"one of the representative books of the sixteenth-century"
BUCHANAN, George.
Paraphrasis Psalmorum Davidis poetica multo quam antehac castigatior; auctore Georgio Buchanano, Scoto, po'tarum nostri saeculi facilè principe. Adnotata sunt argumenta, & carminum genera. Accesserunt duae eiusdem Buchanani tragoediae sacrae: Jephthes, & Baptistes sive Calumnia.
London: Richard Field, 1592.
16mo (96 × 60 mm.), pp. 490, [1]. Woodcut printer's device to title, large vignette to verso of final leaf, decorative initials, text mainly in italics. Occasional browning or staining, mainly to leaves at front and rear (including title), small strip torn from margin of pp. 447-8 with loss of one or two letters at the line-openings of p. 448, cropped at head, affecting some headlines, pagination and annotation, but not the text. Numerous early annotations, apparently systematically overwritten (with ?random letters) at an early date to obscure their text. Early twentieth-century blindtooled sprinkled calf, panelled spine, gilt. A very good copy.
A rare London pocket edition of Buchanan's Latin verse paraphrases of the Psalms: "The work which more than any other has secured to [Buchanan] his eminent place among modern Latin poets. Buchanan's translation of the Psalms may fairly be considered one of the representative books of the sixteenth century, expressing, as it does, in consummate form, the conjunction of piety and learning which was the ideal of the best type of humanist" (Cambridge History of English and American Literature).Buchanan, though a Scotsman, travelled widely on the continent. The two plays, Jephthe and Baptistes, which also appear in our edition were composed at Bordeaux during a spell of teaching at the newly founded Collège de Guyenne (where Montaigne was among Buchanan's pupils). The Paraphrasis was begun at Coimbra (Portugal) where Buchanan had been teaching at the time of the Inquisition. He had gone to teach there in 1547, only to find the university soon overrun with Jesuits who observed his every movement and confined him to a nearby monastery to reform his humanist tendency towards satire (and the eating of meat in Lent). The Paraphrasis was the product of his penance: an unmistakeable triumph of humanist piety and scholarship. The work was dedicated to Mary Queen of Scots (and the dedication is repeated in our Elizabethan edition) who appointed Buchanan tutor to her son, the future James VI. It was first printed by the Estiennes in 1566, but was also printed in England in 1580 and 1583.
Durkan 150. STC 3985. According to ESTC this is the rarest of the sixteenth-century London editions: it is is located at the British Library, John Rylands and Bodley in the UK and Trinity College (Hartford), Folger (2 copies) and University of Vermont in the US.
£875.00
US$1737.57*
* Given as a guide only. Based on an exchange rate of £1 = US$1.985799 for the day 25 July 2008 but liable to fluctuate.
25 July 2008