£17,640
Rare Books, Manuscripts, Maps & Photographs | 759
Auction: 21 September 2023 at 11:00 BST
in Latin, signed 'Godefridus Gulielmus Leibnitius', 30 lines, written in brown ink on both sides of single sheet of laid paper (19.8 x 15.8cm), spotted, lightly creased from folding, attached to a later blank (probably 18th century)
Note: The last universal genius sends his thanks to fellow polymath William Wotton (1666-1727) for the gift of a copy of his History of Rome from the Death of Antoninus Pius, to the Death of Severus Alexander (1701), which he praises as a fine example of the mirrors-for-princes genre, declaring no other work to set forth with such colour the virtues and vices of the caesars, and professing his astonishment that the author should be the same as that of Wotton's Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Learning (1694). In a fascinating aside Leibniz furthermore reveals that he had hastened to show the work to Georg Ludwig, Elector of Hanover, only to find that the future George I was already reading a copy with great enjoyment, a pleasure which he regrets was not permitted to the recently deceased William III.
Wotton was a child prodigy who was proficient in Latin, Greek and Hebrew by the age of five, admitted to St Catherine's College, Cambridge at nine, and upon his graduation as BA at the age of thirteen was considered knowledgeable in six further languages including Arabic, as well as logic, philosophy, mathematics, geography, chronology and history. His History of Rome was later used as a source by Gibbon, while his Reflections, which in the long-running debate was a defence of the moderns and of the achievements of the Royal Society, survived the satire of Swift in A Tale of Tub to be remembered as 'one of the first historical accounts of the growth of scientific ideas' (ODNB). His clerical career was marked by scandal and financial embarrassment, which in the eyes of his biographer 'may explain why his considerable achievements in a range of disciplines are not better known' (ibid.).
Published: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Sämtliche Schrifte und Briefen (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 2012), Reihe I, Band 21, No. 137, pp. 191-2.