bl add ms 32526

BL Add MS 32526 is an odd collection of manuscripts. There is no general theme, and the manuscripts vary from scraps of paper with only very schematic notes, to fully developed treatises and essays. There is no standard page/paper size. Several pages are marked (by oxidation, by annotations from editors and curators) in such a way as to seem to have been ‘front pages’ at some point over the last three hundred years. There are a number of versions, or revisions, of the same essay, and we find yet other versions or revisions of these essays in other volumes in the BL collection of North’s papers. The volume ends with part of a manuscript lifted from a ‘good copy’ (although one with late additions of factual information) of the preface to the life of Francis North. It is worth considering, too, that the individual elements were produced over a long period of time. The earliest seem to date from the early 1690s (his essays on the militia and the clergy are very ‘topical’, and of that time), the essays on manners could be later 90s or even early 1700s, his scientific and philosophical essays could come from any date (although the general absence of anti-Newton sentiment indicates that they are earlier). Only one essay is dated (see f. 120r, below), it was transcribed by his neighbour, the Reverend Ambrose Pimlowe, who tells us that it was written in 1732.

Some of the texts are clearly related to each other, even in the volume as we now have it they seem to be arranged in groups. It must be emphasised here (and I will, tediously, repeat this assertion elsewhere): these texts were absolutely not assembled as a set by Roger North himself. There is no reason to suppose that 32526 represents some desire on his part to define a project, or set out an organised whole. Nor should we suppose that the arrangement of manuscripts comes down to us from his immediate heirs who might in that way have left us with a trace of a lost intention. As you can read in the chapter on the history of the manuscripts, Roger North’s papers have had a strange journey to the twenty-first century. For myself, I imagine an early nineteenth-century antiquarian bookseller seeking to produce a representative selection in order to interest a purchaser. But as Roger North might insist, this is my opinion, and represents my fancy, and has not any kind of claim to a truth. 

It is the diversity of kind and subject matter which makes this volume of manuscripts a sensible choice for an introduction to the BL’s enormous North manuscript library. It is not surprising that Korsten [in Korsten, F. J. M., Roger North (1651-1734) Virtuoso and Essayist, Amsterdam, 1981] drew so many of his examples from this volume. Here we have a set of texts which can individually be read as representing a historical intention, or a set of interests and intentions, attributable to a known historical agent (Roger North). We can make a Roger North for ourselves and fit him back onto the texts, and I will do that from time to time. 

CONTENTS

f. 2r Prfando

f. 2v Prjudices

f. 8v Some Essay’s, concerning the manner of our sence, or perception of thing’s

1. That Sence is Nice ad Infinitum.

f. 9v 2. Attention cannot be to divers object’s (critically) at once

f. 12v 3. Some farther deliberation’s Concerning sence & attention, In order to Investigate ye Nature of sleep & dreams

f.15v An Argument ffor a soul moving ye body, Explanatory of somewhat touch in ye foregoing Essay

f. 16r 4. Of Sleep, & dreams

f. 19v 5. Of pleasure and pain. (of generation, ff 27v-28v)

f. 34v Of Humane Capacity

f. 48r Of Pride

f. 50v Of Breeding

f. 55r Of Affectation

f. 57r Of Dressing

f. 60r Of Selling

f. 64v Prface to a philosofick Essay

f. 68v Of ye Generall Conduct of Weomen

f. 74v Of ye English Militia

f. 79v Of the Clergy of England

f. 88r power of humane understanding

f. 90r Essay [on selfishness]

f. 96r prjudice

f. 108r pleasure

f. 117r pleasure of the mind [19thc title]

f. 120r Reason

f. 124r Religion

f. 126r A demonstration of free will

f. 127r [On the stock Market and prices]

f. 128r [On Authors]

f. 129r [On style in writing]

f. 130r Generall Prface