Blaeu Atlas of Scotland, 1654
Name: | Blaeu, Joan, 1596-1673 |
Title: | Ionnes Blaev Lectori Salvtem |
Pagination: | [2v-3r] |
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View shorter version of Blaeu's 'Greetings to the Reader'.
Translation of text:
to its father. The roles of progenitor, I admit, and of rearer, mother and nurse are different, but piety has long believed that both come under the name of parents. The world does not owe gratitude only to those who create books, unite maps to the art of geography, and fit lands to sky and sky to lands as with a plumbline; but also to those who encourage, urge on, correct and increase these works, promote them with money and expense, strengthen what is feeble, recover what is lost, and give shape and polish to what is deformed, so that the illustrious offspring can be born and reborn and advance with beauty into the light and before the faces of men.
Sixteen years have passed since my excellent parent set himself to this task; so dedicated was he to this study that, sparing no expense, he did not fear with great passion to invade his own treasury, in sure confidence of the public good, though uncertain and doubtful of himself in the mood that then disturbed Scotland. Scotstarvit seemed a suitable partner in this project; in his name Scotland itself promised its support, on account of its united voices and awareness of the duty by which he was bound to it. Added to this he knew him to be a man sharp in intellect, powerful in memory (which is not the least important attribute in these studies), and persistent for all excellent projects which he had undertaken: in addition lavishly honourable to good men, the highest cultivator of scholarship and scholars, imbued with the spirit of fine learning, who also both could and would admire, love and foster in his own home and in public those who excel in erudition. Therefore when he found him present at the beginnings, he summoned him in a frequent dispatch of letters to prepare this foetus: for Scotland could not be published and be born, without Scot as obstetrician.
The maps indeed, which had strayed into the hands of others, he recovered with amazing industry and care, like sacred objects from a shipwreck, and deposited them with us in the safe harbour of Amsterdam, where we engraved them for the use of posterity, to live again (in case they should perish) in copper. Nor was it enough for Scotstarvet to have rescued from destruction the great labours of Pont; but he wished them to be taken up again by the outstanding Gordon, the phoenix of geographers, and a fresh hand to be applied to correcting what here and there had been wrongly noted. The broken-off depictions of many regions and huge blanks on the maps were still in suspense, whose completion was prevented and forbidden by Pont's death. To this matter our friend directed the Gordons, father and his equally distinguished son, lights of Scotland and torches of geographers, who, not far removed from Helix (2), perform the same duty in their country for students of geography as she does for navigators of the ocean. Several maps, though improved by their attentions, were not yet perfected; these, made obvious by full mouldings and arms, owe the happy outcome of their birth and their final lines to Scot.
When some perished by the violence of sea and storms, whose anger at Palladian commodities is unfair, he endured this literary calamity patiently, and although almost everyone would despair in such situations, tenacious of his project and without remission of care he persisted in the undertaking. The erudite James Gordon had written, when he was living with Scotstarvit, that a new map of Fife had been sent to me. When that fell into the hand of the people of Dunkirk, as the landings of sailors are uncertain, Scotstarvit did not cease to use varied devices and to leave no stone unturned among the Belgians, until he had extracted the learned pledge from the sons of Neptune, as from the hands of the Laestrygonians. In the Scottish Synod he arranged that individual ministers of churches were instructed by public edict to direct their attention to the description of Scotland, to inquire more diligently into the lands in which each was settled, and to observe more attentively what was relevant to geographers. But since neither rewards nor penalties created careful assiduity, compliance languished, with only a few fulfilling their duty. These were Maclellan, Bonar, Lauder and Spangius, men distinguished both for piety and for learning, and intent, after care of their church, on higher scholarship.
The works of Gordon would have advanced further if the wretched blow of civil wars on Scotland had not impeded the writer's industry. These being settled through the grace of God, who is the God of peace and good order, we have the expectation of greater things. Indeed, Scotstarvit, to hasten the publication of this work, recently crossed from Scotland to Holland; he spent quite some time in this city of ours, and after visiting and greeting very kindly the distinguished G. Voss and C. Barlaeus, he passed whole days in my establishment writing and dictating what made for the illustration of the maps of his country, with such felicity of memory that, though lacking all papers and books, he dictated regional shapes, situation, boundaries, old and more recent lords, produce of the soil, cities, rivers, and similar matters in great profusion. The man seemed to me to be in himself Scotland, and to have grasped in his mind the archetypal idea of its lands; so I think that country fortunate, in which those who have leisure from the cares of the kingdom so philosophise. He wished me also to dislike all idleness and delay, and the fruit of this labour not to be protracted further. If any descriptions of maps were lacking, he promised that he would produce them; if any were wanting in substance, that he would enrich them with his own additions.
This is that same Scotstarvet who, although he performs duties of state, bound to the Scottish Chancery as to his own Caucasus, nonetheless turns thence to the most charming recesses of the Muses, and after Buchanan, Melville, Johnston and others, composes poetry worthy of the century.