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MITFORD (William): - An Essay upon the Harmony of Language.
London: Printed by Scott for J. Robson..., 1774. FIRST EDITION. 8vo, 213 x 125 mms., pp. [iv], 288, later full calf, raised bands between gilt rules on spine, red morocco label; front free end-paper creased slight general wear to binding and front cover detached, with the autograph "Charles Banham Livius" on the top margin of the front paste-down end-paper. William Mitford (1744 - 1827) wrote one of the first and useful histories of Greece, even though he never went to Greece. Neil Murray in his M. A. thesis, The Prosodic Theory of Patmore, Hopkins, and Bridges ( 1963), notes that Mitford attention to prosody was "first real attempt to grapple with the fundamental problems was made by William Mitford in his comprehensive survey of the field of prosody, Inguiry into the Principles of the Harmony of Language (1774; second enlarged edition 1804). He clearly made the distinction between accent and quantity which most earlier writers had left in obscurity. To demonstrate the point he quoted the opening lines of Paradise Lost with the accents misplaced, and remarked that no matter which syllables one chose to make long or short the lines were no longer metrical." Neil Murray, in his M.A. thesis, The Prosodic Theory of Patmore, Hopkins, and Bridges (1963), notes that the "first real attempt to grapple with the fundamental problems was made by William Mitford in his comprehensive survey of the field of prosody, Inquiry into the Principles of the Harmony of Language (1774; second enlarged edition 1804). He clearly made the distinction between accent and quantity which most earlier writers had left in obscurity. To demonstrate the point he quoted the opening lines of Paradise Lost with the accents misplaced, and remarked that no matter which syllables one chose to make long or short the lines were no longer metrical." So little has been known with certainty about the English dramatist and composer Charles Barham Livius (b. circa 1785 or 1787, d. 1865), who owned the present copy of Mitford's Essay (1774), that an obituary consisting of a single line has been one of the main sources for his life. The Era Almanack: Dramatic & Musical claimed that, on Thursday the 14th of January, "Charles Barham Livius, dramatist, died at Worthing, 1865, aged 80" (The Era Almanack: Dramatic & Musical, 1869, p. 1). Many decades later, Walter A. Reichart would make an admirable attempt to sort out some of the many confusions, and the multiple pseudonyms involved, in Livius's life with his article, "Washington Irving's Friend and Collaborator: Barham John Livius, Esq.", published in the PMLA, Vol. 56, No. 2 (June 1941), pp. 513-531. Reichart cites the variety of names found to refer to the same composer and dramatist as including Charles Barham Livius, John Barham Livius, Barham John Livius, and simply Barham Livius, with which he seems to have signed much of his work. The multiplicity may possibly be explicable in terms of a desire to remain somewhat slippery, since, as Edward Wagenknecht puts it, the "morals [of Barham Livius] were not above reproach" (Edward Wagenknecht, Washington Irving: Moderation Displayed [Oxford University Press, 1962], p. 134). One story has Barham Livius tasked with conveying to the composer Carl Maria von Weber a substantial amount of money, which, unfortunately, never actually reached Weber. Besides being a collaborator of Washington Irving's, Barham Livius was also associated with the Shakespearean actor Charles Kean, the great composer Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, the actor Charles Kemble, the diarist Emily Foster (who was a cousin), and the Victorian journalist George Augustus Sala. On the dearth of details available on Barham Livius's life, one musicologist went so far as to say, "Of this Barham Livius nothing can be traced, except that he was an amateur operetta-composer, that he had belonged to Trinity College, Cambridge (Samm. X, 299, Jan. 1909), and that both Sir George Smart and Charles Kemble himself had a very small opinion of him" (Zeitschrift, Vol. 11, [International Musical Society, 1910], p. 253). In the history of early nineteenth-century English music and drama, the presence of Barham Livius is both pervasive and shadowy. The interest of the inscription in this copy of Mitford's Essay (1774) is twofold. First, we have a book from Barham Livius's library, and a book decidedly telling with regard to his primary vocation: Mitford is writing on the harmony of English, the musical properties of the language, a correct knowledge of which could only aid a British lyricist and British composer. Secondly, we have an example of the dramatist choosing to use one of the rarer variants of his name to mark this book as his own, "Charles Barham Livius", a variant he appears to have used in the latter period of his life, which has been an especially obscure period of his largely opaque life. ESTC T68668 lists several copies of this first edition of Mitford's Essay (1774) in the British Isles, and several in the United States, but finds only one copy, Columbia's, in any Ivy League library. The ESTC database finds no books once owned by Barham Livius, at least not under any version of his name known to me.
GBP 495.00 [Appr.: EURO 587 US$ 628.45 | JP¥ 98906] Booknumber: 9312
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GBP 495.00 [Appr.: EURO 587 US$ 628.45 | JP¥ 98906] Booknumber: 9312
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Total: GBP 495.00 [Appr.: EURO 587 US$ 628.45 | JP¥ 98906]
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