DAVIES, John.

£1,500 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

The Original, Nature, and Immortality of the Soul. First Tate edition of this philosophical poem by James I's Attorney General for Ireland. This edition includes a six-page epistle from Nahun Tate (1653-1715), a collaborator of Dryden and Purcell and the poet laureate from 1692. Tate commends the poem as "a Manual for People to carry about them... the Portraicture of a Humane Soul in the Perfection of its Faculties and Operations" (pp. [iv-v]).Sir John Davies (1569-1626) wrote the poem as Nosce Teipsum around 1594. The work soon attracted the attention of the future James I. Davies primarily argues for the immortality of the soul against the rising tide of Epicureanism, but the work also considers Renaissance conceptions of cognitive psychology. Davies rose rapidly under the Stuarts: he was appointed Lord Chief Justice in 1626 but died of apoplexy the night before he was to be installed. He was also a founder of the Society of Antiquaries.

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