De viris illustribus/On Famous Men (review)

The reputation of most authors rests on the works that they have published. John Leland, the Tudor antiquary and poet, provides an interesting exception to this rule. Although he was esteemed by contemporaries and is still widely known to scholars of early modern England, relatively few of his books were printed during his working lifetime. (The two most important of these were the Cygnea cantio, a Latin poem describing a journey down the Thames from Oxford to Greenwich and Leland's Assertio inclytissimi Arturii regis Brittaniae, an impassioned defence of the historicity of King Arthur). Leland's masterwork, De viris illustribus, a biographical dictionary of British writers, was nearly complete when Leland became insane, but it was not published until 1709, in an uncritical edition compiled by Anthony Hall. This work, which Hall entitled the Commentarii de Scriptoribus Britannicis, despite its imperfections, remained the sole edition of De viris illustribus in print until the present day and the appearance of James Carley's new and vastly improved edition.

Yet Leland's notes and unfinished works were profoundly influential. Like the mighty, trunkless, statue in Shelley's poem, the scope and ambition of Leland's work aroused interest and admiration, although it was (metaphorically) a ruin. The value Leland's contemporaries placed on his papers was demonstrated in numerous ways, not least in the basic fact that they were preserved. They first came into the possession of Sir John Cheke. Afterwards, by a circuitous route, most of them eventually ended up in the Bodleian Library. In the meantime Cheke had loaned at least some of Leland's papers to John Bale, who produced an edited version (with his own commentary) of Leland's 'New Year's Gift' to Henry VIII, a work in which Leland had outlined the progress of his research and set forth his literary plans. Bale had also, after he abandoned initial plans to publish Leland's De viris illustribus, incorporated (acknowledging his debt to Leland) much of the material into his own biographical dictionaries of British authors. Over the next three centuries most antiquaries and historians followed Bale in quarrying Leland's work, whether for topographical studies, as with William Harrison, for local history, as with John Stow and William Lambarde, or bibliography, in the case of Thomas Tanner.

What gave Leland's researches their unique value was both the methodology that supported them and their timing. Inspired by contemporary French scholars, notably Jean de Gagny, Leland toured England and Wales burrowing through ecclesiastical libraries searching for, listing, and describing, the manuscript treasures they contained. Since Leland's travels began in 1533, he was able to comb through the monastic libraries just prior to the Dissolution and the dispersal of their contents. The book lists Leland compiled during his travels were to become the backbone of De viris illustribus, but even more significantly his notes and writings have provided scholars, beginning with Bale, with unique and priceless insights into medieval British history.

Carley has done a great deal in this edition to enhance those insights. A detailed and learned introduction provides meticulous descriptions of Bodley MS Top. Gen. c. 4, the autograph text of De viris and of all subsequent editions of the work, from Bale's 'personalized transcript' to Hall's printed edition. Leland's life and career are thoroughly described and placed in their full historical context; this section of Carley's edition is of considerable value to students of historical writing in early modern England as it contains incisive discussions not only of Leland's work, but of the historical writings of Bale and also Leland's hated rival, Polydore Vergil. Translating Leland's elegant Latin must have been a particular challenge; it is all too easy for a faithful rendering...