1. 690J Alexander, Sir William, Earl of Stirling 1567-1640

Recreations VVith The Mvses. By William Earle of Sterline.         [including]                                                                                                   Dooms-Day, Or, The Great Day of Ivdgement. By William, Earle of Sterline.

London: Printed by Tho. Harper, 1637.   $2,500

Folio 277 x 177 mm Signatures: A⁶ (A1 blank) B-X⁶ Y⁸, [π]² Aa-Dd⁶ Ee⁸ (Ee8blank). (The first and last blanks may be the originals, it is unclear.) This copy lacks the portrait frontispiece, which was probably never included, see below.  Greg is doubtful that it was printed to accompany the book.  Bound c.19th century sprinkled calf boards, modern rebacking with new morocco spine label lettered in gilt and raised bands. Later (1795) engraved facsimile portrait frontispiece.  A tidy copy. First Edition.

Collected verse of a leading Scottish statesman, courtier, scholar, and poet. Appearing here for the first time is a considerable fragment of a sacred epic called “Jonathan.”  The poems of the Earl of Stirling were praised by such contemporaries as Drayton, and were read with care by Milton. 

           “Although nearly every title included in this collection had been previously published, they are here completely revised, and in some cases practically newly written. Students of philology have found the successive editions of Alexander’s works very useful for this reason that they progressively exhibit a text in which provincialisms and vulgarisms were conscientiously weeded. This edition presents the final revision of all this poet’s work which he wished to survive, as well as the first printing of his ‘Jonathan.’” (Pforzheimer)

“The courtly Scottish poet, Sir William Alexander, afterwards earl of Stirling, […] deferred the publication of his sonneteering experiment— ‘the first fancies of his youth’ —till 1604. Then he issued, under the title ‘Aurora,’ one hundred and six sonnets, interspersed, on the Italian and French pattern, with a few songs and elegies. Alexander is not a poet of deep feeling. But he has gifts of style which raise him above the Elizabethan hacks. Another Scottish poet, whose muse developed in the next generation, William Drummond of Hawthornden, began his literary career as a sonneteer on the Elizabethan pattern just before queen Elizabeth died. [Drummond contributed a short commendatory poem to the ‘Dooms-day.’]” (The Cambridge History of English Literature then goes on to class Alexander and Drummond with Fulke Greville. Quoted from volume iii, page 304.)

“William Alexander was born in the village of Menstrie in Clackmannanshire. The family home of Menstrie Castle had been built in about 1560, possibly on the site of an earlier castle owned by the family. As a very junior member of the aristocracy, the young Alexander was appointed tutor to the Earl of Argyll and spent time touring with him abroad. He subsequently became a gentleman usher to Prince Charles, the son of James VI. 

When the royal court moved to London in 1603 on James’ accession to the English crown as James I, William Alexander moved with it, becoming Gentleman of the Privy Chamber and Master of the Household.

Increasingly known for his poetry and his rhymed tragedies, Alexander assisted the King in the preparation of “The Psalms of King David, translated by King James”, and was later appointed by the King to be their sole printer. In 1614 he was knighted. In 1621 James VI/I granted Alexander vast tracts of land in North America. He christened his new lands “Nova Scotia” and set to work colonising them with Scots to whom he sold hereditary baronetcies (on behalf of the King) at £150 each, with considerable success.” Copyright Undiscovered Scotland © 2000-2023

In 1626, James appointed Sir William to the post of Secretary for Scotland, with the power to govern north of the border on the King’s behalf. In 1628 Sir William was granted the lands and barony of Menstrie. In 1630 Sir William became Viscount of Stirling and Lord Alexander of Tullibody, and in 1633 he was further promoted through the ranks of the aristocracy to become the 1st Earl of Stirling. This may have been a consolation prize awarded to him by James VI/I, because in 1632 much of Nova Scotia had been lost to the French. In the process much of Sir William’s fortune was lost and he spent the remainder of his life in reduced circumstances, despite continuing to hold various government appointments. Not so reduced, however, that he couldn’t afford to relocated his home to the newly renovated and very grand Argyll’s Lodging in Stirling.

Sir William continue to write throughout his life. He specialised in “closet dramas” not intended to be performed publicly, and is remembered particularly for a series of classical tragedies entitled “Croesus”, “Darius”, “The Alexandrean”, and “Julius Caesar”. A number of editions of his collected plays were published between 1604 and 1637.

Alexander’s grandest work is an epic poem describing the end of the world, Doomes-day. It was first published in four books (Edinburgh, 1614), and later in twelve (in the collected edition of Alexander’s work printed in London, 1637). The poem, which contains almost 1,400 eight-line stanzas in total, begins with a synopsis of world history in the First ‘Hour’, then provides long catalogues of the creatures, battle dead, pagans, monarchs, sinners, biblical characters and, finally, members of the heavenly host who will appear at the Final Judgement.[17] Alexander’s method was indebted to the French Protestant poet Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas; Drummond acknowledged the kinship in the title of a manuscript poem Sur les oeuvres poetiques de Guillaume Alexandre, Sieur De Menstre. “”William Drummond of Hawthornden (1585–1649)”. Catalogue of English Literary Manuscripts. Retrieved 5 November 2014.”

STC 347;  Pforzheimer #5;. ESTC S106640STC (2nd ed.), 347; Greg, III, p. 1010-1;  Arber iv, 371; Huntington C.L., #4; Huth catalogue iv, 1401; Greg, English Printed Drama,III,1010-1011. Hoe catalogue, lot number 3.”,”11/17/97″,”According to Pforzheimer the portrait frontispiece, “by Marshall, of William Alexander, is not frequently met with, we can only trace six other examples, and [it] was apparently not prepared when the book first came from the press for it does not occur in large paper dedication copies.”

cƒ. “https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/alexander_william_1577_1640_1E.html