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LINACRE, Thomas (1460-1524)
De Emendata Structura Latini Sermonis Libri Sex. London: Richard Pynson, 1524.
Rare first edition of an important Latin grammar by a major English humanist, containing the ‘first specimen of Greek type from a London press’ (Lowndes). It also contains ‘the first reference to letter-founding in any English book’ (Clair). RBH/ABPC record just two other copies since 1947. Linacre, sometime fellow of All Souls, physician to Henry VIII, Cardinal Wolsey, and many of the greatest of Tudor England, tutor to Prince Arthur and Princess Mary, Thomas More, and Erasmus, founder of the Royal College of Physicians – the first such body in the world – and of chairs in Greek medicine at Oxford and Cambridge, spent what must have been his minimal spare time over a period of twenty years completing this scholarly and innovative Latin grammar which was admired throughout Europe and constantly reprinted over the following century.
The work is an advanced practical manual on the construction of Latin prose. This marked it out from its contemporary continental counterparts which were typically elementary. 'What Linacre produces is perhaps the closest one can get to an advanced grammar which combines the systematic ambitions inherent in the grammatical tradition with the humanists' philological attention to details' (Jensen). Of the specimens of Greek type utilised for this edition, Pynson makes the following defence: ‘Of your goodness, reader, excuse it if any of the letters in the Greek citations lack either accents, breathings, or proper marks. The printer was not sufficiently equipped with them, since Greek types have only recently been cast by him, and he had not prepared the quantity necessary for the completion of this work’ (Ingram). Colin Claire, A History of Printing in Britain (1965); William H. Ingram, 'The Ligatures of Early Printed Greek', Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 7:4 (1966); Kristian Jensen, ‘De emendata structura latini sermonis: The Latin Grammar of Thomas Linacre’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 49 (1986); Lowndes IV 1363; STC 15634.
Quarto (214 x 160mm). Title within ‘Mucius Scaevola and Lars Porsena’ woodcut border designed by Holbein (McKerrow & Ferguson 8), initials (staining to upper inner corner of first few leaves, heavier in A where it enters part of the text, small repair to same upper edges). 19th-century calf by Price, of Oswestry, preserving contemporary blind-stamped London sheep covers with inner and outer roll-tooled borders framing a central panel, the former of foliage and Renaissance ornament (Oldham CH.c8 pl. XXXVIII) and the latter mainly female heads (Oldham HM.a11, pl. XLVII) (later rebacked and upper compartment of spine restored). Provenance: ‘a.f’ in early hand on title – Robert Godolphin Owen of Porkington (c.1733-1792; 18th-century armorial bookplate on pastedown with additional contemporary annotation: ‘Or Oriel College Oxon’, where he was a student) – Lord Harlech, Glyn Cywarch (sale Bonham’s, London, 29 March 2017, lot 331).
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