Title: Titi Livii Foro-Juliensis Vita Henrici Quinti, Regis Angliæ. Accedit, sylloge epistolarum, a variis Angliæ principibus scriptarum. E Codicibus calamo exaratis descripsit ediditque Tho. Hearnius, A. M. Oxoniensis, Qui & Appendicem Notasque subjecit
Description: <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;">Tall 8vo. pp. xxxi, [1], 230, [2]. Signatures: a-d4, A-Z4, Aa-Ff4. Bound by Clarke and Bedford in full hard-grain red morocco, spine and covers richly gilt, gilded edges. Marbled endpapers. Title page within double-ruled border. Editor's advertisement on recto of last leaf. Printed footnotes and annotations. First edition of both the ‘Vita Henrici Quinti’ and the independent ‘Sylloge’ of English royal letters (pp. 99-216, with its ‘Appendix’ of material relating to Sir John Oldcastle (the Puritan martyr and prototype of Shakespeare’s Falstaff) and King James I.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;">The poet Thomas Gray’s fine annotated copy, signed by him on the title. The copy has two interesting marginal annotations: at pp. 111-112 Hearne prints, from an unspecified early transcript, the celebrated letter from Anne Boleyn written from the Tower to her husband, King Henry, and Gray – whose astute suspicions of Chatterton’s ‘Rowley’ forgeries convinced his friend Horace Walpole to reject them – has written in the margin: ‘My Ld Herbert [i.e., Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, in his Life and Raigne of Henry the Eighth (1649, see Bib# 6239856 in this collection), who first published it], who had seen this fine letter, seems rather doubtful of its authenticity.’ A second note by Gray appears on p. 221, about ‘the dying words of King James the First’ found in manuscript in a copy of the Book of Common Prayer (1615): ‘they are texts of scripture &amp; payers repeated by John Williams, Bp of Lincolne, to K: James, when dying.’</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;">The volume was sold among Gray’s books and manuscripts at Sotheby’s (1851, lot 69) to Lilly, at the signally high price of four guineas, and bears the later bookplate of Henry Labouchere, with his note on a flyleaf ‘This Book belonged to Gray the Poet / It was bought at Mr Penn’s sale / in 1851. H. L.’</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;">The authenticity of Anne’s letter (‘universally known as one of the finest compositions in the English language’--Sir Henry Ellis, 1825) has been in dispute since its first (alleged) discovery, among the papers of Thomas Cromwell, cf. S. Vasoli, Anne Boleyn’s Letter from the Tower: a New Assessment. Lúcar, 2015 (Bib# 6239903), which dubiously endorses it, and the author’s extensive website presence. But the modern consensus, from Froude onward, prefer to consider it a clever forgery of the Elizabethan era. Before Hearne, it was (first) published by Lord Herbert of Cherbury (1649) as ‘said to be found among the papers of [Thomas] Cromwell, then Secretary [to Henry VIII],’ as a text which ‘seems to be antient’, but with ‘no Original coming to my hand.’</span><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="https://catalyst.library.jhu.edu/catalog/bib_1744836" rel="ugc nofollow">Click here to view the Johns Hopkins University catalog record.</a></span></span></p>