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[BOYLE ( John ), Earl of Cork and Orrery]. Verses by a young nobleman

Currency:EUR Category:Antiques / Books & Manuscripts Start Price:10.00 EUR Estimated At:3,000.00 - 4,000.00 EUR
[BOYLE ( John ), Earl of Cork and Orrery]. Verses by a young nobleman

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Auction Date:2012 Oct 20 @ 11:00 (UTC+1)
Location:38 Molesworth Street, Dublin, Dublin, ., Ireland
[BOYLE ( John ), Earl of Cork and Orrery]. Verses by a young nobleman, on the death of His Grace the Duke of B----- [.] [London : 1736?]. Drop-title, 8-pages, [bound before :] BOYLE ( John ), Earl of Cork and Orrery. A poem to the memory of Edmund Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham, Duke and Marquess of Normanby, Earl of Mulgrave, and Baron of Butterwick. By John Boyle, Earl of Orrery. Dublin: printed by George Faulkner, in Essex-Street, 1741. Pages (4), 8, bound without the half-title and the advertisement leaf at end. London, 1736? - Dublin 1741 1736?-41FIRST LONDON AND FIRST IRISH EDITIONS, privately printed, the author's own copies, signed "Orrery", interleaved with 32 leaves paginated 1-64, including a four and a half-page preface by Orrery discussing the two works and their publication, 2 vols bound in one, 8vo, contemporary red morocco, the boards with wide gilt borders of crowns and stylized leaf tools, lettered in gilt "A Poem on.[sic] / Edmund Duke.[sic] / of Buckingham.", unlettered and fully gilt spine in compartments, with bird-on-branch and other small tools, in gilt, all edges gilt : just a trifle rubbed with the joints slightly cracked, but the binding strong and otherwise an exceptional survival, in fine condition. Foxon B354 and 355. O'Donoghue, page 35, noting Brindley's folio only. The author’s 5-page introductory manuscript notes reads : "The printed contents of this book are two different editions, one in London, the other at Dublin, of the same poem. The first, which was published at London, was printed by the direction of her Grace the Dutchess of Buckingham, in the year 1736. The second, was printed at Dublin from a copy I gave to Falkner at his repeated request, in the year 1741. I cannot apprehend the reason why the Duke of Buckingham's name, in the first copy is not printed at full length, but B-----, and again in page the 3d S-----d's, and in page the 7th S----d, since the whole poem is entirely in his honour : nulla venenato litera mista joco [No venomous jest lies in what I have written - Ovid] : especially as the Duke of Berwick's name is inserted without any abbreviation, and of the two it is certainly esteemed less disloyal to praise the Duke of Buckingham than the Duke of Berwick. As I could take no notice of this circumstance to the Dutchess, who did me great honour, in thinking the poem worth publishing at any rate, I imagine the whole conduct of the press was left entirely to the bookseller who thought he could not be too circumspect and wary upon the occasion. He considered with equal gravity and wisdom that the verses were not only in praise of King James the second's grandson, but dedicated to that king's daughter, and to screen me from the Tower, this learned typographer has secreted my name, and only distinguished me as a young nobleman ; a device which, amidst the innumerable writers of that class, must inevitably save me from all danger : but to be serious, Falkner's edition is by much the most correct (for there is one in folio) of any extant." The Earl of Orrery (1707-62) took his seat in the Lords in November, 1735, where he began his political career as a Tory and a Jacobite, and an associate of Bolingbroke, whence, as he suggests, the printer's overzealous prudence in suppressing his name. He is now chiefly remembered for his close friendship, beginning in the early 1730's, with both Pope and Swift ; his biography of Swift, published in 1751, was popular, but at the same time elicited a great deal of hostile criticism. Samuel Johnson rather liked Orrery, but once described him as "feeble-minded," and said that "he grasped at more than his abilities could reach." In recent years his reputation has risen considerably, as can be clearly seen in the strikingly different assessments of him in the DNB and the ODNB. This 118-line poem, Orrery's first publication, is an elegy for Edmund Sheffield, 2nd Duke of Buckingham and Normandy, who died of consumption in Rome, in 1735, at the age of 19. The differences between the versions printed in 1736 and 1741 are chiefly matters of layout and punctuation, though there are also two substantive alterations in lines 30 ("baneful" for "blasting") and 48 ("vanquished" for "feeble"). Of the Duchess of Buckingham's private printing two copies are recorded, one at the British Library, the only one listed in the ESTC, and the other at Cincinnati (cited by Foxon). The British Library copy is, as here, bound with Faulkner's Dublin printing, of which the ESTC records five other examples : L, D, O ; NjP (also annotated) & PP. The volume was acquired in 1982 at the Christie's sale of the Gerald E. Slater collection, where it formed part of a group of six similarly bound titles originally sold in the dispersal at auction of the Cork and Orrery library in 1905. It also has four and a half pages of Orrery's notes at the front, but the text is entirely different, concluding with a touching assessment of the subject of the poem : "The Duke of Buckingham was a young nobleman of great hopes; of an excellent heart ; a very good understanding ; and a judgement uncommon at his years . . . He came into the world, as it were, an old man." Orrery commonly had more than one copy of his various poems specially bound for his own use. This example is enhanced by a further inscription on the front flyleaf : "Lucy Boyle, the gift of my honoured father, May 1st, 1756." The elaborate morocco binding of each copy has been described as the work of an unassigned Irish binder ; it is more probable that both are the work of James Brindley, the London bookseller and publisher who printed the folio edition of Orrery's poem, which he mentions parenthetically in his note.ENGLISH PRE 1801; DUBLIN PRINTED; ENGLISH LITERATURE; VERSE; ; ; ; ; ; ; ;