6 VALÉRY BERLINCOURT
were thus precisely the same qualities that Reinesius’ earlier letter to
Daum had praised in Heinsius in explicit contrast with Barth’s flaws,
and in both letters they were described in similar terms (Charites,
Graces); in Reinesius’ letter the negative judgment on Barth was ut-
tered by Gronovius, but Reinesius did not disagree.
It is not improbable, then, that Daum’s letter of February 1654
alluded, if not specifically to Reinesius’ letter, at least to a contrast
between two competing conceptions of commentary-writing that had
struck his contemporaries;^20 and we may deem that it was almost in-
ev itably received as such by Reinesius. This does not imply that
Daum intended to express his own preference for Gronovius’ (and
Heinsius’) conception and thus criticize Barth’s; rather, we may think
it a gesture of courtesy that Daum praised Gronovius for qualities that
Reinesius seemed to share.
If Daum’s letter implicitly contrasted Gronovius’ conception with
Barth’s, nothing prevents us from thinking that it did so with an eye to
the latter’s forthcoming Statius. In any case, the idea of setting
Gronovius’ Statius in opposition to Barth’s would emerge quite natu-
rally, at least after 1664–5, much as the idea of comparing Heinsius’
and Barth’s Claudian had done a few years earlier. Daum’s words
thus invite us to consider together the reception of both works.
- Reception
During the two centuries that followed its publication, most readers of
Gronovius’ edition seem to have shared Daum’s high opinion. The
reception of its notes—which were Daum’s sole concern—was excep-
tionally widespread. They were reproduced not only in the re-editions
of Venice 1676 and 1712 (only the text was included in the first re-
recensione Nic. Heinsii, summi Juvenis & Patri nec ingenio, nec eruditione nec ver-
suum scribendorum facultate concessuri: illic plus ducentis locis meliorem videbis
illum Poetam, de quorum cura ne per somnium quidem cogitavit Asiaticus commenta-
tor; hactenus Ille.” Gronovius was then in Deventer, in the province Overijssel (Tran-
sisulana or Transisalana); his letter is apparently lost.
20 Cf. n. 9. Gronovius himself would later compare Barth’s forthcoming Statius to
his Claudian in a letter to N. Heinsius, Leiden, prid. Id. Quinctil. <1660>
[= Burmann 1727, III 415–6, n° 347] (“Statianus commentarius sudat etiamnum sub
praelo, mole aequaturus bina volumina, quale occupat Claudianus ejus.”).