Compare Constellations

Harington, John, Sir, 1560-1612. Epigrams [manuscript], 1605.

Title: Epigrams [manuscript], 1605.

Consists of a fair copy of 406 epigrams in an italic scribal hand (probably Harington's "servant," the emblematist, Thomas Combe) with Harington's autograph revisions and punctuation in a darker ink. Consists of four "books," each of a hundred epigrams. Modelled on the frame of Sir Thomas More's Epigrammata (1518), it includes a dedicatory epigram to James VI, indicating that another copy of the collection had been given to the King in January, 1602/3. At the end are two emblems: a watercolor of a lantern, described in "A newyeares guift to the King's Majesty of Scotland Anno 1602" (leaf 256), and a continental engraving of the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary, accompanied by "Fifteen several disicks" in Latin and English on each decade (leaves 260-263). Concludes with three elegies: gratulatory elegies to King James and to Queen Anne; and the author's "farewell to his Muse," retropectively dated 14 April 1603 (leaves 264-266). Prepared for presentation to Henry, Prince of Wales, and dated in Harington's autograph "June 19, 1605" (James I's birthday). Other than the dedication there are no other marks of royal ownership. Harington's autograph revision of the numbers brings the order of the poems in line with a companion manuscript, British Library Add. MS 12049, which Harington seems to have used as a draft, possibly as early as 1600, and continued to revised after 1605. The numerical revisions highlight the structure of forty theological poems, one on every "tenth Stanze" (III.94), which underpins the whole collection.

ArchivalResource: 1 v. : ill. (watercolor)

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/427383772 View