415J #779 . Anon.), Robert Waring, 1614-1658. Translated by John Norris of Bemerton (1657–1711)

Effigies amoris in English: or the picture of love unveil’d.

Oxford: London : Printed for James Good in Oxford, and sold by J. Nut [i.e. Nutt, London], 1701.                                                                         Price: $1,100

Duodecimo; A-E12, F11 (A1, half title lacking ) Bound in modern full calf. Dedication signed: Phil-icon-erus, i.e. John Norris, who translated the original Latin work of Robert Waring.
With a half-title and a postscript. Not a reissue of the 1682 edition.(this is second Norris edition)

This charming and thought-provoking little volume occupies an unusual place between literature, moral philosophy, and the history of ideas. First published in Latin as Amoris Effigies in 1649, Robert Waring’s meditation on love proved remarkably successful, passing through multiple editions over the course of the seventeenth century. Yet the enduring appeal of the work is perhaps best demonstrated by the fact that John Norris of Bemerton (1657–1711), one of the most important English philosophical writers of his generation, considered the existing English translation inadequate and undertook a new version of the text himself.

Norris , A fellow of All Souls, correspondent of Mary Astell, admirer of Malebranche, and one of the most significant heirs of the Cambridge Platonist tradition, he occupies an important position in the intellectual history of late Stuart England. In his introduction he praised Waring’s “sweetness of fancy, neatness of style, and lusciousness of hidden sense,” qualities he sought to preserve in a translation that transformed what might otherwise have remained a clever neo-Latin exercise into a work accessible to English readers interested in the relationship between reason, affection, virtue, and human happiness.

The result is far more than a conventional treatise on courtship. Waring and Norris treat love as a philosophical problem. Love appears as a sovereign force demanding obedience and sacrifice, yet one that must ultimately be governed by judgment rather than passion. “This is the supreme Office of Reason,” writes Norris’s Waring, “to make a right choice of Disposition and Conditions; to choose a Companion with whom we are sure to live with more delight than with our selves.” True affection is presented not as a loss of self-command but as a disciplined union of minds and characters, in which constancy, patience, and virtue transform two persons into one moral partnership.

Such themes explain the work’s longevity. The book belongs simultaneously to the worlds of Restoration literature, neo-Latin humanism, moral philosophy, and early modern theories of the passions. It stands at the intersection of several important intellectual traditions: the classical conception of friendship, Christian moral teaching, and the Platonic understanding of love that remained influential among English religious and philosophical writers throughout the later seventeenth century.

Although Waring’s original Latin text enjoyed numerous editions, copies of the present Norris translation are encountered only infrequently in commerce. Today the work offers a fascinating glimpse into how educated readers of the Restoration and early Enlightenment periods understood the relationship between love, reason, virtue, and happiness.

Far from a conventional discourse on courtship, The Picture of Love Unveil’d treats love as a force of perpetual renewal, a motion of the soul “resembling the Motions of Heavenly Bodies.” It is this philosophical dimension, as much as its literary elegance, that explains the work’s continued appeal and Norris’s decision to present it anew to an English audience.

ESTC N1243.

Some wonderful quotes for this book:

The Answer of R. W. to his Friend, importunately desiring to know what LOVE might be?

I Acknowledge the wanton Ty∣ranny of imperious Love, that is always requiring the most diffi∣cult Trials of the Affections. Now though it be a kinde of an Hercu∣lean Labour it self to Love, considering those severe duties, those toyls, and hazards appendant to it; as if Cruelty were its sole delight: Nevertheless we believe it reasonable, what names so∣ever we have given to Love, that he should exercise his Soveraignty, which is certainly very great and puissant; and by the Severity of his Commands, that he should augment the glory of his high Rule, and our obedient Sub∣mission.

“However, this is the supreme Office of Reason, to make a right choice of Disposition and Conditions; to choose a Companion with whom we are sure to live with more delight than with our selves; whose judgment we may be sure to follow as our own: or else to stay till we can finde a proper Ob∣ject of Love. Then also so to love, like one who is guided by Judgment, not carried away by Passion; like one so far from ceasing, that he is always beginning to Love. This is to joyn Patience with Constancy. This is to receive the Idea more fairly imprinted in the Minde, than in Wax, and to preserve more stedfastly. ‘Tis the Of∣fice of Vertue, to determine upon one measure of wishing; to covet a dispo∣sition and inclination like his own, through all the changes of Fortune; and so to make two of one, that they may act the same person.”

The “Amoris Effigies (anon.), London, 1649, 1664, 1668, 1671. In 1680 appeared a loose English translation, by a Robert Nightingale, which deviated in many points from the Latin original. John Norris, under the pseudonym Phil-iconerus, published a fresh translation, London, 1682; 2nd edit., 1701; In his introduction, Norris wrote of Waring’s “sweetness of fancy, neatness of style, and lusciousness of hidden sense”.
Waring also wrote Latin verses, including in Jonsonus Virbius [playwright Ben Jonson.](1639), reprinted in the 1668 and subsequent editions of the Amoris Effigies, under the title of Carmen Lapidorium.” (DNB).

ESTC N1243. https://datb.cerl.org/estc/N1243

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