James Gray Bookseller

THURSDAY, JANUARY 25

• 10:00 am-4:00 pm. At The French Institute/Alliance Française, 22 E 60th Street: Booksellers’ Showcase. Following on the great success of previous year’s events, a special mini-antiquarian book fair, sponsored by the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America, will be held this year. In “Le Skyroom” of The French Institute/Alliance Française, right across the street from the Grolier Club. N.B.: If you plan to visit this showcase,

I will be exhibiting at the ABAA Bibliography Week showcase, Thursday 25 January from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

 “Le Skyroom” of The French Institute/Alliance Française, 22 E. 60th Street (right across the street from the Grolier Club). Please let me know if you will be attending and might wish to see a specific book!

HERE IS A CATALOGUE OF SOME OF THE BOOKS I WILL BE BRINGING !!

Please click on link it will take a while to down load ,

fascicule XIF

fascicule XI

JAN. MMXVIII

 

899G Francis Bacon, and Robert Holborne

 

The Learned Readings of Sir Robert Holbourne, Knight, Attorney General to King Charles I.; Upon the Statute of 25 Edw. 3. Cap. 2.; Being the Statute of Treasons: To Which is added Cases of Prerogative.Treason. Misprison of Treason. Felony &c.. Second printing

London : printed for Sam. Heyrick, at Grayes-Inn-Gate in Holborn, and Matthew Gilliflower, in Westminster-Hall, 1681.                  $2,200

 

Octavo  6 x 3 ¾ inches A (±A1+chi1) B-I K .           Second Edition                   Bound in full contemporary calf. This is a reissue, with cancel title page and errata, of the 1680 edition.

 

Sir Robert Holborne (died 1647) was an English lawyer and politician, of Furnival’s Inn and Lincoln’s Inn (where he was bencher and reader in English law). He acted, along with Oliver St. John, as co-counsel for John Hampden in the ship money case. He sat in the House of Commons between 1640 and 1642 and supported the Royalist cause in the English Civil War. He was attorney-general to the Prince of Wales, being knighted in 1643. He also published this legal tract.        Wing  H 2373.

 

982G Marino Becichemo 1468-1526

 

Hoc libro continentur haec opera Becichemi : Panegyricus serenissimo principi Leonardo Lauretano et illustrissimo Senatui Veneto dictus. Centuria epistola[rum] quaestionu[m] eide[m] principi atq[ue] senatui dicata: in qua su[n]t capita plura ad arte[m] oratoria[m] & ad artificiu[m] orationu[m] Ciceronis spectantia. Item sunt castigationes multae in asinu[m] aureu[m] & in multa alio[rum] aucto[rum] opa. Castigationes in totum victorinum. Castigationes in totum opus rhe. de inuentione. Castigationes in omnes libros rhe. ad herennium. Castigationes in tres libros de oratore. Castigationes in quattuor libros floridorum Apuleii. Itam sunt artes. De componenda epistola. De componendo dialogo. De imitatione. De componenda funebri orationes. De componenda nuptiali oratione. Expecta lector propediem secundam centuriam.

 

 

Venetiis : A Bernardino Veneto de uitalibus, VIII. Idus octobris 1506           $3,800

 

Folio 12 1/4 X 8 1/2 Inches. A-E6 ; a4 ,b4, c–x6 Y -Z4z4 verso blank. Second Edition The first was printed in Brescia 1504. Bound in a nice 20th century full dark brown calf binding,by J R . The first leaf has had its margins strengthened but in no way obtrusivly, The paper is very thick and this copy has good margins with some deckel edges. The typography is rather crude for an Italian book of this time .

Marin Beçikemi (aka Latin: Marinus Becichemus Scodrensis or Becichemi, Bicich emo, Becichio, Bezicco) {there are a lot of searches here…} was an Albanian 15th and 16th century humanist, orator, and chronist. Born in Shkodër he had seen 26 out of his 30 family members die in the Siege of Shkodra from the Ottoman Empire. In 1503 he published a panegyric to the Venetian Senate concerning the siege. He wrote commentaries on Cicero, Pliny the Elder and other classical philosophers.

 

“In 1492 (according to S. Gliubich, in Illustrious Men of Dalmatia, Vienna-Zara 1856, p. 25) Beçikemi was called by the Senate of the Republic of Ragusa as rector of the schools. During his stay in this city, and precisely in 14951 he dedicated to the Senate his Castigationes et observationes in Virgilium, Ovidium,Ciceronem,S ervium et Priscianum . It turns out that at the beginning of October 1496 he was in Naples as secretary of the Venetian patrician Melchiorre Trevisan, a Venetian fleet administrator who came to the aid of King Ferrandino. Beçikemi had obtained this assignment for the Manin family’s intervention (according to Gliubich), and it may well have been a public office. While serving Trevisan he went to France, probably in 1499; in September Trevisan was appointed general administrator with the task of occupying that part of the duchy of Milan assigned to the Venetians, and it seems likely has been his secretary during the campaign. In the year 1500, Beçikemi took Venetian citizenship, marking a radical change in his life. Probably at the end of the year he opened a school of human letters in Venice (perhaps his letter mentioned in Sanuto, Diarii , III, 786, Sept. 15, reports the request), rivaling with Raffaele Regio, and including among his students Vittore Cappello, Gian Ludovico Navagero, Marc Anthony Contarini and Augustine Beaziano. On 28 Nov . 1500 he pronounced the funeral prayer for Giambattista Scita in Venice in front of a large audience, probably Pietro Bembo, who estimated the Scita, for whom he wrote an meanwhile had close relations with Venetian patriots and literate, such as Girolamo Donato, Marco Dandolo, Antonio Condulmer, Giorgio Emo and Bernardo Soranzo. Perhaps during the early months of 1501 Beçikemi transferred his school to Padua, but in November he accepted a three-year course for the Brescia Study Chair, with the annual salary of 112 ducats (a wage higher than others were paid) . At the same time he had received a request from Vicenza to teach in the public school of that city, but he chose Brescia perhaps because the salary was higher and because Brescia was the city where he had studied. He pronounced the public proclamation in the Brescia study on July 30, 1503. Meanwhile, John Calfurnio, a rector of the Padua Study (January 1503), uttered a communion of funeral prayer. The Paduan Rectors recommended him for the succession of Calfurnio, but he obtained the seat of the Regio. During the period when Beçikemi taught in Brescia he prepared a collection of works for printing, and the privilege granted on September 26. 1505 seems to have already been ready: Collectanea in Plinium, Artificium,Orationum Ciceronis, Centuriae tres Variarum Observationum, Adnotationes V irgilianae, Observations in Livium et F abium, Commentaries in P ersium, In Libros de Oratore et R ethoricos Ciceronis .   Not all of these works have been handed down to us, and perhaps they were never even finished by the author. At this time Beçikemi had already printed the Variarum observationum collectanea, Brescia 1504 (see Brunet, Manuel …, I, 730), gathering his works already edited. It is believed in Brescia perhaps in 1503, in Primum Plinii observationum librum collectanea (see the catalog of the British Museum) and perhaps the first nuncupatoria , Brixi ae year 1503 conscripta);Other editions of the latter workare: Oratio quaBrix . Senatui praelectio in C. P linium , Ferrariae 1504 (in Oxford’s Bodleian ) and Oratio here the most flourishing S enate Brix . gratiasagit … [Venetiis or Brixiae 1504?] (in the Vatican). It seems that the year 1504 is the first edition of the Panegyricus serenissimo principi Leonardo Lauretano and illustrious Senatus Veneto dictus [Brixiae 1504] (see catalog of the V atican ). In 1505 P anegyricus was re- published with Epistolicarum Quaestionum : Centuria first , Edited and printed by British Angel [Brixiae 1505]. Beçikemi complained that this edition was printed with too many errors, and therefore gave the manuscript of the text to Antonio Moretto for a reprint that appeared

as: Marinus Bechichemus … Opera …Panegyricus … Centuria epistolicarum quaestionum … Castigationes de composendo dialogo , de imitatione , de componenda funebri, Venetiis, Bernardo de ‘Vitali, 1506 (also this is full of typographical multae oration errors). renewed by the Senate Brescia for three years and with the same salary It seems that, having obtained a regular license, he would no longer return to teach in Brescia: certainly at the end of 1508, Francesco Arigoni was appointed to his post. The three most distinguished students of Beçikemi in Brescia were Filippo Donato, son of Girolamo, Pietro Soardo and Gian Antonio Cattaneo.. .. Artes de componenda epistola ,, de componenda nuptiali oratione

Following this literary production, it is not surprising that in November 1505 Beçikemi’s conduct was

In the middle of July 1509, he was appointed a reader of humanity for the students of the Chancellery, holding the school with Girolamo Calvo of Vicenza and reading Pliny, Cicero and Virgil:. In May 1514, Beçikemi da enezia was looking for a place as a professor at Mantua and it was related to Isabella d’Este, who wrote: “Messer Marino is not a suspect person in account, before being retired against his will in V enice the Venetians, then to be the man waiting in letters without impassing of others “(letter of 16 May 1514 to the Count of Caiazzo, published by A. Luzio and R. Renier, in Culture and Literature by Isabella d ‘ Este , in Gior . Stor . Of letter italia , VII [1901], p. 226). On May 19, 1514, Isabella sent to Beçikemi a custodian, but he remained in Venice, perhaps because of a cause pending in that city . Later he was busy writing a poem (now lost), in which he praised the Marquis, the Marquess and all the writers of the Mantuan circle: perhaps for this he obtained a copy of the Chronicle of M antua by Mario Equicola by Gian Giacomo Calandra, secretary of Isabella. In 1515 Becichemo wrote to Calandra that he was looking for a protector to dedicate the poem. In March following his son Marco, canonical, “docto and accustomato”, was killed in Venice (see Sanuto, Diarii , XVIII, 166, XL, 778), and Beçikemi, addressed the marquise of Mantua in a letter in which he said that he would soon be to Mantua carrying two of his works worthy of being published. However, he appears to have stayed in Venice, retaining his position as a teacher at the Chancellery .”

(Cfr. BMSTC, p.77)

 

 

998G     Bernardus Basinus           1445-1510

 

De magicis artibus et magorum maleficiism     ( Tractatus exquisitissimus de magicis artibus et magorum maleficiis, per sacre scientie Parisiensem doctorem magistrum Bernardum Basim, canonicum Cesar augustanensem, in suis vesperis compilatus. )

 

Paris : Antoine Caillaut,1491-1492. (Dated by CIBN)                  $28,000

 

Quarto  7 ¾ X5 ½ inches. a8 b6. Second Edition

 

This treatise on magical practices was based on a speech Basin delivered in Paris before an assembly of cardinals in 1482. Basin was born 1445 in Zaragoza and he received his doctors degree in Paris, having study there theology and canon law. In 9 propositions he explains how people enlist the help of demons and if the practise of such diabolic magic makes a person a heretic. Basin states that magic arts, such as involving the invocation of demons and pacts must be been prohibited by all laws, civil and canon alike. The editio princeps was published in 1483 and is extant in 12 copies worldwide. This second edition is more rare and exists in 6 copies worldwide. A corner stone text in the study of witchcraft and inquisition. Buchnummer des Verkäufers 000137
Canon of Zaragoza. – Theologian Antoine Caillaut, the printer of this tract, practised his art at Paris from 1483 to 1505

United States of America Southern Methodist Univ. ONLY
Not in Goff; 2003; CIBN B-182; Pell(Lyon) 40; Bod-inc B-132; Sheppard 6190; Pr 7967; BSB-Ink B-233; GW 3720                             CIBN: Bibliothèque Nationale. Catalogue des incunables. T. I (Xylographes, A-G); T. II (H-Z). Paris, 1981-2014. B-182GW 3720; Pellechet 2003; Hain 2703;Hain 2703. Pell-Pol 2003. Meyer, Druckerzeichen 88.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

         NO COPY IN THE U.S.

 

10H        Boethius  Anicius Manlius Torquatus Severinus                    480-525

 

De Consolatione Philosophiae : Sacti thome de aquino super libris boetii de solatoe philosophie comentum cu expositione feliciter incipit. In diui Seuerini Boetij de scolarium disciplina commentarium feliciter incipit..

     Add: Pseudo- Boethius: De disciplina scholarium (Comm: pseudo- Thomas Aquinas)          

 

[Lyons: Guillaume Le Roy], 1487                $16,000

 

Folio. 9 ½ X 6 ¾ inches 235 leaves. Sig. a2-8,b-v8 (a1 blank and lacking) x6; A2-8, B-I8. This copy is bound in modern quarter calf over wooden boards, it is a very nice copy.. 235 of 238 leaves, lacking ONLY three Blanks : x6, A1, and I8;

 

The text surrounded by commentary ascribed to Thomas Aquinas, now considered to be by Thomas Waley ,with a second work attributed to Pseudo-Boethius, De Disciplina Scholarium, with commentary of Pseudo-Aquinas; contemporary annotations which are slightly cropped.

 

“Boethius became the connecting link between the logical and metaphysical science of antiquity and the scientific attempts of the Middle Ages. His influence on medieval thought was still greater through his De consolatione philosophiae ,written while in prison at Pavia is written in an elaborate literary form: it consists of a dialogue between Boethius, sitting in his prison-cell awaiting execution, and a lady who personifies Philosophy, and its often highly rhetorical prose is interspersed with verse passages. Moreover, although it is true that elsewhere Boethius does not write in a way which identifies him as a Christian except in the Theological Treatises I, II, IV and V, the absence of any explicit reference to Christianity in the Consolation poses a special problem, when it is recalled that it is the work of a man about to face death and so very literally composing his philosophical and literary testament. Whether Boethius was a Christian has been doubted; and it is certain that the Consolatio makes no mention of Christ, and all the comfort it contains it owes to the optimism of the Neoplatonic school and to the stoicism of Seneca. Nevertheless, for a long time the book was read with the greatest reverence by all Christendom, and its author was regarded as a martyr for the true faith” (Schaff-Herzog).

Boethius’s real predicament sets the scene for the argument of the Consolation. He represents himself as utterly confused and dejected by his sudden change of fortune. Philosophy’s first job—true to the generic aim of a consolatio—is to console, not by offering sympathy, but by showing that Boethius has no good reason to complain: true happiness, she wishes to argue, is not damaged even by the sort of disaster he has experienced. She also identifies in Book I a wider objective: to show that it is not the case, as Boethius the character claims, that the wicked prosper and the good are oppressed.

Philosophy seems to have two different lines of argument to show Boethius that his predicament does not exclude him from true happiness. The first train of argument rests on a complex view of the highest good. The first (which is put forward in Book II and the first part of Book III) distinguishes between the ornamental goods of fortune, which are of very limited value—riches, status, power and sensual pleasure—and the true goods: the virtues and also sufficiency, which is what those who seek riches, status and power really desire. It also recognizes some non-ornamental goods of fortune, such as a person’s friends and family, as having considerable genuine value. On the basis of these distinctions, Philosophy can argue that Boethius has not lost any true goods, and that he still even retains those goods of fortune—his family—which carry much real worth. She does not maintain that, in his fall from being powerful, rich and respected to the status of a condemned prisoner, Boethius has lost nothing of any worth at all. But his loss need not cut him off from true happiness, which is attained primarily by an austere life based on sufficiency, virtue and wisdom.

 

At the end of the Disciplina are the verses beginning “consilibar item… and giving the name Conradus in an acrostic,which is derived from the edition of Parix, Toulouse,1480.

 

Not in Goff!

H 3402; C 1103 = 1114; Pell 2502 & 2557; CIBN B-576; Hillard 431; Aquilon 149; Arnoult 309; Polain(B) 4217; IGI 1827; Kind(Göttingen) 232; Pr 8513A; BMC VIII 238;

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

992G     John Browne      1642-1700?

 

 

Myographia nova: or, a graphical description of all the muscles in the humane body, as they arise in dissection: distributed into six lectures. At the entrance into which, are demonstrated the proper muscles belonging to each lecture, now in general use at the theatre in Chirurgeons-Hall, London, and illustrated with two and forty copper-plates … Together with a philosophical and mathematical account of the mechanism of muscular motion, and an accurate and concise discourse of the heart and its use, with the circulation of the blood, &c. and with a compleat account of the arteries and veins, to their outward coats, proving them to be made with circular fleshy fibers, by whose contractions their trunks become narrowed, and the fluid particles of the blood are sent forwards into all the parts of the body. Digested into this new method, by the care and study of John Browne,           

 

London : Printed by Tho. Milbourn for the Author, 1698                                           $5,500

 

Folio 12 ½ x 8 inches      [π]3, ¶1, a-e2, A-Z2, Aa-Zz2, Aaa-Hhh2 (original blank Hhh2 present). In addition to the preceding collation, text complete with 39 (of 41) plates including the portrait frontispiece and 2 un-numbered plates (lacking plates 14 and 16 )   The following plates are unsigned bifolia: VIII, X, XV, XII, XIII, XIIII, XV, XVI, XVII, XVIII, XIX, and XXXVI.             Second edition. Enlarged
This is a lovely copy, in good internal condition throughout. It is bound in full modern calf in a contemporary Oxford style.

A couple of leaves/plates with edge tears, nothing too disfiguring. First published in 1681 under title: A compleat treatise of the muscles. The description of the muscles is based on William Molins’ Myskotomia, and the plates partly on Guilio Casserio’s Tabula anatomicae. According to Lowndes, the copies of this work that contain Browne’s portrait are printed on large paper.

“This edition has added a ten-page letter dated 16 July 1698 from Dr. Bernard O’Connor to Dr. William Briggs on muscular motion. Richard Lower’s appendix of the heart occupies pp. 177/183. On pp. 171/176 is a tract by John Bernoulli “Mathematical disquisitions concerning muscular motion communicated in the Lypswick transactions” with its own plate”
“Browne was a well-educated man, and in all likelihood a good surgeon, as he was certainly a well-trained anatomist according to the standard of the day. […] His treatise on the muscles consists of six lectures, illustrated by elaborate copper-plates, of which the engraving is better than the drawing. It is probably the first of such books in which the names of the muscles are printed on the figures. Browne’s portrait, engraved by R. White, is prefixed in different states to each of his books. John Browne, physician to King Charles II, James II and William III, came from Norwich and gained surgical experience in London and in the navy, being wounded in the Anglo-Dutch war of 1665-67. About 1675 he was appointed surgeon-in-ordinary to Charles II and surgeon at St Thomas’s Hospital in 1683. He published other works on medicine, including the first recorded description of cirrhosis of the liver (1685) and the best surviving account of touching for the king’s evil (1684). His most important contribution was one of the clearest early descriptions of cirrhosis of the liver. Browne was subjected to a scathing attack by James Young (1647/1721) in which the present work was shown to be plagiarized from works of Casserio and William Molins. The nearly 40 anatomical plates were, with few exceptions, taken from Molins’Myekotomia. Browne did not respond to Youngs criticism, but did make extensive changes to his text and issued future editions of the book under the title Myographia nova.”. (Heirs of Hippocrates N° 642 1681 ed.). Includes dedications to William III and Earl of Sunderland, printing privilege, preface, 8 letters and poems of commendation list of subscribers and a Treatise on Muscular Dissection by Dr Bernard Connor at beginning; and Mathematical Disquisitions concerning Muscular Motion and An Appendix of the Heart and its Use: with the circulation of the blood and index at the end, with a plate.
The present work is based on William Molins’s “Myskotomia,” and the plates are based on Giulio Casserio’s (1552-1616) “Tabula Anatomicae.”

 

Wing B-5126; ESTCR 20507; Russell 101; Cushing B-762; Wellcome III, p. 251; Eimas 642.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Unquestionably one of the most impressive emblem books ever published.”

 

 

 

910G      Johannes Bolland 1596-1665. Jean de Tollenaere 1582-1643. Godefridus Henschenius 1601-1681

Imago Primi Saecvli Societatis Jesv A Provincia Flandro-Belgica Eivsdem Societatis Repræsentata     

 

Antuerpiae : Ex officina Plantiniana Balthasaris Moreti: 1640                 $2,500

 

Large Folio 13 ½ x 9 inches *4, A-Z4, Aa-Zz4, Aaa-Zzz4, Aaaa-Zzzz4, Aaaaa-Zzzzz4, Aaaaaa-Gggggg4. . (Gggggg4 Blank).                  First edition. This copy is bound in full original vellum over boards with gilt ornaments in the center of both boards.
Published on the occasion of the centenary of the Jesuit Order. Sometimes ascribed to Jean de Tollenaer, provincial of the Society of Jesus in the Low Countries, who commissioned the work. But chiefly the work of Joannes Bollandus and Godefridus Henschenius. Each book followed by “Exercitatio poetica” (Latin and a few Greek poems) by Sidronius de Hossche, Jacques van de Walle and others. cf. Paquot’s Mémoire littéraire, Brit. mus. Catalogue. The engraved title page, designed by Philips Fruytiers and is engraved by Cornelis Galle. This work contains 126 emblematic engravings within ornamental borders by Cornelius Galle, in which title, image, and explanatory text are combined to illustrate further the history of the Order of the Society of Jesus in the Low Countries, to mark the centenary of the Order.

 

This magnificent volume; it is an essential addition for every Jesuitica collection.

John O’Malley SJ writes in Art, Controversy, and the Jesuits: The Imago Primi Saeculi (1640) :

“In 1640 the Society of Jesus observed the centenary of its founding with elaborate celebrations worldwide. The most lasting monument from the occasion is the Imago primi saeculi Societatis Iesu, a magnificent volume of 952 folio-sized pages of poetry, prose, and 127 exquisite copperplate engravings published by the prestigious Plantin-Moretus Press, Antwerp, in a Latin edition, followed later that year by a Dutch adaptation. No other book better reveals Jesuit self-understanding at the moment when the order had achieved its mature form. The ink was hardly dry on its pages before it became an object of controversy, one of the first volleys in the bitter Jesuit/Jansenist culture war that divided French society for a century and that contributed to the papal suppression of the Jesuits in 1773.”

 

DeBacker-Sommervogel,; vol. 1, col. 1626, no. 5; Peter Maurice Daly, G. Richard Dimler(1997-2006). Corpus Librorum Emblematum(CLE). Jesuit serie s, J.45;

Landwehr, J. Emblem books in the Low Countries; no. 264; Bib. catholica Neerlandica impressa,; 9332; The Illustration of Books Published by the Moretuses. Antwerp: Plantin-Moretus Museum, 1996; 51; Praz,; p. 380;Désigné comme auteur principal de cet ouvrage par le P.J. Drews, “Fasti Societatis Jesu”, p. 127, et par J. Vogt, “Catalogus … librorum rariorum”, p. 362.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

934G      William Cartwright          1611-1643

 

Comedies, Tragi-Comedies, With other Poems by Mr. William Cartwright late Student of Christ–Church in Oxford and Proctor of the University. The Ayres and Songs set by Mr. Henry Lawes Servant to His late Majesty in His Publick and Private Musick. —nec Ignes, Nec potuit Ferrum,—               

London: Printed for Humphrey Moseley, and are to be sold at his Shop, at the sign of the Prince’s Arms in St Pauls Church–yard, 1651              $4,750

 

Octavo  6 ½ x 4 ¼ inches. [Portrait]1, [a]-b8, *14 , *8, ¶4, **8, ***14, *10, a-e8, f4, g-k8, A-U8, X2, with leaf *11 in UNcancelled. Leaves **7 and U1-3 appear to be in UNcancelled state with no evidence of stubs, otherwise this collation matches that described by Evans. (“The variations in this perplexing volume are too complicated to permit of formal analysis or a complete record of the copies in which they occur”–Greg. For these see G.B. Evans, “The Library” (June 1942, xxiii:12-22),

First edition. This copy is nineteenth century green morocco with a gilt spine,and dentells, gilt edges, with the book plates of Lucius Wilmerding, J.O. Edwards, and Christopher Rowe. It is quite a nice copy.    “Cartwright enjoyed a considerable success among his contemporaries but posterity has been less kind and his work is only known to students of seventeenth century literature. He was educated at Westminster School and went up to Christ Church, Oxford, in 1628; he spent the rest of his short life there. He wrote four plays, intended for academic performance: The Ordinary or The City Cozener (1634) shows clearly the influence of Ben Jonson; The Lady Errant, The Royall Slave, and The Siege or Love’s Convert were published in 1651. The Royall Slave, with designs by Inigo Jones and music by Henry Lawes, was acted for King Charles I and Henrietta Maria at Oxford in 1636 and proved a great success. Cartwright took holy orders in 1638 and wrote no more plays but he became a celebrated preacher; in 1642 he became reader in metaphysics to the university. A Royalist, Cartwright preached at Oxford before the king after the Battle of Edgehill. The edition of his works published in 1651 contained 51 commendatory verses by writers of the day, including Izaak Walton and Henry Vaughan. The Plays and Poems of William Cartwright were collected and edited by G. Blakemore Evans and published in 1951. (Stapleton) This work also includes the first poem by Katherine Phillips to be printed (DNB).

Cartwright was well liked, and many of his wide circle of friends contributed to the verses occupying the first 124 pages; Dr. John Fell, Jasper Mayne, Henry Vaughan the Silurist, Alexander Brome, Izaak Walton, Francis Vaughan, Thomas Vaughan, Henry Lawes, Sir John Birkenhead, James Howell and many others. Including the first Publication of Katerine Phillips.

Wing C-709; see also The Plays and Poems of William Cartwright by G. Blakemore Evans, pages 62-72; Hayward English Poetry Catalogue, 104; Greg page 1027.

631G       John Cotton { preface}    Mather Richard                  1596-1669

 

A plat-form of church-discipline, gathered out of the Word of God, and agreed upon by the elders and messengers of the churches assembled in the Synod at Cambridge in N.E. To be presented to the churches and General Court for their consideration & acceptance in the Lord, the 8th month, anno 1649.

 

Re-printed by William and Andrew Bradford in New-York,1711                       $15,000

 

Octavo  6 X 3 3/4 inches. Signatures: A9 (lacking A2 contents list) -E7 (E8 verso blank and missing). First New York edition                                    Stored in a custom box.
Based on the draft prepared by Richard Mather. The preface is by John Cotton. Cf. Holmes.The platform defines and establishes a congregational polity—meaning that churches are independent both of any higher ecclesiastical authority, and of one another. It affirms that authority to choose officers, admit members, admonish or expel members, or restore those who have been expelled rests in the gathered members of each congregation.
Though distinct and without authority over one another, the platform affirms that there is to be a community of churches in relationship with one another. When an internal dispute cannot be resolved within a church, that church, at its own request, could convene a council of nearby churches to hear the dispute and offer non-binding advice which church members could then vote to act on, or not. Six ways of showing the communion of churches are identified: taking thought for each other’s welfare
consulting on any topic of cause where another church has more familiarity or information about a topic
admonishing another church, even to the point of convening a synod of neighboring churches and ceasing communion with the offending church
allowing members of one church to fully participate and receive communion in another church
sending letters of recommendation when a member goes to a new church, due to a seasonal or permanent relocation
financial support for poor churches

This document has real ramifications for the polity of some denominations today. For example, the congregations of the United Church of Christ and Unitarian Universalist churches, and other modern-day descendants of the Puritan churches, continue to claim congregational polity as their local church organization, but have created large denominational administrations to maintain ministerial oversight and promote intradenominational communication. When some Churches of the Standing Order in New England became Unitarian following the Unitarian Controversy, they kept a congregational polity. That polity continued to deeply influence the polity and organization of the American Unitarian Association, and, in turn, that of the Unitarian Universalist Association—an organization that, while radically different theologically than the signers of the 1648 document, nonetheless shares a great deal of the same polity.
Includes resolutions adopted at the Synod at Boston, Sept. 10, 1679, and at the general meeting of ministers at Boston, May 27, 1697.
Bradford, Andrew, 1686-1742, printer; Bradford, William, 1663-1752, printer.

Source: Dictionary of American History by James Truslow Adams, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1940″The Cambridge Platform, contemporary readers edition”, Peter Hughes, editor, p iix

Evans, 1496;Holmes, T.J. Minor Mathers, 51-I;Sabin, 63336
792G    Nicholas            Culpeper            1616-1654          A directory for midwives: or, A guide for women in their conception, bearing, and suckling their children. The first part contains, 1. The anatomy of the vessels of generation. 2. The formation of the child in the womb. 3. What hinders conception, and its remedies. 4. What furthers conception. 5. A guide for women in conception. 6. Of miscarriage in women. 7. A guide for women in their labour. 8. A guide for women in their lying-in. 9. Of nursing children. To cure all diseases in women, read the second part of this book. By Nicholas Culpeper, Gent. student in physic and astrology.

 

London : sold by most book sellers in London and Westminster, 1700        $5,500

Octavo 6 x 3 ½ inches.   A-Q12 Newly corrected from many gross errors. Contemp. full blind stamped calf; slightly rubbed. A nice copy of a popular and ill-surviving text in contemporary binding.
A Directory of Midwives was first published in 1651 and became one of the seminal texts on midwifery and female health for the next two centuries. This volume contains – with continuous pagination – both Culpeper’s Directory, which focuses on obstetrics, and a separately titled Fourth Book of Practical Physick, which deals with female diseases and general health. The first two books first appeared together in 1671 but not in a continuously paginated edition until 1693. Though the work was frequently reprinted, seveneteenth and early eighteenth-century editions do not survive well, most being well-used on a regular basis.

 

ESTC R232056, Wellcome only in UK; U.S. National Library of Medicine & Yale only in North America; Copac adds Edinburgh and York Universities; OCLC adds University of Essex.

 

655G    William Davenant           1606-1668

 

The Works of Sir William Davenant Kt, Consisting of those which were formerly Printed, and those which he design’d for the Press: Now Published out of the Authors Originall Copies.

 

London: Henry Herringman, 1673                             $2,500

 

Folio12 ¾ x 7½ inches . π1 2π2 A-3D4 3E2; Aa-Ppp4, Aaaa-Oooo4

First Edition An unusually fine, fresh, wide-margined copy, with a fine impression of the portrait. Bound in full contemporary calf with nicely gilt spine.

 

The First Collected Edition, with prefatory material by Hobbes, ‘The answer of Mr. Hobbes to Sr. William D’Avenant’s preface before Gondibert’, and poems by Waller and Cowley. Several of the plays originally published in blank verse are here printed for the first time, converted into prose. The volume also includes first printings of ‘The Playhouse to be Let’, ‘Law Against Lovers’, ‘News from Plymouth’, ‘The Fair Favourite’, ‘The Distresses’, and ‘The Siege’. The posthumous collection was published under the watchful eye of “Lady Mary” D’Avenant. The poems reflect the attitudes of the Cavalier poets and the received tradition of earlier poets, particularly Shakespeare, Jonson, and Donne. She no doubt also insisted on the fine portrait frontispiece restoring her husband’s missing nose, which he had lost through illness in 1638.

Following the death of Ben Jonson in 1637, Davenant was named Poet Laureate in 1638. He was a supporter of King Charles I in the English Civil War. In 1641, before the war began, he was declared guilty of high treason by parliament along with John Suckling, after he participated in the First Army Plot, a Royalist plan to use the army to occupy London. He fled to France Returning to join the king’s army when the war started, he was knighted two years later by king Charles following the siege of Gloucester.

Wing D320

 

 

894F     William Drummond        1585-1649

The works of William Drummond, of Hawthornden. Consisting of those which were formerly printed, and those which were design’d for the press. Now published from the author’s original copies.        

 

Edinburgh : printed by James Watson, in Craig’s-Closs, 1711.            $3,500

 

Folio 13 x 8 ½  inches [ ],a-l2, m1, a1, B-Z2, Aa-Zz2, Aaa-Qqq2, A2.A-P2.  First collected edition

This copy is bound in its original full calf binding, It has been recently rebacked with gilt spine. This is a wonderful copy of this book.
This is the first edition of Drummond’s works, printed under the supervision of his son, it contains a brief life of Drummond and his letters to Ben Jonson and other poets of his day. William Drummond is the last significant figure in Scottish poetry before the Eighteenth Century language. These conditions were now abolished. Poets who had published their work in Scots, followed James in revising it and publishing it in English, and Drummond, who did not go south with the court, was left in a state of cultural bereavement. He made a lot of that melancholy state. He became a poet of retreat and death, like Henry Vaughan during the Interregnum.

Drummond was a late practitioner of the Petrarchan sonnet sequence in English, but he worked in phrases and ideas of the French and Italian masters of late petrarchism. Marino was an author he admired and imitated. The language he writes in is not the Scots he spoke but a literary English, as correct as he could learn to make it from reading books. His art aims at refined sweetness both in versification and in the preciosity of his reworking and tinkering with petrarchan imagery. The landscape of his love-melancholy is a solitary and Arcadian Midlothian.
On this colde World of Ours,
Flowre of the Seasons, Season of the Flowrs,
Sonne of the Sunne sweet Spring,
Such hote and burning Dayes why doest thou bring?
Like Poe, Drummond seems to have felt that the death of a beautiful woman was the best subject for poetry and Euphemia Cunningham did her best for him in this respect. Only a year after he had completed the Poems that end in mourning her literary epiphany. Religion was another source of melancholy interiority that he exploited; he expanded the divine poems of the 1616 collection and brought them out as Flowres of Sion in 1623. The volume includes his prose meditation on death, The Cypresse Grove.   In later years he began to compile an uninteresting royalist History of Scotland. The Bishops’ Wars between Charles I and the Scots Presbyterians and the involvement of the Covenant in the politics of the English Civil War stirred Drummond to write political tracts against the Covenanters, notably Irene in response to the promulgation of the National Covenant of 1638 and Skiamachia in support of the Cross Petition to the Scottish Parliament against moves for an alliance with the English Parliamentarians. He did not publish them but they probably circulated in manuscript. Too literary, written in too elaborate and beautifully modulated a style to engage effectively in the cut and thrust of Civil War polemic, they nevertheless make shrewd points about the contradictions in which the Covenanters had involved themselves. John Sage, brought out an edition of his works in 1711, which, along with the poems, includes some of his letters, his history of Scotland and not very reliable versions of the political works.

Lowndes, p. 675. who reports that Ben Jonson thought of Drummond as a ‘Scotian Petrarch’ ESTC Citation No.   T125750
 

 

1)   945G           Eusebius of Caesarea                  c. 260-c. 340

 

Eusebius Pa[m]phili de eua[n]gelica preparac[i]o[n]e ex greco in latinu[m] translatus Incipit feliciter.         

 

[ Cologne, Ulrich Zel, not after 1473]                          $18,000

 

Folio     10 ¾ x 7 ¾ inches. [a]12, [b-o]10, [p]8      One of the earliest editions most likely the Second, (editio princeps : Venice 1470) This copy is bound in early wooden boards with a quarter calf spine.

 

This copy contains the fifteen books of the “Praeparatio evangelica,” whose purpose is “to justify the Christian in rejecting the religion and philosphy of the Greeks in favor of that of the Hebrews, and then to justify him in not observing the Jewish manner of life […] The following summary of its contents is taken from Mr. Gifford’s introduction to his translation of the “Praeparitio:

 

“The first three books discuss the threefold system of Pagan Theology: Mythical, Allegorical, and Political. The next three, IV-VI, give an account of the chief oracles, of the worship of demons, and of the various opinions of Greek Philosophers on the doctrines of Fate and Free Will. Books VII-IX give reasons for preferring the religion of the Hebrews founded chiefly on the testimony of various authors to the excellency of their Scriptures and the truth of their history. In Books X-XII Eusebius argues that the Greeks had borrowed from the older theology and philosphy of the Hebrews, dwelling especially on the supposed dependence of Plato upon Moses. In the the last three books, the comparson of Moses with Plato is continued, and the mutual contradictions of other Greek Philosphers, especially the Peripatetics and Stoics, are exposed and criticized.”

 

The “Praeparitio” is a gigantic feat of erudition, and, according to Harnack (Chronologie, II, p. 120), was, like many of Eusebius’ other works, actually composed during the stress of the persecution. It ranks, with the Chronicle, second only to the Church History in importance, because of its copious extracts from ancient authors, whose works have perished.” (CE)

It is also very interesting because of its numerous lively fragments from historians and philosophers which are nowhere else preserved, e.g. a summary of the writings of the Phoenician priest Sanchuniathon, or the account from Diodorus Siculus’ sixth book of Euhemerus’ wondrous voyage to the island of Panchaea, and writings of the neo-Platonist philosopher Atticus.

 

Eusebius (c. 263-339), Greek historian and exegete, Christian polemicist and scholar Biblical canon, became bishop of Cesarea in 314 and is considered as the father of Church History as his writings are very important for the first three centuries of the Christianity.

 

 

Goff E119; BMC I 194

(United States of America: Boston Public Library
Indiana Univ., The Lilly Library (- 2 ff.)
YUL);

 

917G       Willem van Hees (Gulielmus Hesius)      1601-1690

 

Emblemata sacra de fide, spe, charitate               

 

Antuerpiae : Ex officina Plantiniana Balthasaris Moreti, 1636           $1,900

 

Octavo  5 ¾ x 3 ¼ inches. A-R12.There are 116 emblems half-page emblematic woodcuts (Liber I with 41, Liber II with 30, Liber III with 40) and 5 unsigned, unnumbered half-page woodcut illustrations (p. 6, 8, 18, 147, 263). The Emblems are from woodcuts by Jan Christoffel Jegher after Erasmus Quellinus–See Praz.

Hees is said to have influenced Artus Quellinus II .( St. Walburga Church in Bruges: an oak pulpit remarkable for breaking with tradition: the barrel is not supported by heavy volutes but rests firmly on a single figure representing Faith (rather than the more usual multiple archangels and church fathers) and the stairs at the back).

Hees’ influence has been identified in Vermeer’s The Allegory of Faith in the glass orb on which the woman sets her eyes. “According to Eddy De Johgh, Vermeer appears to have taken it from a 1636 emblem book by the Jesuit Willem Hesius, Emblemata sacra de fide, spe, charitate. In the emblem, “Capit Quod Non Capit”, a winged boy, a symbol of the soul, is shown holding a sphere reflecting a nearby cross and the sun. In a poem accompanying the emblem, Hesius states that the sphere’s ability to reflect the world is similar to the mind’s ability to believe in God.”[1] Selena Cant has written that the sphere is :

“symbol of the human mind and its capacity both to reflect and to contain infinity.”

DeBacker-Sommervogel,;vol. IV, col. 336, no. 3; Corpus librorum emblematum. Jesuit series,; J.661; Emblem books at the Univ. of Illinois,; H23; Landwehr, J. Emblem books in the Low Countries,; 203; Landwehr, J. Dutch emblem books,; 83; Praz, M. Studies in 17th cent. imagery (2nd ed.),

1. Arthur K. Wheelock, Jr., editor,Johannes Vermeer, catalogue of an exhibition National Gallery of Art, Washington, and the Royal Cabinet of Paintings Mauritshuis, p 192, citing Eddy De Jongh, “Pearls of Virtue and Pearls of Vice”, Simiolus 8: 69–97, 1975/1976, The Hague; pp 190–195, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995
2. Liedtke, Walter A. (2001). Vermeer and the Delft School. Metropolitan Museum of Art. pp. 399–402. 

 

 

 

 

808G    Thomas Hobbes  1588-1679

De Mirabilibus Pecci. Being the Wonders of the Peak in Derby-shire. Commonly Called The Devil’s Arse of Peak. In English and Latine. The Latine written by Thomas Hobbes of Malmsbury. The English by a Person of Quality.
            London: Printed for William Crook at the Green Dragon without Temple-Bar 1678             $2,000
Octavo 6 ¼ x 3 ¾ inches A-E8, F7 (F8 blank and lacking) First English edition .This copy is bound in later quarter calf. From 1608, Hobbes, was appointed tutor to William, only two years his junior. During this interval Hobbes wrote a Latin poem, giving an account of a short tour of the Peak in Derbyshire, made in company with the second earl. It was, it appears, a new year’s gift to his friend, who rewarded him with a gift of 5 pounds. The poem was first published in 1636. This version includes the original Latin and an English translation by ‘a Person of Quality.’ Chatsworth House which features largely in the poem as one of the Wonders of the Peak: Wing H-2224; T.C. I. 296.

 

 

           “ Nothing is more beautiful than know all things”

 

622G    Athansius           Kircher 1602-1680

 

Ars Magna Sciendi, In XII Libros digesta. Qua Nova & Universali Methodo Per Artificiosum Combinationum contextum de omni re proposita plurimis & prope infinitis rationibus disputari, omniumque summaria quædam cognitio compari potest… (tomes 1&2)

 

Amsterdam: Apud Joannem Janssonium à Waesberge, & Viduam Elizei Weyerstraet, 1669         $11,500

 

Folio 14 ½ x 9 inches *4, **4, A-Z4, Aa-Gg4-Zz4, Aaa-Ooo4, Ppp6.

First edition. This copy is bound in full original calf with a gilt spine with an expertly executed early rebacking. The vovell sheets are present but not cut or placed. And two very large foldouts A complete copy with the usual browing. The ‘Ars Magna Sciendi’ is Kircher’s exploration and development of the ‘Combinatoric Art’ of Raymond Lull, the thirteenth century philosopher. Kircher attempts in this monumental work to classify knowledge under the nine ideal attributes of God, which were taken to constitute the pattern for all creation. In the third chapter of this book is presented a new and universal version of the Llullistic method of combination of notions. Kircher seems to be convinced that the Llullistic art of combination is a secret and mystical matter, some kind of esoteric doctrine. In contrast with Llull, who used Latin words, words with clearly defined significations for his combinations, Kircher began filling the tables with signs and symbols of a different kind. By doing this Kircher was attempting to penetrate symbolic representation itself. ( forming a ‘symbolic-Logic)

 

Kircher tried to calculate the possible combinations of all limited alphabets (not only graphical, but also mathematical). He considered himself a grand master of decipherment and tried to (and thought he did) translate Egyptian hieroglyphic texts, he felt that knowledge was a process of encoding and decoding. His tabula generalis, the more mathematical way of thinking created the great difference between Llull and Kircher.
Kircher used the same circle-figures of Llull, but the alphabet which Kircher proposes as material for his combination-machine reveals the difference to Lullus’ at first sight. It is not the signification in correlation with the position in the table, because all nine places in each table are filled with the same significations we find in the Llullistic tables, that makes the difference. It is the notation, which creates the difference. While making certain modifications, mainly in the interest of clarity, Kircher retains the main thesis of Raymond Lull in the search for a scientific approach to the classification of all branches of knowledge. The central aim of Lull’s and Kircher’s activity was to invent a type of logic or scientific approach capable of finding and expressing universal truth. Kircher and his seventeenth century contemporaries had discarded common language as a satisfactory vehicle for this undertaking. Kircher favored the use of symbols as a possible solution to his problem, which he had explored in his earlier work on a non-figurative universal language was not a primary concern of lull’s ‘Combinatoric Art,’ his approach lent itself naturally to the seventeenth century savants and their abiding interest in this subject. (see Brian L. Merrill, Athansius Kircher An Exhibition at Brigham Young University).
 

Sommervogel 1066.28; Merrill 22; Ferguson I. 467; Brunet III, 666; Caillet II, 360.5771; Clendening 10.17; De Backer I, 429-30.23; Graesse IV, 21; Reilly #26.

720G    Athanasius         Kircher 1602-1680

 

Athanasi Kircheri Fuldensis Buchonii è Soc. Jesu presbyteri ars magna lucis et umbræ, in X. libros digesta. Quibus admirandæ lucis & umbræ in mundo, atque adeò universa natura, vires effectusque uti nova, ita varia novorum reconditiorumque speciminum exhibitione, ad varios mortalium usus, panduntur. Editio altera priori multò auctior.          

 

 

Amstelodami, apud Joannem Janssonium à Waesberge, & hæredes Elizæi Weyerstraet. 1671 .      $15,000

 

Folio 15 x 9 ¾ inches *4, **4, ***6, (*)2, A-Xxxx4  Second Enlarged edition   Bound in contemporary calf, with nicely gilt spine.            Kircher’s Major Scientific Work and his Principal Contribution to Optics” In Ars magna lucis et umbrae Kircher discusses the sources of light and shadow. The work deals especially with the sun, moon, stars and planets. Kircher also treats phenomena related to light, such as optical illusions, color and refraction, projection and distortion, comets, eclipses, and instruments that use light, such as sundials and mirrors. He theorizes about the type of mirror supposed to have been used by Archimedes to set Roman ships afire, drawing from notes of his own experiments performed in the harbor of Syracuse. The work includes one of the first treatises on phosphorous and fireflies. Here Kircher also published his depictions of Saturn and Jupiter as he saw them through a telescope in Bologna in 1643. On that occasion he observed that the planets were neither perfectly round nor self-luminous, contrary to the popular Aristotelian belief that they are perfect, unchanging spheres.”Kircher takes a great interest in sundials and mirrors in this book, and several interesting engravings are of fanciful sundials. He had written extensively on these subjects on his previous work, the Primitiae gnomonicae catoptricae. In Ars magna lucis et umbrae Kircher also discusses an odd ancestor of the modern projector: a device called the ‘magic lantern,’ of which he is generally, though erroneously, considered the inventor. “Before writing this work, Kircher had read Kepler’s Ad vitellionem paralipomena (1604), the first modern work on optics and was influenced to some extent by it. The Ars magna lucis et umbrae reveals Kircher’s contribution as an astute observer and cataloguer of natural phenomena” (Merrill)             DeBacker- Sommervogel IV, col. 1050, no.9 ; Merrill 7; Caillet 5770

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

850G     Hugh     Latimer                   1485-1555

 

The fyrste Sermon of Mayster Hughe Latimer, whiche he preached before the kynges Maiest. wythin his graces palayce at Westminster M. D. XLIX. the viii. of Marche. (,’,) Cu gratia et Privilegio ad imprimendum solum.
[bound with]
The seconde Sermon of Maister Hughe Latimer, whych he preached before the Kynges maiestie, iv in his graces Palayce at Westminister y. xv. day of Marche. M. ccccc.xlix. Cum gratia et Privilegio ad Imprimendum solum.

[London: by Jhon Day, dwellynge at Aldergate, and Wylliam Seres, dwellyng in Peter Colledge, 1549]                                                $14,200

 

Octavo  5 ½ x 3 ¾ inches. A-D8, A-Y8, Aa-Ee8 (Lacking Ee7 and 8,both blank.) First editions, each of the two works is one of three or four undated variants, attributed to the year 1549. This copy is bound in nineteenth century calfskin, the hinges starting to crack.                 The Encyclopedia Britannica calls Hugh Latimer’s sermons, “classics of their kind. Vivid, racy, terse in expression; profound in religious feeling, sagacious in their advice on human conduct. To the historical student they are of great value as a mirror of the social and political life of the period.”

“All things which are written, are written for our erudition and knowledge. All things that are written in God’s book, in the Bible book, in the book of the Holy Scripture, are written to be our doctrine.” (from Hugh Latimer’s Sermon of the Plow)

“This was the first of Latimer’s famous Lenten sermons on the duty of restoring stolen goods which resulted in the receipt of considerable sums of ‘conscience money.’” (Phorzimer Catalogue)

“The seven sermons which he preached before the king in the following Lent are a curious combination of moral fervor and political partisanship, eloquently denouncing a host of current abuses, and paying the warmest tribute to the government of Somerset.” (DNB)

STC 15270.7; & STC 15274.7; Pforzheimer #581 and 582; McKerrow & Ferguson 64.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

779G        Nicholas, ed            Ling         fl. ca. 1599

 

 

                             Politeuphuia, Wits Common-wealth. Newly corrected and amended.                

 

 

London :printed by E. Flesher, and are to be sold by Edward Brewster at the Crane in St. Pauls Church-yard
1647.        $4,900

Duodecimo 5 ¾ 4 x 3 ¼ inches.          3 preliminary leaves, 322 pages, 4 leaves A-O12.                  edition(?), first printed in 1597.(To the reader: “Courteous reader, encouraged by thy kind acceptance, of the first and second impression of Wits Common-wealth, I have once more adventured to present thee with the foureteenth edition.”)

 

Bound in ninteenth century full calf edges gilt a very lovely copy.

 

Usually ascribed to John Bodenham, who planned the collection, though the work appears to have been done by Nicholas Ling. Cf. Dedication; also DNB.p. Often cited as Wits’ commonwealth, and some editions appeared under that title. Published first in 1597, as the first in a series of which Mere’s “Palladis tamia”, 1598, was the second, “Wits theater of the little world,” by Robert Allott, 1598, the third, and “Palladis palatium, wisedoms’ pallace,” 1604, the fourth. Cf. DNB. “The popularity of this book, of which altogether some eighteen editions before the end of the seventeenth-century were issued, was due it would seem to the fact that it filled a peculiar need of the public of the day. It is difficult to imagine the style and tone of the conversation of the later years of Elizabeth’s court — the written word is the only clue. But it is certain that the more commonly endowed members of a society which included men of such wide reading and extensive knowledge as Bacon, Selden, Jonson and Raleigh must have frequently felt the need of some compendium of wise and sententious aphorisms by means of which they might ornament their discourse. It is just that function which this volume appears to be intended to fulfill for it is a compilation of precepts and maxims, frequently with their source noted, gathered under various heads such as ‘Of Courage’, ‘Of Nobilitie’, etc. Each division begins with a definition and ends with a Latin quotation, while in the manner of a modern Bartlett. The tables which are appended enable one to search not only the divisional topics, but also the individual aphorism
“The popularity of this type of manual in the early years of the seventeenth century may be compared with the deluge of ‘outlines’ of this and that which the public of the present day is encouraged to imagine will provide a short and easy road to knowledge and culture. This appears to be substantiated by the fact that this book is but one, the first of a series, of four volumes which for the want of a better name is called the ‘Wits Series’. From the fact that there is no indication in this book that it was to be followed by others it may be assumed that the series, as a series at least, was not projected until after the demand for this first book indicated the public taste.

“In the address To the Reader, which otherwise appears to be a reprint of the text of the third edition, the present is numbered the ‘fifteenth edition’. It is quite possible that it is the fifteenth but we have only the publisher’s word as no copies of editions five to eight can be traced, and it is a well known ‘puffing’ device to misnumber editions.” (Pforzheimer)

 

Wing L- 2344; see Pforzheimer 802.;McKerrow 259 [triple star])

Copies – N.America
Harvard University
Lehigh University
Library of Congress
William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
University of Minnesota
Yale University.

 

 

957G Richard Mediavilla [Middleton],     d. 1302/3

 

         Commentum super quartem        Sententarium..

 

Venice: Christophorus Arnoldus, [circa 1476-7]        $22,000

 

Folio 12 ¼ 9 ¼ inches. a-z10 [et]10 [cum]10 [per]10 A 10 B-D8 (D8v blank and aa1r blank) aa8 bb10 cc8 {320 leaves complete}

 

Second edition. This copy is rubricated throughout with nicely complicated red initials. It is bound in an age appropriate binding of full calf over wooden boards with clasps and catches with quite impressive end bands.

 

“Middleton, Richard of [Richard de Mediavilla] Franciscan friar, theologian, and philosopher, was born about the middle of the thirteenth century in either England or France. He studied at Paris, where he formed part of the so-called neo-Augustinian movement, defending the philosophy and theology of Augustine against the inroads of Aristotelianism, during the years 1276–87. He probably studied under William of Ware and Matteo d’Acquasparta, usually viewed as principal figures in this movement.
Middleton’s Commentary on Peter Lombard’s ‘Sentences’ was probably begun in 1281 and was completed in 1284, when he became regent master of the Franciscan school in Paris, a post he held until 1287. The chief characteristic of his Commentary is its sober assessment of many of the positions of Thomas Aquinas. However, the tone of his eighty Quodlibet Questions, produced during his regency, is much more critical and on many issues shows a strong anti-Thomist reaction. In this they have more in common with his disputed questions, which were argued after the condemnations of 1277 but before his Sentences commentary. The latter commentary has been edited along with his Quodlibet Questions. A small number of his disputed questions have also been edited, as have six of his sermons.

Middleton’s link to the neo-Augustinian movement is seen especially in his treatment of the will, even though he does not entirely follow his teachers, Ware and Acquasparta. For Middleton the will is much more noble than the intellect, since it is much more noble to love God than to understand him. Understanding without the corresponding love separates man from God. However, the key to the will’s nobility is its freedom. The intellect is forced by evidence when evidence is given; the will also is forced by its nature to seek the good, but it is free in choosing the means to its predetermined goal. Even if the intellect were prudent enough to show man the best means to his goal, he would not be forced to adopt them. ‘For although the intellect, like a servant with a lamp, points out the way, the will, like the master, makes the decisions and can go in any direction it pleases’ (Stegmüller, 722).

The superiority of the human will over the intellect further manifests itself in Middleton’s conception of the nature of theology. Certainly, the study of the scriptures attempts to clarify human knowledge of both creator and creatures; principally, however, it aims to stimulate man’s affections. Middleton believes that scripture prescribes laws, forbids, threatens, attracts man through promises, and shows him models of behaviour that he should follow or avoid. The study of scripture perfects the soul, moving it toward the good through fear and love. It is more of a practical science than a speculative endeavour. A theology that is speculative is one that models itself on the theology of the metaphysician or philosopher and tends to reduce Christian faith to reason.

The influence of Aquinas is more in evidence in Middleton’s theory of knowledge. Middleton rejects the illumination theory of Bonaventure and his more loyal followers. Man’s intellectual knowledge can be explained, he argues, by the abstraction performed by the agent intellect from the singulars experienced by the human senses. In short, human individuals know, and they know by means of their own intellectual efforts, not by some special divine illumination. Unlike those who endorse the illumination theory, Middleton contends that there is no direct knowledge of spiritual beings, including God. God is not the first thing known. He can be known only by starting with creatures and by reasoning about their origins or final end. Middleton died in Rheims on 30 March 1302 or 1303.” [Oxford DNB]

 

Goff M-424; BMC V 206.

 

(The ISTC shows two US copies…St Louis Univ., Pius XII Memorial Library (–) & YUL – i.e. both defective) add UCLA.

 

 

 

 

942G     Michæl (Michaelis Mediolanensis) Carcano ( 1427- 1484)
Sermonarium de poenitentia per adventum et per quadragesimam fratris Michaelis Mediolanensis.

Venice : Georgius Arrivabenus, 28 Sept. 1496                                     $9,000

Large Octavo a-z8 [et]8 [con]8 [rum]8 A-E8 F10.

This copy is bound in bind-tooled pigskin over wooden boards.Highly impressed with blind tool rool stamps of thistles Strawberries and various other flowers.

 

 

 

Carcano was one of the greatest Franciscan preachers of the 15th-century.

In this book there are 92 sermons for Advent and Lent, that amount to a systematic treatment of penitence. Carcano’s preaching was much admired by Bernardino da Feltre, who called him ‘alter sanctus apostolus Paulus et Christi Tuba’. He is known for his part in founding the montes pietatis banking system, with Bernardine of Feltre, and for the marked anti-Semitism of his attacks on usury. His sermons were later printed as Sermones quadragesimales fratris Michaelis de Mediolano de decem preceptis (1492). They include arguments in favour of religious art.(see Geraldine A. Johnson, Renaissance Art: A Very Short Introduction (2005), p. 37)

 

 

The wording of the colophon suggests that the archetype of this edition is that of Nicholas de Frankfordia,1487
Quadragesimale seu sermonarium de penitentia duplicatum per aduentu[m] videlicet & quadragesima[m] a venerabili viro fratre Michaele Mediolanensi ordinis fratrum minorum de obseruantia editum: qui tum sanctimonia vite, tu[m] ferue[n]tissima verbi dei p[re]dicatione a deo inumeris meruit corruscare miraculis felici numine explicitum est. Impressu[m] Venetijs optimaq[ue] castigatione eme[n]datu[m]: per Georgiu[m] de Arriuabenis Ma[n]tuanum. Anno d[omi]ni .M.cccclxxxxvj. die .xxviij. Septembris./

 

Goff C197; H 4507*;; Walsh 2140; BMC V 386  

(HEHL,Harvard, CL,LC,St Bonaventure Univ ,Univ. of Kentucky, Univ. of Minnesota)

 

904G     Theophilus Metcalfe       active 1649.

 

Manuscript copy of : Short-writing, the most easie, exact, lineal, and speedy method that hath ever been obtained, or taught. Composed by Theophilus Metcalfe, author and professor of the said art. The last edition. With a new table for shortning of words. Which book is able to make the practitioner perfect without a teacher. As many hundreds in this city and elsewhere, that are able to write sermons word for word, can from their own experience testifie.

England: after 1689 and before 1717                        $5,500

 

 

Octavo  6 x 4 inches. 55, [7]pp. + portrait of author. The last section of 7 pp. contains Directions for Book-keeping after the Italian Method.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This manuscript is bound in full modern calf.         This copybook manuscript is taken from the last edition published by Metcalfe. The entire work is done with remarkable calligraphy. This is a rare copy manuscript item with complementary addendum on Italian Book-Keeping.

Theophilus Metcalfe (bap. 1610 – c.1645) was an English stenographer. He invented a shorthand system that became popular, in particular, in New England, where it was used to record the Salem witch trials.[1]
Metcalfe was Baptised in Richmond, Yorkshire, and was the tenth child of Matthew Metcalfe and his wife Maria Taylor; Thomas Taylor (1576–1632) was his mother’s brother. A professional writer and teacher of shorthand, Metcalfe in 1645 resided in the London parish of St Katharine’s by the Tower. He died that year or early in 1646, when his widow assigned rights to reissue the book of his system.   Metcalfe published a stenographic system very much along the lines of Thomas Shelton’s Tachygraphy. The first edition of his work was entitled Radio-Stenography, or Short Writing and is supposed to have been published in 1635. A so-called sixth edition appeared at London in 1645. It was followed in 1649 by A Schoolmaster to Radio-Stenography, explaining all the Rules of the said Art, by way of Dialogue betwixt Master and Scholler, fitted to the weakest capacities that are desirous to learne this Art. Many editions of the system appeared under the title of Short Writing: the most easie, exact, lineall, and speedy Method that hath ever yet been obtained or taught by any in this Kingdome.
103G    Katherine          Philips   1631-1664

 

Letters from Orinda to Poliarchus

 

London: printed by W.B. for Bernard Lintott, 1705             $5,500

 

Octavo  6 3/4 X 3 3/4 inches       A-R8     First edition                   This copy is bound in original full calf stored in a custom morroco case.     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 Andreadis

Source: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 and these letters.

 

 

744G    John Langston 1641-1704

 

Lusus poeticus Latino-Anglicanus in usum scholarum. Or The more eminent sayings of the Latin poets collected; and for the service of youth in that ancient exercise, commonly called capping of verses, alphabetically digested; and for the greater benefit of young beginners i the Latin tongue, rendred into English. By John Langston teacher of a private grammar-school near Spittle-fields, London

London : printed for Henry Eversden at the Crown in Cornhil, near the Stocks-market, 1675.     $1,400 Octavo    5 3/4 X 3 3/4 Inches .This copy is bound in full 17th century calf, recently expertly rebacked.        First edition..     This alphabetically arranged compendium of eminent sayings by Latin poets for the service of youth in capping of verses is the work for which Langston is best remembered. He issued a lesser known grammatical work, “Poeseos Graecae Medulla”, in 1679. He published nothing of a religious nature, but issued the following for school purposes: ‘Lusus Poeticus Latino-Anglicanus,’ &c., 1675, (intended as an aid to capping verses).. LANGSTON, was an, independent divine, was born about 1641, according to Calamy. He went from the Worcester grammar school to Pembroke College, Oxford, where he was matriculated as a servitor in Michaelmas term 1655, and studied for some years. Wood does not mention his graduation. At the Restoration in 1660 (when, if Calamy is right, he had not completed his twentieth year) he held the sequestered perpetual curacy of Ashchurch, Gloucestershire, from which be was displaced . He went to London, and kept a private school near Spitalfields. On the coming into force of the Uniformity Act (24 Aug. 1662) he crossed over to Ireland as chaplain and tutor to Captain Blackwell, but returned to London and to school-keeping in 1663. Under the indulgence of 1672 he took out a license, in concert with William Hooke (d. March 1677, aged 77), formerly master of the Savoy, ‘to preach in Richard Loton’s house in Spittle-yard.’ Some time after 1679 he removed into Bedfordshire, where he ministered till, in 1686, he received an invitation from a newly separated congregation of independents, who had hired a building in Green Yard, St. Peter’s parish, Ipswich. Under his preaching a congregational church of seventeen persons was formed on 12 Oct. 1686. Oon 2 Nov. A ‘new chappell’ in Green Yard was opened on 26 June 1687, and the church membership was raised to 123 persons, many of them from neighbouring villages. Calamy says he was driven out of his house, was forced to remove to London, and was there accused of being a jesuit, whereupon he published a successful ‘Vindication.’ Langston died on 12 Jan. 1704, ‘aetat. 64.’ (DNB).
Wing L411; Arber’s Term cat. I 213.
881G      Gaius Plinius Secundus. (23-79); trans. Philemon Holland 1552-1637

The Historie Of the World: Commonly called, the Natvrall Historie of c. Plinivs Secvndvs. Translted into English by Philemon Holland Doctor of Physicke. The first [and second] Tome[s].           

 

London: Adam Islip, 1601              $15,000

 

Folio 11 ¾ x 8 ½ inches. [π]6, ¶4 a-b6 A8 B-3I6 3K4; A-3G6 3H4 3I-3O6 3P8 (lacking blank leaves π1 and 3P8)   First edition.(second Issue) Title pages to both volumes. This copy is bound full English calf skin expertly rebacked with gilt spine. A good copy with very minor faults: repaired clean tear with slight to the upper corners of 6 leaves of the second volume with only slight loss. Occasional rust spots, marginal tears, or marginal natural paper flaws. “All [of Pliny’s] works have been lost, except for the ‘Naturalis Historia.’ An atmosphere of excess surrounds the work. We know that Pliny claims never to have read a book so bad as not to have any value at all; and Pliny was constantly reading, taking notes, and indexing. The final result was a work in thirty-seven books, intended to inventory the total knowledge possessed by man. The indefatigable Pliny worked his way through impressive numbers: 34,000 notices, 2,000 volumes read, from 100 different authors, and 170 dossiers of notes and preparatory files (‘I have not knowingly omitted any piece of information, if I have found it anywhere.’).
“Pliny remained popular in the Renaissance. He was one of the most frequently consulted authorities on many subjects for Valla and many other humanists; there were at least forty-six editions of his work by 1550; and he was translated in Italian by Landino (published in 1501) and into English by Philemon Holland (1601). But gradually the intense philological work of humanist scholars on the one hand and the new discoveries of the scientific revolution on the other began to throw doubt upon Pliny’s reputation as an infallible authority, and in the end his reputation could not even be rescued by blaming the manuscripts. Yet as Pliny has lost his practical value as a reference handbook for the modern period, he had gained in historical importance for the information he transmits concerning anc indifference to theoretical rigor, his refusal to engage in systematic analysis and selection—that make him so precious for modern scholars interested in the ancient world. Unlike scholars who had greater intelligence, more self-confidence, or simply more time at their disposal, he preserves everything and passes it on to us.” (Conte)

“Along with the patriotic aims of an Englishman and a literary voyager Holland [the English translator of this volume of Pliny] has a theory of his art, though only hints of it are given in his prefaces. What he calls his ‘meane and popular stile’ might be taken as a generic representative of the best early seventeenth century writing. Holland’s unusual learning and care chastened his prose without robbing it of colloquial energy, concrete amplitude, and metaphorical color. His slight but frequent additions are made in the interest of complete and vivid clarity and emotional effect. And the whole tone of his work reflects his Elizabethan veneration for, and sense of contemporaneous intimacy with, the great men and events and the ethical wisdom of antiquity. Pliny’s philosophy gave him some qualms, but these were satisfactorily quieted. In his life and in his work Holland was a fine example of the Christian humanist.” (Bush)
One of the Most Important Elizabethan Science Books “The Natural History” of Pliny the Elder is more than a natural history: it is an encyclopaedia of all the knowledge of the ancient world. It comprises 37 books with mathematics and physics, geography and astronomy, medicine and zoology, anthropology and physiology, philosophy and history, agriculture and mineralogy, the arts and letters. The Historia soon became a standard book of reference; abstracts and abridgements appeared by the third century. Bede owned a copy, Alcuin sent the early books to Charlemagne, and Dicuil, the Irish geographer, quotes him in the ninth century. It was the basis of Isidore’s Etymologiae and such medieval encyclopedias as the Speculum Majus of Vincent of Beauvais and the Catholicon of Balbus. One of the earliest books to be printed at Venice, the centre from which so much of classical literature was first dispensed, it was later translated into English by Philemon Holland in 1601, and twice reprinted (a notable achievement for so vast a text). Over and over again it will be found that the source of some ancient piece of knowledge is Pliny. (PMM 5) Holland’s first book, the first complete rendering of Livy into English, was published in 1600 when he was nearly fifty. It was a work of great importance, presented in a grand folio volume of 1458 pages, and dedicated to the queen. The Livy was followed in the next year by an equally huge translation, of the elder Pliny: The Historie of the World, Commonly called, the Naturall Historie. This encyclopaedia of ancient knowledge about the natural world had already had a great indirect influence in England, as elsewhere in Europe, but had not been translated into English before, and would not be again for 250 years. (ODNB)

 

STC (2nd ed.), 20029.5; Pforzheimer, 496.

Only three complete copies of this massive opus have come to auction in the last thirty-five years

 

111J            Gaspar     Schott      1608-1666

`

1. Gasparis Schotti Regis Curiani E Societate Jesu, Olim in Panormitano Siciliæ, nunc in Herbipolitano Franconiæ Gymnasio ejusdem Societatis Jesu Matheseos Professoris, Physica Curiosa, Sive Mirabilia Naturæ Et Artis Libris XII. Comprehensa, Quibus pleraq;, quæ de Angelis, Dæmonibus, Hominibus, Spectris, Energumenis, Monstris, Portentis, Animalibus, Meteoris, &c. rara, arcana, curiosaq; circumferuntur, ad Veritatis trutinam expenduntur, Variis ex Historia ac Philosophia petitis disquisitionibus excutiuntur, & innumeris exemplis illustrantur. Ad Serenissimum Ac Potentissimum Principem Carolum Ludovicum, S.R.I. Electorem, &c. Cum figuris æri incisis, & Privilegio.

                 

Herbipolus [i.e., Wurzburg]: Sumptibus Johannis Andreæ Endteri & Wolffgangi Jun. Hæredum. Excudebat Jobus Hertz Typographus Herbipol, 1662

 

$7,500

Two Quarto volumes 8 X 6 ½ inches vol.I a3, b-g4, A-Z4, Aa-Zz4, Aaa-Zzz4, Aaaa-Zzzz4, Aaaaa-Ddddd4, Eeeee1.770 pages. vol. II: [ ]1, Eeeee2-4, 5F-5Z4, 6A-6Z4, 7a-7Z4, 8A-8Z4, 9A-9R4. 1583 pages.

 

First edition. Each volume is bound in matching contemporary vellum.

The first volume is dedicated to the wonders of the human race (monsters, etc.) but contains also one of the most complete treatises on demonology, including angels and ghosts. The second volume treats animals and atmospherical phenomena, richly illustrated with plates. There are of course numerous references to electricity, lightning and thunder. The text also deals extensively with meteors and other heavenly bodies, astrology, witchcraft, portents, and medicine; the section on animals is important for its information on South American mammals. An amazing encyclopedia of natural wonders, highly desired for its depictions of extraordinary figures and monstrous beings of both human and animals as well as fish, botanical or arboreal, and teratological phenomena. Caillet says this is the most complete treatise on demonology. ” PHYSICA CURIOSA is a huge, uncritical collections, mines of quaint information in which significant nuggets must be extracted from a great deal of dross. Like many of his time, Schott believed that the principles of nature and art are best revealed in their exceptions!

DeBacker-Sommervogel vol. VII col.909 no. 8;

 

 

 

902G     Thomas Shelton 1601-1650

 

Zeiglographia. or A New art of Short-writing never before published. More easie, exact, short, and speedie than any here to fore. Invented & composed By Thomas Shelton Author and teacher of ye said art Allowed by Authoritie.        

 

London: Printed by M. S. And are to be sold at the Author’s house in Bore’s Head Court by Cripple-Gate,1659.                                    $1,800

 

Octavo  5 ¾ x 3 ¾ inches. A2, B-D8, E4. check   The first edition, reported to have been printed in 1649, is not in Wing. Counting the unrecorded first, this would be the fifth edition.
“A re-issue of the 1654 edition with the same title page except for the alteration of the date to 1659.”                                  This copy is in a well-used state. The leaves are all slightly stained and dog-eared. Paper repairs have corrected many of the curling corners.It has been strengthened and bound in a fulll modern full calf in an aproprate style .              “Thomas Shelton [a] stenographer, descended from an old Norfolk family, was born in 1601. It is probable that he began life as a writing-master, and that he was teaching and studying shorthand before he was nineteen, for in 1649 he speaks of having had more than thirty years’ study and practice of the art. He produced his first book, called ‘Short Writing, the most exact method,’ in 1626, but no copy of this is known to exist. In 1630 he brought out the second edition enlarged, which was ‘sould at the professors house in Cheapside, over against Bowe church.’ He is styled ‘author and professor of the said art.’ Another edition was published in London in 1636. In February 1637-8 he published his most popular work, called ‘Tachygraphy. The most exact and compendious methode of Shorthand Swift Writing that hath ever yet beene published by any … Approved by both Universities.’ It was republished in 1642, and in the same year Shelton brought out a catechism or ‘Tutor to Tachygraphy,’ the author’s residence being then in Old Fish Street. A facsimile reprint of this booklet was published in 1889 by R. McCaskie. In 1645 he was teaching his ‘Tachygraphy’ at ‘the professors house, in the Poultry, near the Church.’ Editions of this work continued to be published down to 1710.
“Shelton, who was a zealous puritan, published in 1640, ‘A Centurie of Similies,’ and in the same year he was cited to appear before the court of high commission, but the offense with which he was charged is not specified. In 1649 his second system of stenography appeared under the title of ‘Zeiglographia, or a New Art of Short Writing never before published, more easie, exact, short, and speedie than heretofore. Invented and composed by Thomas Shelton, being his last thirty years study.’ It is remarkable that the On its appearance Shelton was still living in the Poultry, and there he probably died in or before October 1650.

The book continued to be published down to 1687. alphabet differs from the tachygraphy of 1641 in every respect excepting the letters q, r, v, and z. It is, in fact, an entirely original system.
“Many subsequent writers copied Shelton or published adaptations of his best known system of ‘tachygraphy,’ which was extensively used and highly popular. Old documents between 1640 and 1700, having shorthand signs on them, may often be deciphered by Shelton’s characters, though the practice of adding arbitrary signs sometimes proves a stumbling block. It was in this system that Pepys wrote his celebrated Diary, and not, as frequently stated, in the system erroneously attributed to Jeremiah Rich.
“An adaptation of the system to the Latin language appeared under the title of ‘Tachygraphia, sive exactissima et compendiosissima breviter scribendi methodus,’ London, 1660, 16mo. This adaptation was described and illustrated in Gaspar Schott’s ‘Technica Curiosa,’ published at Nuremberg in 1665. It was slightly modified by Charles Aloysius Ramsay, who published it in France as his own.

 

Wing S-3093,; Westby-Gibson, p. 201-202

Folger ,Huntington ,New York Public ,Washington University, Yale, ;
UK Copies: British Library, Chetham’s Library (Manchester), National Library of Scotland, Senate House Library (London)

 

893F        Sir John  Suckling                  1609-1642

Fragmenta Aurea. A Collection of all The Incomparable Peeces, Written By Sir John Svckling. And published by a Friend to perpetuate his memory. Printed by his owne Copies.           

London: Printed for Humphrey Moseley, and are to be sold at his shop, at the Signe of the Princes Armes in St Pauls Churchyard, 1646                  $6,500

Octavo    7 x 4.75 inches      A4, A-G8, H4, A-E8, F4, A-D8, A-C8, D4.   First edition..        It is bound in full contemporary sheepskin. Binding and contents are in very good shape. It is housed in a custom solander case. This is a very large copy, with many deckle edges throughout. The leaves are large and clean, with a crisp type impression. They have not been washed or pressed.        This copy has the words ‘Fragmenta Aurea’ with the ‘F’ and ‘A’ capitalized, the rest in small letters. Some copies of the first edition have ‘Fragmenta Aurea’ in all caps. This volume is divided into four parts, each with a separate title-page and pagination. The first contains a medley of poems and songs, a number of letters, and an essay on religion; the other three are plays, “Aglaura,” “The Goblins,” and “The Tragedy of Brennoralt.” At his best, Suckling writes with considerable charm; the song which begins, “Why so pale and wan fond lover” has a permanent place in the language of courtship. There is also a short “supplement” to Shakespeare”s Lucrece.
“Sir John Suckling, a Cavalier poet, Suckling’s short life was so crowded with activity that the amount of his literary output is remarkable. The son of an old Norfolk family, he seems to have taken his education none too seriously: he left Cambridge without graduating and spent a year at Gray’s Inn. His father died when Suckling was 18, and this gave him freedom to seek what adventures he pleased. He was a member of the expedition to the Ile de Re (1627), was in the Netherlands (1629-30), and served under Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden (1631-32).

He was knighted in 1630. “A staunch Royalist, Suckling took up arms on the king’s behalf in 1639 and 1640 and is believed to have been active in a plot to free the Earl of Strafford from the Tower. It was to the Parliamentary party’s advantage to make a ‘plot’ of the affair and Suckling fled to Paris, where he died in the following year—by his own hand according to John Aubrey.     “Suckling was the author of three plays—Aglaura, The Goblins, and Brennoralt—which have never been revived but which contain some good lyrics, notably ‘Why so pale and wan, fond lover?’ His best work, indeed, is in the form of short pieces, occasional verses and songs, and in the delightful ‘A Ballad upon a Wedding.’ His expression is direct and robust, reflecting to some degree his lively, pleasure-loving, and tragically short life. His first published collection was A session of the Poets (1637). (quoted from Stapleton’s Cambridge Guide to English Literature)

Wing S-6126; Pforzheimer 996; Hayward 84. ;Greg, III, 1130- 1. ; Studies in Bibliography,L. A. Beaurline and T. Clayton, “Notes on Early Editions of Fragmenta Aurea,” Studies in Bibliography 23 (1970), pp. 165-170; Grolier’s Wither to Prior, # 827 ;CBEL I, 1213. Folger. Printed books, 25:575.
 

“Truth consists of an adequation between the intellect and a thing”

930G Thomas Aquinas 1225-1274. editor Theodoricus de Susteren.

Summa de veritate celeberrimi doctoris s[an]cti Thome Aquinatis. que olim … me[n]dis scatebat. Nouissime iam per … magistru[m] nostru[m] Theodericum de Susteren co[n]uentus Coloniens[is] fratru[m] predicatoru[m] regentem … laboriose reuisa … feliciter incipit.

 

Cologne : Heinrich Quentell, 7 Mar. 1499                                      $12,500

 

Folio 10 1/2 X 8 inches 2°: A-Z6,Aa-Gg6; {signature Dd signed De}   Third Edition, the final 15th century edition.

Bound in blind-tooled calf including some blind ’title’ on the front board, full calf over wooden boards. Clasps missing, but the catch-plates are present. Light foxing, with some red and green ink dots along edges. Front pastedown shows slight signs of water damage. Occasional small red stains on text block (e.g. E3v and Q5), likely from the books’ rubricator, but otherwise a clean text block.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Summa de veritate celeberrimi doctoris sancti Thome Aquinatis…”First written around 1256, Thomas Aquinas’ “Disputed Questions on Truth” defends “the view that truth consists of an adequation between the intellect and a thing. Aquinas develops a notion of truth of being (“ontological truth”) along with truth of the intellect (what might be called “logical truth”)” (Wippel, 295)

Subjects: Truth; God’s Knowledge; Ideas; The Divine Word; Providence; Predestination; The Book of Life; The Knowledge of Angels; Communication of Angelic Knowledge; The Mind; The Teacher; Prophecy; Rapture; Faith; Higher and Lower Reason; Synderesis; Conscience; The Knowledge of the First Man in the State of Innocence; Knowledge of the Soul After Death; The Knowledge of Christ; Good; The Tendency to Good and the Will; God’s Will; Free Choice; Sensuality; The Passions of the Soul; Grace; The Justification of Sinners; and The Grace of Christ. For each topic, Aquinas reviews the topic’s Difficulties, and then responses with ‘To the Contrary’ and ‘Reply’. Aquinas concludes each topic with an “Answers to Difficulties” section, demonstrating his typical insightful worldview and readable literary style.

“Everything is a being essentially. But a creature is good not essentially but by participation. Good, therefore, really adds something to being (“Good” [U1v])

translation from   http://dhspriory.org/thomas/QDdeVer21.htm).

Goff T181; (Columbia University, Union Theological Seminary;HEHL; LC ;Massachusetts Historical Society;YUL); BMC I, 289/90; Only one Copy in The British Isles (BL)

 

930G Aquinas

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

756G    Diodorus Siculus         fl. 44 B.C.

 

Bibliothecae historicae libri VI   [a Poggio Florentino in latinum traductus]              

 

[Paris] : [Denis Roce] Venundantur in vico sancti Iacobi sub signo diui Martini. (1505-08)
Approximate date of publication from Moreau, B. Inventaire chronologique des éditions parisiennes v. 1, p. 274

 

$1,900

 

Octavo 7 X 5 inches a-v in alternate 8’s and 4’s, x 6y4;a-v8/4 x6 y4

 

Diodorus Siculus is the author of the ‘Bibliotheke’ or ‘Library,’ a universal history from mythological times to 60 B.C. Only fifteen of the original forty books survive fully (books one through five; eleven through twenty); the others are preserved in fragments.

 

Diodorus concentrates on Greece and his homeland of Sicily, until the First Punic War, when his sources for Rome become fuller. The ‘Bibliotheke’ is the most extensively preserved history by a Greek author from antiquity. For the period from the accession of Philip II of Macedon to the battle of Ipsus, when the text becomes fragmentary, it is fundamental; and it is the essential source for classical Sicilian history and the Sicilian slave rebellion of the second century B.C. For many individual events throughout Graeco-Roman history, the ‘Bibliotheke’ also sheds important light. Diodorus probably visited Egypt circa 60-56 B.C., where he began researching his history. By 56, he may have settled in Rome, completing the ‘Bibliotheke’ there around 30. He read Latin and had access to written materials in Rome. Books one through six include the geography and ethnography of the inhabited world, and its mythology and paradoxology prior to the Trojan war. Of special significance are the description of Egypt in book one; the discussion of India in book two; passages from the works of Agatharchides in book three; and the highly fragmentary Euhemeran material in book six.” (OCD)

Goff D214; Moreau I 274: 63; Renouard, Imprimeurs III 128; Pell 4264; BMC(Fr) p.135

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

fascicule XI

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

617-678-4515

 

46 Hobbs Road Princeton Ma.

01541