Sustaining Literature: Essays on Literature, History, and Culture, 1500–1800: Commemorating the Life and Work of Simon Varey ed. by Greg Clingham (review)

197 executors, ‘‘to look out all such Books and Papers as are of my own hand writing except such as relate to my Estates debts and private concerns And more especially such as concerne or anyways belong to my publick ministry and imployments at home and abroad and that they do effectually destroy them by burning them or otherwise so-that-no person may peruse or copie them or any part of them’’ (‘‘Copy of Sr Wm Trumbulls Will & Codicils,’’ dated October 13, 1715. Berkshire Record Office, D/ED/ F16A, fol. 8). The Trumbull Papers in the British Library include miscellaneous verses and prose compositions by or addressed to members of the Trumbull family, 1622–1675, n.d. (Add. 72478); ca.1609— ca.1735, n.d. (Add. 72479); and 1609–1721, n.d. (Add. 72480). Some of these are original compositions and translations by Sir William. 33 Cf. Ben Jonson’s imitation of the same epigram in Ben Jonson, ed. C. H. Herford and Percy and Evelyn Simpson (Oxford: Clarendon, 1925–1952), 8:295. 34 Martial, Epigram, 10.47: ‘‘the elements of a happy life are as follows’’ (Martial. Epigrams, trans. D. R. Shackleton Bailey, vol. 2, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge: Harvard, 1993), p. 366). 35 Cf. Horace, Sat. II.vi.1–4. 36 ‘‘And of all the trees that you cultivate none except the abhorrent cypress will follow you, their short-lived master.’’ All translations of Horace are from Odes and Epodes, trans. Niall Rudd, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge: Harvard, 2004). 37 ‘‘All is well for the man to whom God with a frugal hand has given enough.’’ 38 I have been unable to identify a single source for this poem. 39 The final verse recalls lines 11–12 of Pope’s Epitaph on Trumbull ‘‘Such this man was; who now, from earth remov ’d, / At length enjoys that liberty he lov’d’’ (T.E., 6:169). Pembroke College, Cambridge BOOK REVIEWS Sustaining Literature: Essays on Literature, History, and Culture, 1500–1800: Commemorating the Life and Work of Simon Varey, ed. Greg Clingham. Lewisburg: Bucknell , 2007. Pp. 317. $59.50. Simon Varey’s intellectual, social, and personal vitality made his death at the age of fifty-two particularly difficult to accept. Sustaining Literature, edited by his friend Mr. Clingham, is a commendable effort to celebrate a lovable man and an excellent scholar, and it is a valuable contribution to scholarship in its own right. As with most Festschriften, its essays are uneven in quality, depth, scope, and subject, but none is negligible. Mr. Clingham gathers the nineteen essays into four categories: scholarship and reminiscence; Augustanism; fiction; and history and culture. They engage some of the topics that interested him most. In his elegant Introduction, ‘‘Finding Time, Making Memory,’’ Mr. Clingham suggests (not convincingly) that the common thread of the essays is ‘‘the nature of literary evidence.’’ The only contributor who knew Varey in England, he recalls their Cambridge days and records Varey’s complex and fascinating character, his essential decency, and his distinctive clarity. In ‘‘Simon Varey: A Reminiscence,’’ Jerry Beasley recounts personal memories; Alexander Pettit’s ‘‘Remarks on Simon Varey and His Work’’ concisely and appreciatively surveys Varey’s contribution to eighteenthcentury scholarship. He admits that Varey’s Dutch and Spanish scholarship is beyond his capacity, but the Spanish scholarship, at least, is addressed by two essays that describe Varey’s work on the Thesaurus of Francisco Hernández, an important description of American plants and animals. (The Hernández work generates the picture of an armadillo that somewhat surprisingly decorates the cover of the festschrift.) The Thesaurus itself exists in several different languages, and its history and distri- 198 bution engage another of Varey’s interests—the history of the book. The classifications in the Thesaurus represent a pre-Linnaean effort to wrest the natural world into order, and they engage the sorting capacities of the various languages Hernández uses. Dora B. Weiner and Katharine E. Donahue’s ‘‘The Doctors Simon Varey and Francisco Hernández at UCLA: Tragedy and Triumph’’ emphasizes the Hernández text, and Rafael Chabrán’s ‘‘Simon Varey: Alchemist of Erudition and Cusine,’’ the qualities of Hernández that corresponded most...