Justin Croft : Rare & Fine Antiquarian Books - Specialist in antiquarian books, especially in the field of literature, history, social sciences, religion, art and architecture, science and medicine

The first edition to include Buchanan's play Jephthes, printed very shortly after the first edition of 1565/6. "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 play Jephthes (first printed 1554) which also appears in our edition was 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 who appointed Buchanan tutor to her son, the future James VI.