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Abstract
This article discusses a new source with which to reconstruct a lost artificial language scheme of the mid-seventeenth century, the author of which was said to have translated parts of Homer into his artificial character. Other than that he was an émigré (and presumably Francophone) scholar named Champagnolla, little has been known about this author or what his scheme involved. A much fuller account of it is provided by a manuscript in the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth; it records the thoughts of those who had, at the instigation of King James I, been set to assess the value and practicability of proposals for an artificial language put forward by an anonymous French scholar. They provide a clear picture both of what Champagnolla had intended, and the political contours of intellectual life at the end of the Jacobean period.
Notes
1 Ward, 1654: 21.
2 Cf. the accounts in Knowlson, 1975: 47–49; Slaughter, 1982: 129.
3 See Lewis, 2007: 33–37.
4 Ephemerides (1639), Hartlib, 2002: 30/4/12b.
5 In other sources, Champagnolla’s name is given as (de la) Champagnolles and (de la) Champagnolle. For convenience’s sake, I follow Hartlib’s version.
6 Hartlib, 2002: 29/3/32b.
7 BL Ms Sloane 653, f. 116v.
8 On having artificial character sets printed in the Low Countries (on grounds of both cost and expertise), see Lewis, 2007: 39–40.
9 Champagnolla to Kynder, 6 July 1626, Bodleian Library, Oxford, Ms Ashmole 788, f. 49v.
10 Kynder to Beveridge, undated, but before 14 January 1629, Ms Ashmole 788, f. 51v. Nearly three decades later, and omitting any mention of Champagnolla, Kynder would publish an abridged version of his claim to have completed a ‘universall character’ (Kynder, 1656: 28–30).
11 Ephemerides (January–February 1650), Hartlib, 2002: 28/1/46a.
12 Ephemerides (January–February 1650), Hartlib, 2002: 28/1/46b.
13 Ibid., Hartlib, 2002: 28/1/49a.
14 Ephemerides (May–October 1650), Hartlib, 2002: 28/1/64b. On Petty and Ward, see Lewis, 2005a: 108–11; Lewis, 2007: 64–67.
15 Hartlib, 2002: 28/1/64. An image of this manuscript is reproduced in Figure 1.
16 Ibid.
17 Ibid.
18 Williams to Wynn, 11 January 1625, National Library of Wales (NLW), Aberystwyth, Ms 9060E, no. 1281. It is described in NLW, 1926: 205–06. I am grateful to Yelda Nasifoglu for drawing this manuscript to my attention.
19 See Jones, 1970–71; 1978; 1995: 144–89. For a scholarly edition of Wynn’s history of his own family, see Wynn, 1990.
20 See Calendar of State Papers Domestic, 28 October 1624; Arber, 1875–94: 5.lvii–lviii. On Morley, and his significance to later seventeenth-century language planners, see Lewis, 2005b: 117–18.
21 Beck, 1657: sig. A7r–v. See further Salmon, 1979: 177–90; Slaughter, 1982: 120–23; Lewis, 2007: 82–85.
22 On Bermudo, see Schott, 1664: 483–585; on Becher, see Waffenschmidt, 1962; on Kircher, see McCracken, 1948.
23 Duppa to Isham, 16 June 1657, in Clark and Isham, 1955: 136–37.
24 Dalgarno to Hartlib, 20 April 1657, in Dalgarno, 2001: 417–18. On ‘universal’ dictionaries, see further Considine, 2008: 293–306.
25 See n. 19 above, and — on language planning and the ars memoriae more generally — Lewis, 2007: 14, 35, 47, 69, 71, 103–04, 132, 150, 189; 2009: 173–75.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Rhodri Lewis
Rhodri Lewis is University Lecturer and Tutorial Fellow in English at St Hugh’s College, University of Oxford. He is the author of Language, Mind and Nature (2007), William Petty on the Order of Nature (2012), and numerous shorter studies of topics in early modern literary and intellectual history. At present, he is editing Francis Bacon’s early philosophical works, and writing a book on Shakespeare.
Correspondence to: Rhodri Lewis, St Hugh’s College, St Margaret’s Road, Oxford ox2 6le, UK. Email: [email protected]