Wodrow, 1698-1709, edited by L.W. Sharp (Edinburgh: Scottish History Society, Third Series, vol. 24, 1937). Robert Sibbald’s papers at the National Library of Scotland include few letters, but some can be foand in the Sloane MSS at the British Library, the Royal Society, and the Bodleian.
40. Alphonse Dupront, Ludovico-Antonio Muratori et la société europeenne des pré-lumières (Florence, 1976).
41. The correspondence of Pierre Desmaizeaux is at the British Library, London, especially Add. MSS 4281-4289. See the work of J.H. Broome, ‘An Agent in Anglo-French Relationships, Pierre Des Maizeaux, 1673-1745’, (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of London, 1949). Broome also published three related articles: ‘Bayle’s biographer: Pierre Des Maizeaux’, French Studies, 9 (1955), 1-17
42. ‘Pierre Des Maizeaux, Journaliste. Les nouvelles litteraires de Londres entre 1700 et 1740’, Revue de litterature comparée, 29 (1955), 184-204
43. ‘Anthony Collins et Desmaizeaux’, Revue de litterature comparée, 30 (1956), 161-79. Mr. Joseph Almagor, compiler of the ‘Inventory to the correspondence of Pierre Desmaizeaux’ (typescript, Katholieke Universiteit te Nijmegen, 1984), is preparing another thesis on Desmaizeaux.
44. Dr John Smith’s correspondence with Sir Robert Sibbald is in the National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh, MS Adv. 33 3. 19, ff. 47-62. They discussed civil and ecclesiastical history.
45. ‘La république des lettres ne manque pas de gens qui travaillent pour son service. Mais elle est dans une espèce d’Anarchie, n’ayant ni chef, ni archives, ni chancellerie, ni centre d’unite. Elle ne manque pas non plus de portefaix, de ces savans chargées d’érudition comme les appelle M. Bayle, qui ne savent que faire de leur charge ou de leur Marchandise, n’ayant pas l’art de mettre en oeuvre les matériaux qu’ils portent, et qui ne savent non plus où les déposer, faute d’avoir un magazin public, où ils puissent faire valoir leur marchandise au profit des autres’. This ‘Projet pour l’établissement d’un Bureau. Général de la république des lettres’ was attributed by the sceptical editors to an unidentified German professor. Bibliothèque raisonnée des ouvrages des savans de I’Europe, 39 (1747), 202-21, at 205.
46. Maarten Ultee, ‘Res publica litteraria and War, 1680-1715’, Internationaler Arbeitskreis fur Barockliteratur, Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbiittel, March, 1985 in the volume of conference proceedings, Res Publica Litteraria, edited by Conrad Wiedemann and Sebastian Neumeister (in press).
47. Erich Haase, Einjiihrung in die Literatur des Refuge (Berlin, 1959).
48. Graham C. Gibbs, ‘Some International and Political Influences of the Huguenot Emigrés in the United Provinces, c. 1680-1730’, Bijdragen en Mededelingen betreffende de Geschiedenis der Nederlanden, 90 (1975), 255-87.
49. Christiane M.G. Berkvens-Stevelinck, Prosper Marchand et I’Histoire du Livre, Dissertation, Amsterdam (Bruges, 1978).
50. Margaret C. Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons and Republicans (London, 1981), and the reviews by Berkvens-Stevelinck in LIAS, (1982), 129-35
51. and by Gibbs in British Journalfor the History of Science, 17 (1984), 67-81. Ms Anne Goldgar of Harvard University is writing a thesis on this subject.
52. Elisabeth Labrousse, Pierre Bayle, 2 vols (The Hague, 1963-1964).
53. Elizabeth Israels Perry, From Theology to History (The Hague 1973) Elisabeth Labrousse, Bayle, Past Masters Series (Oxford, 1983).
54. F.R.J. Knetsch, ‘Pierre Jurieu, Theologian and Politican of the Dispersion’, Acta Historiae Neerlandica, 5 (1971), 213-42
55. an English summary of his larger work in Dutch, Pierre Jurieu: Theoloog en Politikus der Refuge (Kampen, 1967). Jurieu’s pamphlets were received with enthusiasm by Protestants still in France, and may have inspired their revolts in Languedoc.
56. Joseph Dedieu, Le Role politique des protestants franfais (Paris, 1921), especially pp. 174-97 215-29 but this work should be used with caution.
57. ‘II me semble qu’il n’y a pas de nouvelles de Littérature mais on dit que la paix de Savoye 9st faite’. Malebranche to Charles Reyneau, Oratorian at Angers, Paris, 11 July 1696, printed in Malebranche, Correspondence, edited by André Robinet (Paris, 1961), II, 634.
58. Petronella Fransen, Leibniz and die Friedensschliisse von Utrecht and Rastatt-Baden, Proefschrift, Leiden, 1933 (Purmerend, 1933).
59. Leibniz stated his desire to go to England in a letter to John Ker of Kersland, 8 October 1714, printed in Ker’s Mémoires (Rotterdam, 1726), vol. 1, p. 167.
60. His proposals to become Historiographer Royal are discussed by Raymond Klibansky, ‘Leibniz’s Unknown Correspondence with English Scholars and Men of Letters’, Medieval and Renaissance Studies, (1941), 133-49. He received discouraging responses from the king and his advisers, e.g., A.G. von Bernstorff to Leibniz, 1 November 1714.
61. See Müller and Krönert, Leben and Werk, pp. 248-49.
62. '. quoique toute notre liaison ne doive rouler que sur des points de littérature, et ne ressemble par consequent qu’à celle dont de purs Esprits sont capables independamment de tout interest politique de paix et de guerre’. Abbé Bignon to Pierre Desmaizeaux, Paris, 27 April 1708, British Library, London, Add. MS 4281, f. 161-161vo.
63. Henri-Jean Martin, Livre, Pouvoirs et Société à Paris au XVIIe siècle, 1598-1701, 2 vols (Geneva, 1969), II, 725-27, 752. SeeChristiane Berkvens-Stevelinck, ‘L’édition et le commerce du livre français en Europe’, Histoire de I’édition franqaise, edited by Henri-Jean Martin and Roger Chartier (Paris, 1982-1984), II, 305-13.
64. Criticisms of false learning soand this theme: Michael Lilienthal, De Machiavellismo literario dissertatio historico-moralis (Konigsberg, 1713)
65. Dr. Chrisostome Matanasius [Thémiseul Cordonnier de Saint-Hyacinthe, Prosper Marchand, et al.], Le Chef-d’Oeuvre d’un Inconnu, 2 vols. (La Haye, 1714)
66. Johann Burkhardt Mencke, De Charlataneria eruditorum (Leipzig, 1715 other Latin editions Amsterdam, 1715, 1716, 1727, 1747)
67. French edition De la Charlatanerie de savans (La Haye, 1721), Dutch edition 1739, and Spanish edition 1787.
68. ‘Les jeunes gens puisent aujourd’hui leur savoir dans ces journaux, et après y avoir lu un mauvais extrait, decident hardiment d’un livre et des matières qu’il traite’. Denis-François Camusat, Histoire critique des journaux, 2 vols. (Amsterdam, 1734)
69. quoted in the ‘Advertissement’ by the publisher, J.F. Bernard, who comments: ‘Peut-on douter apres cela que les journaux ne nuisent aux bonnes études? II n’en seroit pas de meme si des Bayle, des Le Clerc, etc. travailloient à nos journaux’. Camusat had first published on the history of journals in 1716, and apparently formed his views on this point before 1720, when he published a prospectus for his history and asked Pierre Desmaizeaux for comments. His letters and a copy of the prospectus are among the Desmaizeaux papers, British Library, Add. MS 4282, ff. 1-52. For a more positive view of journals, see Myriam Yardeni, ‘Journalisme et histoire contemporaine à I’époque de Bayle’, History and Theory, 12 (1973) 208-29.
70. ‘He Trafficks to all places, and has his Correspondents in every part of the world yet his Merchandizes serve not to promote our Luxury, nor encrease our Trade, and neither enrich the Nation, nor himself… I know that the desire of knowledge, and the discovery of things yet unknown is the Pretence but what knowledge is it?… The knowledge they boast so much of, is no more than a Register of their Names, and Marks of Distinction only’. [Mrs Drake or Mary Astell], ‘The Character of a Virtuoso’, An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex (second edition, London, 1696), pp. 97, 102, 103.
71. Cited by Walter E. Houghton, Jr, ‘The English Virtuoso in the Seventeenth Century’, Journal ofthe History ofIdeas, 3 (1942), 51-73, 190-219.
72. Note the striking similarities oflanguage and contrasts of opinion to the Leibniz ‘Relation’ quoted at the beginning of this paper. The Transactioneer (London, 1700), British Library, 740. c. 24. (1), is discussed in Sloane’s letter to Dr John Wallis, London, 6 Feb. 1699/1700, and attributed to Dr William King by Wallis in his reply, Oxford, 19 Feb. 1699/1700, Wellcome Institute, London, MS Ac. 50838.