University of Virginia Library

These notes are extracted, with some modifications, from a paper read at the English Institute on September 8, 1950.

In Oxford Bibliographical Society Proceedings & Papers, 1927-1930 (Oxford, 1930), II, 29-54, 341-342.

I am particularly grateful for details received from Prof. William A. Jackson of the Houghton Library at Harvard; Mr. Herman R. Mead, of the Henry E. Huntington Library; Prof. Allen T. Hazen, of Columbia University; Mr. C. J. Hindle, of the Bodleian Library; Dr. Zoltan Haraszti, of the Boston Public Library; Dr. Donald Wing, of Yale; Mrs. Donald E. Richmond of the Chapin Library; Professor R. H. Griffith, of the University of Texas; and my colleague, Dr. Edwin E. Willoughby, who examined the copies in the British Museum.

Used originally by Henry Bynneman as early as 1580, this was altered slightly and used by Ralph Newbury and Henry Denham in 1584; by Peter Short in association with Richard Yardley in 1592, and by Short alone in 1594; and with another slight modification by Short from 1595 until 1600. It next appears, again with a difference, in 1614 in STC 2549, printed for the Co. of Stationers.

This border was used once by Henry Denham in 1582 and next by Peter Short in Daniel's First Fowre Bookes (1595). By 1609, its next recorded appearance, it had been dismembered.

Perhaps some allowance should be made for the sophistication of copies that have been rebound. The British Museum copy C. 59. g. 26 of Poeticall Essayes retains the Royal Arms title-page to The First Fowre Bookes, plus The fyft Booke; as does the Hoe-Huntington copy, which however, has also the Ciuill Wars (1599) title but no text of Book V. The Pforzheimer copy, in original vellum, has the IHS title-page in combination with The fyft Booke; it has also the errata leaf.

As yet no reference has been made to the dating of Book V of the Civil Wars, two editions of which were printed by 1599, but it should be evident that if Waterson needed to arouse interest in a slow-selling book, he would mention the presence of additional material in any cancel title-page he might elect to issue.

It may be argued that the scarcity of the Royal Arms title-page is to be explained by the fact that the IHS issue came first, after which Waterson had the Royal Arms title-page printed as a cancel but sold relatively few copies. Then in 1599 the stock of Royal Arms title-pages was replaced by the 1599 cancel Ciuill Wars title-page. This seems to me unlikely.

It is not surprising, nor need it be significant, that so few copies of the book have a blank leaf conjugate with the title, for most copies have been rebound. The Pforzheimer copy of Poeticall Essayes in original vellum lacks the blank, which might have been considered objectionable, coming as it does after several pages of preliminaries.

Attention is directed to several formes in which variants have been noted. In the Manwood-Folger copy, inner E reads "The" at I, 91, 5, as prescribed in the list of Faults Escaped, while the other copies examined read "Tho". Inner F has a variant in the signature of F2, which frequently appears as E2; the F of F2 in the Heber-Folger copy appears to differ from that in the Manwood-Folger and Harmsworth 65/29-Folger copies—perhaps the original F was dislodged and replaced carelessly by an E, which in turn was corrected to F. Inner Q has a variant in the position of the marginal gloss on Q4r, which in HH 65/29-Folger occurs improperly opposite lines 1 and 2 of stanza 91, but in other Folger copies is placed correctly opposite line 1 of stanza 90. In the Folger copies, the headline of V1v is "THIRD" instead of "FOWRTH"; the same error occurs on X1v and X3v; the error reappears on Z3v of the Manwood-Locker-Harmsworth-Folger, the Heber-Harmsworth-Folger, and the Huth-Harms-worth-Folger copies but is corrected in the Brooke-Harmsworth-Folger and the Folger cs. 82 copies. This is not the only variation in inner Z; there is a slight change in the position of the numerals of stanza 104 on Z1v and a greater one in the numerals of stanza 119 on Z4, the copies agreeing as before. (Prof. Griffith, who first noted the last variant, reports that in the Texas copy, Wg/D226/595faa, there is no comma after "amities" in 121.2 on this page; it is present in the other Texas and the Folger copies).

On the other hand, "fyft" is erroneously signed Ec3, where "fift" is correct.

As in "tookst" at 2.2.5, "lookt" at 2.10.1, "Sooth'd" at 2.18.4, "good", "stood" at 3.20.4,6, "soone" at 3.114.4, and "tooke", "good" at 4.61.3,4. Short continued to use the digraph oo in parts of Poeticall Essayes printed in 1599.

See, for example, 5.5.1,2; 5.7.5; and 5.50.3.

In the STC both editions are assigned the number 22957, but the notes on the Huntington Library copy indicate what a comparison of the Folger 56-page edition with a microfilm of the Huntington 65-page edition confirms; namely, that there are two distinct editions, the shorter being the earlier. The headpiece is on A4 and F4 of the first 1595 edition and on A4 and G3 of the second.

For directing my attention to this fact and to other uses of the head ornament that is on the leaf of "Faults Escaped," I wish to record my thanks to Mr. John Crow of King's College, London.

See H. R. Hoppe, "John Wolfe, Printer and Publisher," The Library, 4th ser., XIV (1933), 267.

See STC 23697, Tasso's Godfrey of Bulloigne (1594), Gg1v; STC 17669, Maunsell's The First Part of the Catalogue of English Printed Bookes (1595), i3v; STC 13681, Three Sermons on Homelies (1596), D1; STC 6551, Delgadillo de Avellaneda's A Libell of Spanish Lies (1596), G2v; STC 24128, Topsell's The Reward of Religion (1597), X4; and STC 13712, Hooker's Of the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie, "The fift Booke," A8.

See STC 22957 (both editions), A2; STC 6551, printed in 1596, A4v, C4v, E1; STC 18748 Nun's Comfort against the Spaniard (1596), A3; STC 24127, Topsell's The Reward of Religion (1596), A5v.

The watermarks in the paper used in printing The fift Booke, a figure shaped somewhat like a teardrop in which is a cross and below which are, variously, the initials, BB, BR, IA, etc., are wholly unlike those seen in any copy of The First Fowre Bookes.

That in Bb of The fyft Booke, a sphere containing the letter M, with an inverted heart pendant and a flower-like figure above, is much like Briquet's 14068, manufactured in Bayonne in 1593. Another watermark has much the same shape but is surmounted by a fleur-de-lis and encloses a heart.

It is suggested in the Pforzheimer Catalogue I, 242, that Roberts printed the errata leaf, but no evidence is adduced.

The list of errors in The First Fowre Bookes was based on a copy that had forme inner E in the uncorrected state; cf. note 10 above.

It is possible that the list of Faults Escaped was in existence before the second edition of Book V was printed and that it was ignored in the reprint, just as the list of Faults Escaped in the 1590 edition of The Faerie Queene was ignored by Richard Field (and Edmund Spenser) in the second edition of 1596. If so, we should have to postulate that the Roberts edition preceded the Windet edition, for in spite of the dissimilarities in paper it seems likely that the errata leaf was printed at the same time as one of the editions of Book V and by the same man.

See his "Rationale of Copy Text," Studies in Bibliography, III (1950), 19-36.

Professor Griffith notes that copy Ag/D226/S95f at the University of Texas measures 83/16 x 6" and queries whether it is a large-paper copy. The Pforzheimer copy, in original vellum, is 7½ x 5½". Most copies have been trimmed in the process of being rebound.