University of Virginia Library

2.

Earlier in this paper the printing dates 1654-55 set down by Bradshaw in his reconstructions were called inaccurate. It remains now to prove the validity of that assertion and to establish the actual date of printing.

As early as September, 1653, Dorothy Osborne, in writing to William Temple on the subject of romances, states: 'My Lord Broghill sure will give us something worth the reading.'[22]

On October 12, 1653, Herringman had Parthenissa entered in the Stationers' Register as 'a romance heretofore written by the Lo: Broghall.'[23] In an issue of the Mercurius Politicus dated 'From Thursday January 19. to Thursday January 26. 1654' the Lownes Parthenissa was advertised for sale. By mid-February, 1653/54, Dorothy Osborne had received a copy of Parthenissa from her brother in London and had almost finished reading it. These pieces of evidence attest to the fact that Boyle had certainly written at least six books of Part One, the whole of the contents of the Lownes Parthenissa, sometime before 1654. If it now can be established that the Lownes text was set from that of de Pienne—and it is reasonable to suppose that a second edition would be set from printed copy rather than from manuscript provided that a printed copy were available—then de Pienne must have printed a portion of Part One sometime before 1654 also.

The collation of the text of 'The First Part' (Part One, Books 1-4), which Bradshaw had identified as the press work of de Pienne published by Herringman, with the corresponding text of the first four books of Part One printed for Lownes reveals three types of evidence pointing to Lownes' dependence on the de Pienne text.

(1) In eleven instances de Pienne undertook to enclose a phrase in parentheses and failed to include either the opening or closing parenthesis. The Lownes compositor erred in identical fashion on nine occasions, managing to supply de Pienne's omissions only twice.

(2) De Pienne almost habitually used a two-line-high capital for the first word in the text following either the close of an intercalated episode or the presentation of an epistle written by one romance character to another. Seventeen times de Pienne used a two-line-high capital, and eight times he employed a capital of the same font as the rest of the line. In all twenty-five instances the Lownes compositor followed the

de Pienne practice. On four occasions de Pienne introduced a new division of text with a head decoration and a large capital; on each occasion the Lownes compositor did the same. Three times de Pienne set the first letter of the first word in a new segment of text with a two-line-high capital and then set the rest of the letters in that word in one-line-high capitals. The Lownes compositor in each instance set the first word in like manner.

(3) The Lownes compositor, after correcting repeatedly in his text the literal errors committed by de Pienne, finally permitted inadvertently the following error to creep into his London text. The passage which in de Pienne reads: '. . . for Canitius and Castus with those 400 men that were yet in oae of the Groves for our Reserve', is reproduced in Lownes with the word one misprinted in the same odd way.[24]

The evidence, therefore, in favor of resetting is so conclusive that one may state definitely that the Lownes compositor set his text from de Pienne's, not from an independent manuscript, and hence that at least the first six books of Part One—all that was reprinted by Lownes—were printed by de Pienne at some time earlier than 1654, the date fixed by Bradshaw.

Thus the first of Bradshaw's conjectured dates is proved to be inaccurate, but, if the reader recalls, Bradshaw suggested the printing date 1654 for only the first and second tomes (Part I, Books 1-8). Tomes Three and Four (Part II, Books 1-8), he believed, were printed in 1655. External evidence to prove or disprove the validity of Bradshaw's second date is lacking, but the internal evidence of the headlines in the text of the four tomes printed by de Pienne and published by Herringman points to the fact that Bradshaw was also inaccurate in advancing the date 1655 and in believing that a break occurred between the printing of the first two and the last two quarto volumes.

De Pienne, in printing the four tomes of Parthenissa which Herringman published in London, used throughout two skeletons per sheet. By means of the inevitable alterations which from time to time creep into headlines[25] it has been possible to trace overlapping series starting with the inner forme of the Ee gathering in the first tome and ending with the outer forme of the last complete gathering in the fourth tome. It can be stated confidently, therefore, that there is no indication of any break in the printing of sufficient extent to lead to the distribution of the skeletons; instead, it may be concluded that printing was normally continuous.

The evidence gathered from the collation of the de Pienne and the Lownes texts proved that the Lownes text was reset from de Pienne's and hence that de Pienne's printing date for the first tome (Part I, Books 1-4) and half of the second tome (Part I, Books 5-6) was earlier than 1654. The evidence of the de Pienne headlines in all four tomes proves that printing was continuous. Hence one is obliged to conclude that not just Part One, Books 1-6, but actually all eight books of Part One and of Part Two, the whole of the four quarto volumes, were printed earlier than 1654.

How much earlier than 1654 de Pienne started the printing is the question that must next be considered. To give a definite answer would be well nigh impossible were it not for the existence of a copy of Parthenissa containing the de Pienne sheets as later published by Herringman but with a unique title-page dated 1651[26] as the first leaf, the text including the whole of Parts One and Two or the equivalent of the four "Parts" of the Herringman 1655 publication. This lone title-page in a copy found among the holdings of the University of Texas Library bears only the romance title "PARTHENISSA" in large

capitals and an imprint: "Printed in the yeare 1651." The type used to print this title-page is identical with that used elsewhere by de Pienne, and the leaf bears part of a watermark identical with that found on several other leaves in Part One. Because the set has been tightly bound into two volumes by a modern binder, it is impossible to determine positively whether the title-page A1 is conjugate with A4, the fourth leaf of the first gathering in fours, but the chain lines and complementary parts of the same watermark seem to meet, and the signatures of the other leaves seem to warrant such a conclusion.[27] The make-up of the first leaf makes it questionable whether de Pienne ever meant it to serve as a commercial title-page since the facts of authorship, printer, and place of printing normally included on his title-pages are missing. The presence of an imprint date rules out one's considering it a half-title, and the leaf does not bear the information found normally on a section-title. Its contents seem to resemble those intended simply for an identifying title-page on a work privately printed, the printer's expectation being that once the romance was completely printed and publication arrangements made, de Pienne or some bookseller would cancel the temporary title-page and substitute a normal one.

The bibliographical evidence offered earlier points definitely to de Pienne's printing the four quarto tomes of Parthenissa before 1654. The imprint on the title of the Texas copy fixes the date of printing as 1651. The evidence next to be presented suggests the likelihood of de Pienne's doing the printing in about the year 1651.

Professor W. S. Clark, II, Boyle's biographer, states that Boyle served as an officer in the Irish Commonwealth forces from April, 1650, to June, 1654, and that he was most busily engaged in campaigns during the years 1650-52.[28] Hence, in a

letter to me, Professor Clark stated that there might be a question whether Boyle could have found time to compose any large portion of his romance in the early 'fifties. The reasonable alternative explanation is, then, that Boyle must have completed the bulk of his writing sometime earlier. In any case all the campaigns in which Boyle served took place in the south of Ireland[29]; therefore, it is probable that he had a few opportunities to visit Lismore Castle, the family seat, and possibly at least one opportunity to make arrangements for the printing of his romance with de Pienne in Waterford, some thirty miles away.

Like Boyle, de Pienne had previously been royalist in his sympathies as his printing of the Eikon Basilike at Cork in 1649 attests, but by 1651 he had moved to Waterford and had begun operating the Commonwealth press from which he issued Cook's Monarchy No Creature of God's Making (1651) and An Act for the Settlement of Ireland (1652). According to an order issued by the Council for the Affairs of Ireland dated at Kilkenny on September 30, 1652, de Pienne's press was locked up and his salary stopped,[30] but at some point in the year 1651 he could certainly have initiated a private printing job for an officer high in the regard of the Commonwealth government by whom de Pienne himself was employed. Further, the fact that no books bearing de Pienne's imprint dated later than 1652 are known affords us at least the negative evidence for believing that de Pienne ceased printing in that year.

Establishing the date 1651 as in all probability correct for the printing of Parthenissa clears the way for a consideration of the complete setting and printing of this unique quarto in relation to its subsequent publication in London. The fact that it included all eight books of Part One and of Part Two, which Herringman offered for sale 'In Four Parts', each of Herringman's parts bearing a title-page, and yet that it exists with only an elementary title points to two conclusions: (1) De Pienne did

not offer the romance for sale in Ireland; otherwise he would have cancelled the elementary title-leaf and supplied titles bearing his own imprint for all four tomes. (2) The state of this set is that of the sheets as they came to Herringman, who cut out the first leaf, leaving the telltale stub on A4,[31] inserted his cancel title-leaf, and then supplied the three other divisions, which had never had title-leaves, with his own title-pages.

The University of Texas copy is, therefore, I suspect, the only extant copy of several perhaps retained in Ireland for distribution among Boyle's friends. Barring short printing of Herringman's title-pages, it is unlikely that the bookseller would have parted with a copy of the romance in London lacking his title-pages unless it were to the importunate author himself.

If this explanation of the state of the Texas University copy and of the de Pienne-Herringman relationship is accurate, the various editions of Parthenissa follow this order: (1) Parthenissa, Part One, Books 1-8, and Part Two, Books 1-8, 'Printed in the yeare 1651', constitutes the first issue of the first edition. (2) Parthenissa, Part One, Books 1-6, 'For R. Lownes . . . London, 1654', stands as a second setting of type done from the de Pienne text and is therefore a second edition, although it is presumably the first text offered for public sale. (3) Parthenissa, Part One, Books 1-8, and Part Two, Books 1-8, 'For H. Herringman . . . London, 1655', is the second issue of the first edition. Thus the second issue of the first edition of Parthenissa, Parts I and II, Books 1-8, was offered for sale after that of the Lownes second edition of Part One, Books 1-6. In addition, Parthenissa, Part One, Books 7-8, and all eight books of Part Two, which Herringman divided in two and called the Third and Fourth Parts, were offered for sale by Herringman presumably for the first time.