Introduction

Afterword: Dismiss the Antiquary at Your Peril

“…The sense that some private papers are worth preservation in public institutions (such as the Ashmolean Museum and the Royal Society Archive) and even preservation by the state, emerged in the history of science in the eighteenth century-before it arose in the nineteenth, and even the twentieth centuries, in the history of literature. 23 As they collected, transferred, discussed, and published documents, virtuoso antiquaries found ways of authenticating their documents and thus rendering them, if not authoritative sources, at least starting-points for further discussion and experimentation. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, manuscript collectors sought 'signs of the reliability of a text rather than a document'.…”

“…At the beginning of the seventeenth century, manuscript collectors sought 'signs of the reliability of a text rather than a document'. 24 For example, the 'destruction of the original manuscript in the publication of Bacon's works illustrates what little regard the holograph manuscript attracted, other than as an indication of the text's authenticity'. 25 But by the eighteenth century this attitude was changing.…”