University of Virginia Library

Burlington's Library at Chiswick
by
Philip Ayres

Among the documents at Chatsworth House relating to Richard Boyle, third Earl of Burlington (1694-1753), is a manuscript volume titled "A Catalogue of The Earl of Burlington's / Library, / At His Lordships Seat at Cheswick; / January, 1741/2." Many of the books it lists remain together today, no longer at Chiswick but at Chatsworth in Derbyshire, where they form an important part of the Library of the Duke of Devonshire. Historians of architecture know about Burlington's important collection of books on that subject, but no study of the library as a whole, the precise physical disposition of the books within its walls, its historical development, favoured binding-styles, and the ways in which it reflects the range of Burlington's interests, has previously been undertaken. Nor has this library been compared with what is in important respects its antithesis, Timon's library as described in Pope's Epistle to Burlington. Yet the materials that would reward these kinds of inquiries lie readily to hand. In fact one need refer to nothing more than the 1742 Catalogue and the books themselves to analyse in some detail one of the most culturally significant eighteenth-century libraries about which we possess information.[1]

The main body of the Catalogue is preceded by an Index and followed at the end by "A Summary Review of some Articles in the foregoing Catalogue." The Index, as the explanatory notes on the title-page point out,

The shelves were "fixt to ye Walls in Seven Classes" or bookcases within the Library. According to T. S. Rosoman, this was the room described in the 1770 inventory of Chiswick House as "No. 34 The Closet," on the ground or

"Rustic" floor, beneath the Gallery.[2] In the Index the position of each bookcase within the Library is precisely described, with the folio shelves itemised first (these comprised two bookcases each of four shelves exclusively for folios, and the bottom shelf of each of the other five bookcases in this room).

The first of the two exclusively folio bookcases stood "next ye Entrance, on ye Left-Hand," the first three of its four shelves (numbered 1-4, always counting from the bottom up) each containing works on architecture, antiquities, and sculpture, with records relating to English history on the fourth. Shelf 5 constituted the bottom shelf of a bookcase (also holding shelves 14-19) that was attached to the wall "between ye Former [bookcase], & ye Hall-Door," and held folios on English history, geography and divinity. Shelf 6, the bottom shelf of a case also housing shelves 20-25 which stood "Between ye Hall-Door, & ye Farther-End," contained folios mainly on English history and geography. Shelf 7, below shelves 26-31, "at ye Farther End, reaching to ye Inner-Door," was largely devoted to folios of English history and poetry, while "between that Door, and ye Chimney" was shelf 8 (surmounted in its bookcase by shelves 32-37) with its folios of Italian miscellanies and a few texts in English and Latin. "Between ye Garden Door, & ye Hither End," at the bottom of a case also containing shelves 38-43, was shelf 9 with its folios on Greek and Roman antiquities. Immediately to the right as one entered the room was another bookcase exclusively for folios, containing four shelves numbered 10-13, devoted to architecture, antiquities and sculpture; Latin miscellanies (history, poetry, geography); French miscellanies (history, geography, antiquities); and more French miscellanies (chiefly history and translations).

Shelves 14-19 (in the same case with, and above, shelf 5) held small folios or quartos of English miscellanies—largely history and voyages (shelf 14); and octavos in the shelves above: English miscellanies (shelf 15), English miscellanies mainly divinity (shelf 16), English miscellanies chiefly history, voyages, essays (shelf 17), and more English miscellanies (shelf 18). Shelf 19 was left empty in reserve. Shelves 20-25 (in the same case with, and above, shelf 6) contained small folios or quartos of English miscellanies, mainly history, divinity, and geography (shelf 20); and octavos above: French miscellanies (shelf 21), English miscellanies, including divinity, poetry, geography (shelf 22), English miscellanies, chiefly history and state tracts (shelf 23), and more English miscellanies (shelf 24). Shelf 25 was empty in reserve. Shelves 26-31 (in the same case with, and above, shelf 7) contained small folios or quartos largely of English and Latin poetry, and history (shelf 26); with octavos above: mainly Latin classics on shelf 27, chiefly Latin miscellanies on shelf 28, English miscellanies including tracts by Robert Boyle on shelf 29, bibles and Parliamentary debates on shelf 30, with shelf 31 kept in reserve. Shelves 32-37 (in the same case with, and above, shelf 8) contained small folios of Italian miscellanies

including history and poetry (shelf 32); and octavos above: French miscellanies, with a few Italian on shelf 33, architecture, antiquities, and Italian poetry and history on shelf 34, Italian miscellanies including history and poetry on shelf 35, French miscellanies on shelf 36, with shelf 37 in reserve. Shelves 38-43 (in the same case with, and above, shelf 9) contained small folios and quartos of French miscellanies including history and poetry (shelf 38); and octavos, all French miscellanies, above: chiefly history, poetry and novels on shelf 39, mainly memoirs and historical tracts on shelves 40 and 41, mainly memoirs and voyages on shelf 42, with shelf 43 in reserve.

For each shelf the Catalogue lists the books in the order, left to right, in which they stood on that shelf. If one had the original bookcases it would therefore be perfectly possible, theoretically, to put the bookcases and all of the books Burlington had at Chiswick in January 1742 back precisely where they then were.

Within this room, in addition to the bookcases, there were four library tables containing shelves on which stood a wide range of titles, including many devoted to views of places in France, Italy and other countries. Tables A, B and D were of moderate size, each holding a dozen or fewer titles; table C, considerably larger, held thirty-one titles. There were also, in the Circular Room at the west end of the Gallery, two bookcases of two shelves each for large folios of mixed subject matter.

For convenience, some shelves included a number of books which were not strictly part of that class. These titles were included in the "Summary Review of some Articles in the foregoing Catalogue" at the end, which in effect provided them with a supplementary index of their own. When for any reason a book was removed from one shelf to another, the new location was pencilled in alongside the original entry, a procedure underway when the Catalogue was made and noted in its explanatory notes on the title-page. For printed works the Catalogue normally gives, in addition to the title, the place and date of publication.

It is curious that while the Catalogue has ample space for additions, it lists no title published after 1742, though numerous books published subsequent to that date certainly entered the Library over the final eleven years of Burlington's life. It is almost as though he wished the Catalogue to define his Library at a fixed time. On some occasion or occasions during those last eleven years he personally noted, on both sides of two sheets of paper which lie loosely inside the front cover, the details of forty-two titles—seventy volumes—which he added to his Chiswick Library after the composition of the Catalogue, specifying the number of volumes if more than one, and the place and date of publication.[3] These titles and volumes are taken into account here, but in a number of the statistics they are distinguished as bracketed figures so that the primary analysis is of the Library as it existed in January 1742. It should also be noted that the two sheets of paper list only a

fraction of the volumes that Burlington purchased subsequent to the composition of the Catalogue. For instance, on the same day in 1747 he acquired a 1567 edition of Labacco's L'Achitettura and a second copy of the 1601 Venice edition of Palladio's I Quattro Libri dell'Architettura, inscribing on both title-pages "Burlington March 24 1746" (1747). The books are now at Chatsworth, but Burlington did not include them on either of the sheets listing additions to the Chiswick Library, though he did list the acquisition of two additional copies of the 1616 Venice edition of Palladio. Perhaps he noted the 1567 Labacco and the second copy of the 1601 Palladio on other sheets of paper that have disappeared, or transferred these volumes to his library at Londesborough in Yorkshire, where he almost certainly kept important works on architecture for reference whenever he was in residence there. This would also account for the fact that only two of his three copies of the first, 1570, edition of Palladio are listed in the Chiswick catalogue, though he had acquired his third copy in June of 1739.[4]

The Catalogue lists approximately 1318 [+42] titles in some 1942 [+70] volumes, including a few manuscript titles.[5] Burlington's several trips to France and two tours of Italy represented in the world of action interests reflected in a library with a relatively heavy proportion of books in French and Italian—in fact fewer than 50 per cent of the titles represent works in English. Of all titles, including those Burlington added after January 1742, 675, or 49.63 per cent, are of books in English or translations into English (this includes books with Latin titles but whose texts are in English); 339, or 24.93 per cent, are of books in French; 194, or 14.26 per cent, are of books in Italian; 146, or 10.74 per cent, are Latin texts; and 6, or 0.44 per cent, are in other languages. These last include four bibles, two in "Irish" (Burlington owned estates in Ireland, which presumably accounts for the interest reflected by these), one in Hebrew, and one in "Indian." Greek authors were represented in translations.

In Pope's Epistle to Burlington (1731), Timon's library is said to exclude anything recently published—"These shelves admit not any modern book."[6] By contrast, of the books that sat on the shelves of Burlington's Chiswick Library in January 1742, some 83.06 per cent were under 100 years old.[7] More than half, 52.63 per cent, were less than fifty years old, and most of these must

certainly have been acquired by Burlington himself. Many of the 16.94 per cent that were a hundred or more years old were important editions of Italian and French texts on architecture, purchased by Burlington for their historical importance or simply for his professional use, rather than display, though his fondness for Palladio led him to indulge in the purchase of multiple copies of significant editions. There was not a single incunabulum, though Burlington's post-January 1742 additions include one of great importance—"Leo Battista Alberti Florentia 1485 / Shelf 2," that is, the first edition of Alberti's De re aedificatoria.[8]

This was still a dynamic library in 1742--some 10.5 per cent of the titles had been published in the past ten years, 6.3 per cent in the past five--and, as evidence below will show, it remained dynamic through the 1740s as significant texts in architecture and other fields continued to be added.

It is unclear what proportion of the Library had been inherited by Burlington. His father, Charles Boyle, died in 1704. Few of the volumes at Chiswick seem to have borne his name, to judge from the limited number I have physically examined. One of them, a copy of William Wycherley's Miscellany Poems (London, 1704), was a gift of the author's, who inscribed it "For ye Hon, ble Charles Boyle Esq / from, / his most oblidg'd and most humble servant, W. Wycherley." Only occasionally did Burlington autograph his own books, though most of the important works on architecture bear his signature and often a date.

It was these architectural texts, naturally, which represented the cream of Burlington's collection, with the Palladios, the Vitruvii, and the 1485 Alberti the crème de la crème. The Chiswick Catalogue lists twelve copies of Palladio, most of them in Italian. Among them were two of Burlington's three copies of the first (Venice) edition of 1570. The first of the three 1570s he only acquired at the beginning of 1729, almost a decade after his pilgrimage to Vicenza to study Palladio's work at first hand towards the end of 1719. His consolation for having waited so long was that this copy was (and remains) pristine. He signed it "Burlington Jan:22. 1728" (1729), and had it bound in his favoured rich-brown russia, gilt border, diamond-shaped gilt decoration to the centre of the covers, all edges gilt (Plate I). Just twenty-four days later, on 15 February 1728/9, he signed and dated his second copy. He had to wait over ten more years for his third, which he inscribed on 16 June 1739. His very first Palladio, a 1601 Venice edition, had been acquired at Vicenza during his visit there in 1719 (inscribed on a slip of paper pasted onto the front top of the blank sheet preceding the title-page, "Vicenza Nov: 3-1719 Burlington"). This well-known copy is interleaved with blank pages used by Burlington to make notes on Palladio's buildings.[9] Other Palladios have inscriptions dated 11 November 1735 (Venice edition, 1616; Paris edition, 1650), 22 March 1741/2 (Venice edition, 1642), and 24 March 1746/7 (Venice

edition, 1601). Another is signed but undated (Venice edition, 1581). A 1580 Palladio printed at Bordeaux has the autograph of "Baluzius," the controversial French historian Etienne Baluze (1630-1718). Being an octavo, it was separated from most of the other Palladios, at shelf 28.

The nine copies of Vitruvius's de Architectura listed in the Chiswick Catalogue include three items of particular interest: a late manuscript; the Ioconda edition printed in Venice in 1511 (the earliest printed Vitruvius in Burlington's possession); and Inigo Jones's well-known annotated copy of Daniele Barbaro's 1567 Venice edition. Among the others is an edition of 1521 (place of publication unspecified in the Chiswick Catalogue), a Perugia edition of 1536, Barbaro's Venice editions of 1556, 1569 (Catalogue reads "156-") and 1629, and an Elzevir edition published in Amsterdam in 1649. Burlington, however, could not compete in Vitruvii with another architect earl, Edward Harley, Earl of Oxford (1689-1741), who possessed three manuscripts of Vitruvius including what is now Harleian ms. 2767, the earliest and best of all the manuscripts of the de Architectura, dating from the eighth century.[10]

In addition to Alberti, Palladio, and Vitruvius, architectural history was represented at Chiswick by significant and less significant editions of Serlio (1551, 1568, 1569, 1600, all published at Venice); Scamozzi (1583, 1615, both Venice), Vignola (Rome, 1617, and another at Rome undated in Catalogue), Barbaro (Venice, 1569), Rusconi (Venice, 1660), Francini (Paris, 1640), Bullant (Paris, 1568), Delorme (Paris, 1568), Blondel (Paris, 1675/83), Desgodetz (Paris, 1682), and others. There were also some important English works, including John Shute's extremely rare First and Chief Groundes of Architecture (1563), William Kent's Designs of Inigo Jones (1727--supervised by Burlington, who owned the drawings), Robert Castell's pioneering Villas of the Ancients (1728, also influenced by Burlington), Isaac Ware's Designs of Inigo Jones (1735, but undated in the Catalogue; like Kent and Castell, Ware was a Burlington protégé), and Burlington's own Fabbriche Antiche disegnate da Andrea Palladio (1730), listed in the Catalogue as "Therme Antiche di Palladio," without date. Of Colin Campbell's Vitruvius Britannicus only the third volume (1725) appears in the Catalogue. Isaac Ware's superb English edition of Palladio, based on the 1570 Venice edition, dedicated to Burlington and published in 1738, was of course at Chiswick, along with a volume consisting of the plates of this without the text, and yet another by Ware containing just the first book of Palladio (1742). Some of the apparently odd omissions, such as Campbell's first and second volumes, or Leoni's lavish but not particularly faithful English edition of Palladio (which began to appear in 1716, and was not much liked by Burlington), may be plausibly accounted for if one assumes a working library at Londesborough. There are complete copies of Campbell and Leoni at Chatsworth.

Intimately related to Burlington's architectural interests and practice was his enthusiasm for archeology—first and foremost the archeology of ancient Rome, which informed the work of Palladio, but also the archeology of Roman Britain, which produced important works of scholarship in the 1720s and 1730s and probably helped to stimulate the development of a purer classicism in the work of Burlington himself, his disciple Kent and others. This enthusiasm accounts for approximately forty titles in the Catalogue, including among others Johannes Giorgius Graevius's twelve-volume Thesaurus Antiquitatum Graecarum and Jacobus Gronovius's thirteen-volume Thesaurus Antiquitatum Romanarum (both Venice, 1732-37) with the five volumes of supplements by Giovanni Poleni (Venice, 1737), Albert Henri de Sallengre's three-volume Novus Thesaurus Antiquitatum Romanarum (Venice, 1735), Bonaventura van Overbeke's three-volume Les Restes del'ancienne Rome (Amsterdam, 1709), Sextus Julius Frontinus's De Aquaeductibus Urbis Romae Commentarius (Patavia, 1722), Famiano Nardini's Roma Antica (Rome, 1704), Joseph Marie Suares's Praeneste Antiqua, Palladio's collection of Antiquitates Urbis Romae (Oxford, 1709), two editions of Etienne du Perac's I Vestigi dell'Antichità di Roma (Rome, 1575 and 1653), Lucio Fauno's Delle Antichità della Città di Roma (Venice, 1548), Pirro Ligorio's Delle Antichità di Roma (Venice, 1555), Antoine Desgodetz's Les Edifices antiques de Rome (Paris, 1682), Jean Poldo D'Albenas's Discours historial de l'antique et l'illustre Cité de Nismes (Lyon, 1560), Hubert Goltz's Sicilia et Magna Graecia (Antwerp, 1618), Friderik Ludvig Norden's Drawings of Some Ruins and Colossal Statues at Thebes in Egypt (London, 1741), Vincenzo Mirabella e Alagonas's Dichiarazioni della Pianta dell'antiche Siracuse (Naples, 1613), and, indicating Burlington's interest in a newly-developing area of studies, Francesco Gori's Musaeum Etruscum in two volumes (Florence, 1737). Castell's Villas of the Ancients (1728), already noticed, charts previously unexplored archeological territory under Burlington's influence. Romano-British archeology was represented by, among others, Holland's translation of Camden's Britannia (1610) and Gibson's updated edition of 1695, Alexander Gordon's Itinerarium Septentrionale (1726), John Horsley's great Britannia Romana (1732), and Francis Drake's Eboracum (1736--dedicated to Burlington, and with hand-coloured plates in the presentation copy).

As a practising architect Burlington required the tools of the trade, and just as he patronised the best watchmaker of his generation, George Graham, so he bought his mathematical instruments from the best maker, Jonathan Sisson. On 15 February 1721 his accounts book for the period 1719-22 records the payment "To Mr- Sisson for a Silver Case of Mathematical Instruments £12.12." These were immediately put to heavy use, for a year later, on 14 February 1722, a payment was recorded "To Mr- Sisson for an Ivory Rule & cleaning some Mathematical Instruments £1.6."[11] At Chiswick, under

"ye Nearest Window in ye Circular Room," four titles in from the left on the lower shelf, stood (according to the Catalogue) "Stone's Construction & Uses of Mathem1 Instruments London 1723." The point of mentioning Burlington's good taste in mathematical instruments as well as this book on the subject is to illustrate the connectedness of theory and practice here (something that needs no demonstration in regard to the works on architecture). Other books at Chiswick reflected Burlington's interest in astronomy and scientific developments, and by reference to the account books the practical use to which he put at least one of these can be demonstrated too, the work listed in the Catalogue as "Long's Astronomy Vol 1st." Roger Long (c. 1680-1770) was an English astronomer who worked hard to popularise the science. Burlington's possession of this volume holds added interest when we learn that he purchased a telescope on or before 16 September 1747, the date on which his personal accounts book reveals a payment "to Ecclestone for a Telescope [£]7-17-06."[12] Burlington owned a copy of Newton's Optics (1704), and was no doubt familiar with the fact that Eccleston made his reflecting telescopes "after Sir Isaac Newton's form."[13]

Burlington's interest in science was understandable given the family connection with the chemist and philosopher Robert Boyle (1627-91), the brother of Burlington's paternal great grandfather, and not surprisingly the Catalogue lists twenty-three of Boyle's publications. His complete works (1744) were also purchased by Burlington, though they were not included in his notes of additions to the Catalogue (Burlington's copy of the complete works is now at Chatsworth). One of the additions he did list was "Watsons observations on Electricity," which, together with his purchase of a telescope, his possession of "Squire on the Longitude," and his interest in Etruscan studies, indicates how up-to-date Burlington remained in the last years of his life.

In Timon's library, "For Locke or Milton 'tis in vain to look," modern philosophy and literature holding no interest for him. Again Timon's antithesis is Burlington, who possessed editions of Locke's Essay on Human Understanding (1710, two volumes) and his Letters to the Bishop of Worcester (1697, two volumes). Another significant modern work in the philosophical field was Shaftesbury's Characteristics, represented at Chiswick in a three-volume edition of 1723. Timon's exclusion of Locke and Milton excuses an out-of-place consideration of Burlington's Miltons together with his Lockes. Chiswick housed the Poetical Works in quarto (undated in the Catalogue), the Iconoclastes (Amsterdam, 1690), the Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio Secunda (1654), even an Italian Paradise Lost, "Il Paradiso perduto di Milton, tradott da Rolli Londra 1735."

Before passing from science and philosophy to music and literature one should notice editions of Belon's L'Histoire de la Nature des Oyseaux (Paris, 1555), Bacon's Natural History (1658) and Advancement of Learning (1674), Newton's Optics (1704), Sloane's Natural History of Jamaica (two volumes, 1707, 1725), the first edition of Chambers's Universal History of Arts and Sciences (1728), Catesby's Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands (1731), the Catalogue of Foreign and Exotic Plants (1730), Albin's Natural History of Birds (two volumes, 1731), Bradley's Botanic Lectures in manuscript, and Clare's Motion of Fluids, Natural and Artificial (1737).

Burlington's greatest achievement was to oversee the development of English Palladianism, but he was also renowned as a patron of literature and friend of poets, most notably Pope and Gay, and as a leading force in the organisation of Italian opera in England. For some time Handel lived and composed under his roof. In view of his strong musical interests, one might expect the Catalogue to reveal larger holdings in music than it does. Scattered among the "Italian Miscellanies; Hist. Poetry, Archit. Antiqs. &c" on shelf 35 were some musical items including Nichola Haym's libretto Teseo (1713) for Handel's opera of that name (Haym dedicated it to Burlington), Tasso's Aminta, the selected works of Carlo Pallavicino, and Rolli's Porsenna, but there was no shelf in the Library devoted to music. It is very likely that Burlington kept his printed music in a music room and catalogued it separately, if he catalogued it at all. By contrast, his strong literary interests were well-reflected in the Library.

Predictably, the most heavily-represented poet was Pope, with over twenty volumes including the Essay on Man (Catalogue omits date of edition), the Dunciad of 1729, various editions of the Works (1717, 1730, 1735, 1736), the Letters (1737, 1741), the Epistle to Burlington (1731, presentation copy--there was also an uncatalogued early manuscript of this, now at Chatsworth), the Epistle to Bathurst (1733), the Imitation of the First Satire of the Second Book of Horace (1734) and others, but not individual editions of the Essay on Criticism, the Rape of the Lock or anything else pre-dating Pope's friendship with Burlington.

Pope aside, English literature included two editions of Spenser's Works (1679, 1715), Theobald's edition of Shakespeare's Works (1740) though not Pope's (Burlington chose well), a collected works of Beaumont and Fletcher (1711), Bacon's Essays (1625), Jonson's Bartholomew Fair, The Staple of News (both 1631) and the Works (1640), the Miltons already noticed, Browne's Religio Medici (1656), Waller's Poems (1711) and Works (1729), Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel and other works ("in sev1 years"), his Fables (1700) and translations of Virgil, Juvenal and Persius (all 1697), Wycherley's Miscellany Poems (1704), Congreve's Works (1710), Swift's Tale of a Tub (1704) and Works (1735?), Steele's Guardian (1714), Addison's Freeholder (1716), Prior's Poems (1709, 1718), Gay's Trivia ("17--" in the Catalogue--1716), Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719) and Captain Singleton (1720), Thomson's Seasons (1730) and Cibber's Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber (1740). There

was also a great deal of French and Italian literature, including Montaigne's Essays (London, 1724), collected works of Corneille (Paris, 1657, 1664), Racine (Paris, 1682), and Moliere (Paris, 1730, 1734), a Petrarch (Venice, 1531), an Opere of Boccaccio (Florence, 1723), Castiglione's Il Cortegiano (Venice, 1528), Ariosto's Orlando Furioso (Lyon, 1556; Venice, 1584), Trissino's Italia Liberata (Rome, 1545), his Sophonisba (Venice, 1549), Dialogo and Epistola (both Vicenza, 1529) and his collected Opere (Verona, 1729), Guarini's Il Pastor Fido (Paris, 1650; Verona, 1735), Tasso's Gierusalemme Liberata (Genoa, 1617 and London, 1724) and Amadigi (Venice, 1583), and much French and Italian literature besides.

It is perhaps unnecessary to itemise selected works of significance within every category when the Catalogue may be consulted on request at Chatsworth, and for the remainder of this paper I intend merely to notice a few general and distinguishing features of the Library there. Strong areas besides those already noticed included history (with remarkable strengths in modern French history) and geography, and in these fields Burlington's interests ranged very widely. For instance, in addition to his many works on British and Continental history Burlington possessed Du Halde's four-volume Description de la Chine (Paris, 1735), Knox's Historical Relation of Ceylon (1681), Rycaut's Present State of the Ottoman Empire (1668), Knolles's History of the Turks with Rycaut's continuation (1687/1700), Savage's two-volume Abridgement of the History of the Turks (1701), Ockley's two-volume History of the Saracens (1718), A Discourse on the Original of the Cossacks (1671), Morgan's Complete History of Algiers (1728), and a large amount of voyage literature in both English and French. The library was also rich in books of views of places in France, Italy and elsewhere.

Works on antiquities naturally concentrated on Italy, but Burlington was also interested in the collections of his contemporaries in England and owned a copy of The Marble Antiquities of the Earl of Pembroke at Wilton (1731). This field represented just one aspect of his general archeological enthusiasm, reflected in his patronage of Castell's Villas of the Ancients (1728) and Drake's Eboracum (1736), and in his possession of titles whose subjects might at first sight seem remote, such as Du Choul's La Castramentation et Discipline Militaire des Romains (Lyon, 1595).

There is no reason to comment on the large number of Greek and particularly Roman authors in what is in this respect a typical eighteenth-century library, except perhaps to note a comparatively large number of classical texts in French translation and the absence of texts in Greek. There was also a significant collection of Elzevirs, fourteen titles in thirty-two volumes mostly of Roman authors, kept together on shelf 27 and all published between 1625 and 1645 at Leyden with the exception of a 1659 Seneca in four volumes from Amsterdam. Whether Burlington was as proud of his Elzevirs as Timon was of his Aldine printings is matter for speculation. He probably was, given that most of his Elzevirs came from Leyden. In the eighteenth century, connoisseurs considered Leyden Elzevirs the only ones worth having.

Divinity, like classics, is an area where one expects to find a heavy concentration in an eighteenth-century library, and Burlington's collection was no exception. The leading deists seem to have been excluded. On the other hand Butler's Analogy of Religion Natural and Revealed (1736), the most influential refutation of deism, was admitted. The Arianiser William Whiston's sermons were presumably included only because Burlington made a point of buying published sermons which had been delivered at the annual Boyle lectures. Much of the controversial material consists of attacks on Roman Catholicism, with very little representation of the Catholic position. Burlington owned copies of the Sermons de Jean Calvin (Geneva, 1561) and Luther's Table-Talk (1652).

Something should be said in a general way about the bindings of the books in the Library at Chiswick. The first thing to notice is the apparent absence of any serious interest in collecting significant historical bindings, something that appealed to Timon, who was especially fond of the work of Du Sueil, and to whom the physical book--its printer, its binder--mattered far more than its contents ("In Books, not Authors, curious is my Lord"). By contrast, Burlington's tastes were certainly reflected in the contents of the volumes in his library. At the same time he was a man of impeccable and studied taste in every detail of his life and work, from the houses he designed to the mathematical instruments he used to design them, and one expects and finds a style of considerable elegance in the bindings of his books. It is not at all surprising to discover that many of them were bound by Thomas Elliott, also binder to the Harleian Library.[14]

Burlington's bindings may be studied with particular regard to his books on architecture and archeology, since these represented favoured fields and presumably received attention to their bindings second to none. A number of items in these categories are illustrated in the Plates. Generally, Burlington favoured a rich mid-brown russia (also used on the top of his desk[15]) and sometimes an orange-red morocco, marbled end-papers, richly gilt borders, covers sometimes pannelled on books that entered the library prior to the late-1720s, usually not on books acquired after, with ornate lozenge-shaped gilt decoration occasionally applied to the centre of unpannelled covers, and edges often gilt.

A fine example of a late-1720s Burlington binding by Thomas Elliott is what must have been one of the most prized books in the collection, Burlington's first and extremely fine copy of the first (Venice, 1570) edition of Palladio's I Quattro Libri dell'Architettura (Plate 1), in russia. This was probably bound shortly after its purchase on or about 22 January 1729, the date when he signed it. His second 1570 Palladio, inscribed 15 February 1729, he also had bound in russia. The third, inscribed on 16 June 1739, he left in the vellum binding in which it presumably came to him. Plate 2 shows, at top-left, in an Elliott binding, the 1580 octavo Palladio published in Bordeaux bearing the autograph of "Baluzius." Burlington did not record the date when it entered his library. The volume at top-right is Nichola Haym's libretto for Handel's Teseo. It was published in 1713, and because it was dedicated to Burlington one may safely assume it entered his library in that year or the next and is therefore one of the very earliest of the Burlington bindings. Its pannelled design is correct for the period and sets it apart from a Burlington binding of the late-1730s illustrated at bottom-left, Francis Lynch's comedy The Independent Patriot (1737), again dedicated to Burlington. At bottom-right is a work by Henry Aldrich (1647-1710), the undated part-manuscript Elementorum Architecturae, pars prima, probably bound in the late 1720s or 1730s, also by Elliott.

Unfortunately the volumes of Burlington's accounts held at Chatsworth do not record regular payments to Elliott or anyone else for the binding of books, or for that matter payments for books. Presumably payments were made directly by Burlington and never recorded in formal books of accounts. I could find only two entries relating to bookbinding. One entry was made on 23 May 1720: "To Mr- Steph: Bolton Book-binder for a large Porto-folio in red Maroquin, Gilded & for other Books (ask Recet) . . . £4.19." It seems from a separate entry that the "Porto-folio" was of Prior's Works. The bindings on the Priors I examined at Chatsworth were not typical of Burlington bindings.[16] The other entry was made on 15 August 1750, recording a payment of ten shillings and sixpence "to James for ye binding of Pompeo," a work unrecorded by Burlington on his two sheets of post-January 1742 additions.[17]

The majority of the books in Burlington's Chiswick Library in 1742 seem still to have been at Chiswick in 1813 when a new Catalogue for the Library there was completed, though I have not exhaustively compared the two catalogues. A large number of those books which remained at Chiswick in 1813 were subsequently sold, either before or after they left Chiswick for Chatsworth, but certainly before the composition of the current two-volume Chatsworth Catalogue compiled earlier this century. Moreover, a considerable

number of those that were listed in the current Chatsworth Catalogue have subsequently been sold, some in the 1970s and others as recently as 1981-82. Fortunately the crucial architectural core of Burlington's Chiswick Library remains intact at Chatsworth, along with a great number of his most valuable books in other categories. These should enable interested scholars to explore aspects of Burlington's Library beyond those examined here.

Notes