gronden, waarin de auteurs van de memories worden beschreven, met centraal de persoon van R. van Goens, die zeer uitgesproken ideeën over Malabar had, maar die met vele anderen werkzaam op de kust in conflict kwam over de te voeren politiek. Juist aan deze conflicten danken wij interessante stukken.

Drie overzichten volgen als bijlagen, namelijk over de inkomsten en uitgaven van het commandement; een lijst van commandeurs en commissarissen met de namen van in die tijd regerende raja's van Cochin en een overzicht van munten, maten en gewichten.

Dan komen de memories zelf, voorzien van tussenkoppen, zodat men snel het gewenste onderdeel kan opzoeken, als men geen gebruik van de index maakt. In het bijwerk lijsten van aangehaalde werken, van bewerkte archivalia en geraadpleegde geografische en biografische bronnen. Drie registers, op personen, op aardrijkskundige namen en op zaken maken de tekst toegankelijk. Het geheel wordt besloten met een Engelse summary.

Om de lezer een indruk te geven waar de handeling zich afspeelt is een kaart toegevoegd, die naar mijn gevoel iets te summier is. Een atlas blijft bij het lezen nodig.

Met de publicatie van deze memories en instructies heeft de bewerker de onderzoekers van de geschiedenis van Malabar een goede gids bezorgd.

M. E. van Opstall

Hans Bots, ed., *Henri Basnage de Beauval en de Histoire des Ouvrages des Savans 1687-1709* (Studies van het Instituut voor intellectuele betrekkingen tussen Westeuropese landen van de zeventiende eeuw, Nijmegen, IV; Amsterdam: Holland Universiteits Pers, 1976, 2 vols. xii, 351, 326 blz.).

The Instituut voor intellectuele betrekkingen tussen Westeuropese landen van de zeventiende eeuw at the Catholic University of Nijmegen has made another reconnaissance into the less frequented regions of the Republic of Letters. Hard upon the heels of its recent study of Pieter Rabus and *De Boekzaal van Europe 1692-1702*, previously reviewed in *BMGN*, XCI, i (1976) 118-121, comes this present study of another Rotterdam publication of the same period, the *Histoire des Ouvrages des Savans 1687-1709* of Henri Basnage de Beauval, a younger brother of the better-known Jacques Basnage, Huguenot journalist, historian, theologian and diplomat, who frequently contributed reviews to the *Histoire des Ouvrages des Savans*, and is sometimes erroneously identified as its producer.

Like the Rabus volume the present work is the result of a series of forays, undertaken as part of their course of study, by a group of doctoral candidates, the majority of them historians, into territory of their choosing. For some - Jan de Vet, who writes on Locke and the *Histoire des Ouvrages des Savans*; Giel van Gemert, who writes on the treatment of Jesuit works of scholarship in the *Histoire*; and Kees van den Oord, who writes on Basnage and the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes - involvement in the enterprise has constituted not only a second mission successfully completed, but also a return to terrain already visited in the Rabus volume. For most, however, with the further and conspicuous exception of Dr. Hans Bots, now a veteran campaigner, who appears once again as editor, and is also a contributor to an essay on the image of the Republic of Letters in the *Histoire des Ouvrages des Savans*, participation in the quest for Basnage has been a baptism of fire. Not all have survived the experience. To be precise, not all those dispatched upon missions completed them in time and in due form, and to the point of writing up and polishing up an intelligence report. Nevertheless, all-including, it seems, the nameless defaulters-had an opportunity of contributing to the group decisions which preceded the establishment of
the final texts of the enterprise. These run to two volumes, with the promise of a third containing some 50 letters to and from Henri Basnage, and a complete index of the 1000 plus works reviewed in the *Histoires des Ouvrages des Savans*. The last holds out an inviting prospect, and will prove an invaluable aid to scholars, especially if it contains, in addition to the usual bibliographical particulars of author, date and place of publication, and name of publisher, references to the date and location of the review. It is a pity in retrospect, that such material had not been provided in the Rabus volume, and it is to be hoped that it will be provided in the Instituut's forthcoming study of Le Clerc's *Bibliothèque Universelle et Historique*, since it will make available vital comparative material for a much more specific appreciation of the differences and similarities between the publications of Le Clerc and Basnage, and of the individual identities of the two publications, than has yet proved possible, and than has been achieved in the present work.

Even so, some advance has been made on these matters, and things stand on a firmer ground, notably as a result of Anton Schuurman's study of 'Henri de Basnage en de Histoire des Ouvrages des Savans', the most impressive of the essays under review. Amongst other things, Mr. Schuurman has analysed 179 library auction catalogues preserved in the archive of the Bibliotheek van de Vereniging ter Bevordering van de Belangen des Boekhandels at Amsterdam for the period 1687 to 1750. The results yield nothing dramatically new, but they do at least support what was long ago established in Daniel Mornet's classic study of French eighteenth-century private library catalogues; namely, that the *Histoire des Ouvrages des Savans* was a less favoured acquisition in libraries in the eighteenth century than the contemporaneous *Bibliothèque Universelle* of Le Clerc, or the *Nouvelles de la République* of Pierre Bayle. What is also revealed, however, is that a certain number of libraries in the Republic - 17 out of the 179 - contained all three periodical publications. Thus 50% of those who possessed the *Nouvelles*, and 33% of those who possessed the *Bibliothèque Universelle*, also possessed the *Histoires des Ouvrages des Savans*<fnref n="1" />. It is not easy to say what this signifies. But leaving aside the possibility that all can be explained by postulating the existence of 17 eighteenth-century Dutch bibliomaniacs, it may suggest that it is somewhat misleading, or at any rate unguarded, to describe the *Bibliothèque Universelle* and the *Histoire des Ouvrages des Savans*, as competitors, as does another contributor to the present work (see ii, 272). It would seem, in fact, that they were seen in the eighteenth century, and by their respective producers, as serving complementary functions, as well as performing distinctive rôles. More precision on these matters of complementariness and distinctiveness, however, must await the provision of the kind of comparative documentation to which reference has already been made, and a systematic comparison of books reviewed, and of reviews of books. Here again, however, Mr. Schuurman has provided some useful material, and there are relevant asides in Jan de Vet's essay on Locke, and in Math. Meyer's 'Enkele natuurwetenschappelijke artikelen in de Histoire des Ouvrages des Savans'.

Basnage, it is made clear, professed to see his rôle as in some degree that of a populariser, potting knowledge according to the fashion of the time in such a way as to enable the lazy but literate to converse with confidence, and at minimal expense and personal effort, about an infinity of things. It may be doubted whether in fact there was much in the *Histoire des Ouvrages des Savans*, apart from its somewhat gossipy section of 'Extraits de diverses

<footnote n="1">1. For what it is worth, Lord Somers's library also contained incomplete runs of all three periodicals, as well as other learned contemporary periodicals. See British Library, Ad. Ms. 40752, ff. 191-192.</footnote>
lettres', which would have provided the lazy ignoramus with a painless elevation into the ranks of 'habile homme'. It is clear, however, that this popularising rôle, in so far as it provided, through reviews, substitutes for the books themselves, threatened at times to conflict with another function Basnage had set for his periodical, and which its publisher, Reinier Leers, doubtless kept in the forefront of his mind, that of stimulating the sale of books. Hence, it seems, the need to provide reviews which avoided the twin perils of 'tedious Extracts and superficial Catalogues - the former being tiresome to the Reader, as well as injurious to the Sale of the Books'². The art, therefore, was to stimulate but not to satisfy.

At the same time, however, as Basnage set out to build a bridge between the learned and the literate, he did not neglect service to scholarship; indeed, to quote Mr. Schuurman's felicitous phrase, he acted at times quite literally as a secretary to the Republic of Letters, bringing scholars into contact with each other, helping to locate and arrange the exchange of books and manuscripts requested by scholars. A good example of the way in which Basnage lubricated the wheels of scholarship concerns the appeal in the 1690's from Dr. John Mill, the Oxford Biblical scholar and Oxford correspondent of the *Histoire des Ouvrages des Savans*, asking for a particular work, thought to be in the hands of the Bollandist fathers at Antwerp, to enable him and Henry Dodwell to complete their edition of the Epistle of St. Barnabus. An abbreviated version of Mill's letter to Basnage, translated from the original Latin, appeared in the 'Extraits de diverses lettres', and Basnage himself wrote to Papenbroek, the editor of the *Acta Sanctorum*, repeating Mill's appeal. Papenbroek answered the call for help, and Mill and Dodwell were sent the precious work they required to finish their task³.

Mill was one of a number of regular correspondents of the *Histoire des Ouvrages des Savans*, or rather he was one of the less regular correspondents, who provided the periodical with up-to-date information on scholarship just completed or in progress, for inclusion in its 'Extraits de diverses lettres'. Correspondence came from many parts of Europe-France, England, Italy, Germany, Flanders, Switzerland, Sweden and Portugal - but a settled and frequent correspondence was largely confined to the first four countries, with Germany a poor fourth. In this context Leer's many European contacts as a bookseller must have been valuable; and amongst these contacts, it may be added, was the

2. *The History of the Works of the Learned. Or, An Impartial Account of Books Lately Printed in all Parts of Europe. With a Particular Relation of the State of Learning in each Country. For the Year of 1699.* Done by several Hands (London, 1699) 'Preface', i. It is presumably to an earlier imitation of this serial publication that a London correspondent of the *Histoire des Ouvrages Savans* was referring in May 1694 when he wrote 'entire articles of your *Histoire des Ouvrages Savans* are being translated here, for example the History of Learning - it is practically nothing more than a translation of your last quarter' [*ibidem*, May 1694, 423]. Thomas Bennet, one of the publishers of *The History of the Works of the Learned'* 1699, had business dealings with Leers. See Norma Hodgson and Cyprian Blagden, *The Notebook of Thomas Bennet and Henry Clements 1686-1719. With some Aspects of Book Trade Practice* (Oxford, 1956) [Oxford Bibliographical Society. New Series, VI (1953)] 33. Some correspondence from Leers to Samuel Smith for the period 1686 to 1691 is to be found in Bodleian Library, Ms. Rawlinson 114 (Foreign Letters) ff. 119, 121-141.

3. For the text of the original letter by Mill to Basnage, see Adam Fox, *John Mill and Richard Bentley. A Study of the Textual Criticism of the New Testament 1675-1729* (Oxford, 1954) 155. Fox confuses Henri and Jacques Basnage. It would be worthwhile for someone to look at the Mill correspondence at Queen's College Oxford, to see whether more correspondence with Basnage has survived.
English diplomat, Henry Davenant who, whilst secretary to the mission to the circles of the Empire at Frankfurt in 1706, was twice approached by Leers with request for assistance in locating and despatching books<fnref n="4" />. It is not the least of Mr. Schuurman's merits that he has an eye for the wider implications of this material, and for problems outside his immediate brief. Thus he has some interesting observations to make on the extent to which the Nine Years War and the War of the Spanish Succession interrupted the flow and altered the pattern of peace-time cultural relations between the Dutch republic and France and Britain. An analysis of the books reviewed in the *Histoire des Ouvrages des Savans* from 1689 to 1709 discloses a 35% increase in the number of Dutch books reviewed, a reduction of c. 58% in the number of French books reviewed, and a 50% increase in the number of English books reviewed. It is a further pointer to the growth during this period of the Anglo-Dutch book trade<fnref n="5" />.

More might have been done with this material if it had been broken down into annual tables, and then considered in the context of what is known about the incidence of privateering in the Channel and the Northern Seas, the delays in trade caused by the need for convoying during these wars, and the prohibitions and restrictions placed by the belligerents on trade and correspondence during times of war. But it would be palpably unfair to dwell too long upon these might-have-beens. Given the congested calendar of these doctoral candidates for whom time's winged chariot always hurries very near, it is less surprising that all has not been done well than that things have been done at all, and Mr. Schuurman has certainly done pretty well. There are still, however, some instances of curious myopia in other contributions when the left hand seems unaware, or insufficiently aware, of what the right hand has done. Why, for instance, should it seem surprising [i, 160] that in the 1690's - when Rotterdam, as was made clear in the Rabus volume, was menaced by the dark clouds of clerical censorship, and when in the Republic, as in England, the marked growth of Socinianism was viewed with alarm as the Trojan horse of atheism - that the *Histoire des Ouvrages des Savans* should have made only passing and perfunctory mentions of the controversy between the English divines, Sherlock and South, on the nature of the Trinity, the great testing ground of Christianity in the late seventeenth century? Why, for that matter, should it seem surprising that the *Histoire des Ouvrages des Savans* made 5 references to the sermons of Archbishop Tillotson [i, 160]? Leers clearly had a market for Tillotson's sermons<fnref n="6" />. But, to end on a note of encouragement, the present work-perhaps as a result of the group discussions, or perhaps as a result of closer and firmer editorial direction and scrutiny - has fewer instances of gross overlapping in background material, detail, and quotations than its predecessor.

G. C. Gibbs

<footnote n="4">4. British Library, Ad. Ms. 4746, Correspondence of H. Davenant, f. 194, Leers to Davenant, 19 January 1706; *ibidem* f. 195, Leers to Davenant, 9 March 1706.</footnote>

<footnote n="5">5. For two useful recent contributions to this theme, see Giles Barber, 'Books from the Old World and for the New :The British International Trade in Books in the Eighteenth Century', *Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century*, CLI (Oxford, 1976) 'Transactions of the Fourth International Congress on the Enlightenment', 185-224; *idem*, 'Aspects of the Booktrade between England and the Low Countries in the Eighteenth Century', *Documentatieblad Werkgroep 18e eeuw*, XXXIV-XXXV (April 1977) esp. 54-63.</footnote>

<footnote n="6">6. Hodgson and Blagden, *Notebook of Thomas Bennet*, 15, 34.</footnote>
A. J. Veenendaal jr., ed., *De briefwisseling van Anthonie Heinsius, 1702-1720, 1,19 maart-31 december 1702* (RGP, Grote serie CLVIII, Dissertatie Nijmegen; 's-Gravenhage: M. Nijhoff, 1976, xxxiv + 666 blz., f 104.-, ISBN 90 247 1906 2).

De verschijning van deel I van Heinsius' briefwisseling geeft een drievoudige vreugde: omdat het er eindelijk is, omdat de vorm weinig te wensen laat en omdat men hoopvol naar meer kan uitzien. Eindelijk - dat is allerminst een verwijt aan de bewerker A. J. Veenendaal jr. Integendeel, de eerste aflevering van een zo tijdervend werk binnen tien jaar na de opdracht verdient alle waardering. Maar hoe lang (en men mag wel zeggen hoe smartelijk) en door hoe velen is niet om de uitgave van Heinsius' papieren geroepen. Al is in de loop der jaren daaraan deels voldaan door de publicatie van belangrijke reeksen brieven uit de jaren van samenwerking met Willem III, voor de tijd na 1702 moest nog altijd de tocht naar Den Haag worden ondernomen. Eindelijk wordt dan die langdurige en ook internationale belangstelling bevredigd.

Nu is het Heinsius-archief befaamd overzichtelijk en een inventaris in boekvorm maakt het de laatste decenniën bijzonder toegankelijk. Ook zijn er natuurlijk al wel wat krenten uitgepikt, met name de omvangrijke Heinsius-Marlborough correspondentie. Maar het is wat anders fragmenten te kennen, gericht te kunnen zoeken, te weten wat er ligt, of de volledige briefwisseling over achttien jaar voor het grijpen te hebben. *Briefwisseling* is een wat groot woord; de uitgaande brieven zijn ver in de minderheid, zo een op de vijftien - de meeste overigens ijverig bijeengehaald van verscheidene andere plaatsen. Een winstpunt, want men ruilt ze gaarne voor de verder aanwezige stukken die nu bleven liggen.

Als de correspondentie in latere oorlogsjaren sterk zwelt, zal Heinsius' aandeel verhoudingsgewijs waarschijnlijk wel toenemen, maar of dat meer licht zal werpen op het karakter van de raadpensionaris valt te betwijfelen. Tot zover wordt slechts bevestigd wat men al wist: keurig en karig. En al had de moderne lezer hem graag wat ongeremder betrapt, aan die keurigheid allereerst dankt men een verzameling die behalve een zee van informatie ook bijzondere mogelijkheden tot onderzoek biedt.

Want het Heinsius-archief is uniek door de duur: de neerslag van 31 jaar bewogen geschiedenis in de correspondentie van één man die al die tijd als de belangrijkste minister en na 1702 als leider van de Verenigde Provincies naar buiten optrad. Hoe merkwaardig dat is beseft men pas goed door de bonte rij van tegenspelers voor het oog te laten passeren. Vorsten, ministers, gezanten kwamen en gingen - steeds weer hadden zij met Heinsius te doen. En niet weinig toen beslissingen in de Republiek een zo wijd strekkende invloed op het Europese gebeuren konden uitoefenen als in de middentijd van zijn ambtsperiode. Zijn leven was zijn ambt is wel gezegd, maar hoe weinig wordt dat gekend.

Het wekt beschaming (het is al meer gezegd) en bij buitenlanders ongelovige verbazing, dat voor Heinsius nog steeds naar de, overigens begripvolle, schets van de Fouw in zijn *Onbekende Raadpensionarissen* moet worden verwezen. Als deze brievenuitgave alleen maar aanleiding werd tot een portret ten voeten uit was daarmee haar dienst al bewezen. In dit deel wordt men tenminste reeds verblijd met de meest uitvoerige biografische aantekeningen tot nu toe verschenen, zij het enigszins in de trant van een lofrede. Anders werd ook niet over hem geschreven, blijkbaar rekt het onderwerp niet. Heinsius is zo kleurloos, hoort men vaak - in de duisternis van het onbekende blijven alle pensionarissen grauw, al valt zeker niet te verwachten dat zijn toekomstig biograaf een flamboyante persoonlijkheid te voorschijn zal brengen. Maar dat is ook geen vereiste voor een boeiend verhaal. Belangrijker is het tragisch element in de levensgang en daaraan ontbreekt het niet, zoals ieder weet die zich maar zijdelings met de effen Heinsius bemoeid heeft.