jamesgray2

515F Pierre-Daniel Huet 1630-1721.

The history of romances. An enquiry into their original; instructions for composing them; an account of the most eminent authors; With Characters, and Curious Observations upon the Best Performances of that Kind. Written in Latin by Huetius; made English by Mr. Stephen Lewis.

London : printed for J. Hooke, at the Flower-de-Luce, and T. Caldecott, at the Sun; both against St. Dunstan’s Church in Fleetstreet, 1715. 2200 Octavo 5.5 x 3.75 inches [8],xi,[1],144,143-149,[1]p. ; 12 .(O, CSmH, and ABu report the [8] preliminary pages with two dedication leaves after the tp. Some copies have 2 inserted dedication leaves between the title page [A2] and the Preface [A3], not present in this copy, as in some other copies we have traced, e.g. University of Michigan, [see Google Books-on-line], and they were certainly never present in this copy. ) First edition This copy is bound in full modern panelled calf, it is a very nice copy. He translated the pastorals of Longus, wrote a tale called Diane de Castro, and gave with his Traitté de l’origine des romans (1670), his Treatise on the Origin of Romances the first world history of fiction. On being appointed assistant tutor to the Dauphin in 1670, he edited, with the assistance of Anne Lefêvre, afterwards Madame Dacier, the well-known edition of the Delphin Classics. “I shall not undertake to […] examine whether Amadis de Gaul were originally from Spain, Flanders, or France; and whether the Romance of Tiel Ulespiegel be a Translation from the German; or in what Language the Romance of the Seven Wise Men of Greece was first written […]. It shall suffice if I tell you, that all these Works which Ignorance has given Birth to, carried along with them the Marks of their Original, and were no other than a Complication of Fictions, grossly cast together in the greatest Confusion, and infinitely short of the Excellent Degree of Art and Elegance, to which the French Nation is now arrived in Romances.”The History of Romances […] Written in Latin by Huetius; Made English by Stephen Lewis (1715), p.136-38. ESTC Citation No. T126113

754F Richard Head 1637?-1686?.

The English rogue: continued in the life of Meriton Latroon, and other extravagants. Comprehending the most eminent. [sic] cheats of both sexes. The third part. With the illustration of pictures to every chapter.

London: By Anne Johnson for Francis Kirkman, 1674

London : printed for Francis Kirkman, and are to be sold by William Rands at the Crown in Duck-lane, 1680.                     $SOLD

Octavo 9.5 x 16 cm A4, B-Y [2],[308] 3plates ; A-V8 X . [2], 324 1 of 3 Plates Second edition of each volume.

This copy is bound in full contemporary calf recently rebacked. The most important primary source on Head’s life is William Winstanley’s biographical entry published in his Lives of the most famous English poets (1687) – a credible if not reliable source insofar as Winstanley could claim to have been personally acquainted with Head. According to Winstanley, Head was a minister’s son, born in Ireland. His father was killed in the Irish rebellion of 1641, the incidents seem to be reflected in Head’s English Rogue, the satirical romance he published in 1665. His mother took him to England where she had relatives in Barnstaple. They later moved on to Plymouth, to Bridport and to Dorset where Head is known to have attended the town’s grammar school in 1650. Head was eventually admitted to the same Oxford College his father had attended (possibly New Inn Hall, from which a John Head graduated in 1628). His financial means being insufficient Head was taken from college and bound apprentice to a “Latin bookseller” in London “attaining to a good Proficiency in the Trade”, as Winstanley put it.“His genius being addicted to Poetry” he published his first poetical and satirical piece which Winstanley recorded as Venus Cabinet Unlock’d. This may be a reference to Giovanni Benedetto Sinibaldi’s The cabinet of Venus unlocked, and her secrets laid open. Being a translation of part of Sinibaldus, his Geneanthropeia, and a collection of some things out of other Latin authors, never before in English (London: Philip Briggs, 1658). Head married around that time. A second addiction to gambling cost him the profit he made as an author and with his shop.Head moved – or fled – to his homeland Ireland, where he gained esteem with his first comedy Hic et ubique, or, The Humors of Dublin – printed with a dedication to the Duke of Monmouth at his return to England in 1663. The Duke’s recompense remaining below expectations Head had to survive as a bookseller with shop addresses (so Sidney Lee) in Little Britain, and (so Gerard Langbaine) in Petty Canons Alley, off Paternoster Row and opposite Queen’s Head Alley. Winstanley located him in Queen’s Head Alley. If his reports are trustworthy, Head gathered some wealth in little time only to gamble it away again a little later.The English Rogue (1665) solved some of his financial problems. Its tales of drastic adventures were based on the model of Spanish rogue stories (such as Lazarillo de Tormes 1554), which were fashionable due to the contemporary publication of Scarron’s Roman Comique (or Comical Romance, so the English title which established the genre), and savory with the events Head could claim to have based on his personal experience. The censor, so Winstanley reported, rejected the manuscript as “too much smutty”. The softened book edition sold brilliantly and created a complex publishing history: The first edition published by Henry Marsh sold out within the year. Marsh died that very year, Francis Kirkman the business partner, to whom Marsh had been indebted, secured the rights and sold Head’s title in four further editions between 1666 and 1667. It remains unclear how the ensuing volumes two, three, and four, published in 1671, 1674 and 1680, came to be written (a fifth was promised and never appeared). Winstanley speaks of Head as the author indiscriminately. In the dedication to his Proteus redivivus (1675) Head, however, explicitly denies a hand in any part but the first. Kirkman asserted nonetheless that he and Head were responsible for the third and fourth parts. The preface to the latter is signed by both men – facts which make Head’s belated disclaimer suspicious.Head’s imprint as a publisher is found on several titles. Works from his pen appeared until 1677. Winstanley reports that Head drowned on a journey to the Isle of Wight; the report itself was made in June 1686, and this generally accepted as the date of his death, even though more accurately it is a terminus ante quem. Wing H1250 [ O. DU. EN ]Wing H1251 [O. DU. EN; OCI] Sweeney #2264

561G Jeremias Drexel 1581-1638

The considerations of Drexelius upon eternity. Translated by Ralph Winterton, fellow of King’s Colledge in Cambridge, 1632.

London : printed for Rich. Chiswell, and sold by Percivall Gilbourne, in Fleetstreet; and William Davis, at the Black Bull near the Royal Exchange in Cornhil, 1699.                  $1,800

Duodecimo 5 1/2 X 3 inches A6, A4, B-N12 O1 Bound in full calf binding, rebacked with the original boards. Externally, slightly worn. The joints are starting. Internally,there is browning and foxing, with some marks. Drexel, born on the 15th of August in 1581 entered the Society of Jesus in 1598. Soon after, he became a professor of the humanities and rhetoric at Dillingen. For twenty-three years he was the court preacher to the elector of Bavaria. He died in Munich in 1638. The work is an example of the popular seventeenth century genre the “biblical biography.” The book is a biography of Joseph, the son of Jacob (according to Matthew.) The work accounts many events from the life of Joseph such as his being sold into slavery by his brothers, as illustrated in the frontispiece. There is also an interesting reference to the great library at Alexandria in chapter 15. Pornbacher see DeBacker-Sommervogel vol.III, col 182/3 no. 3 (not listing this edition or translation?) ; Wing (2nd ed.), D2181

805G Christopher Irvine fl 1638-1685

Historiæ Scoticæ nomenclatura Latino-vernacula: multis flosculis, ex antiquis Albinorum monumentis, & lingua Galeciorum prisca decerptis, adspersa. In gratiam eorum, qui Scotorum nomen, & veritatis numen colunt, Christophorus Irvinus, abs Bon-Bosco, auspice summo numine, concinnavit;

Et Edinbruchii : sumptibus Gideonis Schaw, bibliopolæ nobilis, typisq[ue] Andersonianis regiis, calendas Januarias, M.CD.LXXXII. [sic] Imprimi curavit, [1682]               $2,500

Octavo 6 1/2 x 4 inches A-M4. First Edition This copy is bound in nice later full calf. IRVINE, CHRISTOPHER, M.D. (fl. 1638–1685), physician, philologist, and antiquary, was a younger son of Christopher Irvine of Robgill Tower, Annandale, and barrister of the Temple (Anderson, Scottish Nation, ii. 538), of the family of Irvine of Bonshaw in Dumfriesshire. He calls himself on one of his title-pages ‘Irvinus abs Bon Bosco.’ He was brother of Sir Gerard Irvine, bart., of Castle Irvine, co. Fermanagh, who died at Dundalk in 1689.Irvine, like his relative, James Irvine of Bonshaw, who seized Donald Cargill, was an ardent royalist and episcopalian, and was ejected from the college of Edinburgh in 1638 or 1639 for refusing the covenant. Involving himself in some unexplained way in the Irish troubles of the following years, he was deprived of his estate (Preface to his Nomenclatura). ‘After my travels,’ he continues, ‘the cruel saints were pleased to mortify me seventeen nights with bread and water in close prison’ (ib.) Allowed to return to Scotland, he was reduced to teaching in schools at Leith and Preston (Sibbald, Bibliotheca Scotica, MS. Adv. Lib. ap. Chambers). About 1650 or 1651 Irvine resumed the profession to which he seems to have been bred, and became surgeon, and finally physician, at Edinburgh. He was present in the camp of Charles II in Athol in June 1651 (Preface to Anatomia Sambuci). After the battle of Worcester he made his peace with the party in power, and was appointed about 1652 or 1653 surgeon to Monck’s army in Scotland. This office he held until the Restoration. He was in London in 1659, and after the Restoration held the office of surgeon to the horse-guards. By what he calls ‘a cruel misrepresentation’ he lost his public employment before 1682 (Preface to Nomenclatura). Irving says he was also historiographer to Charles II. On 17 Nov. 1681 the Scottish privy council granted his petition that he should be allowed to practise in Edinburgh, of which he was a burgess, free of interference from the newly incorporated College of Physicians. This act was ratified by the Scottish parliament in 1685 (Acts of Parl. of Scotl. viii. 530–1). The date of his death is unknown. He married Margaret, daughter of James Whishard, laird of Potterow, and had two sons, Christopher, M.D., and James.Irvine published the following works: 1. ‘Bellum Grammaticale, ad exemplar Magistri Alexandri Humii … editum,’ a ‘tragico-comœdia’ in five acts and in verse, narrating a war of the nouns and the verbs. This rare jeu d’esprit is stated by Chambers to have been first published in 1650, but the copy in the British Museum, printed at Edinburgh in 1658 in 8vo, bears no signs of being a second edition. It was reprinted in 1698. 2. ‘Anatomia Sambuci,’ by Martin Blochwitz, translated by C. Irvine, London, 1655, 12mo. 3. ‘Medicina Magnetica, or the art of Curing by Sympathy,’ London (?), 1656, 8vo, dedicated to Monck; a curious tract reviving some of the wildest ideas of Paracelsus. 4. ‘J. Wallæi [of Leyden] Medica Omnia,’ edited by C. Irvine, London, 1660, 8vo (preface dated London, 26 July 1659). 5. ‘Locorum, nominum propriorum … quæ in Latinis Scotorum Historiis occurrunt explicatio vernacula. … Ex schedis T. Craufurdii excussit … C. Irvine,’ Edinburgh, 1665, 8vo, pp. 79. 6. ‘Historiæ Scoticæ nomenclatura Latino-vernacula,’ Edinburgh, 1682, 8vo, and 1697, 4to, fulsomely dedicated to James, duke of York, at the time he was high commissioner in Scotland (an expansion of No. 5). This has twice been reprinted, by James Watt, Montrose, 1817, 16mo, and at Glasgow, 1819, 12mo. Irvine also projected, but never carried out, a work ‘On the Historie and Antiquitie of Scotland.’[The fullest account of Irvine is in Chambers’s Dict. of Eminent Scotsmen, ed. Thomson, ii. 339; Burke’s Landed Gentry.] Wing (CD-ROM, 1996), I1051

263F Sir Henry Wotton 1568-1639

Reliquiæ Wottonianæ: Or, A Collection Of {Lives, Letters, Poems; With Characters of Sundry Personages: And other Incomparable Pieces of Language and Art. Also Additional Letters to several Persons, not before Printed. By The Curious Pencil of the Ever Memorable Sir Henry Wotton Kt. Late Provost of Eaton Colledge. The Third Edition, with large Additions.

London: Printed by T. Roycroft, for R. Marriott, F. Tyton, T. Collins, and J. Ford, 1672 $1,500 Octavo 6.75 x 4.2 inches a-e8, f4, C-Z8, Aa-Qq8. Third edition, with large additions. This copy was formerly the property of William Earl Cowper (d. 1723), with his fine engraved bookplate with the motto ‘Tuum est’ pasted inside the front boad. William Cowper was a prominent royalist lawyer, who rose under William III to become first Lord Chancellor of Great Britain in 1707; Cowper was also involved in drafting documents that established the Union with Scotland. The binding is lovely contemporary English calf, in good condition. This work contains character sketches of Queen Elizabeth, the Earl of Essex, the Earl of Leicester, Lord Robert Cecil, Sir Philip Sidney, King James I, Sir Francis Bacon, and other observations of the Courts of Queen Elizabeth and King James. It is also cited Boswell in his notes on ‘Othello.’ On pages 425 and 426, in a letter to Sir Edmund Bacon, Wotton describes the burning of the Globe Theater while Shakespeare’s ‘King Henry VIII’ was being acted. “Now, to let matters of State sleep, I will entertain you at the present with what hath happened this week at the Banks side. The Kings Players had a new Play, called All is True, representing some principal pieces of the Raign of Henry 8, which was set forth with many extraordinary circumstances of Pomp and Majesty, even to the matting of the Stage; the Knights of the Order, with their Georges and Garter, the Guards with their embroidered Coats, and the like: sufficient in truth within a while to make greatness very familiar, if not ridiculous. Now, King Henry making a Masque at the Cardinal Wolsey’s House, and certain Canons being shot off at his entry, some of the Paper, or other stuff wherewith one of them was stopped, did light on the Thatch, where being thought at first but an idle smoak, and their eyes more attentive to the show, it kindled inwardly, then ran round like a train, consuming within less than an hour the whole House to the very grounds. This was the fatal period of that vertuous Fabrique; wherein yet nothing did perish, but Wood and Straw, and few forsaken Cloaks; only one man had his Breeches set on fire, that would perhaps have broyled him, if he had not by the benefit of a provident wit put it out with a bottle of Ale.”“Sir Henry Wotton was not an industrious author, and his writings are very small in bulk. Of the twenty-five poems printed in Reliquiae Wottonianae only fifteen are Wotton’s. But of those fifteen two have obtained a place among the best known poems in the language, the lines already mentioned “On his Mistris, the Queen of Bohemia,” and “The Character of a Happy Life.”“During his lifetime he published only two works: The Elements of Architecture (1624), which is a free translation of de Architectura by Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, executed during his time in Venice, [and the first work on architecture published in English] and a Latin prose address to the King on his return from Scotland (1633).“Wotton shares authorship of the oft-quoted line “Well building hath three conditions: firmness, commodity, and delight,” with Vitruvius, from whose de Architectura Wotton translated the phrase. In modern times, misunderstanding of English usage in Wotton’s time has led some authorities to term his Elements a ‘paraphrase’ rather than a true translation, and the quote is most often attributed to Vitruvius.“In 1651 appeared the Reliquiae Wottonianiae, with Izaak Walton’s Life.” (wikipedia)The “Poems Found among the Papers of S.H. Wotton” are all by Sir Walter Raleigh, and are signed with his nom-de-guerre, “Ignoto.” Wing W-3650; Term Cat. I 113; Wither to Prior 1082.

840G Katherine Philips 1631-1664

Letters from Orinda to Poliarchus

London: printed by W.B. for Bernard Lintott, 1705                  $2,900

Octavo 6 3/4 X 3 3/4 inches A-R8 First edition This copy is bound in original full calf recently rebacked with new spine label. /This is a very nice clean copy. This is a collection of 48 ( XLVIII) actual letters written by Philips to her patron Sir Charles Cotterell published several decades after her death, there is quit a bit of discussion of the literary culture of the seventh century in Britain. Including insite to Philips writing and reading habits. she often mentions books she is reading and plays which she is working on.Philips was interested in the epistolary form, she founded the Society of Friendship in 1651 until 1661 was a semi-literary correspondence circle made up of mostly women, though men were also involved. The membership of this group, however, is somewhat questionable, because the authors took on pseudonyms from Classical literature (for example Katherine took on the name Orinda, in which the other members added on the accolade “Matchless.”) It is interesting to see the relations between the female members of the circle, especially Anne Owen, who is known in Philips’s poems as Lucasia. Half of Katherine’s poetry is dedicated to this woman. Anne and Katherine seem to have been lovers in an emotional, if not in a physical, sense for about ten years. Also significant as correspondents and lovers were Mary Awbrey (Rosania) and Elizabeth Boyle (Celimena). Elizabeth’s relationship with Katherine, however, was cut short by Philips’ death in 1664.In “The Sapphic-Platonics of Katherine Philips, 1632-1664” Harriette AndreadisSource:Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 15, no. 1 (autumn 1989): 34-60.Ms Andreadis, in this essay nicely gives a view of Orinda’s live (and Loves) in relation to her writing by using excerpts from her poems andThese letters;

736G Antoine Varillas 1624-1696

An’ekdota ‘Eterouiak’a. Or, The Secret History Of The House Of Medicis. Written Originally by that Fam’d Historian, the Sieur de Varillas. Made English by Ferrand Spence.

London: Printed by R.E. for R. Bentley and S. Magnes, in Russel-street in Covent Garden, 1686                   $1100

Octavo 6 1/2 X 4 inches A8 (lacking initial blank A1), a-d8, B-Z8, Aa-Gg8, Hh4 (lacking final blank Hh4a) First edition in English. It is bound in 19th century quarter calf with an ornately gilt spine and would be a very pretty book on the shelf. In this fascinating Italian history the author makes use of all available sources to tell the legend of the house of Medici. The English translation is well executed and an interesting and enjoyable read. The following passage is quoted from the author’s preface. “If Procopius, the only Author from whom we have anekdota remaining to us, had left behind him the Rules of that kind of Writing, I should not lye under the Obligation of Penning a Preface, being the Authority of that excellent Historian, whom the French King’s Press has lately presented so Correct to the world, would be sufficient to screen me from all sorts of Reproaches, supposing I had observ’d them with exactness.” Ferrand Spence translated many works into English, but he did not write anything himself. He stands for the strong interest among English readers in the late seventeenth century for reading novels and histories in translation. Wing V-111B; CH, CLC, NCU, TU, WF, Y.