«Merge Record #»«Title» - Schulz-Falster Rare Books

past and teachers of their contemporaries. Instead his first aim was merely to show
how things actually were, summed up in his well-known claim of writing history
'wie es eigentlich gewesen'.
'Ranke first applied to medieval and modern history the critical principles which
Niebuhr had established for ancient history. He thereby set up novel standards of
scholarship which have since become accepted by historians of every nation who are
not shackled by the straitjacket of a narrow dogma ... His 'Examination of Modern
Historians' takes its departure from Guicciardini, who had hitherto been regarded as
the chief authority on the period. Without belittling 'one of the great historical
productions which we have', Ranke deprives the Historia d'Italia of its claim to being
a primary source and shows the extent to which Guicciardini was dependent on
other writers, and even more important, how much his outlook is coloured by his
own private life, professional career and party prejudices. In other words, Ranke tries
to assess the value of a source through the explanation of the character of its author'
(PMM 286).
Printing and the Mind of Man 286; see Blackwell Dictionary of Historians.
Signalling Numbers
65.
REQUENO, Vincenzo. Scoperta della Chironomia, ossia dell'Arte di
Gestire con le Mani. Parma, Fratelli Gozzi, 1797. £ 650
8vo, pp. viii, 141, [1] imprint, [1] errata, 3 engraved plates; uncut in the
original pale blue wrappers; spine a little chipped and corners worn; a
crisp and very wide-margined copy.
First edition of this very attractive and curious introduction into the art of
'chiromania' , or talking with one's hands, used not only in mime, but in a wide range
of situations. The author begins with a historical overview, and then discusses the
use of hands and fingers in counting and calculating in classical antiquity. The left
hand indicates numbers up to ninety, whereas the right hand gives hundreds. The
three finely engraved plates, in fact, illustrate this use, and give the hand signs for
different figures and numbers. He also deals with the representation of the letters of
the alphabet with both the left and the right hand.
In the second and more substantial part the author deals with the use of hands and
gestures in mime, pantomime, and classical theatre in general. He deplores in
particular that modern mime does not utilise the hands in the same 'meaningful' way
as was common in antiquity.
Thomas Tooke's Russian Passport
66.
[RUSSIAN PASSPORT.] Auf Befehl Ihro Kayserlichen Majet;at der
Großen Frau und Kayserin Catharina Alexejena Selbstherrscherin