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![[BOEMUS, Johannes.] WATERMAN, William, translator.](/photos/446/main/446.jpg "[BOEMUS, Johannes.] WATERMAN, William, translator.")
The book is important as a summary of anthropological knowlege of races, traits and customs of Africa and Asia from the early years of the age of discovery. A translation of Book 1 only by William Prat had appeared in 1554 (STC 3196.5, BL only) and text was reprinted in the 1812 edition of Hakluyt’s voyages. The dedication to Henry Fitzalan, 12th Earl of Arundel promises a translation of Book 3 (on Europe) but this never appeared. Very little is known of the author. ‘Born in Aub in Franconia and writing between 1515 and 1520, Boemus was a contemporary of Copernicus and of Sir Thomas More; he was an elder member of the generation of Jean Bodin and Giovanni Botero; and if still living in the sixth decade of the sixteenth century, an old man when Bacon and Shakespeare were born’ (Hodgen). His work was evidently well-read in Europe to judge from the various early editions and translations. His descriptions of Africa, include Ethiopia, Egypt and Carthaginia and are based largely on ancient sources while the Asian sections are devoted to the Middle East and India. At the end is printed a ‘treatise of Josephus conteyning the ordres, and Lawes of the Jewes commune wealthe’ a translation of book 4, chapter 8 of Antiquitates Judicae, the first appearance of part of thisJosephus’s text in English. Provenance: foliation in an early hand. Several short quotations in Latin from Horace, Ovid and elsewhere in a neat late 16th-century hand, vertically down outer margins, presumably by the Francis Smith who signs one of them, including on: (O6v) “I fire, i freese, I burne, i broyle. I starve i frett i fume / I live and die. i die and live, in langor I consume.” A direct quote from A Most lamentable and tragicall historie, containing the outrageous and horrible tyranny which a Spanish gentlewoman named Violenta executed upon her lover Didaco, beacuse he espouthed another being first betrothed to her (London, 1576, leaf D2r): adapted into verse by Thomas Achelley from William Painter’s translation of one of Bandello’s Novelles in The Palace of Pleasure. Achelley’s poem recorded in one copy only (STC 1256.4, Bodley, lacking leaf A4). Violenta became, probably via Painter, a speechless character (entering only once) in Shakespeare’s ‘All’s Well that ends Well.’ (T6v): “Dives dives non omni tempore Vives / Da tua, dum tua sunt, post mortem tunc tua sunt. ffranciscus Smyth.” Later provenance: Henry Cunliffe, bookplate and his notes on first flyleaf; probably the Lancashire dialect lexicographer who collected Shakespearean sources and early books on the English language; bought from Boone of New Bond Street for £4 in 1859 [a letter from Boone concerning the incorrect catchword on T7v tipped in at end]; by descent to Rolf, 2nd Baron Cunliffe, sale, Sotheby’s 13 May 1946, lot 46, £38 to Maggs, Catalogue 817/334 (1953) £52/10. see full details...
