‘The Most Popular Vernacular Poem in Translation in Early Modern England’
DU BARTAS, Guillaume de Salluste, Seigneur. Bartas his deuine weekes & workes translated: & dedicated to the Kings most excellent Maiestie by Iosuah Syluester London: Humphray Lownes. [(Colophon:) 1608.]
4to. Contemporary calf, rebacked and recornered in modern calf; pp. [xxxii], 544, 193, [23], 96, [8]; copper-engraved architectural title-page by William Hole incorporating Old Testament scenes, a world map, the constellations, and the Tetragrammaton; ‘The Historie of Judith’ with separate dated title-page to f. 3P1r, woodcut portrait of Bartas to f. B1v, 11 pp. with printed central column containing the name of a Muse, printed sectional titles with astronomical diagrams, dedicatory verse to Philip Sidney in the form of a pyramid with his armorial hedgehog at head, woodcut head- and tailpieces, large woodcut printer’s device to recto of last leaf; small stain to title-page obscuring surname of printer, slight marginal fraying and light soiling to title; boards a little rubbed and worn, headcap chipped; short closed marginal tears to ff. O1 & P1 sympathetically repaired, occasional light marginal dampstaining, small wormtrack at inner margin of last few quires, occasionally touching one or two letters; a very good copy; modern bookplate of the Fox Pointe library of Howard and Linda Knohl to front pastedown, contemporary ink ownership inscription to head of title ‘Mary Woodward her Booke’ and to rear free endpaper ‘William Gibbons his booke 1635’ with ‘I deny that Mary Gibbons her Booke’ beneath (see below) and 4 pp. of contemporary marginalia (see below).
Scarce second (first complete) edition of Josuah Sylvester’s translation of Guillaume de Salluste du Bartas, including for the first time Thomas Hudson’s History of Judith, this copy with contemporary female provenance.
La Semaine, Du Bartas’ epic poetic paraphrase of the first chapter of Genesis, was first published to great acclaim in 1578. Sylvester’s translations, circulating in separate fragments during the 1590s, were first collected together in the 1605 edition. The present 1608 edition completes Sylvester’s translation, incorporating the posthumous portions of La Seconde Semaine and carrying the vast biblical epic as far as Du Bartas himself completed it. Conceived as a continuous account of sacred history from Creation to the Last Judgement, the poem remained unfinished at the author’s death, breaking off in the Fourth Day of the Second Week; this edition therefore represents the most complete early English state of ‘probably the most popular vernacular poem in translation in early modern England’ and the translation that embedded Du Bartas’ poetry in the English cultural consciousness (Auger, p. 17).
Du Bartas’ poem presents an ambitious Protestant epic of Creation and sacred history, combining scriptural narrative with natural philosophy, moral reflection, and encyclopaedic learning. Sylvester’s energetic and expansive rendering ensured its exceptional currency in England. Based on references to Sylvester in print, Du Bartas’ early editor Snyder believed that ‘clearly everyone in pre-Restoration England who had received a literary education read the Weekes and almost all … admired it’ (ODNB). The 1605 collected edition was prefaced by commendatory verses from leading contemporaries including Ben Jonson, Samuel Daniel, and John Davies of Hereford, and the work was praised by figures such as Edmund Spenser and Michael Drayton.
Its influence on English sacred poetry was both immediate and sustained, forming an important precursor to Paradise Lost, in which John Milton adapts and transforms elements of the Bartasian model, including the invocation of a Christian muse, the treatment of Creation, and the integration of speculative natural philosophy within a scriptural framework. Sylvester’s translation is also highly significant in the context of early modern women’s writing as ‘the religious and rhetorically modest nature of biblical verse paraphrase made it a uniquely accessible and appropriable mode for socio-political engagement, and in this regard, the influence of Du Bartas … is felt in women’s poetic writing long into the seventeenth century’ (Ross, p. 99).
Alongside the shorter poems first assembled in the 1605 collection, including translations and adaptations after Du Bartas and other French Protestant writers such as François de La Noue and Guy du Faur de Pibrac, the present edition incorporates Thomas Hudson’s Historie of Judith, first printed separately at Edinburgh in 1584 and here added to Sylvester’s collected Du Bartas for the first time. In his preface, Hudson recounts that he was urged to undertake the translation by James VI and I, an ardent admirer of Du Bartas.
Provenance: Our copy bears early ownership inscriptions by at least two contemporary female owners, including ‘Mary Woodward her Booke’ to the head of the title. A later inscription, ‘William Gibbons his booke 1635,’ appears on the rear free endpaper, beneath which is written ‘I deny that … Mary Gibbons her Booke,’ perhaps preserving the protest of a female claimant. Additional contemporary female ownership inscriptions include ‘Mary Cook[…]’ and ‘Elizabe[th]’.
ESTC locates only four complete copies in the United States (Butler Library, Chicago, Harry Ransom, and the Huntington) and six in the UK (BL, CUL, Magdalen College, Liverpool Hope, All Souls, and Bodleian).
ESTC S116463; Grolier 243. See Auger, Du Bartas’ Legacy in England and Scotland (2019); Ross, Women, Poetry, and Politics in Seventeenth-Century Britain (2015).
SKU: 2122559