Fourth Series T I June 1921 SAMUEL PEPYS'S SPANISH BOOKS 1 BY STEPHEN GASELEE 1 HIS paper has grown out of the discussion which followed that read by Dr. Thomas before the Bibliographical Society on The Output of Spanish Books in the Sixteenth Century' (The Library, Fourth Series, vol. i, p. 93). I do not know where Pepys learned his Spanish, but he was a competent scholar quite early in life, able both to read and to talk. By his generation the fear and hatred of Spain, dating from the days of the Armada, seem to have died away; perhaps the negotiations for a Spanish match when Charles I was Prince of Wales had taught Englishmen that Spaniards were not the sullen bigots they had formerly believed them to be; perhaps our nation has only room for one real enemy at a time, and this place was occupied successively by France and Holland. At any rate, two years after the Restoration, on the occasion of a famous affray between the retainers of the Spanish and French Ambassadors in London, Pepys is found to remark,' Indeed we do naturally all love the Spanish, and hate the French '. 2 Very shortly after the opening of the Diary, he tells us how This morning I lay long abed, and then to my office, 1 Read before the Bibliographical Society, 17 January 1921. 2 Diary, 30 September 1661. A where I read all the morning my Spanish book of Rome'.1 It is not necessary to take up time in contrasting the lives of a civil servant then and now. This book is no. 157 of the list hereafter to be printed with this paper-Las cosas maravillosas della Sancta Ciudad de Roma, a Spanish edition of the well-known Mirabilia urbis Romae, the stock guide-book for visitors to Rome, printed there for the use of Spanish pilgrims in 1651. This must have been one of the earliest Spanish acquisitions made by Pepys. The following description of a translation does not necessarily prove that Pepys knew its original. One Sunday,2 after a day of mixed experiences (he had talked with some of his great friends and official superiors, heard a sermon in the Royal Chapel at Whitehall, visited another church in Southwark but found it too hot to stay there, dined with his wife and father, looked in at a church again, and flirted with his old flame Betty Martin) he seems to have felt the need of quiet and solitude: so he took a boat all alone and went up-stream to Barn Elms (near Mortlake). There he landed and took a turn; then to my boat again, and home, reading and making an end of the book I lately bought-'a merry satyr, called "The Visions", translated from Spanish by L'Estrange, wherein there are many very pretty things; but the translation is, as to the rendering it into English expression, the best that ever I saw, it being 'impossible almost to conceive that it should be a translation". This book was Roger L'Estrange's translation of The Visions of Quevedo; I am the more doubtful if the judgement which I have just quoted was necessarily founded on a knowledge of the original, because there is not a copy of The Visions in Spanish in the library: no. 70 in my list is a different work. I do, however, consider that the following passage shows 1 Diary, 11 February 1659/60. 2 Ibid., 9 June 1667. Ibid., 28 April 1669. 3 that Pepys not only possessed but read one serious Spanish work : This morning Mr. Sheres sent me, in two volumes, 'Mariana his History of Spaine, in Spanish, an excellent 'book, and I am much obliged for it to him'. I do not know whether this was a loan or a gift; if the latter, it affords an example of a practice of Pepys which has long been well known-that he was accustomed to expel from his library an early edition of a book when he afterwards acquired a later; for the edition of Mariana now in the library (no. 100 in my list) is dated 1678. It was an extraordinarily popular book in Spain, being reprinted over and over again in the seventeenth century; and at the end of that century (1699) was even translated into English. We may find small corroborative pieces of evidence of Pepys's knowledge of the Spanish language in his occasional use of Spanish words or expressions, without a rendering, in the Diary. Sometimes, when recording somewhat delicate subjects, he tries to make his shorthand a little more difficult or at any rate less intelligible to the casual reader-by intercalating a few words in a foreign language; for this purpose Spanish and French are most often employed, the former perhaps a little more frequently than the latter; Italian much less often. He mentions on one occasion 1 how in conversation his friend Mr. Creed told him that the Juego de Toros is a simple sport' (a delusion which obtains in the mind of every Englishman, I suppose, until he has learned to appreciate the wonderful skill required in all that take part in it), but the greatest in Spain'; on another, Carteret is walking with Pepys in a garden and, suddenly angry with Sir William Penn, shakes his fist towards Penn's house and cries 'Guarda mi spada; for, by God, I may chance to keep him in Ireland, when he is there'. Such phrases were clearly in a language with which he was quite familiar. 1 Ibid., 24 May 1662. 2 Ibid., 8 May 1662; cf. 5 May 1669. 2 36 He sometimes mentions his purchases of Spanish books. After a visit to Westminster,1 So home through Duck Lane "[the street we now know as "Little Britain"] to inquire 'for some Spanish books, but found none that pleased me'. AgainStaying a little while in Paul's Churchyard, at the "foreign bookseller's, looking over some Spanish books, and " with much ado keeping myself from laying out money there'. Again Through Bedlam, calling by the way at an old bookseller's, and there fell into looking over Spanish books and 'pitched upon some, till I thought of my oath when I was going to agree for them, and so with much ado got myself 'out of the shop glad at my heart and so away'. He records in more than one passage the vows he made to abstain from wine and theatre-going, and I suppose he made himself similar promises not to spend money on books. Again 'Walked down as low as Duck Lane and enquired for some Spanish books, and so back again '. Of greater interest is the following entry": "Thence to Duck Lane and did overlook a great many of M. Fouquet's Library that a bookseller hath bought, and I did buy one Spanish work: Los Illustres Varones.' Lord Braybrooke, in his note on this passage, conjectured that the book might either be Los Claros Varones, by Fernando del Pulgar, historiographer to Ferdinand and Isabella, or the Varones ilustres del Nuevo Mundo of Fernando Pizarro y Orellana. It is, however, neither of these, but the Summa de Varones illustres of Juan de Sedeño (no. 166 of my list), which is still in the library in Nicolas Fouquet's binding. We can identify with equal certainty the subject of the next entry. By coach to see Roger Pepys at his lodgings, 1 Diary, 3 July 1661. 3 Ibid., 13 January 1663/4. 6 Ibid., 24 April 1668. 2 Ibid., 27 March 1663. 4 Ibid., 18 December 1665. • Ibid., 6 November 1668; cf. 15 March 1667, 5 April 1669. 'next door to Arundell House, a barber's; and there I did see a book, which my Lord Sandwich hath promised one "to me of, "A description of the Escuriall in Spaine," which 'I have a great desire to have, though I took it for a finer 'book when he promised it me.' I do not know whether Pepys wheedled this copy out of his cousin, or whether Lord Sandwich fulfilled his promise: but he obtained the book (no. 65 in my list), which is the Descripcion breve del Monasterio de S. Lorenzo el Real del Escorial, by Francisco de los Santos. The work was published in 1657, but the copy in the Pepysian Library is of the 1667 edition, which accords precisely with the time when he saw it in Roger's possession. Before I come to speak of the printed Spanish books which form the subject of this paper, I should mention the comparatively small quantity of Spanish manuscript material in the library. The most important item is what is familiarly called 'The Armada Book'; or, as Pepys himself describes it in his catalogue, 'The original Libro de Cargos (as to provisions and munition) of the Proveedor-General of the Spanish Armada, 1588'. It consists of a large number of single or double sheets bound together; each is headed with the name of one of the ships of the Armada, and the captain's name; below follows the exact quantity of provisions aboard each boat-the amount of biscuit, wine, bacon, rice, pease, vinegar, oil, water, cheese, tunny, &c., with a list of various utensils also aboard, such as pots, dishes, and measures. These sheets are contained in a vellum binding; through the whole, including the covers, is a large circular hole, about three-quarters of an inch in diameterthe remains, I suppose, of a primitive system of filing, and then used so that the book could hang conveniently on a peg aboard ship, easy to take down for reference. On the front cover is the title of the volume in a tall uncial: Libro 'de Cargos de Bastimentos y municiones que se hazen a los |