Juan de Iriarte y Cisneros (1702-1771) was able to complete only one substantial volume of
his bibliography of Greek manuscripts in the Spanish Royal Library in Madrid. When curator
Bruce Swann decided to transfer the Classics Library's copy of Regiae bibliothecae Matritensis
codices Graeci mss. (Madrid, 1769) to the Rare Book & Manuscript Library, he noticed a Latin
inscription on the fly-leaf (see image).
Translated, the inscription reads:
James Harris
Salisbury, 1771
My son gave this scholarly catalogue of manuscripts to me as a gift upon his return following an
absence of three years abroad. Moreover, Charles III, the Catholic king, a noted promoter and patron
of the arts and literature, gave it to him while he was employed at the embassy in Madrid in 1771.
James Harris (1709-1780) was an important English scholar and politician, the author of a
number of works on grammar, music and criticism, copies of which may be found in the Rare
Book & Manuscript Library. He was a great acquaintance of Georg Frideric Handel, many
of whose operatic manuscripts he came to possess. In 1760 he was elected member of
parliament for Christchurch, Hampshire, he later served as a commissioner of the Admiralty and
of the Treasury, and from 1774 was the secretary of Queen Charlotte. His son, also named
James Harris (1746-1820), rose because of his considerable diplomatic services to become,
in 1800, the first Earl of Malmesbury. (Biographical details are from the Oxford Dictionary of
National Biography.)
One of the younger Harris’s first postings was in Spain, where he was instrumental in averting
a war over the Falkland Islands, and where he received this book as a gift from King Charles
III. Young Harris recorded the following impressions of the Spanish monarch: “He has a most
clear head, comprehends with great alacrity, and answers with unparalleled accuracy. His
heart, also, is excellent; the best of fathers and of masters, and although despotic, yet never
a tyrant. … Such are his good qualities; his faults are, a false idea of the glory and power of
his monarchy; a temper, when once irritated, irreconcileable; a bland submission to whatever
happens, which, whether it is to himself or others, he calls the will of Providence; and such a
determined attachment to his favourite amusement, the chace [i.e., hunting], as to make him
slothful and negligent in his more important avocations” (Diaries and correspondence of James
Harris, first Earl of Malmesbury. London, 1844, I, 50-51)
The younger Harris could be sure his father would be interested in this sumptuous catalog
of Greek manuscripts. While in Spain, he also helped further his father’s researches in
other ways: “It having often been asserted, that an entire and complete copy of Livy was
extant in the Escurial library, I requested my son in the year 1771, (he being at that time
minister plenipotentiary to the court of Madrid,) to inquire for me, what manuscripts of that
author were there to be found” (The works of James Harris, Esq. London, 1841, p. 544).
Regiae bibliothecae Matritensis codices Graeci mss. (Q.A.481.75 M26r) may now be consulted
in the Rare Book & Manuscript Library. AB