ANA, a Latin neuter plural termination appropriated to vari ous collections of the observations and criticisms of eminent men, delivered in conversation and recorded by their friends, or discov ered among their papers after their decease. Though the term Ana is of comparatively modern origin, the introduction of this species of composition is not of recent date. It appears, from d'Herbelot's Bibliotheque Orientale, that from the earliest periods the Eastern nations were in the habit of preserving the maxims of their sages. From them the practice passed to the Greeks and Romans. Plato and Xenophon treasured up and recorded the sayings of their master Socrates; and Arrian, in the concluding books of his Enchiridion, now lost, collected the casual observa tions of Epictetus. The numerous apophthegms scattered in Plu tarch, Diogenes Laertius, and other writers, show that it was cus tomary in Greece to preserve the colloquially expressed ideas of illustrious men. It appears that Julius Caesar compiled a book of apophthegms, in which he related the bons mots of Cicero.
But though vestiges of Ana may be traced in the classical ages, it is only in modern times that they have come to be regarded as constituting a distinct species of composition, comprising lit erary anecdotes, critical reflections, and historical incidents, min gled with the detail of bons snots and ludicrous tales. The term Ana seems to have been applied to such collections as far back as the beginning of the 15th century. Francesco Barbaro, in a letter to Poggio, says that the information and anecdotes which Poggio and Bartolommeo of Montepulciano had picked up during a literary excursion through Germany will be called Ana.
Poggio Bracciolini (q.v.) is the first eminent person of modern times whose jests and opinions have been transmitted to pos terity. During the pontificate of Martin V., Poggio and other members of the Roman chancery were in the habit of assembling in a common hall adjoining the Vatican, in order to converse freely on all subjects. The jests and stories which occurred in these unrestrained conversations were collected by Poggio and formed the chief materials of his Facetiae. This collection, which forms a principal part of the Poggiana printed at Amsterdam in 1720, is chiefly valuable as recording interesting anecdotes of em inent men of the 14th and i 5th centuries. It also contains a num ber of quibbles or jeux de mots, and a still greater number of facetiae, idle and licentious stories.
Though Poggio was the first person whose remarks and bons mots were collected under the name of Ana, the Scaligerana, which contains the opinions of Joseph Scaliger, was the first work pub lished under that appellation. There are two collections of Scali gerana—the Prima and Secunda. The first was compiled by a physician named Francois Vertunien, sieur de Lavau, who at tended a family with whom Joseph Scaliger resided. It was pub lished in 1669, under the title of Prima Scaligerana, nusquam antehac edita. The second work, known as Secunda Scaligerana, was collected by two brothers of the name of Vassan, students of the University of Leyden, of which Scaliger was one of the pro fessors. Being particularly recommended to Scaliger, they were received in his house and enjoyed his conversation.
In imitation of the Scaligerana, a prodigious number of similar works appeared in France towards the end of the 17th and be ginning of the 18th century. At first these collections were con fined to what had fallen from eminent men in conversation ; but they were afterwards made to embrace fragments found among their papers, and even passages extracted from their works and correspondence. Of those which merely record the conversations of eminent men, the best known and most valuable is the Mena giana. Gilles Menage was a person of good sense, of various and extensive information and of a most communicative disposition. A collection of his oral opinions was published in 1693, soon after his death.
The Perrohiana, which exhibits the opinions of Cardinal du Perron, was compiled from his conversation by C. Dupuy, and published by Vossius in 1666. The Thuana, or observations of the president de Thou, have usually been published along with the Perroniana, but first appeared in 1669.
The Valesiana is a collection of the literary opinions of the historiographer Adrien de Valois, published by his son.
The Fureteriana (1696) contains the bons mots of Antoine Furetiere, the Academician, the stories which he was in the habit of telling, and a number of anecdotes and remarks found in his papers after his decease.
The Chevraeana (1697), so called from Urbain Chevreau, is more scholarly than most works of a similar description and prob ably more accurate, as it differs from the Ana proper, of which the works described above are instances, in having been published during the life of the author and revised by himself.
Parrhasiana (1699-170I) is the work of Jean le Clerc, a pro fessor of Amsterdam, who bestowed this appellation on his mis cellaneous productions with the view of discussing various topics of philosophy and politics with more freedom than he could have employed under his own name.
The Huetiana contains the detached thoughts and criticisms of P. D. Huet (163o-1722), bishop of Avranches, which he himself committed to writing when he was far advanced in life.
The Casauboniana presents us with the miscellaneous observa tions, chiefly philological, of the celebrated Isaac Casaubon.
Besides the above a great many works under the title of Ana appeared in France about the same period. Thus, the opinions and conversations of Charpentier, Colomesius and St. Evremond were recorded in the Carpenteriana, Colomesiana and St. Evre moniana ; and those of Segrais in the Segraisiana—a collection formed by a person stationed behind the tapestry in a house where Segrais was accustomed to visit, of which Voltaire declared, "que de tous les Ana c'est celui qui merite le plus d'etre mis au rang des mensonges imprimes, et surtout des mensonges in sipides." The Ana, indeed, from the popularity which they now enjoyed, were compiled in such numbers and with so little care that they became almost proverbial for inaccuracy.
Of the examples England has produced of this species of com position, perhaps the most interesting is the IValpoliana, a tran script of the literary conversation of Horace Walpole, earl of Or ford. Most other works which in England have been published under the name of Ana, as Baconiana, Atterburyana, etc., are rather extracts from the writings and correspondence of eminent men than memorials of their conversation.
Of the productions which belong to the class, though they do not bear the name of Ana, the most celebrated are the Colloquia Mensalia of Luther and Selden's Table-Talk. The former, which comprehends the conversation of Luther with his friends and coadjutors in the great work of the Reformation, was first pub lished in 1566. The Table-Talk of Selden contains a more genu ine and undisguised expression of the sentiments of that eminent man than we find in his more studied productions. It was pub lished after his death by Richard Milward, his amanuensis, who affirms that for 20 years he enjoyed the opportunity of daily hearing his discourse, and made it his practice faithfully to com mit to writing "the excellent things that usually fell from him." The most remarkable collection of Ana in the English lan guage—and, indeed, in any language—is to be found in a work which does not correspond to the normal type either in the name or in form. In his Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., Boswell relates that to his remark, a propos of French literature. "Their Ana are good," Johnson replied, "A few of them are good ; but we have one book of that kind better than any of them—Selden's Table Talk." Boswell's own work, however, is incomparably superior to all. Mrs. Thrale (who called her note-book "Thraliana") gave the world a volume in the orthodox Ana style in her Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. A good modern collection of Ana is Mountstuart Grant Duff's Notes from a Diary (1897-1905).
J. C. Wolf has given a history of the Ana in a preliminary discourse to his edition of the Casauboniana, published in 171o. In the Re pertoire de bibliographies speciales, curieuses, et instructives, by Peig not, there is a Notice bibliographique of these collections but many of the books there enumerated consist of mere extracts from the writings of popular authors.