[In the following essay, Bühler argues that in composing his Treatise of Moral Philosophy Baldwin borrowed from the version of the thirteenth-century Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers that was translated into English by Earl Rivers.]

William Baldwin's¹A Treatise of Morall Phylosophie, judging from the number of editions which were called forth, seems to have been extremely popular among Tudor and Stuart readers, no fewer than twenty-three editions² having been issued between 1547 and 1651. The Treatise is divided into four parts, the first containing ‘The Lives and Witty Answers of the Philosophers’ and the remainder devoted to ‘Precepts and Counsells,’ ‘Proverbs and Adages’ and ‘Parables and Semblables,’ in that order. It purports to be, in the main, a collection of suitable quotations from the writers of classical antiquity. The authors thus represented include, among others, Aristippus, Aristotle, Bias, Chilon, Hermes, Isocrates, Pythagoras, Plato, Plutarch and Socrates.³

On signature M8 recto of the edition printed by Edward Whitchurch about the years 1550-1555⁴ there will be found the following proverb, accompanied by a commentary and without attribution to any philosopher:

Wrathe leadeth shame in a lease.⁵

What might there be saide to cause a man more to refraine his wrathe? For euery man naturally hateth shame, which sithe it is the folower & ende of anger, and thereto ioyned inseperably, euen as the shadowe is to the bodye, what man consyderyng the ende, wyll vse hymselfe thereto?

This somewhat curious adage can, with certainty, be traced back not to a classical source but to the popular Liber philosophorum moralium antiquorum, a thirteenth-century treatise from which the first dated book printed in England, the Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers,⁶ was derived. In the Latin text, the proverb is attributed to Plato and reads thus: ‘Et dixit: ira est honor adducens post se dedecus.’⁷ When, late in the following century, Guillaume de Tignonville made his French translation, he rendered this Latin line fairly literally, and in some manuscripts (thus Morgan 771, f. 90^v) we find: ‘Et dit ire est honneur qui mainte honte.’ A subsequent scribe—possibly the translator himself—apparently decided that it was necessary to clarify or amplify this saying in order to explain its meaning in a more satisfactory manner. Exactly what happened is not quite clear, but it is certain that the proverb was altered either by the addition of the words ‘en leesse’⁸ (‘into joy’—which came to be read as ‘en lesse,’ i.e., ‘in a leash’) or by ‘en lesse’⁹ which was subsequently misread by some scribes as ‘en leesse.’

The British Museum MS Royal 19 B IV, f. 31^v, for example, preserves the reading: ‘Et dist ire [est] honneur qui meine honte en leesce’ and this was translated in the anonymous version of the Helmingham Hall MS¹⁰ as: ‘And seith: such angre is worshipful þat bryngeþ oftetymes shame to gladnesse.’ Stephen Scrope, although he mistranslated the first half of this saying, similarly has: ‘… þat ledithe shame in-to gladnes.’¹¹

Some French manuscripts, on the other hand, preserve the other reading and so Morgan MS 10, f. 29, quotes this as: ‘Et dist ire est honneur qui mainte honte en laisse.’ In the later printed editions of Tignonville's French rendering, we find the proverb still further corrupted to read: ‘Et dist ire est le veneur qui mene honte en liesse.’¹²

When Anthony Woodville, Earl Rivers,¹³ made his translation of the Dits Moraulx, he apparently had a fairly corrupt French manuscript¹⁴ before him and one that preserved a different tradition than that familiar to Scrope and the anonymous translator. In this instance he translated the French proverb¹⁵ in the identical words found in Baldwin's Treatise: ‘And sayd wrath ledeth shame in a lese.’ Thus it is certain that the quotation in the Treatise of Morall Phylosophie was borrowed from the Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers in the translation made by Earl Rivers.

Another example will suffice to show, I think, that Baldwin did not make use of the Latin or French texts or of either of the other two English versions for his Treatise but that he unquestionably borrowed heavily from the Rivers translation.¹⁶ Among the quotations attributed to Tac in the Liber philosophorum there is to be found: ‘Et dixit: homines regis sunt cum eo velut ventus cum igne, nam ignis, quando accenditur absque vento, eius opus debilitatur et tardatur eius crematio’ (p. 416). Tignonville rendered this as: ‘Et dist les subges du roy sont auecques lui comme le vent auecques le feu et quant le feu est alume ou il n'a point de vent il tarde de tant plus ardoir.’¹⁷ Scrope's translation, for example, has: ‘And he saithe: þe subiettis of a king is with him as þe winde is with the fire; whan a fire is kindeled wher þere is no wynde, it tariethe lenger of brennyng.’¹⁸ Rivers, on the other hand, supplied the following reading: ‘And saide. the people ar to the kyng as the wynde to a grete fyere. for the more the wynde is. the strenger is the fyere.’¹⁹ This passage seems to have been modified by Baldwin, who attributes it to Pythagoras (sig. L4), to read: ‘The subiectes are to theyr kyng, as a wynd is to a fyre: for the stronger that the wynde is, the greater is the fyer.’

It is quite true that Baldwin occasionally quoted the Rivers text verbatim together with the correct attribution; thus, for example, he assigns to Socrates (sig. L3) the saying: ‘The profite of sylence, is lesse than the profite of speche: and the harme of speche is more than the harme of silence.’²⁰ The identical words, apart from minor orthographical differences, will be found on signature [d6] of the Caxton edition. However, in common with many writers of mediaeval days who found it desirable or expedient to use the Liber philosophorum (or its various descendants) as a source book,²¹ the Tudor compiler often took liberties with his original. As we have seen, he did not hesitate to alter the name of the philosopher to whom a proverb was attributed.²² And the instance cited above is, by no means, a solitary example! Thus we find ‘There is no goodnes in a lyer’ attributed to Seneca (sig. N7), though in the Caxton edition these are the concluding words in the chapter on ‘Omer.’ Again ‘It is better to be in company with a serpente, than with a wicked woman’ is given to Socrates (sig. 02^v), probably on the strength of the many similar, unkind remarks attached to him in the Dictes; the philosopher is not specified in the original text.²³ In many cases,²⁴ also, the wording has been slightly altered; in the first edition,²⁵ the above example reads: ‘And another saide It were better to be in companye & conuersaunt with a serpent. than with an euil woman.’

Another innovation which Baldwin introduced²⁶—and one which certainly improved in no way on his original—was to transform the prose proverbs into what he must have fondly believed was verse. In Rivers' text Sedechias is credited with the line (sig. [a5^v]): ‘And saide/bettir is a woman to be bareyn than to bere an euill disposid or a wikked childe’; for this Baldwin offers (sig. P2^v):

Better it is for a wyfe to be barraine
Then to bring foorth a vyle wycked carrain. Hermes.

Another bit of doggerel²⁷ is attributed by Baldwin to Socrates (sig. O8):

He that to wrathe and anger is thrall,
Ouer his wit hath no power at all.

whereas in the Dictes the line reads (sig. [b5]): ‘Tac sayd he that can not refrayne his Ire hath no power ouir his witte.’

Whatever interest the Treatise of Morall Phylosophie²⁸ may have for us, this does not rest upon the dreary list of moral commonplaces which forms the subject matter of the volume. But as an example of the survival of mediaeval literary traditions²⁹ into the days of the Commonwealth, it is highly significant. By 1640, as Miss Palmer's list³⁰ adequately shows, a very considerable body of classical literature, both in Latin and in translation, had been printed in England. Yet the first edition of Baldwin's Treatise appeared in the same year (1547) as did Robert Whittington's translation of Seneca's De remediis fortuitorum (STC 22216) and 1640 saw the appearance of both Horace's Ars poetica in the translation by Ben Jonson (STC 13798) and the twenty-second edition of the Treatise of Morall Phylosophie ‘now the sixt time inlarged.’

For more than four hundred years, the literary descendants of the Arabic Mokhtâr el-Hikam had influenced the thoughts and writings of many people in Western Europe, though it is scarcely probable that this compilation, in the form of Baldwin's Treatise, enjoyed the esteem of George Chapman, Philemon Holland, or Ben Jonson. The simplicity of its style, however, appealed to Thomas Nashe.³¹ In the seventeenth century, the Treatise had become one of those ‘Handbooks to Improvement’ for the middle classes about which Mr Louis B. Wright³² has written so learnedly and entertainingly. A hundred years after the appearance of the twenty-third edition of Baldwin's book, the Dictes and Sayings was once again claiming the attention of readers but by this time solely as an object of antiquarian interest, for Joseph Ames included an account of this work in his Typographical Antiquities (London, 1749).

Notes

1. For an account of Baldwin's life, see Eveline I. Feasey, ‘William Baldwin,’ Modern Language Review, XX (1925), 407-418. His literary works were discussed by Wilbraham F. Trench, “William Baldwin,” Modern Quarterly of Language and Literature, I (1898), 259-267. Trench found that ‘the plan of Books I and III [of the Treatise] seems to be derived from the Apophthegms of Erasmus, of which Nicholas Udall's English translation was in print since 1542; while Book II is modelled upon Erasmus's Adagia’ (p. 260).

2. Compare the Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland & Ireland … 1475-1640 (STC), (London, 1926), nos. 1253-1269. William W. Bishop, A Checklist of American Copies of “Short-Title Catalogue” Books (Ann Arbor, 1944), cites four additional editions not in STC, viz., 1257.1, 1259.1, 1265.1 and 1267.1. The edition of 1651 is listed by Donald Wing, Short-Title Catalogue … 1641-1700 (New York, 1945), no. B 547.

3. A study of Baldwin's sources was undertaken by D. T. Starnes, ‘Sir Thomas Elyot and the “Sayings of the Philosophers,”’ Texas University Studies in English, XIII (1933), 5-35 (especially 13-17). Starnes concluded (p. 24) that Baldwin had drawn ‘from Laertius, Burley and, to a less extent, from Caxton and Erasmus.’ Elsewhere (p. 14) it is stated that ‘the indebtedness to Laertius is the heaviest’ and that ‘certain of the precepts and sayings seem also to derive from Burley.’ Only in the case of Hermes does Starnes mention specific borrowing from the Dictes. Actually the debt to the Caxton edition is very great, as will be brought out below. Of the 144 lines in the chapter on ‘Wisdom’ in STC 1255, sixty-two lines are certainly derived from the Dictes and thirteen additional ones possibly so.

4. STC 1255, copies seen: Harvard and Folger. Also consulted were the copies of STC 1258 (Union Theological Seminary) and Wing B 547 (Columbia).

5. This saying is also found in the chapter ‘Of anger, wrath, etc.,’ sign. OI.

6. For this work, consult the Introduction to my edition of the Dicts and Sayings of the Philosophers, Early English Text Society, Original Series 211. Starnes's statements that (p. 8) ‘What de Tignonville's source was, we do not know’ and that the Dictes was a work ‘related to that of Burley’ (p. 22) need correction. In this paper Dictes is used only for the Rivers translation, the other versions being cited as Dicts as in my edition.

7. Ed. Ezio Franceschini, ‘Il “Liber philosophorum moralium antiquorum.” Testo critico,’ Atti del Reale Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, XCI (1932), parte seconda, 393-597; see p. 466.

8. See Frédéric Godefroy, Dictionnaire de l'ancienne langue française (Paris, 1880-1895), under ‘leece.’

9. Cf. NED ‘leash.’

10. Ed. cit., 119. 11-12.

11. Ibid., 118. 14-15 and notes p. 349.

12. Paris: Pierre Leber, 1533, folio 58.

13. See Rudolf Hittmair, ‘Earl Rivers’ Einleitung zu seiner Übertragung der Weisheitssprüche der Philosophen,’ Anglia, XLVII (1935), 328-344.

14. Compare my Dicts, pp. xlvii-lix.

15. Pierpont Morgan Library, no. 673, sign. [e5].

16. My statement in the Dicts (p. lxviii, n. 2) to the effect that Baldwin had made fresh translations from the French or Latin texts is quite incorrect.

17. MS Royal 19 B IV, f. 10^v.

18. Ed. cit., 32. 26-28.

19. Morgan 673, sign. [b5^v].

20. Scrope, following his French manuscript, has badly mistranslated this; cf. 96. 14-16 and notes, p. 344.

21. Compare my paper ‘The Fleurs de toutes vertus and Christine de Pisan's L'Epitre d'Othéa,’ PMLA, LXII (1947), 32-44, and my Dicts, pp. xvii-xviii.

22. Starnes, op. cit., p. 15, n. 25, correctly states that ‘Baldwin is quite unreliable in his ascriptions of the sayings.’

23. Ed. cit., 280. 15-17.

24. Another misattribution by Baldwin is found on sign. N8^v: ‘Syckenes is the prieson of the bodye, but sorowe the prieson of the soule. Hermes.’ In the Dicts (71. 12-13) this saying is found under Diogenes.

25. STC 6826, sign. [i6]. On two occasions (The Library, XV [1934] 316-329, and XXI [1941], 284-290) I have maintained that this was the second edition and that the actual first edition was STC 6828. Some years ago a piece of evidence came to my attention which may indicate that my belief was quite wrong. The final solution of the problem awaits an opportunity for a thorough examination of Lambeth MS 265 and a collation of all the known copies of both editions.

26. In his own words (STC 1255, sign. M8): ‘And suche thynges as I thought moste proper, I haue drawen into Metre, & ioyned with them diuers other, by other men doen already: to the intent that such as delite in Englishe Metre, and can retayne it in memorye better than prose, mighte fynde herein somewhat accordyng to their desyres: whiche booke & Meters I submit to the correccion of all fine witted and well learned menne: desyring them herein to pardon myne ignoraunce, and to beare wyth my boldenesse, which thought it better, though rudely, to doe somewhat, than to be idle, and to do nothing.’

27. As another example, we may cite from sign. 08:

    Be mery and glad, honest and vertuous,
    For that suffyseth to anger the enuious. Hermes.

    The attribution is quite correct; cf. my Dicts, 22. 25-26.

28. The Treatise of Morall Phylosophie, in turn, was extensively used as a source book for Politeuphuia; Wits Commonwealth (variously attributed to Nicholas Ling and John Bodenham), as Starnes has adequately demonstrated. This work was also very popular. Of the twelve editions apparently printed before 1640, seven have survived (STC 15685-15690 and Bishop 15687.1). The catalogue of the Carl H. Pforzheimer Library (English Literature, 1475-1700, New York, 1940, III, 826) states that there were issued ‘some eighteen editions before the end of the seventeenth century’ and the last edition in the Library of Congress is dated 1699.

    Starnes has also made the claim (p. 8, n. 12) that Wits Commonwealth borrowed directly from Rivers' Dictes, but I have found no conclusive proof for this. The two quotations cited by Starnes as evidences of direct borrowing are also to be found in the Treatise, the former on sign. N1 of STC 1255 and the latter on p. 148 of Wing B 547 (though, at least in the 1651 edition, the saying is attributed to Seneca).

29. Starnes is of the opinion that the influence of the Dictes can even be traced, through Wits Commonwealth, to Bodenham's Bel-vedére, or the Garden of the Muses (STC 3189-3190). With this opinion the writer does not concur. True enough, many of the sayings in the Garden seem quite similar to those in the Dictes but this is not, in view of the commonplace nature of these adages, sufficient to prove even indirect kinship. Indeed, identity of wording is itself not proof of inter-relationship, as the several English translations of the Dictes amply demonstrate. If an example from the Garden may be cited, we find in the chapter ‘Of Friendship’ (STC 3189, sign. G7^v):

    The summe of friendship is, that of two soules
    One should be made, in will and firme affect.

    This might, of course, have been based upon the Dicts (compare anonymous version, 65. 18-20) but it is also found in Diogenes Laertius (V, 20), of whose work many editions in Greek and Latin were in print before 1600. The adage also occurs in the Rudimentum Novitiorum (Lübeck, 1475, f. 257^v) and in various other works of the ‘Vincent tradition’ (cf. my ‘Greek Philosophers in the Literature of the Later Middle Ages,’ Speculum (1937), XII, 440-455). Thus, for example, it is found in the German translation of Burley (Augsburg, Sorg, 1490, f. 91^v): ‘Ward gefraget. was ist ein freünd. Er sprache ein sele in zweÿen leÿben wonent.’ Similarity of thought and wording, thus, is not proof of kinship and I have noticed no quotation in the Garden which could be solely traced to the Dictes and Sayings.

30. Henrietta R. Palmer, List of English Editions and Translations of Greek and Latin Classics Printed before 1641 (London, 1911).

31. In his preface to Haue with you to Saffron-Walden, Nashe states that he wanted to keep ‘a smooth plain forme in my eloquence, as … Baldwin in his morrall sentences (which now are all snatcht vp for Printers posies),’ (Ronald B. McKerrow, The Works of Thomas Nashe, London, 1904-1910, III, 20).

32. Middle-Class Culture in Elizabethan England (Chapel Hill, 1935), pp. 121-169.