Beschreibung:

Title: Recreations with the Muses Author: Alexander, William, Sir, Earl of Sterling Place: London Publisher: Tho. Harper Date: 1637 Description: Two parts in one. [x], 62, [2], 63-253; [iii], 326 pp. Later (1795) engraved facsimile portrait frontispiece. (Folio) 11x7, modern full black morocco, spine gilt lettered and gilt ruled, raised bands, covers triple gilt ruled, all edges gilt, bound by Stikeman & Co. The collected writings in verse of a leading Scottish statesman, courtier, scholar, and poet. Appearing here for the first time is a considerable fragment of a sacred epic called "Jonathan;" all the rest had previously been published, but the text has been extensively revised for this handsome folio, which was printed three years before the author's death. The poems of the Earl of Stirling were praised by such contemporaries as Drayton, and were read with care by Milton. "Broadly, his poem are weighty with thought after the type of Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, though scarcely so obscure as his. His tragedies have 'brave translunary things,' if laboured and dull as a whole. His 'Aurora' and minor pieces are elegant and musical." -- DNB. A very few copies of this book are known with a frontispiece portrait by Marshall, but this plate was evidently issued as a separate print, and was not present in the book as first offered for sale; the dedication copy does not have it, and the example in the Pforzheimer copy appears to have been supplied. Pforzheimer Catalogue 5; STC 347. Lot Amendments Condition: Light wear to extremities; lacking terminal blanks and original frontis portrait; adhesion damage to title-page; intermittent soiling and marginal dampstaining; else very good. Item number: 186930