WITH MUCH NEW MATERIAL

[Wild, Robert]: Iter Boreale. Together with some other select poems, not heretofore printed. By the same author. London, Printed by L.F. and are to be sold at the Parrot in St. Paul’s Churchyard 1661.

Second edition of Iter Boreale, the popular poem on General Monck by the nonconformist minister Robert Wild (1615/16-1679) - this is also a first edition thus, as this new printing, which followed one of 1660, has a significant number of new works added for the first time.

“The publication of a second edition of ‘Iter boreale’ in 1661 enabled Wild to append a number of shorter poems, most of which were elegies to the earl of Essex and puritan ministers such as Richard Vines, ‘our English Luther’ (p. 35), Jeremiah Whitaker, Stephen Marshall, and Jeremiah Burroughs. The works of Edward Reynolds, who conformed and became bishop of Norwich, received special praise” (Richard L. Greaves in ‘ODNB’).

“Sternhold (who killed the Psalms, and David too,/ In meeter and good meaning) did not do/ More violence to heav’n, than you to her,/ If, whil’st you think’t a kindness, you shall blur/ Her honour with my Ink; ‘Tis a disgrace/ To set black spots upon a glorious face” (from the poem ‘To the Father of a very vertuous Virgin, deceased; who desired an obscure person to make an Elegy, &c.’).

Details

First edition thus. 8vo., pp. 63 [1]. With initial blank. With woodcut parrot vignette to title-page. Light or medium browning, very good, bound in early twentieth-century tan calf, title in gilt to spine (slightly rubbed but good), edges mottled red. A couple of early pen marks to title-page, inscription to final pastedown of Chaundy, 29.iv.32 (possibly Oxford mathematician and expert in mathematical printing Theodore William Chaundy (1889-1966)).

ESTC R35248. Wing (2nd edn.) W2134.