University of Virginia Library

5. Purposes of Annotations

The stated purposes of marginal annotations in Choice are given in Whitney's letter "To the Reader." "I haue now in diuerse places, quoted in the margent," he writes, "some sentẽces in Latin, & such verses as I thoughte did beste fit the seuerall matters I wratte of. . . . First I noted the same in Latin, to helpe . . . some of my acquaintaunce wheare this booke was imprinted, who hauinge no taste in the Englishe tonge, yet weare earnestly addicted to the vnderstandinge hereof: and also, wheare I founde any verse, or sayinge agreable with the matter, I did gather the same of purpose for my owne memorie, not doubtinge but the same may bee also frutefull to others" (sig. * * 3v). The first objective, to help his Dutch friends, is interesting. Although he stayed in Leyden only about a year—having arrived there in the new year of 1586 and left with Leicester in mid-November of the same year—Whitney made a number of friends among the literati associated with the University of Leyden: besides the Dousas and Francis Raphelengius, the printer of Choice, there were the Greek professor Bonaventura Vulcanius, the famous historian Justus Lipsius, and Peter Colvius, the editor of Apuleius; each of these scholars wrote a commendatory verse for Choice. Since the majority of the woodcuts in Choice had been used by the Plantin press previously in printing the emblem-books of Alciati, Sambucus, Junius, Paradin, and Faernus, these Dutch friends of Whitney would no doubt have been familiar with most of the woodcuts in Choice. Together with the Latin mottoes, the Latin marginalia would, moreover, enable these readers to appreciate its contents, even though they might not be able fully to understand its English verse. The second objective, to help Whitney himself remember those Latin verses and sayings which "may bee also frutefull to others," is a common practice. That it was the humanists' task to edit ancient texts, to provide glosses, to write erudite commentaries, and to compile illuminating compendia by ancient authors is also well known. The practice of adding copious marginalia to a text by the author himself or notes by a commentator is also widespread. Beginning with the 1549 French, Spanish, and Latin editions of Alciati's Emblemata the emblems were accompanied with brief notes, epimythiae or "affabulationes" by Barthélemy Aneau, Franciscus Sanctius, and Sebastian Stockhamer.[23] Claude Mignault's copious commentaries (written in 1571) began to accompany the Emblemata with the 1573 Plantin edition, and further expansions were made by Pignorius, Morell, and Thuilius to the massive 1621 Padua edition. As usual, the simple notes and glosses begin with the modest aim of elucidating the obscure, but soon develop into copious commentaries belaboring the commonplace by amassing, ad infinitem, quotations from ancient authors. Frequently, marginalia become a means, and often the unstated purpose, of exhibiting the author's or the commentator's knowledge of the common funds of learning.

By far Ovid is the most frequently cited author: 75 times, covering all of his major writings. He is followed by Horace (40), the Bible (22), Reusner (22). Cited 16 times are Virgil and Alciati, 14 times is Propertius, 13 times are Aelianus and Pliny, and 12 times are Claudius and Seneca. A majority of the authors are those of Greek and Latin classics well-known to every sixteenth-century educated reader.[24] Among Renaissance authors are Aeneas Silvius (Pope Pius II), Angelo Poliziano Ambrogini (Politianus), Coelius Augustinus Curio, Joachim du Bellay, Antonio de Guevara, William Lily, Sir Thomas More, Erasmus, Georgius Sabinus. Emblematists directly quoted, besides Reusner and Alciati, are Aneau 5 times, and Junius and Sambucus each once. Over five-sixths of the total 414 annotations are the result of Whitney's direct gleaning from his authors; in the remaining one-sixth, some 66 times, Whitney borrowed from commentaries and marginalia of his source emblem-books. Six times he acknowledged borrowing from Claude Mignault, but 57 other times he did not credit Mignault for his annotations, and 3 times he took from Paradin's marginalia without acknowledgement. A few examples of his unacknowledged borrowings from Mignault will reveal Whitney's interesting ways of culling from others.

To begin with the simplest. Wh 33 has an end verse of two lines by Borbonius; both the author and the verse are noted by Mignault, who introduces the quote thus: "Sed breuissime Borbonius noster, vno disticho etc." (p. 300).[25] Mignault's comment on Alc (167)—"quod Laocoon apud Virgil confirmat, cum a Troianis equum dole relictum nequaquam in vrbem recipiendum censet"—is simplified by Whitney into a marginal note: "Lacoon apud Virgilium lib. Aeneid.2. sic de equo, loquitur Troianis," and the original quote from Virgil by Mignault (pp. 751f. misnumbered for 758f.)

is reduced to ". . . aut vlla putatis | Dona carere dolis Danaum, &c." as an end verse in Wh 37. Wh 99 from Alc (197) notes in the margin two lines from Virgil's Aeneid, which may have been borrowed from Mignault, whose notes run as follows: ". . . hoc factum Mezentio dignum, qui mortua, vt inquit Maro, With a slight editorial interpolation, Whitney identified the specific book from the Aeneid, Book 8, and quoted in the margin the entire distich. Not infrequently, Whitney went beyond the simple reference given by Mignault as to his source and provided detailed and at times pedantic documentations. For Alc (148) on the beehive, Mignault cited Aelian.historiae anima.1. & 5., but Whitney in Wh 200 gave more in his margin: Aelian. de anima.lib.1.ca.59. & 60. Et lib.5.cap.11. Et Plin.Natural.hist.lib.11.cap.5. & 16. At times, Whitney's use of Mignault may be in doubt, especially when Mignault cites verses from Aneau's Picta Poesis from which Whitney copied six emblems for the MS and two more for Choice. Whereas he certainly could have copied these verses still from Mignault, it is perhaps more likely that he went directly to Aneau (see Wh 15 and Wh 57). At other times, along with Mignault's reference, Whitney added his own. For instance, Whitney added Erasmus and Tertullianus to Wh 202 in addition to Diogenes and Gellius cited by Mignault in Alc (86). Instead of following Mignault's lead in commenting on Alc (159) with a quotation from Ovid's Ponti (III, i) to illustrate the theme of "Amicitia, etiam post mortem durans," Whitney chose as his end verse a passage from the next epistle (to Cotta, III, ii) which, because of its reference to the famous friendship between Orestes and Pylades, better elucidates the thought in the second sextet of Wh 62.[26] Whitney can work independently. When the annotations are used, however, to gloss a name or an object, and when these are found in Mignault, Whitney did not hesitate to borrow silently from the commentator. In glossing the names of Epaminondas and Simonides in the second sextet of Wh 60, Whitney copied from Mignault's gloss: "Meaito apud Pindarum celebratur, . . . & illud Simonidis, Locutum fuisse poenitur, tacuisse vero numquam" (p. 98). In glossing Pittacus' flower in Wh 130, Whitney borrowed part of Mignault's long note: "Symbolum autem prioris est gith, nigerrimum semen optimumque, excitatissimi odoris, quo minomo sumpto in cibis dat saporis gratiam: Largius autem, venenum exhibet. Plerique suspicantur esse minutulum piper, quod poyuretum nostri vocant & pharmacopolae Nigellam Romanam" (p. 842).

In addition to these unacknowledged borrowings from Mignault, there are authors or passages Whitney neglected to identify. For example, in Wh 14, the end verse from Horace is taken from Carmina, 3.6; in Wh 17, the end verse from Ovid is taken from Ars amatoria, Book 3, lines 373ff. The quotation from William Lily in Wh 60, "Est vitae ac pariter ianua lingua necis," is taken from "carmen de moribus" in A Short Introduction to Grammar (sigs. D6v-D8r). The end verse in Wh 138a is from Martial's "Falx," in Epigrammata, 14.34. Quotations without proper identification are, however, infrequent. Despite these minor oversights and unacknowledged borrowings, the majority of Whitney's annotations do reflect his familiarity with the common funds of learning of his day. Furthermore, the marginalia serve yet another purpose; for the modern student attempting to trace the literary or pictorial sources of Whitney's "newly devised" emblems, the marginal notes sometimes provide the only clues.