scottish

First editions of two influential early Hebrew grammars. William Robertson was one of the earliest writers to attempt to teach Hebrew through English to a broad readership, the title, remarkably for the period, stressing that Hebrew can be learned by ‘any ordinary capacity of either sexe’ or ‘any knowing Christian, Man or Woman. The first part, The First Gate, or the Outward Door to the Holy Tongue, Opened in English is a reissue with cancel title of A Gate or Door to the Holy Tongue (1653) intended as the first part of a projected course of Hebrew instruction and was issued here with its continuation, the first edition of The Second Gate, or the Inner Door to the Holy Tongue (1655). The first part combines a Hebrew grammar with explanations of the Hebrew text of Obadiah and of the the Decalogue (the Ten Commandments), while the much larger second part consists of a Hebrew lexicon or dictionary.
The book was published during the English Commonwealth, when interest in Hebrew studies was unusually intense among Protestant intellectuals. Many believed that recovering the original languages of Scripture was essential to religious reform, allowing ordinary people direct access to Hebrew scripture without clerical interpretation Some circles also connected Hebrew studies with hopes for the conversion of the Jews and millenarian expectations.
Robertson was born in Edinburgh and graduated MA there by 1651 before moving to London and establishing himself as a teacher of Hebrew. ‘Robertson found patrons in the puritan establishment: the member of parliament John Sadler... the lord chief baron of the exchequer, William Steele... and, most notably, his distinguished pupil and benefactor Lady Ranelagh, née Katharine Boyle, the beloved elder sister of Robert Boyle (Oxford DNB).
The first Gate has the original title page of the 1653 edition cancelled by a bifolium, as called for, with the second leaf of the bifolium bearing an endorsement of the work signed on verso by James Cranford and 21 others (all London pastors) together with the called-for additional bifolium (here bound before A2) bearing a dedication to the author's ‘respected friend’ (another reissue, Wing R1611, lacks this bifolium). cf. Wing R 1611 (alternative issue without additional bifolium) and R 1618.

A rare imprint from Lumsden’s Toy Book Manufactory in Glasgow. Includes seven tales, each with an illustration: The story of Prince Lupin; Zalmandor and Amandina; Miranda and the Royal Ram; Story of Fortunio; Zamea and Almanzon; Zalmayda and Alinzor and The Princess Frutilla. Abridged from the original version originally published by F. Newbery circa. 1773; tales 1, 3, 4 and 7 are based on tales by Madame d’Aulnoy; while tales 2, 5 and 6 are based on Madame d’ Auneuil’s Les Chevaliers errans. Roscoe & Brimmell, Lumsden, 103; Worldcat: Morgan, UCLA (defective with 5 plates only) and McGill only, not found in JISC.

Smith’s Wealth of Nations had first appeared in French in 1778-9 in an anonymous translation, followed by a second by Jean-Louis Blavet in 1781. Roucher’s translation first appeared in four volumes in 1790-1. Jean-Antoine Roucher (1745–94) was a poet from Montpellier, friend and admirer of J.-J. Rousseau. He welcomed the Revolution, but was arrested in the Terror and went to the guillotine. Rochedieu 304; Goldsmiths 14106; Kress B, 1986. K. E. Carpenter, The Dissemination of The Wealth of Nations in French and in France, New York, 2002, pp. 85-87.

First edition of this Covenanter propaganda pamphlet of the era of the Bishops’ Wars, purporting to offer intelligence as to the parlous and divisive state of the English nation, particularly the English forces, who the author ‘L.D.’ claims to have infiltrated. It is full of fascinating gossip and opinion, albeit mainly fictional, sometimes in verse form.

‘What will you fight for a Booke of Common Prayer?
What will you fight for a Court of High Commission?.... [English]
Wee fight to have our true Religion stand:
Wee fight to keepe our Lawes unvilified...’ [Scots].

The spy-narrator recounts various sorties into England. At Canterbury he visits Becket’s tomb and scrawls on the cathedral wall, hears a sermon at Lambeth, visits Guy Fawkes’s house and reports a dissolute Whitehall, with the King having fled. Wing L10 (another edition of 22 pages is L11); Thomason E.153[22].

A charming book-form trinket box, a ‘blook’ of unknown manufacture, but with other examples known to have been marketed in London in the late nineteenth-century. The monogram reads ‘M.S.’ and the reference is probably to Mary Queen of Scots, given the all-over thistle pattern. Mary was executed in 1587 and so it is possible that these boxes were in some way marketed at the time of the three-hundredth anniversary.

A RARE FRENCH BROADSIDE ADVERTISING THE VIRTUES OF ‘SCOTCH PILLS’ OR ‘GRANA ANGELICA’ invented by the seventeenth-century Edinburgh physician Patrick Anderson, a medical treatment which remained popular in Scotland, England and France well into the nineteenth century. The long text in twelve chapters outlines the supposed virtues of the pills as a cure for almost any complaint. This French version imitates the English broadsides of the second half of the eighteenth century (there are several in ESTC) which themselves mimicked the form of Royal proclamations with woodcut arms at the head. It also reproduces the purported trademark of Anderson and his successor Isabelle Inglish, which seems to have been pirated as often as the pills themselves.

‘Some time after 1625 Anderson was appointed physician to Charles I. In 1635 he published in Edinburgh Grana angelica, a treatise in Latin which puffed his mild aperient pills, made with aloes, colocynth, and gamboge, and pronounced a sovereign remedy for cleansing the system after carouses. Anderson claimed to have brought the formula of the pill back from a trip to Venice about 1603’. (Oxford DNB).

First edition. An account of the author’s ‘pilgrimage’ to the Palace of Holyrood in Edinburgh, where French monarch Charles X had taken refuge (for the second time) following his deposition by the July Revolution in 1830. The object of his pilgrimage was not so much Charles himself, but his young nephew Henri, son of the Duke and Duchess de Berri, named regent of French in exile. A detailed report of this extraordinary young man is given, together with the striking silhouette portrait. The ‘Récit’ of the meeting is followed by various reflections on the author’s return journey through London, and then by a ‘rêve’ in which he dreams of a return to Paris and restoration of the monarchy under a young king Henri.

First edition in French of Dunallan; or, Know what you judge (1825); the last published (but first written) work of this once much-read Presbyterian Scottish novelist (1782-1825). ‘Grace Kennedy's novels (at least eight) were all published anonymously and rapidly in the early 1820s, and met with considerable success, being reissued late into the nineteenth century...’ (Oxford DNB). Worldcat: NLS, Queen’s Public Library (NY) and Penn only outside continental Europe.

A very rare spurious edition of these erotic and bawdy poems by Burns and his circle, first published in 1799 (of which edition only 2 copies are known to survive). The title-page is headed ‘Not for maids, ministers or striplings’. The Roy collection of Robert Burns contains several similar reprints to ours (including our issue) each with differing title-pages giving ‘1827’.

‘Shepherds I have got the clap,
Stroking of my Anna;
My time’s filled up, oh sad mishap,
With taking salts and senna.
I for her King’s Place forsook,
Where girls I had past telling;
But now my pipe’s turned to a crook,
My b—, how they’re hanging...’ Roy collection of Robert Burns, p. 141 b.

First editions in French of the two novels Old Mortality and The Black Dwarf (1816) from Scott’s Tales of my Landlord, only the second volume of Scott’s fictional works to appear in France (after Guy Mannering). Pseudonymously issued, both in Britain and France, it was listed under the pseudonym ‘Cleisbotham’ in the Bibliographie de France. This is the first of Auguste-Jean-Baptiste Defauconpret’s translations and marks the beginning of Scott’s celebrity in France: ‘the first considerable success’ (Dargan). It is also one of the most influential of Scott’s works in France. ‘Defauconpret’s Les Puritains d’Ecosse gave Scott his first French success and first major European breakthrough. Although partially obscured by Ivanhoe and Quentin Durward, it remained for many Frenchmen the Scott novel Par excellence. Stendhal is among many to call Scott not ‘the author of Waverly’ but ‘the author of Old Mortality’ Often critical of Scott, Stendhal remained an unswerving admirer of Old Mortality’ (Barnaby). It was also frequently alluded to by Balzac throughout La Comédie Humaine.

On the strength of its immediate success, the publisher, Nicolle (the predecessor of Gosselin) engaged Defauconpret to translate subsequent novels as they appeared. Bearing in mind its tremendous influence on French European literature, the French edition is remarkably rare. WorldCat lists copies at Bn, NLS, Universities of Edinburgh, Leipzig and Princeton. E. Preston Dargan, ‘Scott and the French Romantics’, PMLA, Vol. 49, No. 2 (Jun 1934), 2 & 3 (May 3); Paul Barnaby, ‘Another Tale of Old Mortality: The Translations of Auguste-Jean-Baptiste Defauconpret in the French Reception of Scott.’ in Pittock, ed., The Reception of Sir Walter Scott in Europe, 2006; Garside, Raven and Schöwerling, The English Novel 1770-1829, 1816: 53.

Sole edition, privately printed, of this collection of a group of letters between the famous beauty and literary patron and the Gordon family accountant. Despite Jane Gordon’s early success in society at Edinburgh and London (she was an important early patron of Burns), her estrangement from her husband 1805 brought financial distress. Forced to live in hotel rooms in London she was in constant dispute with her husband over money. These rather pitiful letters, berating her husband for his excesses and pleading for money, were published here for the first time, prefixed by an attractive photographic reproduction of the portrait of the Duchess by Reynolds. OCLC: no US copies.

Scarce first edition of this work on the medieval Scottish church, inscribed by the author: ‘James T. Gibson Craig esqe with the author’s compliments.’ Nineteenth-century author and historian, Joseph Robertson (1810-66) wrote widely on the history of Scotland; this pamphlet preceded by some years his seminal work on medieval ecclesiastical history, Concilia Scotiae (1866), a two-volume edition of the pre-Reformation Scottish church’s canon law and constitutions.