Susanne Schulz-Falster Catalogue Fifteen

clearly the copy he describes in his letter of 15th October 1694. ‘Sir, I return
you my humble thanks, for your extream courtesie & civility to My sister &
my self at Oxford; & particularly for the book you gave me, which wil make
me renew acquaintance with the Saxon Tongue, as soon as I can get some
more books which I want: for out of Mr Kings book I only transcribed the
Saxon Grammar and the Catalogue of the Saxon books, without medling
with any thing of Gothic, Runic, Islandic, & of al which, with the Scotch I
can out of yours pretty well furnish my self ’til I buy more’.
The focus of Wanley’s interest is clearly the Dictionariolum Islandicum in
the second part of the book, which is extensively and carefully annotated.
Many of the notes are incorporated by Hickes in his revised version published
in the Thesaurus. For example, to ‘aan, defectus’ Wanley glosses ‘Inde
dicitur wan’, and the ‘the wane of ye moon’, both of which are included
by Hickes. Similarly at ‘mier batnar, revaleo’ Wanley notes: ‘to batten, vel
battn apud A.B. est vires acquirere: & proprie dicitur de infante vires post
nativitatem acqurenne’. Hickes follows this definition verbatim. Many of
Wanley’s notes and additions are similarly incorporated, but by no means
all: for example under ‘dapur, aegre affectus’ Wanley notes ‘A. dapper, idem
quod brisk’, which Hickes does not include.
George Hickes acknowledged his debt to the younger man, at least in
private. When he was fifty-five and Wanley was twenty-five, he wrote to
him, ‘I have learnt more from you, than ever I did from any other man,
and living or dying I will make my acknowledgement more ways than one’.
(Hickes to Wanley, 14. Mar. 1698).
Humfrey Wanley (1672–1726) was the most important Anglo-Saxonist
of his age, librarian to Robert and Edward Harley, and a founder member
of the Society of Antiquaries.
Bound at the end is a copy of William Drummond’s Polemo-Middinia,
carmen macaronicum. Oxford, Sheldonian Theatre, 1691.
Alton III, 6; Kennedy 3143; Wing H1851.
susanne schulz-falster rare books