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FOURTH EDITION, 1599.

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lumber-room. All were in good condition in contemporary
vellum binding, and in many cases the leaves were uncut.
But the most interesting feature of this treasure-trove was
the vellum-bound volume in perfect condition which sheltered
within its covers Leake's edition of Venus and Adonis dated
1599, a copy of
The Passionate Pil-
grim published in
the same year, and
copy of Epi-
grammes and Elegies
by I. D. and C. M.
At Middleborough.
(The last pamphlet
consisted of epi-
grams by Sir John
Davies, and cer-
tain of Ovid's Ele-
gies translated by
Christopher Mar-
lowe,and was issued
in London-not,
as stated, at Middle-
borough in all
probability
1598.) This rare
volume of tripli-

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in

cate interest was
sold in the summer
of 1895, by Sir
Charles Isham, to

Mr. Christie Miller of Britwell Court, Maidenhead, together with much else that was valuable in the Lamport treasuretrove. The 1599 edition of Venus and Adonis, which is now at Britwell, measures 4" x 3"; the signatures run as before in eights from A to Diij; and it consists of twenty-seven leaves. The text follows that of 1596, but there are some

1599.

ignorant variations of spelling. The ornaments on the title- FOURTH page altogether differ from those employed by Harrison and EDITION, Field, and suggest that the printer whom Leake employed was Peter Short. A typed facsimile, limited to an edition of 131 copies, was published by Messrs. Sotheran & Co. in

1870.

1600 ?

copy, 1600 ?

Of a succeeding issue, only a single copy is again known FIFTH to be extant. This copy, which lacks a title-page, is in EDITION, Malone's collection at the Bodleian Library (Malone 327). No. VIII. It is bound up with a copy of Shakespeare's Lucrece, which Bodleian has the imprint 'printed by I. H. for Iohn Harison' and the (Malone) date 1600. The volume was a gift from Dr. Farmer to Malone, who collated it before March 24, 1785, with the 1596 edition, and drew up a manuscript list of thirty-nine changes, which is extant, but is not exhaustive.' A manuscript titlepage which has been supplied to this edition of the Venus, merely copies the Lucrece imprint (printed by I. H. for Iohn Harison,' 1600). The date may be right, but the printer's and publisher's names are errors. John Harrison's connexion with the Venus and Adonis had ceased with the transfer of the copyright in 1597 to William Leake. The edition was doubtless published by Leake. It is of textual importance, for although it follows the typography of 1599 there have been deliberately introduced several new misreadings, which are adopted in all subsequent editions of the seventeenth century. The measurements are 4" x 20" The signatures (A-D iij) in eights, and the number of leaves, which are unpaged, twenty-seven, are the same as in previous

issues.

1602.

A new-the sixth-edition was issued by Leake in 1602. SIXTH It seems to have been set up, with reasonable care, from the EDITION, text of 1600. The curious printer's device, in a square scrolled frame on the title-page, shows a winged and laurelled skull surmounted by an hour-glass in front of an open book, inscribed I liue to dy. I dy to liue': beneath the skull is a globe showing the Western hemisphere and the sea with a ship. 'See No. I, p. 57, note 1.

SIXTH EDITION, 1602.

The device was probably that of Humphry Lownes, who seems to have printed the volume for Leake. An edition of Robert Southwell's Saint Peter's Complaint, which was probably printed

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in the same year (1602), although the title-page is undated, bears the same device and has the imprint, Printed by H[umphry] L[ownes] for William Leake.' Three copies

survive-respectively in the Bodleian Library, the British SIXTH Museum, and the Earl of Macclesfield's library.

An alteration was made in the type of the title-page after a few copies were struck off: for the comma which originally followed the word 'vulgus' in the middle of the first line of the Latin quotation, there was substituted a colon, which figures in two of the three extant copies of the edition. The copy in the British Museum alone has the comma on the titlepage. There is no other distinction in the type of the three copies.'

EDITION, 1602.

Museum

The British Museum copy of the 1602 edition, with No. IX. the unique comma' title-page, measures 53" x 3". The British ownership can be traced some distance back. It was сору, 1602. bought by the commentator, George Steevens, at the sale of Dr. Chauncey's library on April 15, 1790, for eight shillings. James Bindley paid f IIS. 6d. for it at the Steevens sale on May 21, 1800. The price leapt up at Bindley's sale in 1819 to £42, when it was bought by Mr. Strettel of Canonbury. At Strettel's sale, in 1841, the bidding only reached £26 5s. od. and no sale was then effected, but George Daniel soon afterwards acquired it for £40 8s. 6d. Daniel sold the copy to the British Museum at a slightly higher price. There are manuscript notes, dealing with the successive changes of ownership, in the hands of Steevens (who knew of no other copy), Bindley, and Daniel. On Sig. B 1 (line (line 303) is the following good manuscript note in a seventeenth-century hand :-To bid the wind a bace. Base or Bace-a sport used among country people called Prison-Base in which some persue to take others

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The Cambridge editors vaguely credit each of the three copies with typographical peculiarities, and treat each as representative of a different edition, thus attributing to Leake three editions in 1602. A comparison of the three does not support this allegation. A careful collation of the Earl of Macclesfield's copy, which was kindly lent to the British Museum by the Countess of Macclesfield for the purpose, with the British Museum copy, shows that the two are at all points identical in type, save for the punctuation on the title-page. The paper of the Bodleian copy is perhaps of a quality slightly inferior to that of the Museum and Macclesfield copies.

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SIXTH
EDITION,
1602.

No. X.
Bodleian

Prisoners—and therefore To bid the wind a Base, is by using the Language of yt sport To take the wind Prisoner.'

The Bodleian copy of 1602 (8°. M 9, Art B S) bears the autograph signature of Robert Burton. It has been in the copy, 1602. Library since 1640, when it was forwarded in conformity with the clause of Burton's will: If I have any books the University Library hath not, let them take them.'' This copy was the first edition of the poem to pass the portals of the Bodleian Library. That Burton was well acquainted with Venus and Adonis is clear from a mnemonic quotation of four lines in his Anatomy of Melancholy (1621). Burton's copy is now bound up with five other tracts, only one of which was his property. The Venus comes second in the volume. Some of the leaves are uncut.3 The measurements are 5" × 33".

No. XI.

copy, 1602.

The third surviving copy of the 1602 edition is in the Macclesfield library of the Earl of Macclesfield at Shirburn Castle, Oxfordshire. It has, like the Bodleian copy, the colon title-page. It is a perfect copy in admirable preservation, and has been strongly bound in recent years by Hatton of Manchester. It was probably acquired by the first Earl of Macclesfield, the Lord Chancellor, in the early part of the eighteenth century. The measurements are 5"x3". There

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Macray's Annals of the Bodleian, 1890, p. 90.

2 Burton quotes the four lines from memory (ed. Shilleto, vol. iii, p. 79) thus: When Venus ran to meet her rose-cheeked Adonis, as an elegant Poet of ours sets her out,

The bushes in the way

Some catch her [by the] neck, some kiss her face,
Some twine about her legs to make her stay,
And all did covet her for to embrace.'

(11.871-4.)

Burton's allusion to Shakespeare as an elegant Poet of ours' is curious. He only seems to quote Shakespeare in two other places in his Anatomy, once from Lucrece, 11. 615-6 (vol. i, p. 91), and once from Romeo and Juliet (vol. iii, p. 216). Burton makes several other references to the story of Venus and Adonis, but only as it figures in classical authors.

3 The opening tract, The Devill of Mascon, from the French (Oxford, 1658), is not of much interest. But the third tract, Laneham's Letter, concerning the Kenilworth Entertainment of 1575, bears, like Venus and Adonis, the autograph signature of Robtus Burton'.

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