One of the most dedicated commonplacers in early modernity, and the subject of one of Grafton’s portraits, was the German scholar Francis Daniel Pastorius who included in his commonplace book not only excerpts from ancient texts but also jokes, stories, reflections, recipes and even bits of his friends’ journals. Pastorius handed down the manuscript, his prized possession, which he called the Bee Hive, to his sons, instructing them to record in it ‘all remarkable words, Phrases, Sentences or Matters of moment, which we do hear and read’. He had begun it by citing Macrobius: ‘In this Book all is mine, & Nothing is mine. Omne meum, nihil meum.’ Pastorius meant that by assembling bits of the old, he had created something new. It took considerable intellectual discernment – and long, cramped hours of reading and notetaking – to create a masterpiece that was at once his own and a compilation of others’ writings. The Bee Hive exemplifies what is so puzzlingly postmodern about early modern textuality: it was both individual and collective, unique and pastiched.

Erin Maglaque · Ten Small Raisins: Sweat or Inky Fingers? · LRB 1 July 2021