Part 1: 134 leaves; Part 2 (beginning from rear of volume): 32 leaves
In English, Latin, Italian, and French, with some translations of Italian, Spanish and French works into English
A miscellany consisting of proverbs and other extracts gathered primarily from works of political theory. Drake's sources include Cicero, John Donne, Sir Henry Blount, James Howell, Erasmus, Ben Jonson (his Sejanus), Niccolò Machiavelli, Francesco Guicciardini and Girolamo Cardano, and other English, Latin, French and Italian authors (mostly translated into English), many of them copied multiple times. The extracts are glossed with references to other works and historical examples
Some of the notes correspond to marginalia in William Drake's annotated copy of Henri Rohan's A treatise of the interest of the princes and states of Christendome (1641), now at the Folger Shakespeare Library (R1868)
Other notebooks attributed to William Drake include 15 volumes in the Bacon/Tottel collection at University College, London (Ogden MS 7), a notebook at the House of Lords Record Office, London (Historical Collections MS 49), and assorted leaves at the Buckinghamshire Record Office (D/DR/10/56). The Huntington Library holds his journal, 1631-1642 (mssHM 55603)
Formerly Folger MS 1439.4
Publications
For a detailed examination of Sir William Drake, his notebooks, and his reading, see Kevin M. Sharpe, Reading revolutions : the politics of reading in early modern England (New Haven, CT : Yale University Press, 2000)
Also known as
Extended title: Notebook of Sir William Drake late 1630s-late 1650s
Alternate titles: Collection of proverbs, apothegms ...
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