A Brill Calendar: July 29

Few periods in Europe’s history are less torn by conflict than the middle of the 18th century.

The horror of the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) was almost forgotten a century later; with the wars of the Spanish Succession piddling affairs by comparison. And the doom of Enlightened Despotism in France, Spain, Austria and Prussia after 1789 is only predicted by madmen & fools. The general feeling is that Europeans live in the best of all possible worlds; it is especially strong in the Dutch Republic and its Parnassus, Leyden University, cosmopolitan headquarters of Western scholarship.

In this ambiance, the leading publisher and bookseller at Leyden, Samuel Luchtmans (1685 – 1757) bequeathed on July 29 1749 the business to two sons; Samuel II (1725 – 1780) and Johannes (1726 – 1809). His boys, resembling one another like Castor resembles Pollux, became share-holders. Their grandfather Jordaan (1652 – 1708) had created a sound printing and bookselling firm and for more than thirty years, Samuel’s two first-born children would run an international publishing company; according to contemporary assessment ‘the last position fit for a gentleman’.

It is seldom that a partnership played such a convincing part in a civilization. Samuel Junior and Johannes were literate in academic Latin, French and Dutch and adequately trained in speaking English, German and Italian, finding themselves everywhere in Europe at home, unlike old Jordaan. In this cultural setting, with the Classical, Baroque and Rococo interleaving, at the culmination of the life of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 – 1750), the sensational rediscovery of Pompeii initiated a new awareness of the presence of the past, plus a new aesthetic; by necessity also in scholarly publishing. Talleyrand, born survivor, said about the era: ‘who hasn’t experienced it, doesn’t know the sweetness of life’.