WOTTON, Henry. Reliquiae Wottonianae. Or, A collection of lives, letters, poems; with characters of sundry personages: and other incomparable pieces of language and art. By the curious Pensil of the Ever Memorable Sr Henry Wotton Kt, Late, Provost of Eton Colledg. London: printed by Thomas Maxey, for R. Marriot, G. Bedel, and T. Garthwait. 1651.
12mo. Contemporary sheep, covers with double fillet borders in blind, rebacked, flat spine blind-ruled in compartments, gilt lettering direct; pp. [60], 540, with 4 engraved portraits, frontispiece engraving of author by Pierre Lombart (1613-181) (outer margin slightly trimmed as usual), portrait of George Villiers trimmed and mounted (shaving caption), title with typographic border of fleurons, woodcut initials and typographic headpieces; moderate wear to boards and corners, lighter square patch to spine, pages bright and clean; overall a very good copy; neat contemporary marginal annotations in ink, predominantly to “A Surveigeh of Education” (pp. 315-35), small tear to upper corner of N12; elegant and intricate diagram of a staircase (“A Stayrecase”) in the same hand to the first blank (see below).
First edition of this wonderfully various, posthumously published, Collected Works.
The Reliquiae, essentially a posthumous Collected Works, amounts to a portrait of an exemplary Renaissance English gentleman (“the most widely cultivated Englishman of his time” [Pearsall Smith]). Compiled by Wotton’s friend and fishing companion, Issak Walton (1593-1683), the volume reflects the sheer breadth of Wotton’s private and public interests and enthusiasms, and the many facets of his career. Dedicated by Walton to Mary Lady Wotton née Throckmorton (Wotton’s niece by marriage), and her three daughters, the preliminary “Advertisement to the Reader” begins with three “Testimonies”, the second, notably, “that of the Great Secretary of Nature, the Lord Chancellor [Francis] Bacon, who thought it not beneath Him to collect some of the Apothegmes and sayings of this Author.”
An informal guide to the wonderful miscellany of the volume follows: “Thou shalt find in it many curious things about Architecture, Picture, Sculpture, Landskip, Magneticall experiments., Gardens, Fountains, Groves, Aviaries, Conservatories of rare beasts, Fish-ponds […] And also many observations of the Miseries and Laberinths in Courts and States delivered in Lives, Letters to, and Characters of sundry Personages”. An extensive indexed list of these characters and personages is given.
Walton’s affectionate memoir of Wotton (now famous as part of Walton’s series of Lives) opens the collection proper. Two chapters (of parallels and disparities) are devoted to Wotton’s insights, as an insider, into Robert Devereux and George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, infamous favourites of Elizabeth and James I respectively. “A Panegyrick to King Charles” follows, preceding what purports to be a history of English Kings (grandly titled “A Conceipt of Some Observations Intended upon things most Remarkable in the Civil History of this Kingdom; And likewise in the State of the Church, From the Norman Invasion, till the Twelfth yeer of our virtuous Soveraign Charles the First, Whom God have in his precious Custody”). Following the account of William I (the Conqueror), however, it ends. This copy includes a pleasing contemporary marginal ink inscription beside William’s name: “This is the only history here mentioned”, as if short-changed.
A substantial part of the volume is devoted to The Elements of Architecture, Wotton’s seminal translation and adaptation of Vitruvian principles and theories (previously published alone in 1624), a fine example of his engagement with continental thought and arguably the first significant work of architectural theory in English. The section devoted to the construction of staircases (pp. 249-51) inspired a contemporary owner of this copy to sketch, in some technical detail, a staircase to the blank recto of the frontispiece. A Surveigh of Education (1630) follows, complete with “An Epistle Dedicatory” to King Charles.
There are essays on philosophy, religion, and diplomacy, poems, and a section of Wotton’s letters addressed to such luminaries as the Queen of Bohemia, Bacon, King James, and not least, the young John Milton, who visited the aging provost in 1638, before embarking upon his famous trip to Italy. Wotton praises Milton’s Comus as “a dainty piece [sic] of entertainment […] Wherein I should much commend the Tragicall part, if the Lyricall did not ravish me with a certaine Dorique delicacy in your Songs and Odes; whereunto I must plainly confesse to have seen yet nothing Parallel in our Language: Ipsa mollities. ”
See Logan Pearsall Smith, The Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton in Two Volumes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907)
ESTC R209190, Wing W3648
SKU: 2125412