Written by Michelle Brice
A commonplace, from the Latin locus communis, is defined by Merriam-Webster1 as “a passage of speech not directly concerned with the issue at hand,” or a “general observation.” Furthermore, the term commonplace refers to “a passage of general significance that may be applied to particular cases,” or “a striking or especially noticeable passage.” A commonplace book, then, is a book where one would record such passages. Such books have been in existence for centuries. Recommended by the Ancients, the tradition was carried on through the following eras. Because they have been around for so long, there have been many different types of commonplace books, compiled for many different reasons. To understand the purpose of a given book it is necessary to study its contents, and in doing so, one also studies the book’s compiler.
Initially, commonplace books were used as tools in the educational and oratory environments. Students and orators would copy out important passages or phrases from their readings, writing them out by hand into their own journal. In this way, they could collect a wide variety of materials which would be readily available any time they needed to recall what they had studied. Subjects could include politics, scientific study, history, rhetoric, religion, and any other topic which the compiler found useful or important. These books were prized as memory aids for two reasons. First, the physical act of writing would help ingrain the knowledge in the compiler’s mind. Second, with the book always at hand, they could look up an item often enough that they should eventually be able to recall it on their own. For orators, the commonplace book would have entries about a wide variety of topics, so that if one were called on to speak of a given topic, they would always have something to say. They could be used, then, to prepare a speech with winning phrases, to back up an argument with quotations from highly regarded individuals, or they could simply be used to make one appear eloquent and educated in polite society. All of these things were possible when one documented their readings.
To aid in finding the information they sought, passages would be organized under relevant subject headings. It was thought that by having organized notes, the mind would be thus organized. These headings might be unique to the individual, or they might be created as prescribed by an instructor. English philosopher and physician John Locke, for instance, created a “new method” for organizing such materials in an alphabetical order which, when used properly, would spread the recorded information relatively uniformly through the pages of the book. This method was developed in order to prevent certain lettered sections of the book from becoming filled while other sections remained empty. The method achieved this by associating the first letter of the word with the initial vowel of the word. As such, headings might read Ae for “Adversariorum methodus.” Be for “Beauty, Beneficience, Bread, Bleeding, Blemishes.”2 To have such order would have made the search for a subject much faster than if the compiler of a book simply wrote subject headings as they thought of them. Locke’s method of categorization was praised and widely taught for this reason.
However, as commonplace books grew in popularity—and using rote memory as a means to prove intelligence became frowned upon—the books became less about professing education and more about acquiring true knowledge. That is, being able to speak on a subject intelligently and to form new thoughts and ideas of one’s own, rather than relying entirely on the phrases of another to make a point. The use of commonplace books spread among numerous professions and eventually became common practice among ordinary people who had a passion for “accumulating universal knowledge.”3 Those who compiled books began to do so not because they needed a study aid or because they wanted a store of wise-sounding maxims to repeat in front of others, but because they wanted to learn and grow. As such, the compiler would document passages and quotations of particular interest to them, saving them to look back on, reflect on, and form their own thoughts on the matter. John Locke, in the second edition of his Essay concerning Human Understanding, “famously suggested that self-identity lay in the mind and resided in the continuity of memory and consciousness.”4 The items found in the book could be entirely unique to the individual, and they could use it to develop their own identity both publicly, through sharing their thoughts and conclusions about recorded matters, and privately, by studying their own book introspectively.
Elizabeth Newell’s manuscript is believed to have been written around 1655 to 1668, a few decades before Locke’s assertion about self-identity was made, and her writings do indeed show some insight into her character, though no hard facts are known about her or her life. To start, what is immediately clear without reading any passages is that she has no subject headings to sort the entries in her book. Instead, she separates each poem simply with its title. This suggests that she did not care about timely and efficient retrieval of information, as would have been provided by an organizational method of some sort, but was more concerned with dwelling on the subjects over which she wrote.
Additionally, it is clear that she in fact did dwell on these matters, as she has made small notes in the margins of her book. In these annotations she relates various parts of the poems to broad themes like knowledge and love, and links the poems with specific verses in the bible. This shows that she was thinking deeply about the poems, making connections to other things which she had read. The content of the poems, too, gives some insight into her thoughts. No doubt she was interested in devotional verse, as that is what she has copied into her manuscript. These poems show that she was reflecting on the glory of God, his mercy, the wretchedness of man, and the relationship between God and man, among other Christian ideas. Though her reasons cannot be known, at the very least it is certain that religion, specifically Christianity, was an important subject to her.
Finally, her manuscript shows that she was developing her identity as she wrote. Multiple locations in her manuscript have her name scrawled across the page repeatedly. Sometimes her full name, other times Eliz Newell, and in places nothing more than the letter E, looped and swirled all in a row. Whether she was conscious of it or not, this shows that in addition to her religious concerns, she was concerned about herself and how she was perceived. All things considered together, this manuscript provides a small glimpse into the very personal workings of her mind.
Newell may have copied the works of other writers, but in bringing them together, she made the commonplaces her own. As Erasmus wrote in De Copia:5
The student, diligent as a little bee, will flit about through all the gardens of authors and will attack all the little flowerlets from whence he collects some honey which he carries into his own hive; and, since there is so much fertility of material in these that they are not all able to be plucked off, he will select the most excellent and adapt it to the structure of his own work.
The sentiment of the bee gathering pollen for an even greater end product was often used to describe commonplace books, and the sentiment is one which dates all the way back to Seneca. Viewing this as an art of imitation, he argued that one could gather the nectar of other people’s thoughts and “blend those several flavors into one delicious compound that, even though it betrays its origin, yet it nevertheless is clearly a different thing from whence it came.”6 Those who compiled commonplace books, then, were seeking to expand their own minds by borrowing from the minds of those whose words they admired. By taking inspiration from many sources and gathering them all together in one spot, they could sort through their own thoughts and opinions, add onto the ideas of others, and come away with a new book which was wholly theirs.
Bibliography:
1 Merriam-Webster, Incorporated. Merriam-Webster’s Encyclopedia of Literature. (Springfield: Merriam-Webster, Incorporated, Publishers, 1995). Back to text.
2 Dacome, Lucia, “Noting the Mind: Commonplace Books and the Pursuit of the Self in Eighteenth-Century Britain,” Journal of the History of Ideas 65.4 (2004): 603-625, accessed October 20, 2015. Back to text.
3 Lechner, Joan Marie quoted in Richard Yeo, “Ephraim Chambers’s Cyclopedia (1728) and the Tradition of Commonplaces,” Journal of the History of Ideas 57.1 (1996): 157-175, accessed October 20, 2015. Back to text.
4 Dacome, “Noting the Mind: Commonplace Books and the Pursuit of the Self in Eighteenth-Century Britain,” 604. Back to text.
5 Erasmus quoted in Richard Yeo, “Ephraim Chambers’s Cyclopedia (1728) and the Tradition of Commonplaces,” 166. Back to text.
6 Havens, Earle, ““Of Common-Places, or Memorial Books”: An Anonymous Manuscript on Commonplace Books and the Art of Memory in Seventeenth Century England,” Yale University Library Gazette (2002): 136-153, accessed November 12, 2015. Back to text.
Moss, Ann, “The Politica of Justus Lipsius and the Commonplace-Book,” Journal of the History of Ideas 59.3 (1998): 421-436, accessed November 12, 2015.
Rechtien, John G., “John Foxe’s Comprehensive Collection of Commonplaces: A Renaissance Memory System for Students and Theologians,” The Sixteenth Century Journal 9.1 (1978): 82-89, accessed November 15, 2015.