Description:
New Holland Publishers (Nz) Ltd. Paperback. GOOD. Spine creases, wear to binding and pages from reading. May contain limited notes, underlining or highlighting that does affect the text. Possible ex library copy, will have the markings and stickers associated from the library. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included.
Certaine Learned And Elegant Works Of the Right Honourable Fulke Lord Brooke, Written in his Youth, and familiar Exercise with Sir Philip Sidney. by [GREVILLE] (Fulke, Lord Brooke) - 1633
by [GREVILLE] (Fulke, Lord Brooke)
Certaine Learned And Elegant Works Of the Right Honourable Fulke Lord Brooke, Written in his Youth, and familiar Exercise with Sir Philip Sidney.
by [GREVILLE] (Fulke, Lord Brooke)
- Used
- first
The seuerall Names of which Workes the Following page doth declare. London, Printed by E[lizabeth]. P[urslowe]. for Henry Seyle, and are to Be sold at his shop at the signe of the Tygers Head in St. Paules Church-yard, 1633. Pott folio in fours (so watermarked: v. note); gatherings a - c (pp. 1-22 [?plus prelims.]) cancelled as in all copies; cancel title-page, a single inset leaf (v. note); final blank (conjugate with Rr1); pp.[ii]+23 - 82+1 - 35+38 [on verso of 35!] - 298; [-]1, d - i, k4, l2, D - I, K - T, V, X - Z, Aa - Ii, Kk - Qq4, Rr6; twentieth century green polished calf, ruled and tooled blind on sides and spine, lettered gilt on spine; cream laid end-papers, the old front end-paper preserved (v.note). Slight mottled fading to calf; small old ink-stain affecting top quarter inch (maximum) of part of blank upper margin of first few leaves, and similar depth spot on fore-margin of two other leaves, with small overspill onto a few adjacent edges; small old shelf-mark on blank lower margin of title-page and final page of text, and related library ‘duplicate’ stamp on blank lower margin of verso of title-page and blank fore-margin of first leaf of text, ink ownership inscription on blank extreme inner margin of same leaf, all these relating the the Advocates Library, Edinburgh; ownership inscription between rules at upper margin of first leaf of text (v.note), and ms. notes added to the dramatis personæ page of ‘Mustapha’, recording the relationship of the characters; insignificant tear in paper just below margin of G3 almost certainly a fault from printing, and without loss of text; small hole in blank lower-margin of L3 and blank fore-margin of Qq2, both original paper flaws; several leaves and conjugate pairs of leaves embrowned (v. note); in general, nonetheless, a nice copy. From the Advocates Library, with their shelf-marks, ownership inscription, and Duplicate stamps dating from c.1818, together with the ownership inscription of the noted book collector and friend of Sir Walter Scott, reading: ‘James Maidment Advocate 1818’ at the head of the first leaf of text, and a note on the final blank possibly also in his holograph; subsequently in the library of book collector and bibliographer Eric Quayle, whose Zennor bookplate is on the front pastedown together with some pencilled notes, there and on the facing end-paper, in his hand. Laid onto the preserved front end-paper is a slip bearing Fulke Greville’s signature, and an example of the armorial bookplate of a later Fulke Lord Brooke, together with an old inked note recording the fact, and a couple of quotations from Charles Lamb relating to Fulke Greville, in an old but unidentified hand. Born in 1554, and a friend of Sir Philip Sidney, with whom he attended Shrewsbury School, Greville represented Warwick in Parliament, held various minor posts, was Treasurer of the Navy from 1598 to 1604, and Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1614 to 1622. He received a knighthood in 1603 and a peerage in 1621. In 1628, a few days after the murder of Buckingham, he was stabbed by a servant (for whom he had provided an annuity) and died some weeks later. As Douglas Bush remarks (‘English Literature in the Earlier Seventeenth Century, 1600-1660’, O.U.P., 1962, pp. 97-100): “Greville seeks to recall men from sinful ‘pride of minde’ to humility and obedience, to re-establish the sovereignty of religion, reason and order in the individual soul and in society.” His “normal utterance is of a massive realistic plainness fitted for the sober and penetrating thought that is his main concern. Greville, a public man and a thinker, grappled with the problems of sovereignty, resistance, natural and positive law.... Having the realistic toughness of a courtier and statesman, and a starkly Calvinistic conviction of human depravity, he is too experienced, philosophical, and sceptical to rest in either cynical expediency or humanistic idealism (though he has his Stoic supports and is, in his world, a kind of modern Seneca). The contradictions Greville sees in the nature and destiny of man are unresolvable”- a fact reflected in his most famous lines, from the Chorus Sacerdotum of ‘Mustapha’ (p.159 in the present volume): “Oh wearisome Condition of Humanity! / Borne under one Law, to another bound: / Vainely begot, and yet forbidden vanity; / Created sicke, commanded to be sound: / What meaneth Nature by these diverse Lawes? / Passion and reason, selfe-division cause”.In Bush’s expressive phrase, Greville is a “disillusioned fundamentalist”. More than this, however, he is a very real poet, noted especially for his lyric poetry, his lyrics being, in the words of F.E. Schelling:”remarkable in their frequent grace of fancy, uncommon wit, originality, and real music of expression.” Replete as it is with oddities, this volume is a difficult book to catalogue. In the present copy, in addition to the discontinuities of pagination noted above, pp.134 and 135 are misnumbered 136 and 137; p.209 is misnumbered 206; 215, 115; 242, 244; 247, 245; 251, 241; 254, 248; 264, 164; and 280, 290. The collation given above is correct for all known copies, and the missing leaves are assumed to have contained the ‘Treatie on Religion’, which it may not at that moment have been safe to publish, but how many leaves were represented by gatherings a to c is a matter of doubt, particularly in view of the fact that the second alphabet starts with D not A. (That this coincides with the start of a new sequence of numbering at ‘1’ does not wholly forbid us to rule out further suppressions, either of introductory material or separately numbered work). There is room, however, in the lower-case sequence alone, assuming each gathering to have no more than the usual four leaves, for the 22 missing pages plus two others: which we might, in the absence of other evidence, hypothesise to have been the original title-page, with the Contents on its verso, as here. That the present title-page was not that originally planned is evidenced by the fact that the ‘Names’ of the ‘Workes’ included on its verso calls for nothing before the ‘Treatie of Humane Learning’ which starts on p.23, and the presence in this copy of the final blank, which might have been used to print this leaf, suggests that the suppression of the text of the first twenty-two pages was not decided upon until the printing of the whole had been completed, and in that case the title-page here must be a cancel. Further, there is a problem with the paper, which is printed on at least three (possibly four) different stocks, and may suggest the presence of further cancels. The blank has the very clear watermark of an ornate drinking ‘pot’, and it and its conjugate are slightly thicker than the average of the volume. The watermark of the paper used for the generality of the text is badly impressed, and though it may very probably be a ‘pot’ it could just conceivably be a fools-cap. Both of these paper stocks tend to retain a creamy whiteness. The third paper stock has a much larger watermark, a simpler, pot-bellied, ‘pot’, but is very inferior to the others in quality and tends very decidedly to embrown (although not to become brittle). It occurs spasmodically through the volume, always in conjugate pairs of leaves. It (or it and another) is here present as f2 and f3, E2 and E3, K2 and K3, R2 and R3, Ee1 and Ee4, Ff1 and Ff4, Ii2 and Ii3, Kk2 and Kk3, Mm2 and Mm3. STC 12361; Grolier Langland to Wither, 26; Pforzheimer 437; Hayward 68; Block, Key Books, p.57; NCBEL, I, 1057. Apart from ‘Mustapha’ (1609), much of the contents of the present volume is here first published.
All books listed by Robert Temple are first editions unless otherwise stated.
- Bookseller Independent bookstores (GB)
- Book Condition Used
- Date Published 1633