Iain Pears - An Instance of the Fingerpost

So easy it is to delude the trusting! This Cola began to steal his way into Matthew’s affections, no doubt conversing with the facility of the passing acquaintance, never approaching the care that I had devoted to the lad over so many years. It is easy to entertain and fascinate, harder to educate and love; Matthew, alas, was not yet old or discriminating enough to tell the difference, and was easy prey to the ruthlessness of the Italian, who beguiled with his words until he needed to strike.

The letter disturbed me, for my main concern was that Matthew’s natural amiability might permit some ill-chosen words to slip out and alert Cola to my awareness of him. I forced my mind to concentrate on problems more easy to resolve, and took up once more the question of the coded letter and its key.

Only one of the books Matthew mentioned could be the one I needed, the problem was to determine which one. The easiest solution was denied me—for I knew that Euclid had only been printed in octavo but once, in Paris in 1621, and I had that edition in my own library. It was simple enough, therefore, to discover it was not the one I wanted. That left the remaining three. Accordingly, the moment I arrived back in Oxford I summoned a strange young man of my acquaintance, Mr. Anthony Wood, whom I knew to be an expert squirreler in such matters. I had rendered him many favors in those days, earning his gratitude for allowing him access to manuscripts in my care, and he was pathetically eager to repay my kindnesses to him, although as a price I had to listen to interminable discussions about this press and that press, one edition after another and so on. I suppose he thought I was interested in the minutiae of ancient learning and attempted to curry favor by drawing me into scholarly conversation.

It took him some considerable time before he returned to my room one evening (building works at my house having forced me, meanwhile, to rent space at New College—a regrettable fact which I will discuss later on) and reported that in all probability he had worked out which books were meant, although personally he believed that, in the case of the Thomas More and the Polydore Vergil, better editions existed at a more modest cost.

I detested having to play such silly games, but I patiently explained, nonetheless, that I had set my heart on these particular versions. I wished, I said, to experiment with making comparisons between the various editions, so as to prepare a complete version, without faults, for the world. He admired greatly my devotion, and said he understood perfectly. The Utopia of Thomas More, he said, was a quarto, and undoubtedly the translation by Robinson which Alsop had published in 1624—he could tell that because Alsop only produced one edition before changing times meant that publishing the works of Catholic saints became a risky occupation. A copy, he said, was in the Bodleian library. The History of Polydore Vergil was also simple—there were not many new editions of this fine author published in Douai, after all. It had to be the idiosyncratic edition of George Lily, an octavo printed in 1603. Copies were not hard to come by and, indeed, he had seen a version only the other day at Mr. Heath’s, the bookseller, at a price of one shilling and sixpence. He was sure he could bargain the man down—as if I cared about two pence.

“And the fourth?”

“That is a problem,” he said. “I think I know which edition you refer to here, it is the ‘Heins’ which gives it away, of course. This refers to the handsome edition of Livy’s histories by Daniel Heinsius, issued in Leiden in 1634. A triumph of skill and learning which, alas, never received the approbation it deserved. I assume this refers to volume two of the edition, which was a duodecimo, in three volumes. Few were printed and I have never seen one. I know it only by reputation—others have shamelessly used his insights without ever crediting their true author. Which is a burden true scholars must constantly bear.”

“Make enquiries for me,” I told him with heavy patience. “I will pay a good price for it, if it is to be had. You must know booksellers and antiquarians and collectors of libraries and the like. If there is one, someone like you will be able to find it, of that I feel sure.”

The silly man looked modestly down his nose at the compliment. “I will do my best for you,” he said. “And I can assure you, that if I cannot find a copy, no one else will be able to.”

“That is all I ask,” I replied, and ushered him out as quickly as was possible.

I have read of late a scurrilous pamphlet which (without naming me directly) said that the crisis with which I was dealing at this stage was a fabrication, whipped up by a government to foment fear of sectaries and that it did not, in fact, exist. Nothing could be further from the truth. I hope I have already made my good intentions and my honesty clear. What I did, I admit—I freely own that I overemphasized the danger of the rising which led to my employment by Mr. Bennet, and claim for myself the mistake which led to the regrettable death of Signor di Pietro. I hope there is no doubt about the sincerity of my remorse, but the fact remains that the man was carrying subversive and conspiratorial material, and it was necessary for the security of the kingdom to have it.

I feel as though I ought to set out some of my thinking, lest it be thought that my punctiliousness over letters and obscure books makes me seem fussy and obsessive. For it had struck me as obvious that these books which Matthew had told me about were most unusual. Everybody knows about the sectaries and their pathetic claims to learning. Self-taught scrabblers in the dust, most of them, seduced by second-rate reading into the delusion that they are educated. Educated? A Bible whose sublime subtlety and symbolic beauty they cannot even begin to understand, and a few screeching pamphlets by that handful of dissenters whose arrogance exceeds their shame, is all they have by way of education. No Latin, no Greek, and certainly no Hebrew; unable to read any language but their own, and assaulted by the ravings of false prophets and self-appointed Messiahs even in English. Of course they are not educated; knowledge is the province of the gentleman. I do not say that artisans cannot know, but it is obvious that they cannot assess, as they possess neither the leisure nor the training to consider free from prejudice. Plato said so, and I know of no serious person who has denied him.

And the writer of this letter to Cola was using one of these fine texts for his code? Livy, Polydore, More. Initially it made me shudder to think of such hands even touching these works, but then I reconsidered—some scruffy pamphlet I would have accepted, but these? Where did they get their hands on books which belong only in the library of a gentleman?

By the time Wood reappeared, sniffing and twitching like a little mouse, I had established that neither the More nor the Polydore Vergil was the book I required. The answer therefore lay in the Livy—find it, find who possessed it, and my investigation would advance in a great leap. Wood told me that a long-dead London bookseller had brought half a dozen copies into the country in 1643, as part of a general shipment for scholars. What had happened to them after that, alas, was unclear, as the man had been a supporter of the king, and all his stock was confiscated in fines when Parliament secured its hold on London. Wood assumed these books were dispersed then.

“So you mean to tell me, after all that, that you cannot get me a copy?”

He looked a bit surprised by my sharpness of tone, but shook his head. “Oh, no, sir,” he said. “I thought you might be interested, that is all. But they are rare, and I have identified only one person who definitely had one, which he brought in himself from abroad. I know of it because my friend Mr. Aubrey wrote to a bookseller in Italy on some other matter…”